by D. B. Martin
It was signed merely ‘J’, and the message was brief.
So, a HCJ soon. What more could one ask for – other than anonymity from blame and the past – especially if one has both to hide. If you wish to keep both ‘in the bag’, may I politely suggest you stop trying to let the cat out of it. You know what I mean.
Be in touch soon – J.
There was only one ‘J’ in my life – one who had been threatening me from the periphery of it for days now, without being present. The sick fear of those long-ago days slid over me once again. The feel of the polythene over my face. The way it sealed my nostrils and sucked into my mouth as I struggled for breath, forcing my eyelashes into my eyes as he pulled it tight and I writhed, eyes bulging and chest bursting. And then the pain – simultaneously searing and freezing – a dry ice burn of revulsion. When it was over and salvation rushed back into my lungs, the ecstasy of release barely compensated for the black pit of despair and loathing my soul sank back into. Thirty-five years of the feelings washed over me again as intensely as then. I drowned in a tide of stinking sewage – all the flotsam I’d thought I’d left behind, but had merely dragged along in my wake.
Shut up, he was saying. Shut up and leave the past dead. Yet now I’d started, how could I stop? My only hope was to sort out the mess and find a way forward – especially now Queen and country had bestowed the possibility of doing so on me. Yet the threat was explicit and needed no explanation. This time, there would be no salvation, and no loosened bag for this cat to jump out of.
A different possibility struck me. What did be in touch soon mean? Was he intending blackmailing me, or smothering me? ‘Let the cat out of the bag’ was ambiguous. It could mean sharing secrets or be referring to Kat. Was he planning on using her against me, or on me? I couldn’t let either happen. I needed to figure out exactly what was going on so I could minimise damage or I could kiss goodbye to that crested letter ever becoming a reality, and now I also needed to keep the other people safe too.
I bundled the letters back into their envelopes and left the other post untouched, taking with me only the two opened letters. I left without bothering about how much noise I made. The stairs deadened my footsteps anyway, enabling me to slip past Louise, now in the post room busy with the outgoing afternoon mail. There was still no sign of Gregory but the other clerks were engrossed in wading through their sea of files, winding up cases and prepping evidence for court appearances the next day. It was now four o’clock and they would want to escape by five. I slipped noiselessly out of the front door and onto the anonymity of Lincoln’s Inn, walking the rest of the way to the Strand, immersed in trying to rationalise what I knew.
Win’s role had seemed straightforward at first – consumed by the desire for revenge – but the revelation about Danny’s parentage, and now about Wilhelm John’s false imprisonment, muddied the waters. Did they change his intentions, or were they just incidental parts of the same story? Then there was Margaret – or maybe I should say, Molly? They still hadn’t found her killer. I was beginning to suspect they wouldn’t. Given how much she must have known maybe someone had been more comfortable with her not being around anymore, and who that someone might be worried me even more. Eventually I found myself back where it had all started: Danny – and how and why he’d been involved at all. By the time I’d given up trying to hail a cab because it was rush hour, and walked along to Embankment to pick up the District Line, my brain had gone from largo to allegro and stopped working altogether. Now it really was time to pull the covers over me and let oblivion minus the brandy take me.
And yet even that simple respite eluded me. When I eventually fought free of the stale air of the hated tube, the bodies pressed too close and the faces too far into my personal space, there was another surprise waiting for me on my doorstep.
‘Danny!’
‘I ran away.’ He scrambled up and I was struck again by how scrawny he was. I’d not noticed that in the interview room but since I’d seen him marooned in the middle of the hospital bed, and known he could be my son – I’d seen him as the child more than the client.
‘From the hospital – why?’ I hesitated, unsure whether to take him inside or straight back to the hospital.
‘I hate it there ...’ he paused, ‘and I was scared.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘’Bout half an hour.’
‘You were fine when we left you this morning. What changed? ’ His expression turned mutinous. ‘Nothing.’ He scuffed at the edge of a protruding cobble.
‘Well clearly it has or you’d still be safely hooked up to drips and getting better.’ I waited. No, it was a really bad idea to take him in.
‘Uncle Win came round,’ he burst out in response.
‘Win – at the hospital?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How the hell did he get in?’
‘He’s family.’ He looked at me strangely. ‘He told me something about you.’
‘Ah,’ now we had it. I prepared for the onslaught, wondering if I should ring Kat before it started or wait out the worst. My stomach turned over. I could have done with the brandy but it wouldn’t have helped.
‘He said you’re me uncle too.’ The pinched face looked worried. My breath came out noisily in relief, but why hadn’t Win told him the more explosive version? ‘But if that’s true, how can you be me brief as well? And you was going to get me off.’
The options narrowed down to just one – the one that was the bad idea. I put the key into the lock and opened the box. Whatever else Win had told Danny he’d also added another strand to the twisted threads of the weave – family commitment.
‘Let’s go in for a moment, Danny. We need to have a talk.’ He trotted after me like a puppy. I debated where to take him and decided on the kitchen. He perched unsteadily on one of the breakfast bar stools and surveyed the room open-mouthed.
