by D. B. Martin
‘Most certainly, ‘I replied, shaking the manager’s hand, sweaty-palmed and equally as anxious to escape.
The manager ushered us out, officiously relieving us of our visitor’s badges at reception and standing at the plate glass doors to wave us off. Probably more likely to see us off the premises.
‘My God, where did you go?’ hissed Kat as I strode back to my car and she struggled to keep up. ‘Lawrence!’ I stopped and turned. She hurried to catch up. ‘Slow down, will you, for God’s sake. I might be prepared to follow you to the ends of the earth, but I’d lose you on the motorway there at this rate!’
‘Sorry, I just wanted to get away from there as quickly as possible.’
‘Do you really feel bad again?’
‘Yes, but not for the reason you think.’ We reached my car and she got in. ‘Where’s your car?’
‘Back at the office. I walked.’
‘OK. Let’s drive.’ It was a spur of the moment decision – one of those overwhelming needs to confide which you later regret but can’t see any way out of either. ‘I’ve got a story to tell you and you’re not going to like it.’
17: The Female of the Species
I wanted to tell her everything. It would have been like penance, the knotted flail searing my skin – far more effective than the coffee had been, but I knew I should wait for the impetus to self-harm to cool before partaking or being burnt. It wouldn’t feel any better afterwards, even though I wouldn’t have to pretend any more. That in itself would have been a relief and a revelation. I’d not had nothing to hide since I was nine. But I didn’t. I drove us back to her office and she picked up her car from where she’d parked it in a side street. Then we drove back to her place and sat opposite each other in her small lounge. I declined tea because it reminded me of Sarah, and I edited and told my partial truth. As I talked, I tried to tell myself it wouldn’t matter; it wouldn’t matter what this woman thought of me. It would be over and done with soon – like Sarah had said, think about what you’re goin’ to do in the future, not what you done in the past. Make it right. I was always good at lying to myself.
I started with the day that Kimmy was born, giving her all my siblings’ names this time, and Jaggers. I wanted to leave my betrayal of Win out but if I didn’t tell her, how could she understand the tricky non-relationship between us? I moved on through the judge, softening my role in his life to ‘companion’, and ending with joining Chambers. Once there I had two more confessions to make – the Johns’ case and Danny. After nearly four hours recounting a damage that was immeasurable, my voice was dry and rasping and I’d told her almost everything – bar one thing. The atrocities of the children’s home, the manipulations I’d willingly bought into to achieve my dreams, the turning of a blind eye to injustice – all of that I admitted to; but nothing about Danny – not yet.
It was twilight by the time I’d finished. We sat in silence for several minutes more as I waited for her reaction. I hadn’t yet got to what I’d found in the FFF offices. I needed to know whether I could rely on her before I admitted how much at risk I was from Jaggers, and whatever Margaret and he had planned. After all, Margaret had been a kind of mentor to Kat, and she’d arranged the defence of Kat’s brother. That meant Kat might still have other loyalties. If so, her reaction now would reveal them. When she spoke she sounded thready and stunned.
‘You can’t make injustice right, Lawrence. Ever.’
‘I can’t change the past either, so the only things I have to play with are the present and the future. I have to change the future.’
‘I don’t see how you’re going to do that either. In fact you shouldn’t be involved with this case at all. Neither should I. Oh my God, we’ll mess it all up for him, poor kid. You were his one hope.’
‘Seems like it could be my nemesis instead.’ She hit me then, stinging my face and making my eyes water. I hadn’t anticipated it from her – always so gentle and biddable since I’d broken down in the park, even when pretending to fight with me. I’d almost forgotten the feisty young woman who’d squared up to me when we first met. I still had my eyes shut. I’d chosen to ignore the inner iron in preference to the outer softness.
Don’t be the clever bastard with me! You’re an adult and you can cope with this kind of stuff. Danny’s just a child, and he’s not an awkward predicament to be facetious about. We’re responsible for him. Why can’t you just be – oh, I don’t know – human about it?’ She sank back into her chair and glared at me, soft face shadowed but angular in the darkness. Grim.
