What the Eye Doesn't See

by Alice Jolly

  I watch the luminous blobs on the face of the alarm clock. Do the honourable thing. An accident with a gun. The words pull me out of bed. I stand in the sitting room, my heart pushing against my ribs. I go to the phone but I can’t ring his number. The trapped bird scratching against the skylight window, the broom banging, the hot-water bottle against my feet. You have more power over him than you know.

  I look at my watch. Half past three. I imagine him alone in that tall house, with the china dog and the unmade bed. Lives, all of our lives, seem as fragile as glass. Each of us trying to grasp a few moments of happiness, every day reclaimed from nothing. What does he have to live for now? Who will take care of him? We are all that is left to each other.

  I hold on to my throat. A black figure cartwheels down through the grey air, falling and falling. I see hands stretched out but the figure still falls. Then I am on the edge looking down, and he’s beside me. I put out my hands and pull him back. There’s that look in his eyes – that look which pulls tight between us. It was there the night Nanda died. The moment when the airwaves cleared. And he did what nobody else could possibly have done.

  I pull on clothes, find my bag and coat. I’m just about to leave when I remember the keys Rosa gave me. I check they’re still in my bag. Hurry, hurry, I go to the door. But then I stop, go back to the bedroom and look at Adam sleeping, breathing heavily. I think of living with him and waking up to find him always with me. I’m making a bargain here. If I give Adam up then Dad will be all right. Is it a deal, God? Are you listening? Let Dad be all right. Make him wait for me. Dad, I’ll do anything for you, anything, but please wait for me. Please keep reclaiming the days.

  I look around for a pen and something to write on but in the darkness I can’t find either. I mustn’t wake Adam. Fumbling, I run my hands across the desk and along the front of my bookshelves. There is no pen. Finally I find a pen in my bag. There should be lots of paper but I can’t find a piece big enough so he’ll be sure to notice. This can’t fail because of a lack of paper. I sort through piles of post on my desk until I find a large envelope.

  The flowers he bought are still lying on the dressing table with the Cellophane around them. I stand and watch him. The white of the pillow reflects onto his face. That cropped head, those shadowed eyes, the shape of his face. He is a good man – why wasn’t that enough? In Seville he said – do you just want someone who believes in your father? Perhaps he was right. And I’d never have been able to bear the burden of his forgiveness. I’d have to behave well for a hundred years to make it up to him.

  I put the necklace and bracelet carefully away in the drawer and touch his shirt where it hangs on the back of a chair. I turn to watch him again. Will he really care that he has lost me? Will he? I suspect not. He will only care that he failed to save me. But he will still know that he was right. He has been right all along. He is invulnerable in his small rightness.

  I write – Sorry, Adam. I can’t live with you. I can’t go out with you any more.

  When two people hurt each other, often it’s a person from outside that situation who finally pays the price. Nanda, Dad and I – trapped in our secret battles and our fugitive guilt – we have been reckless with other people’s lives. I leave the envelope on the floor in the hall. This is a kindness, finally. I look at Adam’s face once again then turn away. What’s frightening about this is not how hard it is but how easy.

  I run all the way to Dad’s house, my bag gripped against me, my heart loose inside my chest. When I reach the square I can’t breathe any more so I have to walk. There are no lights on at the house. I cross the street and stand on the pavement, then turn, aware that I’m not alone. In a car parked at the kerb a man sleeps, his head dropped forward against the steering wheel. So the vultures gather. On muffled feet I hurry to the front step, push the key into the lock, fall into the hall, and shut the door behind me. Then I stand quite still.

  Of course, this is stupid, absolutely stupid. It’s all a creation of my mind, there’s no reason to think there’s anything wrong. I take deep breaths, talk myself into calm. But there’s someone in the house, I know it. A sound – faint, blunt. A rhythmic tap which echoes inside me, like the beating of my heart, one beat to every four. I search for a light switch, running my hands around the sides of the doors. Above me, on the half landing, a strand of light shines under a door. I hesitate, watching that light. Tap, tap, tap in my chest. I hesitate, turn into the front room, look out of the window across the square. Lights from a few windows are scattered in the blackness.

