by Laura Powell
‘But I’m interested. Are you well? And in good health?’
She stops stunned. She could just say it; I have breast cancer. She has an unnerving urge to tell him and then lean on him; this old and withered almost-stranger.
‘I’m fine,’ she says instead, in a clipped way. ‘As I said, I’m not here to talk about me. I’m here because—’
‘I’ve thought a lot about you over the years,’ he cuts in.
‘I’m here about Nigel Forbes.’
There, his name sits between them in the room. It leaves no space for her to think about what he has just said. I’ve thought a lot about you.
‘He was interviewed in one of the newspapers a couple of days ago,’ she continues. ‘You might have seen it – it’s all over the other papers now.’
John’s expression doesn’t change, as though the words ‘newspaper’ and ‘Nigel Forbes’ mean nothing to him. He looks so calm, she is stabbed with envy.
‘He wants to clear his name,’ she says a little harder.
Gallagher does a long blink as if rebooting his brain and his eyes fix on something over her shoulder. She glances back but there is only the half open door and a white wall.
‘You do remember it all?’ she says.
‘Of course,’ he says in the gruff voice that he used on the nurse. He blinks again and shakes his head slightly. ‘I’m sorry, I find myself doing that. It’s being shut up here.’
She looks hard at him. They are so close, she could brush against his wrist if she dared. She doesn’t; she doesn’t want to either. Instead, she is pricked with new anger.
‘I never forgot him…’ she trails off.
He still doesn’t reply. You have blood on your hands too, she wants to remind him.
‘I’d been so convinced that I did the right thing but now I don’t know. I wanted to hear what you thought… That’s all. That’s why I’m here.’
His eyes glaze over. She wonders whether he is having a funny turn but he nods slowly.
‘You did receive the letter I sent you all those years ago?’ she presses. ‘Where I suggested we go to the police?’
He doesn’t respond. Don’t you feel any guilt? She thinks it, but finds herself saying it aloud too.
‘I do, on occasion,’ says Gallagher slowly.
‘On occasion?’ she says in a high-pitched voice that sounds nothing like her own.
‘But you’re not here about Forbes, not really. You want to know why I left you.’
‘How can you just lie there like that?’ she bursts out. ‘How did you let yourself off the hook? He was locked up for twenty years and neither of us helped him. I tried to at the time, just after he was convicted, but – that’s not the point. I should have done more. You should have done something too.’
‘It’s in the past now,’ he whispers, as though it is difficult to even speak. ‘There are so many more important things I’d like to ask you about yourself but, now you’re here, it’s taking me some time to put my thoughts in order. If you’d just give me a minute to—’
‘In the past? You think it’s in the past for him too?’
‘You don’t want to dredge it up. It’s for the best.’
‘The best for who? What about the best for Nigel Forbes?’
Or the best for me? She won’t say that though.
‘I saw the article,’ says Gallagher quietly. ‘It was a relief…’
‘A relief,’ she cries in that new voice of hers.
‘I never forgot him either but—’ He stops. ‘Look, it was hard for me too, but let’s not talk about that now.’
‘Hard? HARD?’
She bites her lip to stop herself but what she wants to say is: do you know how hard it is to live with guilt that is so physically heavy, you’d rather a pile of bricks crushing down on you? Do you know how hard it is to raise a child and cling onto a husband in that state but never risk telling them, in case you’re left with no one again? Or how hard it is, that moment you’re at a birthday dinner or an anniversary supper, when it strikes you that you don’t deserve these little freedoms because you stole them from someone else? So you find yourself lying in a locked toilet cubicle at a restaurant because the guilt becomes so unbearable you can’t stay upright any more. And even when you finally convince yourself, once again, that you did the right thing and that you saved the right man, it only gets easier because you harden yourself to it – and to everything else – a little bit more each year.
He still looks calm.
‘Say something!’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘But this isn’t about him, even if you think it is. It’s about you and me, and I can explain—’
‘That’s all? You’re sorry?’ she interrupts before he can say what he means by the rest.
