Sleep beckoned. He resisted it with the irrational crossness of a two-year-old, beating at it with fists and cries for fear of being left behind and missing something. Squinting at that damn painting, with the light at another angle, vowing that this dram would be the last, he repeated his own conclusions, dredged from the paint, and the books, and everything he thought he never knew. He thought of his own daughter and how much they had wounded one another; thought of Richard Beaumont, and then thought back to his daughter, and how much he preferred the status quo to the bottomless pit of horror that would exist if he did not know if she were alive or dead. I can’t make it up to you. I can to her. The love of a child put all other loves into perspective.
He looked at the oil painting through a haze of smoke. The cigarette made him dizzy. He was still imagining this room with bright colours, gracefully faded by nicotine, bad habits and good company. He would do it, when this was over. Never again would he live in his former sterility, or neglect a duty dictated by passion. He would reach out, he would interfere, he would instigate, instead of waiting. When this was over. As he grew calmer, he realised again that he owed a terrible duty to that pathetic body at the bottom of the cliff because it was what had awakened him into a new lease of life, opened his eyes to the pity he had lost, made him want to be in some small way useful, and unique, because others would forget. And he owed it in particular because he now knew what no one else did, and knowledge always imposed a duty. Knowledge imposed dangerous, inevitable obligations. He was not sure he was up to it. That was why he phoned Sarah, ashamed to admit he needed a woman and there was no one else. For the last three years he had shunned his friends.
‘You were a sweet lad, once,’ he told himself. A bookish lad with a great knowledge of birds. A boyhood passion, until he became bored with it, like he had with the stamps and the music. He had come to be wary of them. So, back to the volume containing Corvus corax.
There were the ravens in the painting, surrounding the dead body of the girl, the smaller ravens hopping and dancing as they had today, the larger adults slashing and pecking and carrying away. He was confused about what he thought he could see and what he had read. Adult ravens carried away flesh, hid it for future consumption. Babies were nervous, followed examples. Ravens were discriminating, charming, yet the omens of doom. And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting . . . And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming, And the lamplight o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor. They were all crows. Carrion was carrion: flesh was food, and the more scarce the food, the more they pecked. They did not kill: they found what was already dead.
And they liked bright things. They went for wide open eyes, anything that shone, the tawdry and the precious, as long as it glittered. Thieves. Something about the punctuated thread of gold around the neck of that painted body failed to convince. John remembered the dog he had once walked on the cliffs. It had careered after a rabbit, caught it and then, unable to arrest its own headlong pursuit, went straight over the edge, to be found later, dead, broken backed and bloodless on the rocks below, with the rabbit still gripped in its spaniel jaws. Perhaps the body at the bottom of the cliff also held something in her mouth, or in her clenched fist.
He had a brief moment of pity for what Richard Beaumont had seen, and then it was temporarily displaced by an acute dislike for anyone who could have sat, sketched and dispassionately absorbed the terrible sight of Edwin’s ravens pecking at a young body. It was the work of a ghastly voyeur, with blood the temperature of ice or an enjoyment of revenge. Not only had he watched and sketched, but he had, painstakingly and with loving clumsiness, transferred it into paint. The bastard. But oh, the painful shock for a man with such a soft and sentimental reverence for innocent birds, to see what they could do. Take out the eyes, widen the wounds, tear at the flesh and remove what glittered. John struggled to remember his huge liking for Richard Beaumont, contemplated the perils of any friendship. Friendship was love of a kind and involved accepting what you could not understand and forgiving it. Artists were different anyway. They viewed selectively; they were mesmerised and blinkered by turns; they were intoxicated by the visual, like boys on drugs. Maybe Richard was not aware of what he had seen. Oh yes he was. Perhaps simply paralysed. And he thought he had seen the chough, because he had dreamed of seeing it, and because it was infinitely better than what he had actually seen: the carnivorous brutal raven, raping flesh. Far better to have seen the gentler chough, with all its optimistic associations. When he had had the clarity of just enough alcohol, John was sure he had also discovered the mystery of this red-beaked thing, which crowded into the right-hand corner of this small oil painting. He squinted at it again, thick paint, rough shape. The black bird with the red beak and red feet. The thing that Richard included because he thought it might have been there, or wished it was there, or wanted it to be what it was not. And it was not the ancient chough of his fond imagining, but a baby raven, with feet and feathers still bright red with blood. A bloodied raven, rising to a height, yelling at the parents to go, go, go. Enough to fool a man who was denying what he had seen, and preferred it to be the gentler chough, which fed on invertebrates, insects, crustacea, molluscs, spiders and worms, but never carrion.
John found he could not stop crying.
Brushing away tears, he looked again. Oh Lord, he had not cried in such a long time. The thing round the neck was simply white, a gap in the deep paint, where the canvas was visible. He thought of a ligature, and of the dirty pale colours of Edwin’s scarf. Shuddered. The bright yellow speck by the hand was more significant. Something she clutched that might show who she was, or where she had come from. It was all there, in the painting. Edwin had something to give him. Something the ravens had taken from her hand. Or her neck.
