by Gareth Rubin
The clock by my bed ticked. Lorelei laughed again, a reckless whooping cry that rose and faded, seeping into the hard bricks and plaster of the house. I felt that somehow it would stay locked in them, in the fabric of our house. Charles’s eyes were a dark, searing red as they looked to me, then down to his hands. He wiped them with his sleeve, leaving little dark patches on the material, and his mouth twisted into a silent sob. Then his arm went back over his face to shut out the world. I recognized that pain, the very sadness of love.
‘Were you going to go to Ireland?’ I asked. He nodded, his skin glistening below his sleeve. Charles, who, Nick had said, wanted a wife and children more than anything. I guessed what she had told him. ‘Did she say the baby was yours?’
He nodded again, a shallow little double dip of his head, gaze downcast, which spoke of a man whose life had slipped from his grasp a long time ago. ‘But it wasn’t.’ It was little more than a whisper.
So that was how it had turned. Her death wasn’t the result of ambition or money. Like so many others in our shattered land, she had just wanted out. But they had put a wall up around us, to protect our new state, and he had been her only way through it. So subtle, she had been.
‘It wasn’t,’ he said, tears rolling down his cheeks.
I had to know. ‘What did you do?’ He didn’t reply. ‘Charles? What did you do to her?’
And then he spoke. ‘I … tried to get it out of her.’
My eyes closed and I felt sick. Those final minutes she had lived through in immeasurable pain. I couldn’t help but picture them.
There had been something in her Champagne, yes. Charles had put it there to take away a child he thought was another man’s.
He lowered his arm and looked at me. Wet streaks on his skin reflected the light. ‘Please,’ he said, reaching out a hand. ‘Please.’ His hands were open, the palms up, begging for understanding.
I had to get away from him, to dispel the image of the pain that had racked her. I knocked his hands away and grasped the mantelpiece, pulling myself to my feet, but my limbs were hardly working and I twisted my ankle. And then I was on my front with his knee on my spine, pinning me to the floor. ‘No!’ he said. ‘Stop!’ And a grey mist came down, as if my mind wanted to blot out what was happening. I struggled but his weight was too much for me. Pressing me down.
I tried to think of something to tell him, to convince him to let me go. ‘I’ll help you,’ I said desperately. ‘It was an accident, wasn’t it?’ And he paused, listening. ‘Did she drink too much of it?’
He stayed there, unmoving. I waited, hearing his lungs wheeze, until his voice wheedled like a child’s. ‘I didn’t want that,’ he said. ‘I didn’t.’
‘I know! I’ll tell them that.’ If he would just accept it could be true. ‘Charles, I’m on your side.’ A hesitation, and then he pulled up, just a little.
‘Will you?’
‘I’ll tell them what you told me. Just an accident.’ And, with another tiny move, almost imperceptible, his weight shifted away from the knee on my back.
I could feel the situation changing, moving my way, safety in sight. ‘I can go –’
But, as I said it, something broke in: a sudden insistent sound from downstairs. The brass knocker on the front door was clacking, ringing through the hollow dark hallway.
‘Hello?’ a man’s loud voice called from outside. I had no idea who it was – the postman with a package or a neighbour calling around. I just prayed it was something they wouldn’t let go.
I began to form a word, a cry to beg for help, but, as I lifted my chest to draw in breath, Charles seemed to harden his thoughts and crushed his weight back down on to me, so that I could hardly suck in enough air to breathe. I could only croak out a cry for help so weak that it wouldn’t have been heard outside the room.
The door knocker clacked again. The man was still there. I struggled, trying to turn on to my side, but Charles pulled my head back hard by my hair.
‘Let me go,’ I gasped. ‘Let me go.’
The letterbox creaked open. ‘Is anybody at home?’ Looking in, whoever it was would see only an empty hallway. The letterbox closed again with a dull flapping sound, and we waited, listening, but there was only silence. We stayed there for a long time, long enough for the caller to leave and be swallowed up by the smog. I felt the hope that I had built slipping out of me.
