by Emma Stonex
‘It only made him sound worse than he was – and there was already so much against him that it didn’t seem kind to rub salt in the wound. That’s all it would have been, for it to come out straight away afterwards. Do you see?’
‘Yes.’
Her eyes met Helen’s, and the look communicated in them was urgent and pained. ‘But there was another thing in that letter that I should have shared, Helen. It did matter. It could have helped. Only I was too scared to say anything.’
Helen waited.
‘Vinny told me there was a man out to get him. He thought he’d be able to get away from his past with this job on the lighthouses, but actually it was the opposite. Now this person knew just where to find him. Vinny was a sitting target, out on the sea.’
‘Who are you talking about?’
‘The one he’d done it to. The last thing.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Michelle checked behind her, as if her husband might be standing there, or an official from Trident House. Out in the vestibule, a baby started crying.
‘This man worked for Trident,’ she said. ‘Vinny found out right after he got offered the job. His mate back home told him; said he’d never believe it, but guess who else had found a way in? Not as a keeper – he was office administration, but under the same roof, if you can call it that. He had this funny name for himself. Called himself the White Rook. That’s what the gangs back in town called him. It was cos of him having all this white hair, since he was a kid. What’s that again?’
‘Albino.’
‘His real name was Eddie.’
‘Eddie took the job as a way to get at Vince?’
‘He must’ve discovered Vinny got work at Trident, then decided that’d be as good a way to do it as any, so he wormed his way in.’
Helen felt light-headed. This was how it worked with the vanishing. Whenever a new idea surfaced, or the event tilted to a fresh angle in her mind, or a possibility occurred to her at three in the morning so fully formed that she had to sit up, clammy and disorientated, and turn the bedside lamp on to get her bearings, the lighthouse shook in its snow globe. The pieces fell in a new pattern each time.
‘Are you talking about revenge?’
‘I think so.’
‘What happened to Eddie?’
‘He left the Institution,’ said Michelle. ‘No one saw him again. But I don’t think it was Eddie that did it anyway. I think he paid someone. He had people all over. Dangerous people who could get things done and do it under the radar.’
‘Did Trident know the connection? They must have.’
‘If they did, they never said anything to me about it. But it’s like Vinny knew it was going to happen. He said he was seeing things out there. Imagining stuff that wasn’t true, and he said that happened sometimes, with the loneliness of it, but this was new. Then when they disappeared, the more I think about it, the more it seems clear as glass to me that that’s what happened. It wasn’t the sea or spies or any of that. It was this man, this White Rook. Eddie. He’s still out there, and if he gets wind that I’ve been talking about Vinny, whatever I say, he’ll come after me and my family.’
Helen thought about the birds Arthur’s father had kept. Her husband had used to recall going up the hill in the early mornings, before school.
They get better, then they fly away.
In a sliver of an instant she saw the dimple in Arthur’s smile as he looked up at her from the book he was reading.
How did the mind hold on to such things? She could never remember which number bus to take to the city centre from home, but she could remember that.
‘It’s easy to feel responsible,’ she said carefully. ‘I feel it too. I expect Jenny does. Our own stories are always going to feel the most significant. But listen – for your White Rook there are a dozen more. Things that make us worry we had more to do with the disappearance than we realize; that we’re all to blame in some way—’
‘This writer following me,’ said Michelle; ‘it brings it all back. How it was in ’73. I can’t live through it again, Helen. I was nineteen, bloody hell, I was a baby. Didn’t know what hit me. I’d lost the man I was mad for.’ Her throat closed; her voice broke. ‘I miss Vinny. Every single day. And you miss Arthur too, and Jenny misses Bill. With Roger, with marrying him, it isn’t the same. If I’d been your age, I’d never have got with anyone else, like you haven’t, cos there wouldn’t be any point. But I had to get on; I couldn’t give up on life. I wouldn’t change the girls for the world but maybe it’s true that you never love again like you love the first time.’