  I go back to the hall. The space is hollow and the sound of my feet echoes in the darkness. The long windows at the back of the house show the sky starting to turn from black to iron grey. A shadow wavers across the window. For a moment I stop quite still and nearly cry out, then I realise that it’s the branch of a palm. I go up the stairs and there’s a circular shadow in the shape of the landing window. I pass the light shining under the bathroom door and go up to the bedroom. His coat hangs on the front of the wardrobe door. I remember Nanda’s library books on the hall table, her watch still ticking after her death. The room is lit by the streetlights outside. I touch the sleeve of the coat, press the emptiness of the wool between my fingers. Something rustles. I jump back against the wall but it’s only the noise of papers falling from a chair where my coat has caught against them.

  I look again at the light under the bathroom door. I move down the stairs. The tapping is louder. I put out my hand and slide the handle round. A click, as loud as cymbals, in the stillness of the house. I start to ease open the door. Drops of water are falling from the basin tap. I watch a drop form, then fall. I step into the room. My breath jerks tight. He’s in the bath, the white length of him stretched out, his head tipped back against the end of the bath, his throat exposed. No steam rises from the water, a grey scum has gathered on the surface. His flesh sags down around the bones of his shoulders and chest. One arm hangs down over the side of the bath. I step back from him.

  Suddenly he sits forward, splashing water over the sides of the bath and onto my shoes. He presses his head into his hands, groans, and then stares up through blurry eyes. ‘Lucía,’ he says. ‘Lucía.’

  ‘Dad. It’s me.’ I stand on the wet bathroom floor, gasping. I can still taste omelette like glue in my mouth. He sits back in the bath again with his face in his hands. The flesh on his arms is white and water-swollen, and his hair is flat on his head. His willy floats in the water like a crumpled sock.

  ‘What?’ He shakes his head and then stands up, sending water over the floor. The flesh of his legs collects in folds above his knees. I pass him a towel from the rail. He steadies himself on the side of the bath as he manoeuvres a stiff leg. The basin tap is still dripping and I lean over and turn it off.

  ‘Maggie,’ he says. ‘Sorry. Sorry. Let me go and find some clothes.’

  Rivulets of water run down his legs, following the lines of the hairs. I look down at his bad foot – a livid scar shaped like a flower with crooked petals of jagged flesh around it. His two middle toes are bent up like claws. It’s seldom that I’ve seen his foot and I look away.

  ‘Dad, it wasn’t me. I didn’t tell anybody.’

  He shakes his head like a dog and water splashes across my arms. Then he nearly drops the bath towel as he leans down to pull out the plug. ‘No,’ he says. ‘No. Of course it wasn’t. I never thought it was.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Gus,’ he says. ‘It was Gus.’

  I move out of the way while Dad leans over to pick up some clothes on the floor. He’s awkward, bending over, still gripping the bath towel, and I want to put out my hand to help him.

  ‘But I don’t understand. Gus adores you.’

  ‘Yes.’ Dad turns away for a minute and looks over to where the blind is looped up at the window. Then he begins to move past me to the bathroom door, walking slowly, as though his balance is uncertain. ‘I was always very fond of Gus. I may have teased him rather bu
t I was fond of him.’

  He turns to look at me, his blue eyes settle on my face. ‘Maggie,’ he says. ‘You do look a ghastly colour.’

  ‘Yes, I know. It’s stupid … I thought …’

  He shakes his head, smiles. ‘Maggie, you should know by now that I am not an honourable man.’ He steps out to the landing and stands for a moment in the circle of light that shines through the round landing window. ‘But thank you,’ he says. ‘Thank you for coming.’

  ‘But, Dad, what will happen now?’

  ‘I fear Her Majesty will be deciding that.’

  ‘No, Dad, no.’

  I move to stand in front of him. ‘Listen, I’m sure if you talk to Geoffrey he can sort it out.’

  ‘No, Maggie.’

  I take hold of his arm and the flesh is cold and wet. ‘Dad, I’ll help you.’

  He shakes his head. ‘Thanks. It’s kind, but no.’