Sarah would understand. He knew she would. Somebody must. She had understood. She said it was the mourners who lit a soul’s pathway to heaven. Not greedy ravens. If that lonely girl had a father or mother, or sister, they must know. But not everything, no, not everything.
And yes, he could still like Richard Beaumont, and want to know him for ever.
Sarah did not understand.
The bedraggled girl who sat on the sofa was not Minty, although there was a resemblance. Possibly the same tribe. She was a more beautiful, harder version of Minty. The tableau had re-formed. The girl sat between Mr and Mrs Fritz; Mrs Fritz held her hand. Steven sat on the floor, patently exhausted, resting his back against Sarah’s knees. She kept one hand on his shoulder, not wanting to lose contact. There was a scratch on his face. They were two entirely separate groupings, the sofa and the floor. Steven seemed to have removed himself in spirit from all of them. He had pushed the girl through the door and run back upstairs, muttering about fixing the lock, then back down again, while Sarah ministered coffee, then into the bathroom, where she heard him, noisily sick. Mrs Fritz had taken charge of the girl. A babble of low-voiced conversation still ensued. Steven had returned in Sarah’s dressing gown and sat where he sat now, utterly silent. The low-voiced conversation on the sofa went on. Sarah roused herself. At the moment, she cared for no one but him. And felt heavy with foreboding. ‘Think you ought to go and get some sleep. You’ve done your bit.’
‘I should go home.’
‘No, sleep here.’
He turned his sweet smile on her. The smile which transformed his face from the nondescript to curiously attractive. It was when he smiled they most resembled one another.
‘Come on, then. You can have my bed.’
They left the room; the babble went on behind them. Steven got into her bed; Sarah sat on the edge. His day clothes were strewn around the room and she remembered, inconsequentially, that he would need a clean shirt for the morning. Plenty of those: she kept them in reserve.
‘Are you always sick, afterwards?’
He nodded.
‘I shouldn’t have asked you to do it.’
‘Oh, I don’t k
now. It was different. I had to hit her and she scratched, but it wasn’t bad. What’s the story? Who is she?’
‘I’ll have to find out. May take the rest of the night. You sleep.’
He was fading. ‘We always reverse it, don’t we, sis, you and I? Day is night and night is day. Perhaps we’ll be reincarnated as nocturnal animals. There’s a bird called the fire raven. Saw a picture of it once. You look like it. Red beak and claws.’
‘I wouldn’t mind being reincarnated as perfectly normal.’
‘Too late, sis, too late. What time is it?’
‘Early for us. Only one a.m.’
‘Night’s young,’ he said drowsily. ‘But I got things to do tomorrow. I’ll take all my stuff away tomorrow. You know the difference between us two? You care about people. I don’t. But I don’t want Lilian to see me before tomorrow.’
‘Lilian never surfaces before ten. Steven, are you all right?’
‘Never better. Knackered. I was good, wasn’t I? They’ll never know about the lock, promise. Stupid, stupid idea, though. And Sarah, love, I tell you something, they’re serious traders up there. Serious thieves. Serious good taste.’
His eyes were closing. She was worried about the flushed pallor of his skin, his hectic happiness.
‘I think they trade in people.’
He was drifting into sleep. ‘Paintings, drawings. Why are they always a she? Why . . . are they always shes?’
She was quiet, holding the damaged hand he placed in hers. Hallucinating, surely he was. May have needed food; he neglected food. She pulled the covers up to his chin, as she had when he was a child, and put the hand beneath.
He withdrew the hand and patted her with it. All four fingers. Then woke up again briefly, suddenly urgent.
‘Lovely day tomorrow, got to be well. Lovely Lilian. I’ll take her back that painting and she’ll love me for ever. Where is it? Only small.’
She hated to do this.
‘I can’t give it to you, Steven. Not yet. I gave it to someone else for safekeeping. It was too important for me to keep. I’m sorry.’
His eyes closed again.
‘Oh, sister Sarah, you bitch,’ he said. And slept.
And slept.
She checked on the balcony. Washing line, scarcely visible; the floor of the well littered. It would do.
She went back to the others. Night would be day and day would be night.
CHAPTER TEN
No unauthorised access
I want my sister. I want my sister. Angry weeping.
I came here to this country the same way as she. In a boat, cold, cold, cold. We paid good money. Up a steep hill, out of the sea, cold. In the dark: man with a scarf and a torch. Remember he. Eight months ago. We got our phones, nothing else. We know the name of the first town, near the Cliffts. We all have these tags with number and address, like soldiers do, only in case we get lost. We want jobs, money to pay back. Go to one house, first, then London. To Chinese people in office, not here. They tell us what Jobs are. Like tarts. Minty don’t want to be no tart: she won’t do it. They take her somewhere else. Then no word. Nada. I work, I don’t mind, but where is my sister? She lose her phone. Months, I worry, then angry.