Charles pushed himself away. I no longer had the breath and blood to get up and run. He sat on the bed, shaking still with his own shock and nerves. ‘Sit there,’ he said, pointing to the dresser.
I dragged myself to the dresser in the room I had shared with Nick, the room where we had first made love after our wedding, looking at my cosmetics, at the compact and the rouge. Lorelei’s voice came through the wall, speaking over a soaring violin. Charles sat staring at the floor. He couldn’t let me go. I knew it. He knew it. If he did, he would get the rope. He was as trapped as I was.
And, even as we sat there, both of us unable to leave that room, each looking for a way out that couldn’t possibly exist, I couldn’t help but think the same thought that I had had on the balcony with Ian Fellowman: that this was the squalid natural ending to those dreams he and Anthony Blunt and Kim Philby and Guy Burgess and Arthur Wynn and John Cairncross had woven for us. This was where they ended: in ordinary people desperate to run away, but too fearful of the consequences that waited outside like bare-toothed dogs. All the words these men had poured into our ears and down our throats night and day – all they really amounted to when the light hit them was this havoc. This utter wreckage.
Something fell away in me then, leaving a numbness of feeling. It was like half my being had gone, leaving only my body. I didn’t care any more. Not for any of it. There was nothing left to care. ‘Charles,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m going. Please don’t stop me. Just let me go.’
I pushed myself up and attempted to walk calmly across the room. And, as I took a pace, then another, reaching the centre of the room, I honestly thought he was going to let me leave.
But halfway across his eyes flicked open and I knew then, looking into them, that if he touched me I wouldn’t see the day through. And, although my mind and body were numb, there is within us a sense of self-preservation stronger than almost anything else in the world that we can know. And so, once more, I ran.
Ignoring the pain in my ankle, knowing that he was a pace or two behind me, without an idea of where to go, I threw myself out of the room. I wouldn’t get to the hallway before he caught me, so by instinct I made for the bathroom, the only room with a door that could be locked.
My feet skidded on its floor, awash with water, just as Lorelei’s had been that day. I tried to slam the door, but he was barging in and the force knocked me back against the bath. And then he grabbed hold of me and my face hit the cold surface of the overflowing water and it felt like glass.
Somewhere, Lorelei was singing. She was offering someone Champagne to the sound of light music. Music to dance to.
I struggled for a time, twisting this way and that, catching glimpses of the air above, but the sounds of the world outside became muted, slow and heavy. I couldn’t understand them any more, I was falling asleep and they seemed to be coming from a place where I had never been and didn’t belong. The strands of my hair drifted out like threads. The water was pulling me deeper, tangling my limbs and cooling my thoughts, until my mind was all washed through and strange. Images flickered past – people I had known, emotions; the poster on the wall above us, its political words picked out in red type. But they were all somehow indistinct and without weight or time. I felt nothing for them as they slipped away.
I fell into a closing darkness, and, deep down, I understood it was all that I would have from now on. Everything was cold and hushed and empty. I would never go back. I would drift through an endless dark ocean, forever with a sense of loss.
38
I don’t know how long I was in that darkness. It felt like second
s, weeks, years. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all.
And then, after a while, something changed. The world began to shiver. The colour shifted. In the black there were points of light like distant stars, growing larger, and I could feel myself somehow being drawn towards them. They grew until I could see into them, and I was dragged faster and faster. In my veins, the blood was moving. My muscles were shaking. My arms were rushing through a river.
I burst up out of the water, spraying droplets and gasping for breath, ready to retch. My lungs were on fire as I sucked in all the air that I could. All I knew then was air – I had no idea of my own life until the memories flooded back with the freezing wet that was pouring down me. I twisted around and saw Charles looking towards the stairs. In a second I understood what had distracted him.
Below us, the front door slammed closed. ‘Jane!’ someone called. ‘What’s going on?’ It was Nick. Charles’s head fell as if he were in pain. ‘Jane, are you there?’
I wanted to twist the knife, to tell Charles that Lorelei had despised him, that she laughed at him behind his back, but I couldn’t form any words – they had been drenched out of me.
