The Light of Day

by Graham Swift

Watch them, George.

  “ ‘Watch them’? So you carried on watching just him. You followed Mr. Nash all the way back—to ‘make sure,’ so you’ve stated—till he drove into Beecham Close, then you turned round and drove home.”

  “Yes.”

  “But then, minutes later, before you reached home, you turned round again and drove back.”

  “Right.”

  “Why? Why should you have done that?”

  Another flinty stare, as if he’d practised it over the years—and as if for a moment I’d become prime suspect.

  And why not, why not? If it could have halved Sarah’s guilt, or taken it away: all my idea, my mad, murderous plan. Seeing Bob into the trap then making myself scarce. But I’d got cold feet. Driven back. Too late.

  And I must have been giving it off in waves.

  “An—intuition,” I said.

  “Intuition?”

  “I thought—I’ve stated this already—I thought something bad was going to happen.”

  “You mean you thought Mr. Nash was going to be murdered?”

  (Suppose I’d said, “Yes?”)

  “I thought I might prevent it.”

  “It? You didn’t.”

  “How is she?” I said.

  I heard the crack in my voice. I might have been saying to him: And here’s my motive, loud and clear.

  “She’s not very happy. She’s in a state of shock.” His eyes flicked away for an instant. “The constable’s notes say”—he put a finger on his file—“that you said he should let you through because, quote, you ‘knew what you were doing.’ Do you remember saying that?”

  “I suppose so.”

  (Let me through, I’m a detective.)

  “And did you—did you know what you were doing?” He hardly left a pause. “It seems to me you didn’t know what you were doing, you didn’t know what you were doing at all. Because if you knew what you were doing, that suggests you knew exactly what had happened.”

  The eyes back on mine. Bad tactics. A full stretch of service and hadn’t he learnt to go easy on the fixing stare? Look away, get up, turn your back, let silence pass. Then they blab.

  But they weren’t nerveless eyes. Flint not steel. Not in for the kill. Your last case: what do you do? Come on strong and extra tough, or show mercy?

  “You didn’t know what you were doing”: like something held out, dangling.

  And how he wrote his report, how he assessed, for example, the arrested party’s reactions—immediate confession (she herself had made the call), immediate submission to custody—might, just might, affect the sentence.

  It must have been well past midnight.

  “You’re ready to sign the statement you’ve made? That you followed Mr. Nash to Beecham Close, then drove away, then drove back. Those were your movements tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t have a record of taking truthful statements. I wouldn’t want to take an untruthful one from you.”

  So. He couldn’t help that. Ammunition. But fired over my head.

  I might have said, “Phoney statements can be true, even if they’re not what the witness ever said.” And he might have said, “That’s what all the bent cops say.”

  I didn’t say anything. Be the humble, scared Joe Citizen. Evidently distressed.

  And maybe he’d been there too: close, near the edge, near the limit. Some other time, in an interview room.

  “Nothing you wish to add?”

  “No.”

  “About ‘intuition’ …?”

  “No.”

  “A true account of your movements—which you even happened to time precisely.”

  “Professional habit.”

  “Of course—like one of us. Technically you committed the offence of impersonating a police officer. I shan’t press that.”

  (But “I’m a detective” wasn’t a lie.)

  “You ‘thought something bad was going to happen.’ That’s to stand as already stated?”

  “Yes.”

  “It could still read as if you had prior knowledge …”

  “Then why should I have suddenly turned back?”

  “Quite. Of course. And then there’s another point that hasn’t been mentioned. It’s my impression, it’s my distinct impression, from all you’ve said, that the thing you thought was going to happen—the bad thing—was going to happen to Mrs. Nash.”

  “But it has, it did.”

  I must have been giving it off in waves.

  17

  A corner table in Gladstone’s. It’s a thrown-together place with a pseudo-Victorian feel. Music-hall posters on the wall. In Wimbledon you can go to Rio or imagine Jack the Ripper is prowling outside.

