It wouldn’t last, of course. By the very next morning she could already feel, in her fast-healing body, the beginnings of returning strength and vigour, and this, of course, she found immensely reassuring.
Reassuring, yes, but something in her had changed, and would stay changed. She would be strong again, and brave again, but never again would she be a person who did not know what it was like to be weak. It was a piece of knowledge to be added to her already extensive store, and it would never be forgotten.
Chapter 27
The following afternoon, Bridget received a surprise visitor. A young woman was hurrying lightly, purposefully across the ward, and for a moment Bridget couldn’t put a name to her. The face was familiar, certainly – but who …? where …? It was a face she’d seen quite recently – and now, in a flash, she remembered where she’d seen it. On a mantelpiece. The mantelpiece over the fireplace in Norah’s home.
Yes, it was Norah; it really was – but what a transformation! For a moment, Bridget fancied that the unhappy lady must suddenly have bought herself a lot of new, smart clothes … must have had her hair done in a new style – something like that. But no, at a second glance, Bridget realised that her hair was still the same tight, gingery-grey frizz. She wore the usual cardigan, the usual nondescript blouse. What was different was her face, her walk, her whole demeanour. Even her height was altered, now that her cringing stance had been replaced by straight, swinging shoulders and a lifted head.
What could have caused so startling a transformation, at a time of such unmitigated disaster in the poor woman’s life? Her son was dead; her husband on a murder charge. What on earth could have caused such rejuvenation?
The disaster itself, of course. However much a disaster sweeps away, it also inevitably leaves a slate clean, and its born-again victim has nowhere to go but forward. Around her, even before she knows it, doors have been flung open by the very force of the storm. Newness shines in her face long, long before it penetrates her mind.
Of course, Norah had first to ask Bridget how she was, and of course Bridget had to answer; but almost at once they found themselves piecing together, on the basis of what each already knew, the probable sequence of events on that fatal Sunday afternoon. There seemed little doubt that a phoney break-in was what Mervyn had first tried to organise. Christopher was to be found dead indoors, with a bullet through his head; and the gun that the imaginary robbers had used would be found discarded in the garden. A son who had died heroically fighting off burglars would be a far, far more creditable son to boast of than the ever-deteriorating mental wreck which was the alternative.
But the plan had misfired. Christopher had wandered off somewhere: he had not returned home at the appropriate time to play his appointed part in this scenario, and Mervyn had panicked. Those same agonising questions that Norah had so often had to ask herself were now homing in on Mervyn. Where is he? What is he up to? Who is he upsetting? What sort of disgrace is he bringing the family into this time? For the first time, it was the father, not the mother who had to face these questions. For the first time he had to cope, to decide by himself what to do. He was aware, by this time, that Christopher was mad, and that his madness was escalating with terrifying speed into one of his worst manic phases. Possibly – indeed, probably – he had been talking to his father in exactly the way he had talked to Bridget. “You are my creature,” he would have said: “I genetically engineered you … You can only do what I’ve programmed you to do.”
The child is father of the man: a new and horrifying gloss on the old proverb.
For Mervyn, compelled at last to awake from his years of self-imposed blindness, it had been too much. Too terrifying. Too humiliating. To have this son roaming the neighbourhood in this sort of state … He had got to be found, and urgently. After the three intrusive women had at last left, and when Christopher still hadn’t got home, Mervyn had gone, gun in hand, in search of him.
Had he guessed the boy would be wandering on the Common, intent on some crazy project? Or had he tracked him down elsewhere, and lured him into the car for his last, fatal journey? Whichever it was, the deserted Common, after dark, must have seemed like a good place, with its dark bushes and overhanging dripping trees.
“I could blow up the world!” Christopher had boasted to Bridget on that Sunday afternoon. Was this what he believed he had done, as the noise roared through him, just as it had roared through Bridget? Had it been as painless for him as it had been for her? Did he die in triumph, world destroyer, world creator, King of the World?
While they talked, sometimes even laughing at some bizarre little incident that one or other of them recalled, speculations about Mervyn escalated. Right now, probably, the story was being pieced together by the police. He had no defence, of course, having been caught red-handed.
Somehow, Norah couldn’t bring herself to care, one way or the other. It all seemed too complicated to care about. It was beyond the range of her still-battered emotions.
They both laughed a little, guiltily, uneasily. Norah was still feeling vaguely surprised to find herself laughing, even at a time like this. A time like what? She had not yet in any way faced the vastness of her freedom, the multiplicity of the options that would soon be edging their way into her field of vision.
The process would begin very gradually, of course. Indeed, in a very small way, it had begun already. Only that morning, she’d picked up the telephone and had heard the voice of her neighbour and confidante, Louise. The voice, as of old, was once again bubbling over with warm and eager curiosity. Once again it was the voice of friendship; a cup of tea was being offered, and the prospect of a long, long talk.
“Why don’t you pop in?” Louise had said, and Norah, for the first time in years, and without any qualms or backward glances at what might be going on at home, was able to say “Yes, I’d love to.”
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2014
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
All rights reserved
© Celia Fremlin, 1994
Biographical Sketch © Chris Simmons, 2014
Preface © Rebecca Tope, 2014
The right of Celia Fremlin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–31278–8
King of the World Page 18