‘Blimey, you’re loaded,’ he commented at length. I suppose to him the sleek elegance Margaret had commissioned did look like ‘loaded’. It was intended to convey that impression. As ever, Margaret was effortlessly effective. Sheer black marble worktops, pristine white glossy doors and sparkling chrome stamped sophistication all over what really was a place of functionality. She’d done the same with the bathroom and downstairs cloakroom before moving onto the lounge, dining room and bedrooms in her make-over of my house and me. The only private space I’d managed to defend successfully had been my study, as doggedly masculine and traditional as I’d first created it, without any modern trappings. It could have been the private room at a gentleman’s club with its burnished wood grain, heavy drapes and outsize office chair. Only the fact that I didn’t smoke kept it from being completely so. When Francis had visited to pay his respects in private shortly after Margaret had died, the room had perfected itself – replete with his cigarillo smoke and expensive cologne.
Danny’s insubstantiality was even more apparent as he swayed gently on the high stool. He reminded me of a malnourished nestling in danger of plummeting to the depths below from weakness due to starvation.
‘Have you eaten today?’
‘Nah, I slipped out when they had the doors open to bring the grub in.’
‘Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat?’
‘Cor, yeah!’
I made him a sandwich – cheese, peanut butter and tomato ketchup; his choice. He tucked into it as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks. Whilst he devoured it, I turned the kettle on to make myself a coffee, debating what to do next. I’d said we needed to talk, but what about – and how much? I was now labelled as his uncle, thanks to Win, which could have been a sign that fatherhood was precluded – or could merely be another twist of the tiger’s tail, to see how much I would roar. Whatever, Win wasn’t stopping until he got what he wanted: ‘Win Juss – gets you what you want when you want it.’
I surveyed the boy who was possibly partly mine. He had a look of me about him that was true, but then so had Sarah
, Binnie, Jill and Emm – though it pained me to say it, and even Win. It was in the eyes, I decided. We all had Ma’s eyes even though our features differed. I hoped there was little of Pop in us, with his buckled belt and readiness to use it, but it must be present to a greater or lesser degree – that inclination towards aggression. It was in the genes, as the doctor had amply demonstrated in the hieroglyphics still bundled into my pocket alongside the buff brown envelope containing the enigma of Margaret. In Win, it displayed itself most obviously, but there had been an element of it ever-present in the thinly veiled hostility towards men that Jill and Emm had brandished like a weapon, and Binnie had been far from welcoming, or defenceless, I suspected. Kimmy? The hardness was palpable in everything she did – from child neglect to prostitution. Sarah had said she thought Kimmy wanted what was best for her kids and that was why she’d gladly put Danny up for adoption. More like getting rid of her kids was what was best for Kimmy. I wondered who would be next after Danny.
Sarah, though – she hadn’t seemed hard or hostile. Perhaps Pop’s bellicose nature had passed her by after all, or had been contained in her determination to live – or die – her way. The boys and Georgie, I couldn’t comment on. That only left me. That violent force must be within me too. I faced another part of the patchwork I’d steadfastly concealed in the box – the man who entered court, determined to win at all costs. The man who belittled his opponents, demolished his competitors and ground witnesses to dust in the pursuit of success. That was where my aggression went – and my bitterness – into the man who’d left his principles at the court door when prosecuting the Wilhelm Johns case. The one Atticus would have renounced long ago. I deliberately turned my back on him and watched instead the boy who could be me, wondering how different we actually were. Had his violence already found its mark in the old woman, or was it yet to emerge?
My reverie was cut short by the phone ringing in my study. Danny was still gob-full of sandwich so I left him in the kitchen, cheek distended with too much crust and trying to lick his fingers at the same time. I got the phone just before the caller rang off. It was Kat. I couldn’t keep the terseness from my voice even though it wasn’t intended for her. It was for everything but her at the moment.
‘Oh, have I called at a bad time?’
‘I’m not sure there’s a good one at the moment. No, it’s OK, but Danny is here. I was probably going to ring you in a while anyway.’
‘Danny’s there? But he should be in hospital. What’s going on?’
‘You tell me. My charming brother visited him after we went but I haven’t yet found out why – other than to set the cat amongst the pigeons even more.’
‘Do you want me to come over?’ Once upon a time it would have been the last thing on earth I would have wanted – more complication, but it was all my world seemed to be composed of now. Besides, the thought of having Kat there was inexplicably comforting as well as unbearably complicating.
‘If you can.’ I gave her the address.
‘I’ll be about five minutes.’ Five minutes from Morden to Chelsea – I doubted it, but then as with all things and all people now, I had no idea where Kat actually was, wherever it was she ought to be. I put the receiver down and turned to find Danny had padded in behind me. His cat-like entry reminded me of Win. He was all eyes.
‘You got an awful lot of books, Mister Big.’
‘Mainly law books Danny – for my profession.’ He moved toward one of the floor to ceiling bookcases and caressed the spines of the shelf nearest his eye level.
‘I like books, but we don’t get that many of them at home. Only crappy ones – love stories that Mum reads.’ Love stories was said with disgust. ‘You got real ones.’
‘All books are real, Danny – we just have different tastes. Maybe it’s escapism for your mum.’