‘It is true,’ said Helen.
‘I’m safer if I keep my mouth shut.’
‘That’s what Trident wants you to think.’
‘What difference is a stupid book going to make?’
‘None, maybe. Except to me.’
A couple of schoolboys in the next aisle were looking at them. Michelle said: ‘Tell it to Jenny instead, then. She is who you’re doing it for, isn’t she?’
‘Of course,’ said Helen. ‘And believe me, I’ve tried.’
‘Where’s she living?’
Helen told her. ‘Trident gave me the address.’
‘Mrs PK still gets the perks.’ But she said it with a smile. ‘Twenty years is long enough, isn’t it? We’ve all moved on. She can’t hold it against you. It wasn’t as though—’
‘Yes, she can.’
Michelle took her hand. ‘I’ll help you, if you want.’
‘I don’t know how you’re going to do that.’
‘If you help me. Be careful, Helen. That’s all. Be careful what you tell him. Will you?’
‘I will.’
Michelle looked at her watch. ‘Oh God, it’s half past. I’ve got to get to Debenhams and back before Roger sends out a search party.’
She collected her bag and jacket; then they stood and hugged each other. Helen wasn’t used to hugging; it had never come that naturally to her, and besides, there was no one these days who needed it.
‘It was good seeing you,’ said Michelle.
‘It was good seeing you, too.’
Helen put on her coat and watched the other woman leave, down the aisle and out into the bright afternoon light.
25
HELEN
It would have been normal to meet one’s new neighbours on the doorstep, or when slamming the door to one’s car. Instead she had met Bill and Jenny Walker at a charity dance in Mortehaven village hall one summer when Arthur was off on the light. She had spent much of the week crying in the bathroom, Monday to Thursday anyway, because she felt that was a safe place to cry. Normally she did not mind when Arthur was away, the empty cottage, but she felt it then. It depended on the time of year.
Frank’s wife Betty dropped in with a shepherd’s pie and asked if she would be kind enough to help in the cloakroom. One of their number had fallen away; they’d be so grateful. As usual when put on the spot, she felt she couldn’t say no; the instinct was to be helpful, even if, after Betty left, she wondered why on earth she had agreed. But the village hall cloakroom was a dim-lit place and putting tickets on hangers on coats made a plodding, harmless sense. ‘Have you met them next door yet?’ Betty asked. She hadn’t. The Walkers’ car had arrived yesterday, the new Assistant Keeper and his family, chaotic with luggage and children. Helen should have been round already. It looked unfriendly that she hadn’t. She was Mrs PK, it was her obligation; she ought to have been leading the charge, offering her services as she had when Betty moved in.
Arthur couldn’t help when his spells of duty fell, but yesterday was a mighty and dreaded obelisk. For three hundred and sixty-four days of the year it rolled towards her from a foul horizon. She had an instant to meet its living eye before closing her own.
The dance was successful. Helen stayed with the coats, soft and perfumed. She smelled the men’s cologne, which was warm and spicy, and the women’s musk like flowers and sex. In quiet moments she smoked to stop herself
crying and fingered the velvet sleeves that hung in their rows, closely packed and frilled like gills on a mushroom. He came to her near the end, to collect the jackets his wife had put in.
‘You’re Helen,’ he said, and introduced himself.
She was thankful for the dark. Bill Walker wasn’t what she had expected, although she hadn’t expected anything in particular; he was neater and younger, with a long nose and even features that reminded her of one of Raphael’s cardinals. He gazed at her as she hadn’t been gazed at in a very long time, and she could almost believe she was another woman, and none of the things that had happened to her had happened.
‘Those two,’ he said. ‘The buttons, yes; no, next one along.’
In the end he came and pointed them out himself. The closeness of him, his skin fair and unlined, felt inexplicably comforting. She had to have twenty years on him, at least.
Like spectators, the coats gathered round. It was a few seconds; it couldn’t have been more. For all the times she would relive it, it must have been more.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Bill, for he could tell.