  She asked for a white wine. I ordered a beer. Sipped it very slowly, watching the level in her glass like you might watch an hour glass.

  In life there’s a sound principle: make a little do for a lot. Don’t expect much. This may be all you’ll get.

  She said, “He’ll be there now, he’ll be with her now.”

  She didn’t have to say it. I might have guessed: six o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon, and she had time to spare for me. So they were there and we were here. But she didn’t have to say it. Maybe I had the thought that for them too—him and the girl—time was running out. They were watching the glass, even now. Only twenty more days—if it was all true.

  “He has consultations at the Charing Cross on Tuesday afternoons. Up until five. Handy.”

  A sour kind of smile. As if to say: See what I’ve come to. Or as if we were like prim parents thinking of the children at play.

  Except we were the children, maybe—whispering in our corner while the grown-ups did their thing.

  And this look she had—as if the girl inside her was just beneath her skin.

  How does it work? Your life comes off its hinges, so you go back to where you were. Not grown-up and forty-something after all. Like Kristina, forced to be a child again. But now Kristina had become the woman—Bob’s woman. All the other way round. So Sarah had become the girl—the girl of long ago who didn’t yet have Bob. A student, being driven through France. Flashing trees, the road south. Don’t bank on it. A little for a lot, this may be all you’ll get.

  Is that how it is (I ought to know): a mid-life disaster takes away the years?

  Or (another on-the-spot and fumbling theory): she was getting him back again—so she believed. Counting the days. Back to the start again with him, back to how she once was.

  Flashing trees, the windows down.

  So, I thought: she loves him still. And I was seeing what Bob had once seen.

  Or it was just her anyway. How she was now. Young—and forty-three. A teaching thing, maybe. The gap getting wider between you and your class, but something rubs off. A connection—like the one she’d made with Kristina.

  And yes, I could see it. “Lecturer”: it sounds old and strict and severe. But in the middle of a class something might happen—a spark, an excitement, something in her face. The student still inside the teacher. And some surly eighteen-year-old, in the middle row, would surprise himself, catch himself. He’d look at her hips, her knees. She stands by the window. The curve of an armpit, through the sleeve of a blouse, like the twist in a rope. The hidden layers in people. And girls his age could only be—girls his age.

  What a fool this Bob Nash was, not to see what was under his nose. Going for the young girl. And him a gynaecologist too.

  But now he was coming back—so she believed. It showed, it shone. She loved him still.

  It hadn’t turned into something else.

  I watched the wine in her glass.

  “He’ll be home around nine. For supper—yes.” Another bruised little smile. “That is, if he doesn’t decide to stay the night.” A glance. “I can’t stop him, can I?”

  As if she expected some sharp answer. Other women wouldn’t do it like this, would they? Other women would have put up a fight long ago. I ought to know—in m
y line of work.

  I kept quiet.

  “It’s a concession, you see. A concession. He only has so many days now—nights now. Only so much time.” She looked bleakly into her glass. “Actually—it’s all been a concession.” She looked up. “When does a concession become a surrender?” She took a swallow of wine. “You concede because you really want to keep, don’t you? The risk is you’re only letting it all slip away.”

  The girl had vanished from her face. She held her glass just under her chin, as if it was there to catch her words.

  “Are you married?”

  “Was.”

  A faint smile. “It’s what I thought.” A detective too. “In any case—I know what you’re thinking. What would be the usual thing, the usual option? You’d send her packing, wouldn’t you? You’d tell her to get lost and never show up again. Then keep a close eye on him.”

  I must have kept a straight face. Yes, that’s what many would do—and the close eye might include mine. Not counting those who’d go the whole hog and send him packing as well.

  “An asylum seeker,” she said. “You see.”

  I nodded. Yes, I’d got there already, followed that line. All the same, there’s a point where all the rules might go hang.

  “I know what you’re thinking, George. If I’d never let her in. If I’d never let the poor—thing—into my house …”

  I looked at my beer. She’d called me George. It’s what I say, in the early stages: “You can call me George.” They don’t always take it up.

