by Graham Swift
“This is delicious,” she said. She meant my Chicken Marsala.
I must tell her, I thought, I must tell her about Rachel and me.
But maybe she won’t come any more—not now. Now it’s over with, now she’s said it. Maybe that’s what it’s all been about, these visits. Not about my cooking, my managing, my proving I could look after myself.
But she did keep coming. (She hasn’t stopped coming.) In the fullness of time I even got to meet Clare.
Though it was after that evening when she made her announcement that she began to get more direct, more pushy, even more plain damn nosy, about me finding someone else, someone, that is, who wasn’t her.
I went on a weekend cookery course. She nudged me into it. I had a real talent, didn’t I realize? Buried by twenty-four years in the Force. It needed bringing out.
Though I didn’t need that much nudging, I was keen myself. This new me, this unsuspected me, this kitchen me.
“How was it?” she said.
“Fine. I picked up lots of tips.”
“Did you pick up anything else?”
I wasn’t going to act dim.
“I was the only bloke there, if that’s what you mean … they all admired my pastry.”
But it was only after I went into private detection—which she hadn’t been pushing for at all—that facts began to race ahead of her little teasing schemes.
I think she was glad for me. And I think, the way it turned out, she was the one to be shocked. Her dad. Not just finding another woman in his life but, so it seemed, more than one. But it was my life, like it was hers. Fair exchange, and let’s be frank (and she’d have known if her dad was having her on), I slept with clients. There. One or two. Difficult not to. Breaking all the professional rules. But hadn’t I taken that turn already? Already been branded?
Corrupt, through and through.
I think she didn’t know how to take it, I think she was a little ashamed. Do you remember, Helen, when you were a rebel, impossible to handle? But I think she was also entertained. She hadn’t known this man before (nor had I), this—what’s the word?—womanizer. I think she was taken aback but I think she found it mainly comic. And maybe, mainly, it was.
Life was a comedy after all, maybe. As opposed to all that tragic teenage stuff. As opposed to all that grim stuff you find in police files.
“This is really delicious.”
Lifting her fork daintily. Like a woman on a date again, like a man’s woman making sweet and obliging comments, testing the ground. But she meant it too. And there’d been all those wretched months when I’d struggled round art galleries, an off-duty policeman, staring at pictures, trying to see in them some clue, some lead to my daughter.
Chicken Marsala, followed by lemon tart. A bottle of wine. A man and a woman at a candlelit table. Interior design. Don’t knock it—what’s civilization for?
Beyond the window, the back garden, hidden and dark. My last days in the old house. Rachel, Helen, me. I turned and pointed at the glass, at our two faces looming in a pool of light.
“Caravaggio,” I said.
25
I never found that lost golf ball, hidden in the rough. And now there was something else that would have to stay out of sight: the little wild black ball of what I’d heard, that had come slicing, whirring towards me. I’d caught it and put it in my pocket, and that’s where it had to stay.
I wish I could have found that missing ball—the white, the right one. Held it up with a smile, like something that put everything back where it was.
But you know when you’ve crossed a line.
“Never mind. It’s only a golf ball …”
They got up from the bench. We moved on to the next hole, me pulling the bags on their trolley, a little way behind. Before we reached the tee I’d already made my decision: that I’d have to pretend—so Mum would never know. Keep mum. That was my mission now.
I’d never been this way before—where words, that were just bits of air, could turn scary and black and hard. The word “wrong,” for example. It gets chucked all the time at kids, gets chucked at you all the time at school. I’d never caught it, never felt the weight of the word “wrong.”
We got to the tee. He drove first and I handed him his club. I felt the weight of the word “club” in my hand.
Pretend, keep silent. I couldn’t even tell Pauline Freeman, who must know already—because she’d given me the brush-off. Tell her that I knew too. Though that might have been a way of getting back together with her. Partners in secrecy. Like her mum and my dad …
I thought of the little black ball of knowledge Pauline had been carrying around with her for months already. And it would have to go on. Because you’d never not know.