‘Jane!’ Nick’s voice was in the hall now. Then there were footsteps coming up the stairs.
‘I’m here!’ I cried.
At my shout, Charles seemed to regain his strength and made for the door. Barely able to stand, I stumbled after, grabbing at him as he reached the landing. Nick, part-way up the stairs, looked stupefied at the sight of us. In the darkness of the hall he was holding the lighted oil lamp that he used to see through the smog, and, from the way I was grasping at Charles and the state of my torn and soaking clothes, he must have gained some idea of what had happened. Charles stopped when he saw Nick, and they both stared, until Nick began to move again, rushing towards us. Charles, seeing no other way out, leaped down the stairs, barging with his shoulder and hardly touching the steps. Nick was stronger and fitter, but Charles had the momentum. As he moved through the air, I yelled Nick’s name, as if I could somehow protect him.
They met with a shout that rang in my ears long after they had crashed together and broken apart again. But it was mixed with something else: the bone sound of breaking wood. As I watched, a web of cracks spread through the bannister and a metre-long section exploded away, tumbling in shards and blades to the floor. Charles and Nick fell through it together, spinning through the air, lighted by a flickering flame from the lamp as it too dropped to the ground, splitting on the floorboards to spread paraffin on to the heavy hall rug. The lamp, the shattered wood and their bodies all lay, unmoving, on the floor. Wreckage again.
‘Nick,’ I gasped, as I ran down.
Time and sound seemed to have stopped as I looked from one to the other, both perfectly still and without signs of life. Nothing to say there was blood or warmth in them. I could hear the silence, long and bleak.
And then, with a groan, slowly and painfully, Nick stirred. My heart floated at the sight of his head lifting from the floor. With an effort, he got to his knees, a severe bruise welling on his cheek, and I made to throw my arms around him, but at that moment a flame leaped up from a pool of the lamp’s oil at my feet, making me grab at the bannister for balance. The flare reflected on Nick’s skin as he stood.
He looked deep into me and spoke in a low, severe voice. ‘Go. The police.’ He glanced at Charles, who appeared to be unconscious or worse. In a moment I felt just as I had done when he found me surrounded by police after Lorelei’s death: gratitude entwined with guilt. Unable to say anything, I nodded and ran outside, stumbling over the bottles of paraffin for our heaters. The door closed behind me and the lock clicked into place.
That sound worried me – I couldn’t say why, but here and now it seemed to be cutting me off from Nick for a second time and there was something threatening in that. I turned and shoved at the door. I hadn’t thought to take my key and it was locked firm, but through the leaded side window I could see a bright glow that illuminated Nick’s figure, bending down to pull the remains of the lamp’s oil holder away from the fire – and, behind his back, Charles beginning to lift himself up from the floor.
I smacked my hand on the glass. ‘Nick!’ I screamed, desperate to warn him. His face turned to me; and then it burst away as Charles threw himself on Nick from behind, the two of them tumbling out of sight, slamming against the bottom of the door. ‘Nick!’ I cried out again.
I reeled wildly around, looking for anyone who could help. But the smog was so thick I couldn’t see more than a few metres. I ran towards the end of the street, feeling for anyone there. ‘Please help!’ I yelled, tripping into the gutter and banging into low walls and cars.
A radio somewhere was broadcasting Blunt’s Liberation Day speech once again. ‘… where the people who create the wealth have equal shares in that wealth, instead of being forced …’ The crowd were cheering under his words. I ran blind, flailing about in the thick mist, hardly knowing in which direction I was moving. I blundered into the road, narrowly avoiding being hit by a car that was creeping through the blanket of smoke mixed with wet fog, and cried out for anyone to help. Anyone.
Then, from ahead of me, a shout answered mine.
‘Jane? Are you there?’ I recognized the voice, hardened by years of rough, cheap spirits. I couldn’t see him but Tibbot was there somewhere. I ran towards the sound, hoping to touch him, winding my arms through the dirty air. His face came out of the mist, a severe look on his face. ‘What’s wrong?’ he demanded, grabbing me by the shoulders.
‘God, come quick!’ I cried, latching on to his coat.
