by Graham Swift
But then the call had come—at ten to seven by my watch and the clocks in Terminal 2—and it must have seemed, after all, that all that preparation had worked. At that point—after wiping away tears—after opening the bottle, and breathing deeply herself, she would have returned to the simple civilized task of cooking as if it were a splendour, an act of celebration.
Not that there would have been so much to do. Time and slow heat. She might already have removed the chicken pieces, to reduce and thicken the liquid (a little flour-and-butter whisked in), then returned them to the pot and to the barest simmer.
She’d set aside vegetables. With coq au vin you want nothing much. A few small potatoes, a dish of French beans. Some crusty bread. She’d made a pudding—poached pears. They’d been left to cool. A wedge of Roquefort, some red grapes. All never to be touched. She would have laid the table—now it was safe—the same table where once she’d hugged a sobbing Kristina and thought: now it will be all right.
Kristina by then, perhaps, would have been boarding her plane.
At some point, after a tidy-up and a quick glance round, she would have gone upstairs to change. The sudden coolness of even a well-heated house when you leave the warmth of the kitchen. November dark outside. She put on, so the police would observe, a simple but stunning scoop-necked dress of black velvet—a dress for an evening out though it was an evening in—and chose from the box on the dressing-table a pearl necklace (no doubt, but I know it now, a present from him).
A simple question: do you get dressed like that if you mean to—?
Now I run it all back through my head, as if I was there (there in their bedroom), it seems almost the most unbearable moment. The last time, though she didn’t know it, she would do this. Make herself ready. Those practised, almost unthinking and, recently, just token actions, now once more performed with meaning, even a touch of triumph. All that Kristina might have had to offer. Not any more.
She touched up her hair, her face. Lipstick. Scent. The last time she would do these things, this way. The last time she would know even the commonplace pleasure of a bedroom, a dressing-table, laying out a special dress.
And Mrs. Nash, the papers would note (Marsh would note it), was a striking woman. If that’s not an unfortunate word.
I should have been in that bedroom, fastening that necklace, fastening that dress.
It was nearly eight perhaps by then. She came back downstairs. Now all her agony had condensed into a single minor uncertainty: when would she hear the car, his step? The key in the door. She knew it might be a while. Traffic. A weekday night. Heathrow to Wimbledon, it can take longer than you think. She knew she might need this last scrap of patience.
In the hallway, by the window, she’d have checked that the porch light, the light over the garage and the little low lights at the entrance to the drive were all on. Of course they were. She would have eyed herself in the mirror. The way we can look at ourselves as if we haven’t met for a while.
And Bob—did she wonder? Would it be like meeting him all over again?
She would have gone back to the kitchen. She would have been doubly careful to put on the apron—the proper, wrap-around cook’s apron, navy-blue with a white stripe—that was found, when the police arrived, bundled loosely on the work-surface where she must have flung it quickly when she heard him arrive.
One of the cops (a tasteless joke): she should have kept it on.
But there had still been things to do. Final touches. A last taste, a last stir, a last adjustment of the heat. And there was the parsley to chop, for the garnish. And perhaps it was at this point—not waiting, after all, till she heard the car—that she lit the candle.
So that when the police arrived they walked into a scene that was not at first—till you saw the obvious—like a murder scene at all. The opposite. A scene of perfect welcome. A warm, inviting house on a cold November night. And a house that smelt, that breathed—this was the really striking thing—of something wonderful cooking. You couldn’t help smelling it as soon as you entered (whatever your reason for being there). The smell of good cooking that goes straight from nose to stomach, from stomach to heart.
Look, it was still there, still on the gentlest simmer, it hadn’t been touched.
Someone took it upon themselves to turn off the heat. And someone (Marsh himself?)—after Mrs. Nash had been taken away but the body, her husband, was still there—might have raised the lid, looked, sniffed.
A wooden spoon was close by. Did they dare?
And over there, in the corner, the candle, the flowers, the napkins, the unpoured wine.
Even the murder weapon, a kitchen knife, a good one and recently sharpened, still had on it, along with Bob Nash’s blood, some green smears and flecks of parsley.
A private detective, who blundered madly in, noted all this too.
The Nash Case. How could it have been cold-blooded revenge? But if not revenge, then what? On that very night, at that very point?
She hadn’t planned an escape, a get-away. The opposite. She herself made the call, said the words. And there she was, still there, saying it over and over again, I did it, I did it, I did it, as if she was learning a new language, as if someone should have been there to translate.