  I looked at her knees.

  “ ‘What a fool,’ that’s what you’re thinking.”

  I’d been thinking Bob was the fool.

  “I wasn’t thinking that,” I said. I sipped some beer.

  “And I don’t even hate her now. Even now.” She looked straight at me. “And I still love him. I still love him and I don’t want to lose him. There,”—a little shiver of her shoulders—“that’s my statement.”

  As if she’d been called in for questioning.

  “What does she do?” I said, as if I hadn’t heard. “I mean—if she’s there in this flat all the time.”

  “How does she live you mean? He pays for that too. The rent and everything she needs to live on—plus a bit more. And last March she enrolled in a professional interpreters’ course. She’s not stupid. That’s what I did once—she’s actually copying me. He paid the fees for that too.

  “I know what you’re thinking, That’s a lot of money going in her direction that should be going in ours. But Bob makes a lot of money these days. ‘We’ can afford it. Ha. There’s a word for it, isn’t there? Do you still think I’m not a fool? She’s being ‘kept.’ So much for charity.”

  A sip of wine as if it was some bitter medicine.

  “I didn’t want to go to war, George. I didn’t want to make a war of it. I know … we’re supposed to fight, aren’t we? Tooth and nail.”

  She looked into the air. George.

  “What I’d say is—if you’re going to be unhappy, better an unhappy peace than an unhappy war.” She looked straight at me again. “Ha! I mean—compared to her. We’re not exactly victims, are we? We’re sitting here, having a drink. We’ve got homes to go to. We’re not exactly refugees.”

  I thought: She’s forgotten who I am. Just her hired snoop.

  “Anyway,” she said, “—anyway. In three weeks it’ll be all over. One way or the other. It’s my little gesture. Not war but—intelligence. If they’ve got some other plan, then I want to know, straight away. I don’t want to wait like a fool to find out. My concession—to myself.”

  Another swallow of wine, the biggest so far. I thought: she’s going to drain the glass then dash. But she looked at me hard.

  One day, later (in a place where they don’t let you do too much kissing), I’d tell her: I wanted to kiss your knees.

  “Am I making sense, George? To love is to be ready to lose—isn’t it? It’s not to have, it’s not to keep. It’s to put someone else’s happiness before yours. Isn’t that how it should be? So if that other person goes a different way, what can you do?”

  She blinked. She saw me looking—how couldn’t she?—not into her eyes but at them. The eyes that went with the knees.

  They say it can happen all at once, in an instant, in a flash, and you think that’s just talk, a story, that’s for kids not for grown-ups. But I think that was the moment.

  Maybe it was me all along, something happening in me, that could make me see, detect, the girl in her. Maybe I was the one feeling young.

  And it’s still, amazingly, how I feel.

  Something’s come over you, George.

  18

  Rachel said, “Goodbye. Goodbye.” As if once wasn’t enough.

  As if I might have mistaken this for some ordinary morning, one of those ordinary but not so common mornings when I was off duty and could have the luxury of a late lazy breakfast while she had to scramble to work. “No, don’t get up.” A blown kiss. She’d stand there for a moment, all set, in the kitchen doorway, and I’d think of how in half an hour or so she’d walk into her class—“Good moorn-ning, Missis Webb”—and none of them would imagine how just a little earlier she’d stood in another doorway while a man in a dressing-gown, buttering toast, had sent her off to school.

  “Goodbye, George.”

  As if twenty years were just another day and it had all been anyway like some long, non-stop test which I’d finally failed. Teachers! Don’t you just love them?

  I didn’t move. She didn’t say, “Don’t get up.” And I was damned anyway if I was going to give her that last bit of satisfaction. Of seeing me get up and beg. So she could turn even harder on her heel.

  Damned anyway. That was the word: damned. Judged—doubly judged now. Worse than being simply left. Or replaced. If there’d been someone else (was there? I’ll never know) … But just to be judged—damned.