‘Well, thanks. The one thing I thought I was is human – to err is human, to forgive divine, and all that crap. If I’d been an automaton I wouldn’t have been swayed by the charms of a woman, no matter how persuasive, and that would have put Margaret and you out of business, wouldn’t it?’ Her jaw dropped and she stared at me. ‘I didn’t mean that the way it came out.’
‘You did.’
The child in me responded – the one I’d been denying since childhood. ‘All right, I did. I’m fucking mad – OK? Not mad-insane, mad-furious. Yes, there is a child involved, there are two of them. I’m the other one, adult or no. We’ve both been stitched up one way or another, all our lives.’
‘Oh poor you. But you’re not a child now, Lawrence – and you weren’t a child ten years ago when you swung that case. Don’t try to defend yourself. You can’t.’ I didn’t reply. She was right. Ten years ago, I’d set aside responsible action for self-gratification. If some divine justice had placed Jaggers and me side by side then, my soul would have been as dark as his. We faced each other in silence. I broke it in the end.
‘I don’t know what to say, Kat.’
‘There’s nothing to say, Lawrence. You’re not who I thought you were. I was wrong – as usual.’ She put her face in her hands and I was excluded. After some time had passed I touched her arm, unsure for the first time in all of my life what this outcome would bring. Even in the children’s home I’d been able to judge the likely possibilities of my actions and react accordingly. Life had been one long manipulation of events since then, with me assuming I had complete mastery of the situation. Ironic that it had been directed unseen by Margaret for the last ten years of it and that when I finally tried to do the right – and the human thing – it blew straight back in my face.
‘Kat?’
She shivered. ‘Don’t touch me.’
‘OK, I get the picture. I’ll go. If you think I should be taken off the case, I’ll volunteer a replacement at my own expense.’
‘Can you volunteer a replacement life for Danny?’ She removed her hands from her face and it was still cold and hard, paler than before.
‘That was a cheap shot.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry. It was.’ The regret seemed genuine, but her expression didn’t soften with it. ‘I agree. You should go. I don’t know what I think about anything at the moment.’
I’d wanted done with all of it, the lying, the hiding and the secrets. I’d wanted absolution and acceptance. I’d mistakenly assumed I could find it with Kat, but she was just another erring human. No-one could give me what I needed – only God, and he didn’t exist in my world. Now I’d asked and found Kat as lost as me, I wanted done with her too. Thank God I’d kept the ultimate – the worst possibility of all to myself. I’d thought, amongst all the chaos that surrounded me, I’d found a small voice of calm and unconditional love. A voice like Ma’s. She’d seemed to have been promising a future like a rainbow arcing overhead and I’d been foolish enough to believe in the possibility of a pot of gold at the end of it. Life wasn’t like that. I, of all people, should have worked that out by now. What an idiot, what a stupid, bloody idiot I was. I hadn’t been lying when I’d described myself as mad-furious. I was, deep in my gut, I was angry – with her, with me, with a world I just simply couldn’t get it right in, whatever I did. What was the fucking point?
I got up to go. The room was swathed in shadow, only the occasional beam of passing
headlights illuminating it and us. My movement cast a silhouette that travelled across the room like a shadow puppet, playing out a scene from a tragedy. She said it quietly to my back – in retreat – as if in her own defence.
It was criminal, Lawrence.’ At least she was braver than me in naming it. I hadn’t manage to formally attach the label yet, even though I knew perfectly well what it was.
‘It was a mistake, Kat.’ She stared at me and the whites of her eyes shone in the dark. They reminded me of a wild animal, afraid of the hunter. I was the hunter – the destroyer of worlds. She was afraid of me, and the damage I could do to her world as well as my own. I was on my own then.
