‘Wasn’t it?’ she said, hopelessly.
‘How do you do?’ said Marcus’s father. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
Violetta frowned. What did he say? ‘How do you do?’
She turned around. It was Simon’s aunts. They did not speak in unison, nor did they hold out their hands at the same time, but somehow they gave the impression that they did. Violetta noticed Ezra’s father lurking behind them, his neck bent as if held on a leash. They had caught him in the kitchen with a glass of punch.
‘Lovely day for a party,’ remarked one of the aunts, driven to such a blatant lie, no doubt, by Violetta’s failure to perform the required introductions. For the sky had been greying over for several minutes now, the ground was damp, and people had goose-bumps on their exposed skin.
‘Yes, well, it doesn’t do to be too hot at these sorts of gatherings,’ replied Marcus’s father doubtfully. ‘Heat-stroke, that sort of thing, you know.’
Violetta felt she would quite welcome a few dramatic cases of heat-stroke, someone fainting behind her so she could rush to the phone to call an ambulance.
‘Where are your poor parents?’ whispered one aunt with theatrical discretion to Violetta, who knew what she meant now, of course. But all Violetta said was, ‘Is Simon here?’ finding comfort in the soft, biblical syllables of the name. ‘Simon?’
The aunts gestured in various directions, as if to say that Simon, like God, is always with us, which was probably true, seeing he was so dependent on them for a lift. Violetta looked wildly around her, but could see him nowhere. That’s rather like God, too, she thought dolefully, recalling the phrase from the Bible: ‘Seek and ye shall find’, which had always struck her as a most profound untruth. But without a word she obeyed its instructions, and wandered away into the crowd of people, searching.
Ezra walked slowly and carefully over to where Geraldine was sitting, holding a half-full wine glass of Coca-Cola in his hand, and carrying a plateful of potato and dill salad. He sat down next to her, and pulled a knife and fork wrapped in a serviette from his top pocket. He settled himself against the tree trunk and began to fork the vegetables into his mouth.
He sneaked a glance at Geraldine. If before she looked yellow, now she almost looked blue. Her eyes were staring straight ahead of her, and crumbs of barbecue potato-chip were spread about her mouth, which she licked off slowly with her greyish tongue. Whoever compared a person’s tongue with a ripe strawberry had never seen Geraldine’s.
Inside, a radio was turned on. Some rather mournful choral music burst through the low window of the dining-room. It softened and loudened and softened again, giving the impression of shaking foundations, it sounded so deep and important. Then it stopped and there was the whizzing noise of someone changing channels rapidly, through discussions of sport, news, pop music, orchestras. Finally it stopped at a song, something operatic.
Geraldine closed her eyes, as the deep crackling old-fashioned voice of someone who must have died years ago cried its eternal sorrows about their devastated garden. Some people find consolation in music, she knew, like her father and his guitar. The trunk of the tree dug into her back, cold and wet, but she found its presence, even the pain it caused, reassuring. She felt almost peaceful.
Just as the song was finishing, there was a loud knocking at the front door. The radio was abruptly turned off. Another late guest, Geraldine thought sleepily, come for the leftovers. She was aware of her parents, of people, walking away, of a hub of low talking. But she didn’t move, she stayed dozing, stomach pleasantly full. It wasn’t warm, but the rain had staved off. She felt her head sink slowly forward, echoing strains of music rising above her …
16 · The Strangers Return
‘Geraldine! Geraldine!’
She opened one eye. Ezra was shaking her shoulder.
‘What?’
‘Everyone’s gone inside,’ he said.
‘So what?’ she retorted, and yawned. There was a hush, and an emptiness in the garden. The caterers stood by the tables of food, murmuring. One of them shovelled egg and mayonnaise onto a plate. The woman with the bright red cheeks was looking at Geraldine, concerned.
‘I think you better go indoors, pet,’ she called. ‘Go and see your dad.’