She’d put down the knife. She’d put it back on the chopping board.
Revenge? He had it coming? But who was the real monster now? The real monster of the two? He was just a gynaecologist who’d crossed a line—and taken advantage (if it was that way round) of a poor helpless refugee girl. No, he didn’t look so pretty. But who was the real monster now?
But go back, go back to that kitchen before it was the scene of a crime. Before it was a case, a story in the press. Rewind the clock. Relive it (how do the dead relive?). It might be different this time.
It’s eight o’clock. It’s eight-fifteen. She begins to worry—ordinary clock-watching worry. Traffic. But of course—she’s not naive—he might be having to do some thinking, he might be having to pull himself together. Taking his time.
All the more reason for this meal, for all this elaborate preparation. So that when he arrives he’ll be instantly reassured. Instantly greeted by a smell, a smell speaking louder than words.
And it can stand waiting, one of its virtues, the longer it simmers, the better.
And, anyway, a little after eight-thirty she hears the sound that for her is like a confirmation, an embrace. A familiar and not often thought-about sound, which recently has meant little to her ears. But now it comes like music. The sizzly civilized sound of tyres on gravel.
45
“You know what he said once, George? He said, ‘I can’t live without her.’ ”
We sit at our prison table. She’s never told me this before.
“Just before she moved out—into the flat. How are you supposed to take that? Your husband says he can’t live without another woman. It’s the sort of thing that should never get said—and he didn’t have to bloody well say it—but once it’s said, what are you supposed to think? He doesn’t mean it?”
I think of a table laid for two.
“And what are you supposed to feel: it’s wrong—that can’t be? I’m the one you shouldn’t be able to live without. But is that what counts, is that how it should be—to expect that someone else can’t live without you?”
I look at her and try not to think too hard.
“And he had lived without her, hadn’t he? All the time he’d never bloody known her. All the time he’d been living with me. So what did he mean?”
It’s as though Bob’s still here and she’s giving him a grilling. All his bloody fault.
Or giving me a grilling in his place.
I should shrug and say it’s just an expression, it’s just a bunch of words. But I take words seriously these days.
Her face has gone grim and cold. Like it was in those first days I came visiting.
“Of course we can live without,” she says, “we can live without anyone. If
we have to, we must.”
I look at her, not blinking. It’s like a test.
“Look at Kristina, George. Wasn’t she living without? Without just about everything. And this place—my God—doesn’t it teach you to live without, doesn’t it teach that?”
I try to smile. “I wouldn’t know, sweetheart.”
The barest of smiles back. “It’s a luxury, isn’t it? Having someone you can’t live without?”
“But this isn’t luxury, sweetheart.”
The screws stand around, keeping an eye. It’s not a playground (despite the kids) but it’s a kind of school. Here you have to learn. And here—she’s explained it more than once, though any fool might guess—it’s not so much what you have to live without but what you live with. More words that you have to take seriously, big wordy words that used to be just words in the dictionary or like words in someone else’s language. But now (I feel their weight too) they’re as real as rocks.
“Remorse,” for example.
Today, of all days, they’re real.
• • •
“It wasn’t a luxury for him, either. I wish I could have said it was. You know—like men have another woman because it’s a luxury. She’s just his luxury. So—he’ll get tired.”
The smile’s disappeared.
“You know what I thought—ha!—he’s the refugee now. He’s the bloody refugee. The one who doesn’t know where his home is. Now I’d be giving him shelter. I’d be sheltering my own husband.”
It’s as though it’s still happening now. It must be the day. The reliving.
Sometimes I want to say—and then it seems absurd: Stop punishing yourself. Today, of all days, it seems absurd.
On the wall in the Visits Room there’s a clock with a red second hand that jerks round, telling you the time you have left. It always seems like a bad joke. Thirty minutes … Eight years …
If only they’d let her out, just for this day. So she could go to the grave and see. If only they’d allow her that—luxury. I’d take her, I’d stand surety, I’d deliver her back. I wouldn’t sneak off with her, oh no. I’d even stand off to one side, like a guard—it’s my job, to tag people—while she stood there looking.
A cruelty for her to look at it. A cruelty that she can’t.
So she could see. Just a grave.
“You know what I thought, George? Well, now you can’t be greedy any more. You can’t be greedy. If you can’t live without him—then share. But don’t stop loving him, don’t stop loving him—that’s not how it works.”