And the other thing I decided, even as I followed Dad to the next hole, was that I’d have to follow him—other sense. Watch him, trail him. Because if you knew something then you had to know what you knew, you had to have proof. Otherwise you might be tempted to think it was all a mistake, everything was like it had always been.
But I didn’t follow him—how could I follow him? He’d turn and recognize me at once—I followed her: Mrs. Freeman. Though she too might recognize me. That smile, that wave outside the school gates (had nothing been happening then?). And once, later, I’d passed by Maynard’s estate agents in the High Street where she worked part-time (Pauline told me), and I’d looked in through the window, past the photos of houses, and seen her, Mrs. Freeman, dressed like a secretary, and she’d seen me, I’m sure, but hadn’t waved or smiled. And I’d thought that was because Pauline and me weren’t friends any more.
But that’s how it came to me, how a whole rush of things came to me. Part-time at the estate agent’s—Wednesdays to Fridays, Pauline had said. And Maynard’s was just fifty yards or so from Dad’s studio, on the other side. So during that three-day stretch each of them would know that the other was there, across the road, near yet far. Was that how it began? He’d invited her across? “Taking her pic.” What kind of pic? The old beach photographer. After hours maybe. But it couldn’t carry on like that (if it was going to carry on) in his studio.
So …? Three days a week in Maynard’s, which left two days when she was just—to use the word then—a housewife. Free to come and go. And Mr. Freeman worked all day in town. And Dad worked in his studio of course, but he still went out on jobs, even though he had assistants, packing his gear in the back of the car. And he could pretend. Though he’d hardly go to the Freeman house in Gifford Road.
But she worked in Maynard’s, and working in an estate agent’s she’d surely know about places that were briefly empty, waiting for buyers, tenants. She might even be able to get, or get a copy of, a key …
There are always these simple, mechanical questions. Where? When? How? Often they’re half the battle. For them, as well as you.
“ ‘Matrimonial work,’ Helen. That’s what they call it.”
• • •
I looked in his appointments diary. Not difficult. He carried a pocket-size version of the one he kept on his office desk. In the evening he’d often leave it, for ready reference, by the phone in the hall. Nothing suspicious inside—unless you already had a theory and saw that on Monday afternoons for two weeks ahead there was a gap between one and four. And once on a Tuesday.
Detective work. It’s mostly graft and slog but there are times when a light comes on in your head.
I couldn’t follow him: he drove a car. I followed her. She didn’t drive, but they’d make separate journeys, I was sure. He wouldn’t risk picking her up. Gifford Road joined White Horse Hill, a bus route, so I waited near the bus stop on White Horse Hill, reckoning that if they rendezvoused soon after one, I should be on watch from about a quarter past twelve.
Summer. The school holidays: I was free too. Summer, but pouring with rain. But that was a blessing. I could wear the hood of my anorak up. I could loiter, as if sheltering, under the awning of the newsagent’s some twenty yar
ds from the bus stop. And when she appeared, round the corner of Gifford Road, she was carrying an umbrella, which is like a kind of hood too, a barrier to knowing you’re being watched. Rain: the detective’s friend.
She might have crossed, to take the bus in the other direction—I’d have crossed over myself—but she stayed on my side. A bus came. I dashed, at the last moment, to get on. Then it was a case of sitting with my head turned mostly to the window. And if she saw me—well, it was a coincidence and I’d have to settle for studying her face.
She didn’t see me. She got off at the Spencer Arms. I timed my exit neatly, hung back while she walked on. Then I followed her round two, three corners, remembering the names of the streets.
At any moment, of course, Dad might have driven by and spotted me, hood or no hood. But I was lucky in that too. She was well ahead of him.