Then Minty phones me. So pleased. Someone give her a new mobile phone. All she wants to do is go home. So homesick, has to go home. So she says she is going back to these Cliffts, the place where we came in. She’s gonna wait for the boat bringing people in, ask them to bring her back. She has money: she wants only to go home. She want her grandmother, her father. I say, you stupid, where are you? She says she don’t know how to get to Cliffts, but Mr Fritz tells her there is kind man who goes to Cliffts. Must be the same place. She is going to follow him, on train. Wait for me, I say. She won’t: she is sick for home. No more words from her. So I come to find her.
Wait outside. Chinese people come. I shout and scream, where is my sister, where is my sister? They hit me and bring me upstairs. Say I must work instead of my sister. They lock me in. Take my phone. They say she will come soon.
Where is my sister?
Sarah had written it down as it emerged, in broken phrases, over two hours. Throughout the girl fiddled with a gold-coloured chain round her neck, her only adornment, cheap and bright.
‘May I see that?’
The girl took it off and passed it to Mrs Fritz, who passed it to Sarah. The girl’s face was red and blotched; she swayed with tiredness. Sarah held the small yellow medallion in her palm, where it was warm to touch.
‘Tell her,’ Sarah said to Mrs Fritz, ‘that her sister is probably—’
‘No.’ Mrs Fritz shook her head.
Sarah turned to Fritz.
‘Did you tell Minty to follow Mr Beaumont?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he know?’
‘She like Mr Richard. He chat to her. Like her father, she said. I think he look at her not like her father.’
‘Her friend?’
‘Yes, her friend. More than you.’
She remembered something Richard had said. Live models are hard to find. The bastard.
‘Where can we hide her for now?’
‘We do that. She ours,’ Mrs Fritz said. ‘Keep very quiet. And you—’ she stabbed a finger in Sarah’s direction. ‘You lucky. You nice rich tart. You got flat. You got money. You got men friends. You lucky. Us, we look after this girl here. You find Minty.’ Sarah went downstairs first, checking. Silent as a grave at dawn, traffic beginning outside. The girl and her new keepers disappeared into the basement. It seemed to her later, trying to snatch sleep on her sofa, that there was no one to tell, except perhaps the doctor. Her flat felt like a prison, suffocating in sadness. So much for non-involvement. She slept until eleven and woke up guilty. Steven was long gone; she wanted to crawl into the bed he had left and disappear. Don’t want anyone else’s shit, anyone else’s pain, but there it was, like a big fat nail through the skull. Dangerous knowledge, about to grow into a tumour if left alone. Knowledge of girls bribed into slavery, into being servants or prostitutes. She got up, listened to the messages, cancelled her appointments, and enquired about the times of trains. Richard Beaumont’s painting of the body haunted her as if it was still in the room.
There was no reply from Dr John Armstrong, only messages. Right. Go. The building remained silent from behind her closed door. No alarms, no sirens, no movement. She phoned the Beaumonts. No reply either. Just as well. Richard could not be trusted. What had he done? How could you?
So, go. Go and look at the sea. Something to do, perhaps, before telling a girl her sister was dead, but immortalised in a painting. Nevertheless, she did not move. Sat and tried to work it out, the whole of her slow with angry pity and lack of sleep. How little one knew about one’s neighbours, after all. Who lived alongside her? The Smiths, who only took up residence at weekends; Hoffman, who was only there during the week. The Skoyles who came in late at night and left at dawn. People who respected the privacy of others, used their apartments as static vehicles for living, themselves always in transit, appreciative of the quiet and the empty flats which separated them from one another. An ideal place for hiding. Rich, mainly, and busy. A place half full of people who did not want to know one another, committed to peace and ignorance. The Beaumonts, living in safe splendour, he being the only other who talked to everyone, only to forget, while Lilian was contemptuous and disinterested in anything outside the door. Fritz, who either cared selectively or not at all, and would not care if they were robbed. They might as well all have been ghosts. They did not think about where they lived as Sarah did. This place was her refuge, her security, the heavyweight anchor of her life, the place to which she hurried to return, but at the moment it could have been anywhere.
She looked at the medallion in her hand. It was like a cheap identity disc, the texture of tin. What was it like to have no possessions, no identity, other than a piece of tin? And what was it like to want to go home, all the time, every waking hour of the day?
Sarah counted on her fingers, childishly, trying to concentrate her mind. The Chinese in the penthouse. Would they call the police and report another missing servant? No, not if they had imported her: too much to hide. They were the receivers of parcels and goods; they never came in or went out empty-handed. So, they were traders of a kind. Everyone knew that. Traders in things, possibly including people. Confident traders, not even trying to conceal. They were rude, dismissive, confident no one would notice or care. The building itself, with its indifferent occupants, shrouded them. Was it they who filled boatloads with displaced Romanies, lured into long-term payment by the promise of jobs and better lives? What was the difference in trading in chattels, or people? If that is what they did, they were arrogant enough to supply their immigrants with incriminating evidence. The medallion did not say who the wearer was. It simply told them where to go. A bright thing, like a thin polished coin. 15 Cram Mans W1 0207 . . . the rest of the number blurred.
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