by Graham Swift
That first autumn (I guessed right), before anything had begun.
I found these same photos again among all that stuff I never burnt. The one of her is the bigger mystery. A poor photo, or something blurred in her? Who took it, and why? (It was Bob who took it—it was his jacket.) Italian, you’d think—who would say “Croatian”?
She could be eighteen, she could be twenty-five. She didn’t look like the woman I’d see three weeks later, if only briefly and never from closer than a few yards. Stepping in and out of a black Saab.
But all that was after she’d—bloomed.
And anyway (trust a detective) people don’t always look like they look.
I studied the photo and nodded. What was I supposed to say again? That she looked like trouble, a marriage-buster? That she looked like some lost soul anyone would have wanted to take into their care?
But I knew what we were both thinking (I think). There they were on my desk, like a couple, as if they’d been picked. There we were like judges. Were they a pair, a match? Was that how it was meant to be?
I turn and drive along the edge of the Common. The light through the trees is like the light through the spokes of a wheel.
How do you choose? How do these things happen? I think Rita will go and run a dating agency. It’s just my fantasy. The same job, but in reverse. One day, after extra-careful consideration, she’ll say to one of her clients: I’ve got just the woman for you.
I heard Rita cough, that afternoon, outside. She can’t hear what’s being said in my office—any more than I can hear what she says on the phone—but she can hear when things get heated, desperate, hysterical. Nurse Rita. Or when nothing’s being said at all.
I shuffled the photos matter-of-factly. Perhaps I coughed myself.
“Good,” I said. “Now I’ve seen. And now we have a date and time.” Perhaps she noticed the “we.”
“If the flight’s at seven-thirty and check-in’s an hour earlier … Fulham to the airport, that’s a straight run—but at that time of day … Will you have a way of letting me know when Mr. Nash will pick Miss Lazic up?”
She gave me a look as if I was being slow.
“He won’t ‘pick her up.’ He’ll be there.”
“I see.”
She took the photos and slid them back carefully, like precious objects, into the envelope. Then into the bag. There they go, back into their nest.
“Yes—now you’ve seen.”
A strange look, as if there’d been some flash of nakedness.
All I’d seen were her knees.
She zipped up the bag.
I said, “I’m about to close shop anyway.” (Sometimes Rita locks up too. And she could think what she liked.) “Would you like a drink?”
12
Yet another thing I never expected: that they’d thank you for it, like you for it, when they ought to hate you for it. You’re the one, after all, who gives them the bad news, the messenger who ought to get shot.
Yes, it’s pretty much as you imagined, yes, it looks like your marriage is wrecked …
And what’s more, you’re a man. One of them. Another of the bastards.
But if you start off their enemy, their hired enemy, you become, bit by bit, their ally, their friend, at least with some of them you do. You’re in this thing together, it’s between just you two. And who else do they have who’s going to tell them this painful, intimate truth?
Some of them of course don’t ever drop their guard. With some of them it’s always mind how you tread.
You have to learn to make allowances—to develop a bedside manner (not something you pick up in the Force). Part counsellor, part comforter. They’ve all had to nerve themselves, they all think they’re unique, and it wouldn’t do to set them straight: My bread and butter, sweetheart, you’re not alone …
“In your own time … In your own words …”
(Who else’s words would they be?)
Their ally, sometimes, their accomplice. It almost turns into an adventure. And sometimes it’s at the very moment they learn the worst that they most become your friend. They thank you for it—they even pay you for it. Who else could have spelt it out to them so plainly? You see them in their humiliation, their anger, their first rush of revenge. They’re on the rebound. And before you know it, though you’re ready with the Kleenex, the whisky bottle, the well-practised words, it’s not you who’s putting out an arm (though you could be forgiven for it, it’s even the best thing you could do), it’s they who’ve reached for you. They’ve come to hire you to be their detective, to do this and do that, but before you know it what they most want you to do is give them a hug.
“They’re mostly women, Helen …”
When I fell into disgrace many years ago—when I left the Force and Rachel left me—it was Helen who came to my side. I don’t mean she thought I was blameless, but she came to my side. The strangest thing, when we’d been such enemies. When you might have thought she’d have relished it, gloated over it. At least have taken her mother’s side.
But she took my side.
The strangest thing. She’s almost thirty now, and I’m turned fifty. The years between us haven’t changed, but when we see each other now it feels like we’re just two contemporaries, two grown-ups. So different from when, say, I was thirty-something and she was just fifteen. She used to make my life a misery—as if police work couldn’t be tough enough—she used to give me hell.
I think she hated me. She might have hated both of us, but I know she hated me, and it was my being a cop that put the seal on it. “My dad’s a policeman”: it simply wasn’t a cool or easy thing for any teenager to say in those days. Even if I wore plain clothes, even if it didn’t show that much. My dad’s a policeman and therefore one of the ones on the other side. My dad’s a policeman and therefore one of the pigs.
I’d sometimes wonder—small comfort—if it wouldn’t have been worse if I’d had a son. On the other hand, sometimes I wished I’d had a son—as well—to take away some of Helen’s heat.