‘I’m sorry about your mother’s death. I’m sorry you were locked up in that place, Middlebury. You didn’t deserve any of that. I felt very strongly for you, Betty. I mean, Mary.’ He winces. ‘If you’d just let me find the words – I get so confused by things these days. I—’
‘But you’re not sorry you left me there? Or that you didn’t come back for me, even after I wrote you that letter?’
Gallagher opens his lips. He moves them, as though speaking, but nothing comes out. He shakes his head, frowning.
‘I loved you,’ she cries, her throat hoarse and the words taut. ‘Maybe I was just one of hundreds of girls you charmed and tricked but my feelings for you were real, even though I was terribly young. And I lived with the real consequences of what we did. I didn’t tell anyone about Paxon, even though I should have, because I really loved you – I wanted to protect you. Maybe that was deluded but, for so many years, I’d have done anything for you… I waited for you!’ She swallows. ‘I waited for you for so long, even after I met…’ She stops. She won’t bring Jerry into this room again. It is a betrayal.
‘Betty, I—’
‘No, let me finish! I ruined a man’s life for you, and I waited for you for years. Even when I was married, I was waiting. And I only stopped waiting when that poor, poor man was released from prison, because I knew then it was over. But even then, I believed I’d done right in choosing you, and that there was a good, genuine, sad reason you never came back for me. But there wasn’t, was there? Did you have no empathy, no sense of proportion at just how huge it all was? Were you so self obsessed that you didn’t feel a shred of pity or guilt or remorse?’
She stops. She runs very cold.
‘Wait. You said Middlebury. How did you know I was sent there?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You did. You said it, a moment ago.’
‘You just told me.’
‘No, I didn’t mention it once. I never say that word.’
He breathes out slowly and turns his head away from her for the first time since she arrived.
‘You knew I was locked up in that place and you still did nothing?’
He doesn’t answer. She looks away too and stares out of the window as she tries to piece it together. A chain of seagulls fly past and, below, a red postman’s van threads along an empty road. A car alarm pierces the morning. It screeches on and on.
‘Yes,’ he says eventually, barely audible. ‘I knew you were there. I honestly believed it would be a fresh start for you.’
‘A fresh start? You thought that place was a fresh start?’ she cries. ‘I had your child. On a train. It was dead, I had a miscarriage—’ she squeezes closed her eyes as she says it. ‘I was a child myself and I went through that on my own. When I tried to tell the doctors, they told me I was delusional. Delusional! Of course they did, the whole story was so disgustingly unbelievable, I actually started wondering whether they were right and if it was all just in my head – you and me, Paxon, poor Forbes, the baby or whatever it was. But you knew it was true and you knew I was there, and still you did nothing at all to help me.’
She stops. She is panting. He doesn’t look at her.
‘Yes,’ he says qui
etly.
‘Is that all? Can’t you even manage a sentence?’
He sighs.
‘Yes, I knew it all. They sent my father your files – I told him. I knew everything.’
Mary flops into the armchair. She is tired, too tired to stand.
If only he knew I was here, he would come for me. That thought had kept her upright through those years at Middlebury. She had even thought about writing to him again for help. She had planned to slot the letter into a bottle and send it out to sea because they wouldn’t let her post anything unless it was vetted first. If she wrote his newspaper office address inside the bottle too, it would be forwarded on and reach him eventually. He would rescue her.
She had put it off though; she kept putting it off because what if she had sent it and he hadn’t come for her a second time?
‘The truth is,’ she says quietly. ‘You’re a coward.’
The word hangs in the air. The letters thicken and expand and grow between them. He nods.
‘Yes,’ he says, still without meeting her eye. ‘I left you because I was a coward.’
* * *
She should feel lighter but she doesn’t. Isn’t an explanation all she has ever wanted from him? She is gathering the energy to pull herself to her feet and leave when the light changes. A cloud shifts or the Earth moves and a plank of sunlight slices the room in half. It hits the wall on the far side and fractures, creeping up the wallpaper at a peculiar angle. Everything else in the room looks strangely angular too: the sharp oblong of the headboard, the rectangular wheelie tray, the cubed bedside cupboards, the blunt creases on his sheets. She stares and stares, until the room becomes a series of angular lines and planes and it hits her.