  She buttoned her coat, gave that little lift and shake of her head that settled her hair. Yes, she was really leaving. It was all settled. But where had she come from—this woman in the doorway? How come I’d never seen her before, never known she was there? She’d missed her vocation, surely. She shouldn’t be teaching sweet little infants. She was made of tougher stuff than that.

  And when had she last blown me that breakfast kiss?

  She stood there like some departing official visitor—like someone who’d only ever visited my life.

  I even had to admire her. The firmness, the steadiness. The way you couldn’t help admire them sometimes, whatever they’d done, when they kept their composure, didn’t move a muscle, when you told them they were under arrest.

  But hold on, I was the one on the charge.

  So I didn’t budge an inch, didn’t even scrape my chair. I might even have taken a bite of toast. The small crumb of pride you grab when the cliff is giving way.

  And everything, anyway, was suddenly up to her. I didn’t have a case, a leg to stand on. She might have made me do the walking, with no leg to stand on. But she wanted to be the one to make the exit, to slam the door (I’d hear it in a little while), put me behind her. Didn’t even want to stay where there’d be my taint.

  No taint. That was all mine now. And I could keep it. No taint to her dealings with those rows of little faces, or to her clean smooth path from Deputy to Head.

  Though for twenty years we’d lived with it, the taint I’d come home with, the slow creeping taint. Married to the Force, as they say, and all that goes with it. But hold on, the taint was the taint—the taint wasn’t me.

  A clean slate. A clean blackboard on that bright Monday morning. A fresh white stick of chalk and a fresh brave smile, even as I kept on sitting there in that kitchen. Still as stone and off duty.

  Off duty now for good …

  And now it’s such a strange, sad, far-off word—“duty.” Now Sarah’s made me think about words. When once it used to be just something floating in the air. “Duty officer,” “duty roster,
” “in the course of duty …”

  I suppose Rachel was doing her duty that morning. “Good moorn-ning, Missis Webb.” Well, she’d have to ditch that name.

  Maybe I took a defiant bite of toast. Crunch. But I must have looked straight at her, as straight as I dared, consciously taking that last picture of her, framed in the doorway. Yes, I had seen this woman before. Yes, of course I recognized her, this bold, decisive woman. She’d done this before once, rejected someone else. Someone I could hardly ever have competed with.

  “Goodbye, Rachel.”

  What else could I have said? What else was she expecting?

  She turned and disappeared. Her bright swirl of hair. Became the sound of her steps in the hall, the sound of a slamming door (maybe she just closed it, maybe the slamming was me). I heard the noise of the car. Then I felt myself falling. Doubly judged—and for the double drop. Falling though I sat there at the kitchen table, toast stuck in my throat, sat there not moving, but falling all the while.

  19

  She didn’t drain her glass. An inch or so left.

  “You think he loves her?” I said.

  The questions you come to ask. That even a best friend wouldn’t ask. The part of the job I’d never imagined.

  She sipped—barely a touch of the lips.

  “I think so.”

  She might as well have said, “I know so.”

  “And—she loves him?”

  “Harder. Oh—I can see that she could. Ha!” Her face brightened, went dark again. “She’s the one who’s leaving. She can’t not go back. That’s what she says—what Bob says she says. It’s her country—homeland. Maybe she’s torn: it and him. I’ll tell you something, I’ve never followed the news so closely. I blessed the day when the Croats started fighting back, pushing back the Serbs, and the whole thing looked like it could soon be over. I thought this could be my—our solution. I wanted to cheer them on. Never mind they were killing each other, never mind they were doing as bad things to the Serbs as the Serbs had done to them. I was on their side! Our solution. Never mind the international solution. Crazy, isn’t it? Wanting a war to be won just so it might save your day. And Bob … I think Bob was praying for the opposite, that the Croats would lose, that the whole bloody thing would go on, just so Kristina would never have that—way out. She’d always be—his refugee.