Collingwood Road. She turned into a house—number twenty. Yes, it had an agent’s sign outside. Yes, she had a key. I scurried to the other side of the road and walked on a little—carefully eyeing each parked car. This was the tricky part. A residential street: where do you hide? But some way along was the entrance to a little park, a recreation ground—deserted in the rain—and I tucked myself in the gateway, under the branches of a chestnut tree.
And it was from here that I saw Dad’s Wolsey drive by and park, not so near number twenty, though there was a gap, and saw Dad, a blurry figure in the rain—half hidden, too, by an umbrella, but unmistakably my dad—hurry to the same house. He didn’t have to wait to be let in.
I stood, not moving, under my tree. You know when you’re committed, when there’s no going back.
I suppose I had the thought: now I could pounce. I could go to number twenty, bang on the door. Open up! I had him—them—trapped. It was even, maybe, the right thing to do.
But I didn’t move, as if I was on guard. The mysterious urge to protect. My shoes were leaking, my neck was damp. I thought of the sound of the rain from inside. Gurgling gutters and down-pipes. The smell of a room that isn’t yours. The feeling of shelter, of taking shelter wherever you can.
And was this their only shelter, here in Collingwood Road? Did they have—according to their strategy and the state of the housing market—a whole string of shelters, in Chislehurst, in Petts Wood, Bromley, all round the not-to-be-trusted suburbs?
I suppose that’s what I felt, under my chestnut tree: that I didn’t have any shelter, real shelter, any more. I was shelterless. Rain dripped from the leaves.
I could slink off home now but I didn’t have a real home any more, just a pretend one, and I’d have to work hard—just me and for as long as it took—to stop the pretend-walls and pretend-roof from tumbling down.
Until the thing that was going on there in number twenty died a death. Whenever that might be. But even then—because I’d always know—I’d have to go on pretending, even after it had died a death.
26
And Kristina? What did she want? Did she really love him—that man over there under the slab, with the roses? And so was it really her “sacrifice”? To go back. Not to destroy him—him and Sarah. To get out of their lives.
Destroyed anyway.
So much of it I’ve had to piece together gradually, on my visits. As much as she’s wanted to tell, as much as she’s wanted to talk. A special room for talking, like an interview room, like several interview rooms together. It’s not ideal, it’s not private, but it’s all we have. You haven’t got her yet.
And we write. I write: my “English lessons.” That’s where Kristina came in. If she’d never walked into Sarah’s English class …
In the beginning, when she didn’t want to see me, speak to me (no Visiting Order, no visit), it was all there was, suddenly: writing. I’d never done it before, put down things like that on paper.
Please call me … Please see me … Please answer this letter …
As if I was the one on remand.
How much could I ever have learnt then—in Café Rio, in Gladstone’s? Our few moments, our time together, in the free world. You haven’t got her yet. But a little for a lot in this world—the only rule.
It might have been Bob’s rule too. It’s all on remand. This can’t last, this will end in disaster—but I’ll always have known this madness.
And even then, in Gladstone’s, trying to make a glass of beer last for ever, I wasn’t thinking so much of what she was telling me. A lapse of professional concentration. I was thinking: I may not see her again, not like this. This job—this simple job—and then?
And I wanted it to be a success—I mean, I wanted it to turn out as she wanted. I wanted to see her get her husband back, to be a witness to that. So that then, at least, I’d see her happy.
She’d have settled the bill, thanked me. Thanked me like some good uncle.
And then? I might never have seen her again. Unless I loitered continually by the Fine Foods section. Unless—crazy ridiculous thoughts—she asked me to dinner, to sample her cooking, to meet her husband. To say, “Bob, this is George, the one I paid to watch you, to spy on you. You and Kristina—just in case. George, this is Bob. Bob’s been dying to meet you …”
Crazy thoughts.
But I was a detective, wasn’t I? I could always see people, be with them, follow them. I could follow her, just as I’d followed Bob and Kristina. Just as I’d thought, years before, when the divorce was on its way, of following Rachel, of viewing this impossible thing: Rachel in another life, her own life, without me. Rachel as she once must have been, before I’d ever met her. Rachel with somebody else.