The sulks, the tempers, the silences that burned. Where does it all get brewed? And Rachel, a primary-school teacher, used to the tantrums of little brats. But Rachel and Helen, I thought, had some kind of bond that was beyond me. How does it work—a policeman’s daughter, a policeman’s wife? I always thought they were friends.
Maybe it wasn’t that I was a cop. Maybe that wasn’t the main thing at all.
And it wasn’t that she just took it out on me, she took it out on herself too, or so it seemed. She took it out on herself to take it out on me. She’d wear those awful clothes and dye her hair a different colour every month and make it go spiky like the bristles on an old brush. God knows how she got away with it at school—but we got the letters, the cautions, about the code for dress and personal appearance. And me a policeman. And Rachel up for Deputy Head. But the strange thing was her schoolwork was always pretty good.
Not like me, in my day. Poor marks all round.
(I’ve told Helen most things now, of course, most of the story.)
Then she had a stud stuck in the side of her nose. Then another on the other side. In those days that sort of thing hadn’t yet become a kind of uniform.
Her business, her nose. But at weekends she’d go out with some gang, some gaggle—we never knew who they were—and sometimes disappear all night. Being a policeman doesn’t stop you worrying, the opposite if anything. And sometimes I’d think that sooner or later I’d have to go and fetch her from some nick. Me a cop, and her in a nick. Drugs, whatever. And that would be it, that would make her day. The perfect piece of retaliation.
So when real scandal came my way, when I got drummed out of the Force and proved to be, after all, a dodgy cop, a bad cop (but a good one too—I’d made DI), shouldn’t that have been her moment of triumph?
But which way did it work? If being a policeman was bad in the first place, then being a bad one … Do two bads make a good?
We both knew which
way it worked for Rachel. Rachel decided—almost overnight—that I wasn’t just a bad cop, I was a bad husband, a bad deal altogether. Rachel decided I was no longer for her and went her own way. That’s how it worked, in a word, for her. And Helen, I would have thought, would have jumped the same way too.
But by this time she’d left school and left home. She’d already gone her own way (to be honest, it was a bit of a relief). She was at college now, art college—so, hardly a tearaway. Underneath all the outrageousness, a good little schoolgirl, particularly good, it seemed, at art and art history.
Though even that she’d use like a stick to beat me with. Me, the brainless clod of a policeman.
(But I’d been to college—police college, day-release. Sweated through police exams.)
It’s true, I didn’t know, or care much, about art. I didn’t see the point of looking at pictures. Or painting them. Though I’d have said to Helen—if it had ever come to it—that that’s just why we have policemen: so that law-abiding people are safe and free to go to art galleries and look at pictures. Or whatever. Stick pins in their nose. What else is civilization for?
But I didn’t say it, of course. Red rag to a bull. I even tried, for her sake, to get interested in art.
“You’re a detective, Dad. But you don’t see things. You don’t notice things.”
I even went to art galleries, and looked—and yawned. I even mugged up on her favourite painter, Caravaggio (they all looked like waxworks to me). And found out he was a bit of a tearaway himself, a bit of a thug on the side, always running up against the law. (Was there a message there for me?) A bit of a nancy too.
Then she left home. Then two years later I left the police. Then Rachel left me. And then Helen came home. I mean, she came home to visit me, to take my side against Rachel, who became, as far as Helen was concerned, the real culprit in the whole business, for turning her back on me.
“It’s your mother you’re talking about, Helen.”
“Is it?”
She never forgave Rachel but I think she forgave me, pretty quick, even when I was still putting my hand up to say it was all my fault, I shouldn’t have done it, blame me.
I still see Rachel’s face (though it’s dim now, strange and floating, like the face of a woman I wonder if I really knew) when she said to me, “I can’t stay with you now, George. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Her eyes more judging than the eyes of any judge I’ve seen in court.
“I can’t be your wife any more …”
And I still remember the feeling—until then I hadn’t had it, even if the ground had been opening up—of falling. Just falling, in the way you fall when you know there’s nothing to land on, endlessly falling, the way people must fall in outer space.
I still have dreams of falling, like I used to have then. Everyone’s supposed to have dreams of falling. What dreams does Sarah still have?
Falling. Off the edge, off the cliff of life. But in my dreams, though I fell, I could always see, above me, the point I’d fallen from, as if I wasn’t just falling but always feeling that first sick rush. And there, at the top of the cliff, looking down, would be Dyson, laughing at me. Laughing himself sick. Laughing his fucking head off. He hadn’t even had to push.
And sometimes Dyson would turn into Rachel, who was never laughing at all.
But Helen came home, to visit me, when Rachel was gone, when I was alone in the house—till we sorted out who got what. Before I migrated to Wimbledon. Alone with no job. Helen came just to see if I was all right, to make sure I was looking after myself. She’d look at me and then glance round at the place as if for signs of cracks in the walls.
The strangest thing. This renegade daughter of mine, who used not to waste a chance to make me wince. Now she was turning into the sweet little (but drop the “little”) half-mother of a daughter she’d never been. She’d even toned down the clothes, the hair. She’d finished college by then and had some kind of design job. She was twenty now. Not little at all.