  ‘Dad, please. You can’t just give up. You could run away. Let me help you. And Fiona will help you, I know she will.’

  ‘Where would I go?’

  ‘I don’t know. South America?’

  Dad turns to me, laughs, shakes his head. A ridiculous suggestion.

  ‘Thanks, Maggie. But no. No. It’s finished with. I’ll hire the best lawyer there is and maybe I’ll be lucky. If justice is done then I’ll be released. There’s nothing more I can do.’

  He steps out of the circle of light and goes up the stairs, his clothes gripped under his arm. His head is bent down and he moves slowly. At the bedroom door he turns back, hovering with one foot on a step and one trailing behind him. He sees my hand reaching out towards the light switch. ‘No, no.’ He waves a hand to stop me. ‘Don’t put any lights on at the front of the house. Go down to the kitchen. I’ll come.’

  I feel the minutes dripping away. All these months we haven’t spoken and now we’re left with only the tail end of this one night. In the kitchen the base of a broken wine bottle sticks up from the table and glass crunches under my feet. Outside I can see the shadows of the garden. My arms are wrapped tight around me. From above water glugs as the bath runs out. The floorboards creak as Dad comes down the stairs. He flicks on the light and we blink at each other across the kitchen table. He’s smaller now.

  ‘Careful,’ I say. Without his glasses he can’t see the broken glass on the floor. He’s hovering, uncertain where to put his feet, so I steer him out of the way of the glass, then pass him his spectacles which are on the sideboard. He props them on his nose, sits down, looks at me and smiles. He’s wearing old corduroys and a shirt with the sleeves unbuttoned which remind me of weekends with Nanda. The low light hanging over the kitchen table lights the top of his silver hair. He’s tired and rumpled but somehow younger. His grandeur has gone. Prospero without his magic.

  ‘I thought that journalist chap was coming to stay? What do you call him?’ Dad is leaning forward with his elbows on the table.

  ‘Adam. No, no. Not any more.’

  It’s hard to think about that.

  ‘Actually, I’ve got another boyfriend. But he’s got a wife and three children.’ I start to laugh and Dad laughs as well, the only sound in the early morning. We keep looking at each other and looking away. Dad strikes a match to light a cigarette. We both watch the orange flame as it waves and flickers near the ends of his fingers.

  ‘And he’s Spanish.’

  ‘Spanish? Oh, good God.’

  We laugh again, enjoying the sound of it.

  ‘Did you know that Freddy and Theodora are going away?’ His voice is croaky and he coughs.

  ‘Going away?’

  ‘Yes, last seen in Gloucester buying rucksacks and having a furious row at the ticket office about the evils of rail privatisation, while trying to buy some sort of Eurorailing ticket for the over-sixties. No doubt they’ll stop off in Brussels.’

  My eyes follow the grain of the wood on the kitchen table.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Dad says. ‘Seems indecent really, doesn’t it? But they’re not the sorts to lie down and die …’ We start to laugh again.

  Then upstairs someone knocks at the front door.

  ‘It’s Rosa,’ I say. ‘She said she’d come.’

  ‘No. She’s got a key.’ The knocking stops. We wait and it starts again, loud and insistent. Dad looks at me, shuts his eyes.

  ‘I’ll go and say you aren’t here.’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘Just wait.’

  I put my hands over my ears. ‘Dad, I don’t want you to go to prison.’

  I can feel the banging against the inside of my ribcage. I wince at each thump. I look down at Dad’s foot and it’s bleeding because of the broken glass. Finally the knocking stops. Dad doesn’t seem to care about his foot but I get some water and make him put his foot up on the table, pulling it forward so it’s under the low-hanging light. His foot is pink where the scar is and the tissue is in swollen ridges. It seems strangely personal to touch him there, and I’m gentle, laying my fingers softly on the furrowed flesh. I’m conscious of him watching me. There’s a shard of glass stuck in the sole of his foot, and I lift it out, and wipe the severed skin with a tea towel.

  ‘Dad, how did your foot get hurt?’

  ‘I shot it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I shot it. You knew that, didn’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really?’ A smile spreads on his face and he nods his head and laughs. ‘It was your mother … she wouldn’t have me when I first asked her. I pleaded and pleaded with her but she thought I was just fooling around.’