Geraldine frowned. ‘What happened? Where is everyone?’
‘Inside,’ said the red-cheeked woman, who was perhaps a little less ruddy than she had been.
Geraldine turned to Ezra.
‘Maybe your dad’s making a goodbye speech or something,’ he muttered.
Geraldine picked herself up from the ground. That brief feeling of fullness and contentment had disappeared. She noticed that her back was cold and aching slightly, that she was starting to get a sore throat. She blinked and sniffed and said to Ezra, ‘Oh well, let’s go in then.’
They walked in through the laundry, now empty of baskets and machines, and into the kitchen. There was no sound of a speech. People were standing about, talking softly. When they saw Geraldine, they touched her on the shoulder, they pushed her through the doorway. Ezra’s father stood by the stove, not talking to anyone, but when he saw Ezra, he grabbed hold of him, and held tightly onto his hand.
Geraldine passed slowly into the deep, high hallway. What was going on? People stood about here as well, and she could hear her mother crying somewhere—in the bedroom? The living-room? Where was her father? Where was Violetta? She swung around, then stopped still, in shock.
The two men. The two men in the dark-grey suits. The two men she had opened the door to and sent away that night. They stood at the stairwell. They did not look at her, they looked at the ground. They were waiting.
Her father came out from behind the dining-room doors, her mother behind him. Surely Geraldine had heard her crying, but her eyes were dry and dark. Her father approached the two men.
‘I don’t want her to come with me,’ he said, gesturing at Geraldine’s mother, and they nodded.
‘Right, sir,’ said one of them.
Geraldine’s father caught sight of her. He leant towards her and kissed her hair. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours, my love,’ he said. ‘Where’s Violetta?’ He looked sad, but not surprised.
Geraldine shook her head. What’s happened, she wanted to say, where are you going? Who are they? But she said nothing.
Her father turned to her mother. He did not kiss her, but he touched her thick golden plait with the tips of his fingers, as if it were Rapunzel’s braid, and had some magical restoring power that might save him, whisk him away to a tall tower with her, away from the men in grey suits and the staring greedy eyes of his friends. Then he walked with the two men, one on either side, out the front door.
No one spoke for a moment, like that short, unstable silence in church the moment after the minister glides out the back door. Then someone whispers, someone else replies, people start to move about, collect their belongings, talk more loudly, even laugh.
Geraldine, who had watched the exit of her father in a frozen trance, suddenly came to life and dashed out the door after him. She ran to the gate and onto the footpath, where he was getting into the back of the shiny car. Other people followed her, from inside the house. Ezra was there, she knew that much. She did not see him, but she was aware of his shape, his colour, his presence near her.
The grey car was parked in front of their driveway. Geraldine could not bear it. They must tell her what had happened. What was going on? She felt herself panicking. Her father turned and smiled at her, and mouthed some words as obscure to her as a foreign language. She shook her head. Her lips were sore where she had been licking salt from them in the cool wind.
‘What’s happening?’ she shouted, stamping her feet.
There was a small crowd of people gathered in front of the house. Not just party guests, but also people from other houses, who had been digging in their front gardens or rea
ding the newspaper on the verandah and had come over to see Geraldine’s father as he was driven away. But none of them said anything.
‘Geraldine! Look!’
Someone pulled her by the arm, insistently. It was Ezra, his eyes shining. Like Tory’s, she thought, automatically. She looked to where he was pointing.
‘Look!’ he breathed, like a visionary saint seeing Mary beaming at him in a dark grotto. ‘It’s her!’
Geraldine looked. She looked hard, with astonishment. She looked directly into two pale pink penetrating eyes. She looked at the long glossy fur, and the firm, unafraid whiskers, the bold, palebrown nostrils. She looked into the eyes and Alberta looked out.