‘Wait. You couldn’t have been a coward if you did that war reporting job,’ she says. ‘You hated the thought of war.’
He scans the ceiling and interlaces his long bony fingers.
‘And how could you have known I’d been taken to Middlebury unless someone told you?’ She swallows a little gasp. ‘You must have gone back to St Steele after they’d locked me up. That’s how you knew that my mother had died and where I was. That’s how you got them to send my medical records, isn’t it?’
His jaw tightens and he stutters over his words.
‘I-I didn’t… I was a coward. Leave it now.’
He rolls onto his side so she can’t see his face, just the narrow rhombus of his back. His shoulders shake through the blankets.
‘You should leave,’ he mutters. ‘Go home to your family.’
‘Leave?’
John reaches up an arm. She thinks he is about to touch her and she freezes, every muscle tenses, but he stretches beyond her and pulls a long red cord that hangs from the ceiling.
‘What are you doing? Why did you do that?’
His lips open, his fists ball up and his head shakes from side to side as though his two inward selves are wrestling.
‘But you came back to St Steele for me after I’d gone?’
‘An article,’ he manages. ‘I just went back to write another article.’
‘You didn’t. You’d already left your job.’
‘He’s free. It’s over. Go home now.’
‘But why did you leave me there? What did I do wrong?’ She sounds childlike but she doesn’t care any more. ‘You said you’d explain.’
The nurse’s footsteps are back, they turn up the next set of stairs. Mary crouches so she is level with him; so she can feel his warm, stale breath on her cheek and see the film of age cover his eyes. He opens his lips and mouths something. He tries again, but then the door opens. Mary doesn’t move.
‘How are we doing Mr Gallagher?’ says the nurse brightly.
Mary watches his face but his eyes are locked away from her.
‘I just want to know why,’ she murmurs.
‘Mr Gallagher needs some rest,’ says the nurse.
‘She was just a silly naive schoolgirl, wasn’t she?’ she continues, not caring what the nurse thinks of her any more.
‘Perhaps it’s best you wait outside. Mr Gallagher’s getting distressed,’ says the nurse.
‘And he was just a selfish man who should have known better. It meant nothing to him, did it? He had hundreds of girls like her, didn’t he? I know I’m right… I need to know.’
‘It’s best you leave,’ says the nurse sternly, just as another nurse and a doctor hurry in.
‘Just tell me!’
A blue skirt and a pair of stocking-covered legs squeeze between her and the bed so she can’t see him at all any more. She cranes around for a glimpse of his face but they crowd him. Their voices tangle up.
‘Say it, just so it’s final. I meant nothing to you, did I?’
Someone is clamping her shoulders and helping her to her feet. They steer her out of the room and down the stairs.
An hour passes and John slips in and out of consciousness. When he wakes next, he is locked to the bed with a needle threaded into his arm, connected to lots of clear tubes. A different nurse is hovering in the doorway. He doesn’t look at her. Thursday, he recalls. Simon is in Geneva.
‘Are you awake?’ says the nurse in a hushed voice.
Toes still flex. Knuckles still bend.
‘You’re a popular man today,’ she continues. ‘You’ve another visitor, can I send him in?’
Another visitor? He frowns. He hasn’t received a visitor today.
‘I’m not expecting anyone. Simon’s in Geneva.’
That moment, it floods back and he is overwhelmed with nausea; she really was here. His Betty. He had wanted to tell her. The explanation was on his tongue. The words were lined up. Then the fog came.
‘Yes, Simon is in Geneva,’ confirms the nurse. ‘But this gentleman was very insistent.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘He wouldn’t give it,’ she says, just as the bedroom door pushes open.
A tall figure with coils of sandy grey hair strides in before the nurse can stop him. In his left fist is a golf ball-shaped keyring sprayed gold. His other hand is hidden inside the pocket of his blazer. His frown is thick and low, his eyes are bright blue, almost turquoise, and his jaw is clenched so tightly that two knobs of bone stick out.