‘I’ll go,’ I repeated, and her reply was the same; nothing. What did I expect? The sanguine survivor in me had cautioned against sharing confidences, but I’d ignored it in my rush of enthusiasm to share the burden. I’d mingled the two separate lives. They should have stayed in their two separate boxes, as Lennox had advised. That way at least one of them might have endured. How could anything as fragile as the tentative tendrils of a brand new relationship survive the blunt instrument that the truth represented here? You should have known that, even with your pig-ignorance of people, the inner me said. But I’d fallen in love – or infatuation. Yes; that could have its formal label too – and love makes you blind.
Heather was right. I had been walking around with my eyes shut. All the literature and homilies I’d ever read or heard quoted had made the concept quite clear and yet I’d wilfully ignored it and insisted on telling the woman I’d fallen for something she wouldn’t want to hear about me. There’s no such thing as pragmatism or objectivity where emotion is concerned. And whereas in the past my problem had been the lack of emotion with Margaret, excess of it was my problem now. I had reached half a century without understanding people at all. The patchwork that was me was still incomplete.
‘I agree it’s not appropriate for me to remain on this case now, but I can’t just leave it all in abeyance. It’s my life this affects as well as the boy’s. I’ll continue with my research until I reach a conclusion and then I’ll turn it all over to you. You can do what you want with it in order to defend the boy. Just please leave me out of the rest of it.’
‘Leave you out of it. That’s what you wanted right from the start, wasn’t it?’ She was bitter.
‘Yes, at the start that’s what I wanted. I wanted something different now.’ I waited but the passing headlights flickered across the room and died as we too died a little death. I thought I heard her call my name as I shut the door, but it was probably just imagination. For my own sanity, life should return to its recognisable pre-case format. I plainly wasn’t cut out for the roller-coaster of emotional investment. Complete Margaret’s obsequies, put my affairs in order and await the death blow professionally. If it included naming my original patron then it really would be a death blow. Thirty or so years of ‘loan’ to repay plus compound interest when the terms of the ‘loan’ in the will were breached would wipe me out. I wondered where I would go then, but at the moment it didn’t really seem to matter. I drove slowly home and parked the car in its allocated spot. The cobbles of the mews shone ghostly in the moonlight. I could almost imagine Margaret walking across them, taunting me over my stupidity. The lure of the brandy was my first inclination, but something else in me kicked out at that.
I pocketed the keys and walked instead, along the narrow streets of Chelsea and past the glamorous boutiques Heather would be likely to frequent, chic and extortionately expensive monstrosities bedecking the giraffe-necked mannequins in the windows. I didn’t care where I was walking. It just seemed to help with the hum of facts and questions circling in my head. The night was still and breathless – that promise of impending summer storm, not quite yet ready to break. Even the air smelt angry. I passed at least three pubs without going in, despite the still insistent lure of alcohol to numb the pain. The sweetish smell of beer and fag ash burst on me whenever a customer left, reeling gently into the night, or another solace-seeker entered. The comfort of anonymity and oblivion beckoned from them, but I declined. My solitary life was best spent alone and sober until I’d figured out what to do about all of this.
I ended up on a small side-road in Battersea after crossing the Thames via Battersea Bridge Road, lingering fleetingly to watch the reflection of the moon wallowing in its murky waters and wondering what it would feel like to jump into them and sink down, down into the depths. I soon shook that notion from my head. The last thing I wanted to be was dead. I was a survivor and that was what I had been battling to be ever since landing up in the children’s home. What was the point of abandoning that now, even though things looked bad? They’d been worse. It was purely self-pity that had made me consider it.
The road was Binnie’s. Whether subconsciously or not I had headed for it. The lights were still on in the front. It was about eleven thirty. A completely inappropriate time for anyone to visit, let alone a long-lost brother. Yet I did. The devil was in me since the confession to Kat and I felt a general animosity towards all my fellow men – or women – particularly any linked to my past, whether innocent or guilty. It was where all the trouble had stemmed from and a hitherto unknown belligerence in me wanted to settle with it once and for all. Kill the past, dead – before it killed me.