She was scarcely a metre away from where Geraldine and Ezra were standing. She was perched on a small lump of clay on the nature strip in front of their house. She was totally fearless; she was superior. She stared at the crowd, challenging. Geraldine was transfixed, immobilised by the steady, proud gaze. She heard the smooth grey car start its engine, warming up to take her father away, but she couldn’t turn her head from Alberta. The car started to reverse.
‘Alberta!’ shouted Geraldine, jumping towards her.
Suddenly, shocked, Alberta lunged forward, as if someone had pushed her violently from behind. She shot out onto the driveway, towards the spinning black rubber of the tyres. Geraldine screamed, high, long and loud. Alberta seemed to bounce upwards, fell over on her back, straight under the wheels of the reversing car. Geraldine screamed again.
The car stopped and one of the men, the one driving, got out.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, and peered under the curving bumper bar.
Geraldine covered her eyes with her fingers. She felt her mother’s arms about her and she hid herself in her mother’s body.
The driver put his hand to the tyre and pulled at the white fur.
‘Where did it come from?’ he said, shaking his head. ‘God, I’m sorry. Was it hers?’ and he gestured at Geraldine.
Ezra stepped hesitantly forward and went over to the car. He knelt down next to the tyre and next to Alberta.
She was broken somewhere, her body was out of shape, but there was no blood on her fur. She was breathing very very fast, as if she had just finished a long race. This is how the runner must have looked who dashed all those miles from Marathon to Athens, thought Ezra, just managing to get out a message of victory before dying in the arms of his fellow-citizens.
Did Alberta have a message? Her poor pink eyes were half-open, and Ezra sensed an urgency about her. Perhaps it was only death. Because Ezra knew she was dying. So this is how it feels, he thought, when someone is dying, lying on a street, panting their final breaths.
The driver knelt down next to him.
‘Should we get a vet or something, son?’ he asked, but Ezra shook his head.
‘She’s dying,’ he said.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said the man. ‘I’m so sorry. Is it yours?’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ said Ezra. ‘She just ran out. You couldn’t know.’
The man leant over her. ‘The poor little thing,’ he said gently. ‘Poor little thing.’
Ezra had forgotten the other people standing around. He was aware only of himself and Alberta. He raised his hand, and stretched it towards Alberta’s coat, and, in a tentative gesture of unexpected and unpractised affection, stroked the yellowed, thorn-matted fur. Funny how in the twilight the first time he had seen her, she had looked so very white. Now under the cold afternoon sun, her fur was clearly stained with urine and grass, tangled like a wild, long-haired sheep. Her little face jerked to one side, her whiskers shook, her half-dead eyes glanced up at him, not unfavourably, he felt.
He watched as Alberta drew her last, rapid breath. Her life did not wind down slowly, as you might expect, but finished suddenly, between respirations. She just stopped breathing. The jerking movement at her chest ceased. Alberta was dead.
Ezra leant over and picked her up. He lifted her from the ground, and took her cooling body in his arms. He looked over at Geraldine.
But Geraldine, her head beneath her mother’s arm, kept her eyes tightly closed. She didn’t want to see anything, hear anything, know anything. If only you could close your ears, she thought, like platypuses do when they go underwater. If only you could close everything off and just drift about in the silent, odourless dark.
17 · True Love
So Geraldine’s father was arrested, taken away by the two detectives, charged with fraud. And Alberta was found, run over, dead. The guests vanished, the party dissolved, the house and the family in ruins.
Violetta and Simon were in Violetta’s bedroom. Violetta was lying on the bed, crying. Simon was less comfortably positioned on a splintery wooden box. They had been there for some time. It was getting dark. Violetta would not come out of her room.
At first Simon had tried arguing with her. ‘Say goodbye to your father at least,’ he’d suggested, but she’d turned on him with unexpected fury, that almost made him wish he were somewhere else altogether. But not quite.
‘Never!’ she said. ‘I’m never going to talk to him again!’
‘Oh,’ said Simon.
‘Never!’ Violetta rolled over on her back. ‘You know what he’s done, don’t you? Of course you know. Everybody knows. It was in the paper, wasn’t it? Everybody knows except me.’