‘Yes,’ she said, because she would never. She didn’t know where to start, nor should she start, with someone she had only just met.
His wife was still at the bar; she wouldn’t come back of her own accord, he’d have to go out there and fetch her. They danced to ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’, there in the cloakroom, the only two people in the world. In the sooty darkness he drew her to him, or she went without persuasion, it was hard to say, and they held each other, her cheek on his, and the room was humming harder as the ceiling flew away.
26
HELEN
I don’t know what drew me to him. If it hadn’t been Bill, it might have been someone else. At that time in my life, it could have been anyone.
That sounds selfish but I hope you’ll stick with me. If you’re putting this in your book, you need to get it down right. I don’t want any mistakes.
Will Jenny believe me? I shouldn’t think so. But this is one story I can give you and know it’s true. I’d rather leave it written down than not at all.
That was how Bill and I met. The temptation was more about how it made me feel than any such thing towards him. It felt good to be wanted. That isn’t an excuse; I did what I did; it was my decision. But when we had that initial connection . . . I wonder if that isn’t too grand a word – ‘connection’; what is that anyway, a fussy way of saying ‘attraction’? I wouldn’t say I was even attracted to him; it was just that he had seen me crying; he had seen a secret part of me, and once that happened it seemed logical that he might as well see the rest. I was lonely and sad. It had been a long time since a man had held me – since he’d touched any part of me – and then there was Bill. He made me feel all the things affairs are supposed to: young, desired, cleansed of past misdemeanours, even if the misdemeanour in the present is the worst of the lot.
Did I feel for him in return? No. Not for Bill. I felt for someone who wanted to be kind to me. Who’d listen, after my husband had stopped.
Living in the cottages, we couldn’t avoid getting close. We lived all over each other; even when the men were away the women were stitched together constantly. You couldn’t decide one day that you didn’t feel sociable because there’d always be someone doing their weeding in the front or calling out the window asking if you wanted to come over for a cup of coffee, so if you didn’t crop up at least once you’d have them banging down the door asking if you were all right. Some people might like that, but it wasn’t for me. I like my front door and it’s closed for a reason.
When Arthur was off it sometimes meant Bill was home, and the other way around. That was how it worked with the roster. For each man it was eight weeks on the tower then four at home, rotated among four of them, if you count in Frank. So, in a way, it would have been the ideal ground for it. When I didn’t have my husband, there was a chance I’d have Bill. It could have worked beautifully . . . if that was what happened.
Of course, when Jenny discovered it, she thought the worst. I don’t know what gave it away. She never said and I never asked. She’d had her suspicions for a while, I suppose. Bill made no attempt to conceal his feelings about me, and to be honest, I’m not even sure it was about me. Not deep down. I believe Bill wanted a way out of a life he didn’t get on with. Our ‘affair’ was a choice he could make on his own.
She told me she knew on the day of the memorial. She said the oddest thing to me then; she said: ‘He got what was coming to him.’ I did too, in a way.
Trident House held the service once they’d decided my husband was dead. They didn’t consult me or ask for my blessing or understanding or anything like that.
Have you made any progress with them, by the way? No, that makes sense. I’d imagine you could ring them six more times and you still wouldn’t hear back. Trident will want to distance themselves from what you’re doing, so I doubt they’ll comment on it much. I don’t mean to be offensive, but they’ll be dismissive about the stories you’ve had published. They’ll say, what’s a man like him going to know about a matter like this? They’d be right. But in twenty years, you’re the first person who’s asked me for my part in it. All the journalists who’ve thrown their hat in, not one of them ever knocked on my door and asked for my own words.
Trident would sooner blot the event from their history. They’ve never engaged with any aspect of the aftermath, as far as I know: no interviews, no release of records, no transparency whatsoever. These days, it wouldn’t be like that – there’s more demand for that sort of thing now. But back then it was all about covering it up. Unluckily for the Institution, people don’t work that way. Feelings and memories don’t either. It isn’t something you can hide away in a filing cabinet. You can’t keep people quiet however hard you go at it.