When she left I’d stand at the door (the neighbours, of course, knew: there’d been some changes at number three) and watch her get into the old Renault she’d bought and throw it into gear and give a last wave, and I’d think the obvious and simple thought: she’s a woman now, her own life. But she cares about mine.
I’d watch her tail lights disappear, then turn to go in. Autumn nights, shivery and raw. Smoke in the air. “You don’t see things.” The neighbours knew I was a detective (and who really wants one of them up their street?)—though not any more. So now they were snooping on me.
The feeling of being alone again in the house. Like water flooding into a ship.
She’d even cook meals for me—pretty good meals—as if I never ate. (I drank—she noticed that.) That old wisdom in times of trouble: you’ve got to eat. This was my daughter, Helen. And that’s how it began. My own cooking, my own mugging up on food. (Art too, but food mainly.) Something else they don’t teach you in the Force.
I learnt to cook. First simple stuff, under Helen’s eye (and where did she learn?), and then by myself, in the long empty hours, with the aid and the company of recipe books. Bright cheery photos of food. I decided I had a knack. I moved on to quite challenging stuff.
But, frankly, it kept my life from falling apart. The way a whole day can hinge round a meal. And it was all to please Helen. To prove to her I was really looking after myself.
That’s how the routine began. Helen would turn up one evening a week and I’d cook a meal for her. Three courses, the full works. And I’d set a table nicely: candles, napkins, wine glasses. She was my sole guest—and guinea-pig and judge. But the fact is I impressed her. I out-classed my teacher. She’d even dress up a bit. We’d eat and talk and drink wine.
The best day of the week—the days Helen came. Days that hinged round meals and weeks that hinged round Helen’s visits. I didn’t sleep so much then—that was the time. Though when I did, I dreamt. I fell. Days and nights of being awake at all hours, ready to do a job that wasn’t there. The old job.
It doesn’t stop, I’d tell Marsh, it doesn’t go away. It’s not a job, it’s something inside, it’s how you are. Better a washed-up detective, tracking down stray husbands, than no detective at all …
Helen wasn’t keen, I knew. Going private. She thought it was just a bit obvious, a bit uninspired, like putting on a badge that said “Failed Cop.” She even thought it was a bit mucky (but wasn’t police work?). Her old dad.
So what should I be, Helen? An artist? A chef?
Marsh now, in the lap of retirement, still gets up early—when he can lie-in all morning—as if he’s on call. He’s told me, when we play golf.
I thought about it for a long time: taking him on. I thought: maybe only if he asks. And besides, I had Rita.
Days when Helen would come, the best days of the week. When planning a meal was all the food my mind wanted or needed or could handle.
Of course I had the simple thought—and so did she: she’s become the woman in my life now. My regular date.
I was going to go private, put myself up for hire. But that wasn’t the only issue, and when it was settled—when I was out on the snoop again—the other question didn’t go away. So, was I going to find somebody else? It happens. It’s what men in my position do.
A new woman in my life, who wasn’t my daughter. I was only forty-two. Only. And if I was getting all this—practice. If I could wine and dine. Get them round to try your cooking. Refill their glass.
“Nearly all women, Helen …”
But by the time I said it, by the time I made this not wholly honest or accurate remark, Helen had already come round to my being a private investigator—and she’d moved on herself, after all, from art to interior design (a switch I felt I shouldn’t say too much about). And being a private investigator had a dimension she hadn’t reckoned on—and nor had I. Full of potential for me and full of interest—entertainment?—for her. Her old dad.
I think she knew by the time I said it that I was already getting up to things.
“… More women than men.”
“So—are you complaining?”
13
I pass Parkside Hospital. The trim front hedge, the neat forecourt, the glass doors. It could be some discreet, unshowy hotel. Then I reach the roundabout at Tibbet’s Corner. I take the slip road for the A3, where it sweeps down between Wimbledon Common and Putney Heath. Richmond Park ahead. These chunks of tame wilderness—parks, commons, heaths. A pressing-round of trees. The road hard, humming and ruthless, six lanes wide.
I don’t know if Rachel still thinks of me, if she’s curious as well. She would have read the papers, I suppose, two years ago—the Nash Case—have read the reports which, in some cases, mentioned me. A private investigator acting for Mrs. Nash …
My God—that’s George. That must be George.
Curious? But I was “out of her life” now, and she was out of mine. As if when someone’s out of your life they might as well be dead.
And if she could see me now—if she could see what I’m doing now—what on earth would she think? That I’ve lost it altogether, passed way beyond the bounds?
The road drops away in front of me. There’s hardly any distance to go. The sun is almost straight ahead, so everything in front has a glint, a metal sheen, like some great glistening slide.
A head teacher now, of course. Up there on the platform at assembly, addressing the little sparkling faces on this sparkling day.
Sometimes I think she can see me—she’s watching over me—like I imagine she must imagine I can see her. It’s a right, an ability we both have, by virtue of having been together, once, for so long.