From the other side of the road I heard more footsteps running. A man sprinted past, followed a moment later by three Teddy Boys, whooping and shouting. One got a hand to the man’s jacket and brought him down. ‘Informant cunt,’ one of the boys shouted, while the others kicked him. He struggled up, tore clear of them and began to run again. ‘Off to the Secs?’ they screamed at his back.
Tibbot and I turned and dashed back to the house, stumbling and catching each other. ‘What is it?’ Tibbot asked urgently.
‘It’s Charles. And Nick,’ I said.
I went to the side window but all I could see were flames, divided into six by the lead-framed panes of glass, surging along the hallway. The pile of newspapers that we had to send each month to be destroyed in the National Records Office, the stack of our collective madness of accusations and denunciations and fury, was alight. The bottles of paraffin had exploded in the heat, fuelling the fire.
Something unseen was smacking against the wood from the other side – feet or fists. Tibbot put his shoulder to the door and I pushed against it too, but, whether it was the strength of the lock or the weight of the bodies on the other side, it wouldn’t give. We heard someone cry in pain from the other side of the wood.
‘The back door?’ Tibbot shouted to me.
‘It’s bolted.’
‘I’ll call the station.’
‘There’s no time!’ The heat was coming through the wood.
Tibbot scanned the ground and picked up a large stone from the garden. He pulled it back behind his shoulder and pitched it at the side window. But the leaded frame was sturdy, and, although the glass fractured, the window didn’t give. He took the stone and used it to smash again and again at the frame, knocking it out of the wood to fall on the floor of the hall. A blast of hot air and smoke rushed out, stinging my skin and making me stagger back. Tibbot jerked his head away, doubling up to cough out harsh smoke.
Holding my sleeve over my mouth and nose to block out the smoke, I reached inside, turning the lock. Tibbot shoved the door then and it gave way easily – whatever had been up against it was gone, but as it swung back there was another rush of scalding air. The bottles of paraffin had showered the room with droplets of oil that flared here and there; the fire was licking high on the coat stand, and black smoke from the charring fabric billowed through the hall, making it hard to see. Nick lay
on the floor and above him stood Charles, his hand and temple both bloody. He shook as his eyes met mine. I had no thoughts then but hatred of him. A second later Tibbot pushed me aside and rushed in; but the surge of air from the open doorway made the flames on the rug billow up, and they forced him back, coughing again. We both turned away from the stinging heat, and, when we looked back, Charles was running out through the rear of the house. The flames blew up again as he burst out the back door.
I took my handkerchief from my sleeve, held it over my face so I could breathe in shallow, panting breaths and flew to Nick, winding past the flames on the rug. He was lying on his side, turned away from me. I dropped to my knees and froze at the sight of his blackened face as Tibbot rolled him on to his back and put his head to Nick’s chest. ‘He’s not breathing,’ he said. There were broken pieces of bannister around us, smeared with blood where Charles’s hand had touched it.
‘Nick,’ I rasped, my voice barely loud enough to be heard. On the rug, needles of glass from the broken paraffin bottles glistened in the firelight. ‘Nick, can you hear me?’ I bent to listen for any sound. There was nothing. I felt like I was holding his hand while he stood on a precipice.
‘Look at me!’ Tibbot ordered him, smacking Nick’s cheek lightly. There was no response. ‘Look at me.’ He slapped again, more forcefully this time. I watched for any sign of life. The colour was gone from his skin. Tibbot felt Nick’s wrist for a pulse, searching for it, seemingly unable to find anything.
‘Is he alive?’ I whispered, my heart thudding against my chest so hard that I thought I would break apart. ‘Tell me.’ A spray of oil flared by my hand, burning it. Tibbot glanced at me, a grim look on his face, as he moved rapidly to Nick’s neck to feel for a pulse. Then he started pumping his hands up and down on Nick’s chest, alternated with blowing into his mouth. I sat and watched, wondering if it would ever end. After a while, Tibbot checked Nick’s wrist for a heartbeat, and then his neck again. He went through the cycle of actions again and again, each time feeling for a pulse.