The day of the memorial stays with me for all the wrong reasons. It was cold, on the fringes of spring, and windless; Mortehaven Beach was smooth and brown, pitted with pebbles, and I can still see very clearly the lip of the sea as it dragged into shore; it had that rotten-froth quality, fermented like beer. There were men in uniform standing by boards covered in flowers. They had photographs of Arthur and the others, staring back to us, to land. A simulation of a burial when there was nothing to bury.
It rained and rained. I wore heels because it seemed disrespectful – stupidly – not to, and my shoes kept disappearing into the sand. Arthur’s face on the placard didn’t belong to him. You know when you see a picture in the paper of a murdered girl and you search her eyes for a clue as to what happened to her, some inkling that she’d known? Well, that day I looked at Arthur and I understood this was his secret and it always would be. Families and friends urged us to ‘fight’ – for answers and resolution – but the definition of fighting is that you’re up against something, aren’t you, and it was just too exhausting for me. It wasn’t Trident House I was fighting. It was him; it was Arthur. He didn’t want me in on it. There’s the assumption you have to seek answers for your loved ones when they die. Suppose they’d prefer silence?
Afterwards, Jenny went for me. I couldn’t blame her. I was trying to help her with the baby because her daughters were off running riot on the beach, and I could see she’d been crying and not sleeping, just like me, and then out of nowhere she smacked me across the cheek. The worst was seeing Arthur’s and Bill’s faces on the billboards, and the look in Arthur’s eye was one of, Thank God I’m out of that.
Right then I’d have swapped with him in a heartbeat, just about wherever he was. Chained up on a ship or pecked to death in a cove, anything was preferable. I envied him his privacy. It isn’t easy to disappear. For the life of me I don’t know how he managed it. The problem is that Jenny never listened to my side of the story. You might say the problem is with me and your readers will, I’m sure. There’s nothing so hateful as a woman who gets involved with another woman’s husband. Never mind the husband’s part: he was tricked or seduced, m
ost likely, and it’s funny how men insist on power in all aspects of their lives except when it does not suit them, and then they’re content to be feeble and let the women take responsibility. Jenny carried on loving Bill and that’s her business, that’s her prerogative. Bill was a husband and a father, and the meaning in those roles is greater than I have privilege to know.
The truth is, I did dance with Bill at the charity ball when Arthur was away on the light, and I did get close to him in the weeks after that. On one occasion, after I became upset at their house, he kissed me.
The kiss was quick and meaningless. It felt completely wrong. That was the turning point. I asked myself what I had been doing – this wasn’t me; it wasn’t at all – and what exactly I’d been hoping to get out of it. Flattery was part of it, I admit. I couldn’t think what a young man saw in me. I’d been a fool and I regretted my mistake. I wished that Bill would regret it too.
I told him it couldn’t go any further. I thought he’d agree, but his reaction was astonishing. He became hostile at the same time as swearing his devotion. He said he was in love with me. He very nearly spat those words, as though he hated his position but could do nothing to change it.
After that, I did all I could to avoid him. I made excuses to Jenny and felt thankful when Bill went back to the Maiden, so I didn’t have to see him. When he was ashore without Arthur, he behaved frighteningly. That’s the only word I can use. I’d find him in my cottage, saying he’d come to fix a light that Jenny told him about, and afterwards I’d notice possessions of mine were missing. Underwear and soaps, shoes and jewellery: to this day I’m convinced he stole a dear necklace of mine, a chain Arthur gave me when he proposed. I can’t think where else it went and naturally I couldn’t tell Arthur, so he must have thought I’d lost it or didn’t want to wear it.
It seemed Bill wanted us to be a couple so much that in his mind, at least, it came true. He talked about holidays we might take. Local beauty spots he’d show me when he was next ashore. Suppers he’d treat me to at his favourite restaurants.