I marched up to the door and rapped on it. Its glossy yellow paint shone like fluorescence in the moonlight and a faint smell of curry lingered in the air. Must have been tea. It mingled incongruously with the perfume from the honeysuckle growing up the front wall of the house, and around the door. Surreal like my life. Lights went on in the hall and an indistinct figure loomed behind the glass half of the door. There was a sound of locks being pulled back and a chain being slid on. The door opened fractionally, chain barring full passage. The face behind the chain was a big bruiser of a man, head shaven, jowls giving him a British bulldog look without the British. He was about sixty but could probably still pack a fair punch. He looked suspicious.
‘Yeah?’
‘Is Binnie home?’
‘Why? Do we know you?’
‘Binnie does. I’m her brother.’ He looked unconvinced, but called over his shoulder anyway, heavy cockney accent mangling the words.
‘Binn? Someone here says he’s your brother.’ The middle-aged woman I’d seen in the photo Win had shown me appeared behind him, frowning.
‘Win? At this time?’ She saw me and gasped. ‘Kenny? My God!’ Then more belligerently, ‘What you doing here?’
‘I thought that maybe you might have been expecting me – or at least that was what Win led me to assume.’
‘He ain’t coming in here,’ the bruiser said pointedly to Binnie. She shook her head.
‘It’s not Win, it’s the other one.’ To me, ‘What you up to with Win?’
‘I assumed you’d know.’ I was beginning to regret the spontaneous decision to surprise her. It was showing as many of the hallmarks of backfiring on me as the confession to Kat had. ‘Danny and Kimberley.’
‘Oh.’ Yes, she did know. She looked me over in an unfriendly way. ‘You’d better come in, I s’pose.’ The bouncer on the door looked at her for instruction and she nodded at him. ‘It’s OK Len, he’s me little bruvver – you know, the one ...’
‘Ah,’ he scrutinised me. ‘’im.’ He shut the door and the chain rattled. The door re-opened a few seconds later and he ushered me in. The curry smell was stronger in the hallway and the honeysuckle scent was banished to the night. Old flock wallpaper covered the walls, yellowed and probably as old as the house itself. ‘Only as far as here, though – get it?’ he said to me. A small dog scurried out to greet me and scampered around my ankles, covering my dark trousers in spiky white hairs. ‘Buster – git!’ The man, Len, kicked out at him, but not unkindly. The dog attacked his ankles but followed him along the hallway and into the kitchen anyway. I decided it must be the kitchen because it was the source of the curry smell. Binnie and I remained in the hall
.
‘So,’ she said coolly, ‘you decided to just pop by after all these years – and at gone eleven at night? Funny way to do things, ain’t it – or is this what you swanky bleeders do?’
‘I didn’t know where you were before so I could hardly have popped by sooner.’ The welcome here was decidedly frosty – completely unlike Sarah’s. I was surprised at the disparity between their two responses. ‘I’m sorry it’s so late though. I’ll come back tomorrow if you prefer.’
‘Nah, get it over with – and you can’t have exactly tried before neither,’ she responded tartly. ‘So what you come for now?’
‘I told you, Win suggested I should talk to you about the family. He gave me your address.’
‘Win? And why would he do that?’
‘Why wouldn’t he?’
‘We don’t see eye to eye, Win and me, that’s why.’ Her lips compressed and the dimple showed more in its repression. ‘And you ain’t been around to know why.’
‘Well, neither do we, so that’s something at least we have in common.’
She studied me. ‘What d’you not see eye to eye over?’
‘Probably everything – it goes a long way back.’
‘To the children’s home?’
‘Yes, that would be about it.’ The silence lengthened. It was like breaking through a wall of ice that was being steadily reformed on the other side as soon as I chipped a fragment from mine. ‘Binnie,’ I sighed, ‘I can see you don’t regard me particularly highly, but you are my older sister and Sarah said families stick together.’ At Sarah’s name her expression changed.
‘You been to see Sarah too?’
‘Yes, a few days ago.’
‘How was she?’ I wasn’t sure how to answer. Sarah had said the others didn’t know how ill she was. Should I betray her request for my silence or enlist support for her. Binnie pre-empted my response. ‘Oh, like that.’