‘Well, it was in the paper,’ agreed Simon. ‘But it was very small writing.’
‘He’s a thief,’ muttered Violetta to her pillow. ‘A thief, a thief, a thief, a thief.’
‘Perhaps there were mitigating circumstances,’ broke in Simon, fearing she might go on saying the word all night. ‘You know, I mean, businesses and all that …’
Simon faltered, not actually knowing the least thing about businesses or the crimes you might find yourself committing if you got in deep enough. Were there mitigating circumstances, after all? He had not understood the newspaper report he’d read at breakfast in his college dining-room the day before, all the more interesting parts of the paper having been taken by the earlier risers. Bits he understood—the legislation breached, the large sums of money, the names of the other people involved. He had seen Violetta’s father’s name, and that he was likely to be charged with some kind of fraud to do with his toy empire and to do with other businesses. Howard someone-or-other seemed to figure largely, but it didn’t appear that they had enough evidence to charge him.
Simon had been hoping, in fact, for Violetta to enlighten him about it all, she was so clever. He had imagined her declaring her father’s innocence of all charges, assuring him that he was the victim of a cruel and elaborate conspiracy, and how she, his loving daughter, would stand by him forever no matter what anyone said or did, even if he went to prison for fifty years.
‘I hate him! I hate him! I never want to see him again!’ sobbed the loving daughter. ‘I wish he was dead!’
Simon shifted on the splintery box. It was really very uncomfortable. He would have liked to go and sit next to Violetta on her bed, but he was afraid she might hit him.
‘He’s a liar! He’s a thief!’ wept Violetta and she continued in this vein for some time.
Simon, while not exactly growing weary of her company, which was a blessing under any circumstances, did start to wonder how he was going to get home, seeing his aunts had deserted him. Sunday was not a good day for public transport—but could he afford another taxi? He could hardly ask Violetta’s mother for a lift … Could he?
‘Where’s my mother?’ Violetta interrupted his thoughts telepathically, sitting up suddenly in bed, pushing back her tear-sodden hair. ‘She didn’t go with him, did she?’
‘She knocked on the door a little while ago,’ mentioned Simon, ‘but you told her to go away and that you hated her and you never wanted to see her again.’
‘Did I?’ Violetta looked unrepentant
.
‘Your father should be back soon, anyway,’ said Simon, not sure if this would comfort her or not. ‘They can’t put him in prison without a trial, you know. Only charge him. Someone will have to pay bail, of course,’ and he frowned. How do you pay bail if you’re bankrupt? Simon had rather old-fashioned ideas of bankruptcy, drawn largely from the works of Dickens.
‘Maybe they won’t let him out,’ suggested Violetta, brightening. ‘They refuse bail sometimes, don’t they?’
‘Only if they think you’re dangerous or you’re going to run away.’ replied Simon, firmly. ‘I’m sure they’ll let him out.’
Violetta fell down again on the bed.
‘What happened to Marcus?’ she asked.
‘He knocked too,’ said Simon. ‘But you just sort of moaned, so he went away.’
And a good thing too, Simon told himself. Marcus was hardly the sort of person you wanted around in an hour of need, especially in that ridiculous dress, like Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. How could Violetta be going around with him, as Ezra had claimed she was? It was an unprofitable line of thought, likely only to depress him.
He was beginning to feel rather hungry. He hadn’t managed to eat much before the detectives had arrived and Violetta had gone into this spasm of outrage. She seemed such a calm sort of girl, too. Sharp, but calm. She’d been a little odd before the detectives came, admittedly, a bit distant and cranky, but the sight of the two suited men appearing at the wide open door and asking for her father had drained her of all normalcy. He wasn’t sure now how he had been brave enough to follow this white-faced girl down the corridor to her room, nor, as she stumbled inside, why she had let him come with her, locking the door behind them and flinging the key on the floor.
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