‘’Scapism – what’s that?’
‘An imaginary world where things happen the way you want them to.’ It occurred to me with intense irony that I had been suffering from escapism for the last thirty five years or more. Hiding in plain sight? Who was I kidding? I’d been in the sights of either Win, Jaggers or Margaret for all of that time. I’d never been hidden at all. It had just suited them to leave me alone until the time was right.
‘D’you do that? ’Scapism?’ The boy must have a direct line to my brain.
‘We all do at times, Danny. It’s human nature to want what we haven’t got – or for life to be perfect. Unfortunately most of the time that’s not possible. We have to make the best of what we have. Cobble it together.’
‘This is a real book. I seen it in the library at school.’ Mocking Bird. The cover of my copy depicted Tom and Atticus. He was waving it at me. ‘Is there a good guy and a bad guy?’
‘Yes, more than one.’
‘Does the bad guy get his come-uppance in the end?’
‘In a way – although not everyone is completely good either.’
‘That ain’t having a good guy and a bad guy then, is it?’
‘Good and bad are sometimes relative, Danny.’ He looked bemused. ‘Sometimes something bad might have a good outcome and something good might cause harm. You have to look beyond the person or the action to see the outcome before you decide.’
‘But how can something that’s good be bad, or someone’s that’s nice be bad?’
‘Things aren’t always black and white. People aren’t always what they seem to be.’ And there I was in a nutshell.
‘Can I keep it?’ He was clutching the book to himself. ‘I ain’t got no proper books of me own.’ It was my childhood copy, dog-eared, thumbed and cracking along the spine; resident untouched in my bookcase for the last ten years or more. It no longer had seemed an appropriate read after the Johns case, yet it symbolised everything I’d fought to be – and failed. It was right he should have it – me before the fall, perhaps. And maybe a right amongst all the wrongs I’d committed so far.
‘You can keep it Danny. When you’re a little older and you’ve read it we’ll talk about it again.’
He beamed and sauntered around the room examining the rest of its contents. I watched from my transfixed position by the phone. He reached the desk, and the photograph of Margaret, still floored and facing heaven-wards.
‘That’s your missus, ain’t it?’ Of course, he’d met her.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you meant to put photos of dead people flat then?’
‘No, it just got knocked over and I haven’t righted it yet.’ He put Atticus carefully on the edge of the desk and stood the photo back up, facing me.
‘Oh.’
I asked carefully, ‘How often did you meet her, Danny?’
‘Only once before the mugging. She came to see mum with Uncle Win.’
‘When was that?’
‘Last year, round about now. She brought me sweets and a comic and took me outside with the other kids when Uncle Win and mum were having a spat. We talked about drawing.’
‘Do you know what they were arguing about?’
‘Me.’
‘You? What about you?’
‘Uncle Win wanted mum to say something she said were lying. I heard her say it were all right to lie to the other bloke, but she’d done it for cash then and it hadn’t done any harm but she weren’t going to get anyone into trouble.’
‘Do you know what kind of trouble – or what he wanted her to lie about?’
‘Nah, but then when mum had no money for the tallyman, Uncle Win came round and they had the same barney all over again, and it ended up with her agreeing for me to help him out instead.’
‘Help out – how?’
‘I could run fast, see. I had to pinch the old girl’s bags and run like fuck.’ He looked sheepish. ‘I’m sorry, Mister Big. I didn’t want to pinch off them old ladies but mum said they only picked the rich old ones who could afford it ... But I didn’t do it.’ It was the refrain from the interview room. The doorbell rang and I motioned for him to stay where
he was and wait. It was Kat, breathless and bright-faced. She burst on me like a flower and irrelevantly I remembered one of Margaret’s foibles as I described her so in my head: Queen of the night – Peniocereus greggi. It was a bloom Margaret had told me about once – not because she was a keen gardener, but because she was a harvester of unusual information; a warehouse of minutiae and trivia she could turn on me whenever she had an argument to win. All information is useful, Lawrence – you just have to know when to use it.
The queen of the night epitomised Margaret to perfection for me now – if not Kat – a dramatic, white, waxy flower composed of elegant petals and dainty stamens. Virtually invisible most of the year, making its inconspicuous home amongst other desert cacti or shrubbery whilst growing its extensive tuberous root storing food and water to out-survive less hardy desert plants; just as Margaret had stealthily gathered her resources secretly beneath her charitable facade. Although each bloom will last only one night, a queen cactus can grow more than one bloom, appearing on a different night over a period of several nights during a week's period – each as dramatic and overawing as the next. Margaret had no doubt been planning her night to bloom thus soon. I hoped to God there was only one flower she’d been nurturing.
‘What’s going on Lawrence?’ Kat’s bloom was far more earthy and in my face. I sucked in a deep breath of her fragrance and took courage. I shrugged my shoulders.
‘Come and find out – I’m as much in the dark as you, even though I have all the facts so far.’ She followed me impatiently back to the study, eyes swivelling en route taking in the minimalistic chic and then widening at the contrast to it in my study.
‘Danny, you know you shouldn’t have run away!’