‘So you’re John,’ he says, as though he has just tasted something bitter.
Chapter 19
October 1956
Betty charges at Mr Paxon headfirst. Mrs Eden tries to catch her wrist but Betty is too quick. She is just about to reach him, and thwack him over the head with her fist because she hasn’t a harder weapon, when someone pulls her backwards. She lunges away from them and raises her fist again, ready to crash it down on his head. It collides with something. There are gasps and tuts, and she realises that she hit Mr Eden instead.
‘Him,’ she shrieks, finding her voice. ‘Someone get him!’
Still no one moves. Mr Eden catches her arm and pulls her out of the big room, while she tries to struggle away. Joan follows them into the hall and closes the door.
‘It was him. He was with Miss Hollinghurst. You have to get him.’
‘What’s she talking about?’ says Joan.
‘Let’s all calm down,’ says Mr Eden.
‘Fetch Inspector Napier!’
The big room door swings open again and Mrs Eden appears.
‘The girl’s mad,’ she hisses. ‘Do something with her, Tancred.’ Then turning to him, him, very him through the open doorway, Mrs Eden says: ‘I’m so sorry about this, Mr Paxon. She’s been acting strangely since her mother passed away; harming herself and screaming and behaving quite like an animal. Do you know that she kissed Tancred at the funeral, actually kissed him? Now accusing you of goodness knows what. I really am sorry.’
‘No harm done,’ says Mr Paxon in a quiet voice, still looking into his teacup.
‘But it was him,’ cries Betty from the hallway.
Mrs Eden tuts loudly. Joan lowers her eyes.
‘Just look at him,’ yells Bet
ty. ‘He even looks guilty. Why won’t anyone believe me?’
‘I am sorry. Now, can I top up anyone’s tea?’ soothes Mrs Eden. She turns to Mr Eden and hisses under her breath, ‘For Pete’s sake Tancred, be a man for once and sort this out. She can’t stay here. Not after this.’
The door to the big room is wrenched shut and Betty can’t see Mr Paxon any more. Mr Eden lets go of her and Joan rubs her temples.
‘Your mother died in her sleep. It was an accident,’ pleads Mr Eden.
‘I don’t mean Mother, I mean Miss Hollinghurst. He killed all the girls. Someone needs to tell the judge and stop Mr Forbes’s trial.’
‘Stop this,’ snaps Mr Eden. It is the first time she has seen him angry. ‘Go and lie down, Betty.’
‘I’m telling the truth. I would have told you sooner but – I can’t tell you everything or someone else will be hurt – I have to protect him – But it’s true that Mr Forbes didn’t hurt anyone and that it was Mr Paxon all along – Get him before he hurts someone else!’
‘If you don’t calm down, she’ll call the doctor,’ says Mr Eden sharply. ‘You won’t want that and I certainly don’t either, so let’s stay calm.’
‘Please!’
‘There’s nothing to worry about any more,’ tries Joan. ‘Mr Forbes was found guilty and he’s being sentenced this week.’
‘Guilty? But you’re not listening. It wasn’t Mr Forbes, it was Mr Paxon.’
The door to the big room opens again and Mrs Eden elbows her way back into the hall.
‘I’ve heard enough of this,’ she seethes. ‘It’s enough to raise the dead.’
‘Evelyn,’ warns Mr Eden.
Mrs Eden blushes momentarily, then her face hardens again.
‘No Tancred, you’ve indulged her for too long. She’ll behave herself until this day is over, then she’s not welcome here. We’ve done all we can.’
‘Come on, let’s get you upstairs,’ says Joan, taking Betty’s other arm.
‘I’m not going up,’ screams Betty. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
‘That’s enough,’ snaps Joan.
‘If I do he’ll kill you all.’
‘We need a doctor,’ says Mrs Eden. ‘She’s hysterical.’
‘It was him. Mr Gallagher knows.’