How do we choose?
She must have someone else—she must have had someone else. So all that getting on her high horse, all that being the judge of me …
I might even have stopped following and watching and butted in.
A detective, wasn’t I? A detective still.
“It’s my choice, Helen, it’s up to me …”
Choice? It’s in the blood. It’s what I do, I am.
It’s what we all do, I think, in our different ways. Something in the blood, in the nose. Under the chestnut tree, the sticky breath of summer rain. We’re hunters, that’s what we are, always stalking, tracking the missing thing, the missing part of our lives.
I might never have seen Sarah again, not properly. Just followed her, dogged her, snooped, spied. But that wouldn’t have made me a detective, would it? It would have made me something else.
27
And Kristina? She disappeared of course. Became a missing person, an absent witness. Marsh wasn’t going to have her traced. The trouble, the expense. Not worth it for such a sewn-up case. (Just a few loose threads.) Not worth his remaining time, ticking away till they let him out. And, anyway, for all immediate purposes she was out of the picture, uninvolved. She was up in the sky when the crime was committed—or coming down to land, in Switzerland. Neutral territory.
I think of her on that night, in that plane. Tears all the way? (Did someone sitting next to her have to take pity?) Or dry-eyed, hard-eyed, sipping her free drink?
Thinking of what was behind her, or what was ahead?
I see her arriving in Geneva, producing her wad of papers and credentials, the proof of who she was. The passport from a country that no longer existed.
And she didn’t know—how could she?—that Bob didn’t exist any more either, whether for her or not. The lights and announcements of an airport, the flow of people. Didn’t know (it was meant to stop things being destroyed) the destruction she’d left behind.
But then—she’d always been leaving destruction behind. The story of her life. Five years in England while everything she’d known was torn apart. Going back now to see what was left.
Hard-eyed and hardened? But blossomed and softened and beautiful, with the embrace of another woman’s husband still with her like the clasp of a ghost.
Switzerland. Airport shops full of watches and chocolates.
Over and over I’ve thought it:
she might never have known, she still might not know. Would she have looked at the English papers? Or even noticed, if she had, the not so big story (only a murder, only a simple murder) on the inside pages? Would that have been her first concern? Out of their lives—that was the deal? So, no follow-ups or backward looks, no further communication. Dead to each other.
In Switzerland, or in Croatia, you don’t think of a street, a house in Wimbledon. Any more than people in Wimbledon think of a street, a house (a ruined street, a burnt-out house) in the former Yugoslavia.
Some things it’s best not to know. And if she does know, if she did find out, she’s never come forward, never declared herself. Lived—wherever she is—like an exile with the knowledge.
And she’s never appeared here, in this cemetery, considering it worth the journey, the expense, considering it necessary to come all the way back, to stand—shed tears perhaps—lay flowers.
Though how would I know? Who keeps a constant watch on a grave?
The sun here, by this wall, has a papery warmth. The sky is as blue as a summer sea. Holiday brochures. Dubrovnik …
I see her sitting too, at some pavement café. Geneva? Zagreb? Dubrovnik? Winter sunshine. Steaming coffee cups, glinting table tops. Her eyes are hidden by sunglasses. You can’t follow her gaze. You’d look and think: no child. A woman of the world.
What did she want? It’s easy to say she got what she wanted—as if it was all done by calculation: loss and gain. The bright-eyed girl who’d come to London to study, to get a life. Well, she’d got her compensation. A refugee? A flat of her own, for God’s sake. Seeing how they lived in comfortable Wimbledon, in comfortable Fulham. Oh she knew how to turn everything to havoc. Compensation? More. All the time, after all, she might have been living through a war. Atrocities on both sides. Fair’s fair.
And then when it seemed at last she had a country of her own to go to, she went back with her loot, her credentials, a veteran of the English suburbs.