  Before I can finish with Dad’s foot, he gets up again. ‘Maggie, there’s something I need you to do.’ He moves to the sideboard, hobbling on the heel of his cut foot, and picks up his wallet.

  ‘I need you to look after Rosa for me.’ He passes me a pile of new fifty-pound notes. ‘You need to give her that. And I’m going to write down the numbers of these cards, and you need to take out as much money as you possibly can before they close my accounts.’ He moves quickly now, pulling the lid off a pen and writing on the back of an envelope. He turns back to me. ‘And you must make her take the money. You must insist.’

  A trail of blood is smudged across the floor from Dad’s foot. He hands me credit cards and an envelope with numbers written on. ‘You know Rosa is pregnant. So you must insist about the money.’

  ‘She’s pregnant?’

  ‘Yes. Not part of the plan but there we are. She’ll have to stop watching life and start living it.’

  I stand and stare at the credit cards then I push them into my bag.

  ‘Listen Maggie, I don’t know who is upstairs but they’ll be back soon. You must go. There’s a door at the end of the garden …’

  ‘Dad, I’m not going.’

  ‘Maggie, come on. I want you out of this. Come on.’

  He opens the back doors. The sun is coming up and the garden is emerging from shadows. The air tastes as cool and smooth as milk.

  ‘Dad, wait. At least let me do something about your foot and let me find you some proper clothes.’ I run upstairs to the bedroom and pick up his socks and tie and find a jacket and the overcoat on the hanger. In the bathroom cupboard I find a pillowcase. I make him sit down and put his foot back on the table and I start to rip up the pillowcase. The sound as it rips is loud and I tug where the seams are until it comes apart. My hands are rattling and I’m making a bad job of it. I don’t even know what I’ll do with the strips of pillowcase. I start to tie them round his foot but they won’t work properly and I swear. One of them falls to the floor. Dad puts out a hand to help me and holds a strip of cotton steady while I tie another over the top of it. When I’ve finished I try to pull his sock over the swollen mass of cotton but my hands are jolting so badly that I can’t do it, so he does it instead. He puts his foot into his shoe with difficulty and it won’t lace up. He winces with the pain of it. I make him put on his overcoat.

  Upstairs the knocking starts again, the sound of it
crashes through the house, bouncing back off the walls. I put my hand over my ears. Please, please stop … Leave him alone … Don’t take him away. Dad takes hold of my shoulders and turns me towards the doors. I turn back against him, clinging to the sleeve of his coat.

  ‘Dad, if only you’d explained that night. It was Gus’s fault …’

  ‘No, Maggie. It wasn’t Gus. It was me.’

  ‘But why didn’t you explain?’

  Upstairs the knocking has stopped and my words swell in the silence. I look up into his eyes. He holds me by the shoulders. His face caves in and his eyes shut. From between cracked lips his voice is a whisper. ‘To have the chance to save the life of someone you love … to fail …’

  He shakes his head, his chin sinking down onto his chest. I raise my hand and touch his face. His hand closes over my fingers, holding them against his cheek. He cannot open his eyes. I lean forward against him and his arms knot around me, pressing me against his overcoat. His hands run through my hair. I push myself against him. Tiffany died for the lack of this. My arms hold him tight. Make this time last, make it last …

  He stands me back from him and looks into my eyes. ‘Maggie, you do believe that I didn’t harm Tiffany, don’t you?’

  His eyes are opaque and I cannot see what lies behind them.

  ‘You do believe that, don’t you?’ he says.

  ‘Yes.’

  I believe him even if it isn’t true.

  We stand together on the terrace. Cool air brushes over us, tasting of falling leaves. The sun is hidden behind mist, its thin yellow light scattered across the white sky.

  ‘I didn’t know about your foot,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Silly,’ he says, and puts out a hand to steer me down the steps.

  My fingers are scrabbling against his overcoat. ‘Dad, what shall I do? I don’t know what to do.’

  He looks down at me and puts his arm around me.

  ‘We none of us know that, sweetheart,’ he says. ‘Don’t expect to know that.’