I say to myself: Do I want to hear this, do I want to hear any of this?
What do I want to hear? That Bob was a mistake, a long mistake? A smashed windscreen, coq au vin. Like I became a mistake for Rachel. Goodbye, George.
I don’t know what she’d say now—after two years—if she was let out, if she could stand by the grave. I don’t know how it works.
I’d stand to one side straining my ears.
Goodbye, Bob.
The second hand jerks on. Nearly a quarter to four. Two years ago it was their last afternoon in Fulham.
I can tell you now, Bob—as the one who killed you, after all—I don’t love you any more.
Her eyes look worn, as if she hasn’t slept. The knot in her brow. She’s not wearing make-up.
Don’t punish yourself.
“She wasn’t his luxury, was she—only his luxury? Otherwise he could never have said it, he could never have dared say it to me: ‘I can’t live without her.’ ”
She looks down at her hands. “And, anyway, it was true, wasn’t it? He didn’t, did he?”
46
My job was over when I said those words.
“He’s on his way home.”
I could have gone home myself—cooked my own supper for one. Cannelloni with spinach and ricotta. It was already done (I think ahead), it only needed twenty minutes in the oven. A tomato and basil salad. A glass of Chianti. Don’t stint yourself because you’re on your own. Allow yourself a little luxury.
But I’d seen his face—or that loss of a face—as he turned, came stumbling, without knowing it, towards me. There was a moment when I lay right in his path and—had he been looking, had he been seeing anything with that emptied-out face—he’d have seen me, for an instant, no more than three yards away, phone to my ear. He’d have taken in a man he wouldn’t have known at all, a nobody, but who was right then talking to his wife. While, in reverse, I was looking at a man I knew (I’d seen his photo—a holiday shirt) but who seemed to have become a nobody. So for a second or two it was like looking in a mirror. Is that me? That lost soul?
Then he swerved, lurched away from me. I pocketed my mobile. My job wasn’t done. Of course not.
It’s where Marsh’s questions began. You didn’t have to do it—keep trailing him still.
No, I could have been eating cannelloni.
As if it wasn’t up to me to make it true. To stand surety. He’s coming home. That leap in her voice—“oh, thank you”—and that leap inside me, when I should have been sinking, like him.
The other’s happiness, not your own.
He headed back towards the car park. In his shoes what would I have done? Found some spot that looked out on the runways? Pressed my nose against cold glass? All those taxiing lights. All those trundling planes, the people inside them like mere possibilities. At night it’s hard to follow …
I followed him along the walkway. “Followed” isn’t really the word. I couldn’t explain this to Marsh. “Urged” maybe. Forced. None of the usual caution: see and don’t be seen. As if I might have caught up with him—his own steps heavy and slow as lead—gripped his arm, dragged him along. Come on, do it!
How he found the right level, found the car, I don’t know. At the best of times you get lost in such places, forget where you were. But less than an hour ago he must have known it, not wanting to think of how it would feel: he’d have to come back this way, retrace his steps, all by himself.
The mercilessness of a multi-storey car park. Cold concrete, blotches of oil. The scream of jets. She’d gone. He found the Saab, got in. A car can be like a bunker, a bolt-hole, a tomb. After a few seconds the interior light went out and he still hadn’t switched on anything else. I couldn’t see if his head was in his hands.
Five minutes must have passed. So the car became like a black hard shell again. Was there a person inside?
For God’s sake, man. Start the fucking car!
47
I think: he only lived without her for a couple of hours.
I don’t say anything.
And this has been two years.
Sometimes, on the other side of the table, she’s as close as a breath, sometimes it could be a mile.
It’s not the first time I’ve thought it: if I’m a good visitor, an unfailing visitor, if I serve my time (two years!), won’t they let me take her home?
Shouldn’t it work that way round? I’ll look after her, I promise. No more killings. She’s safe with me. Surety, indefinitely.
I’m nice to the screws, I’m always nice to the screws.
And it would be one less problem, one less chore for them. One less mouth to feed, one less inmate to house. A small easing of the public burden. Private charity work. I’ll keep her, myself, under lock and key.
It’s only what she did once—three years ago: she took Kristina in. Was that overstepping the mark? For pity’s sake.
The screws stand around as if at any time they could make their selection. Okay, you two, we’ve been watching you. Today’s your lucky day. No—don’t thank us.
But they simply watch. It’s their job. You stay detached. As if there’s a line for them too. All the lines.
It’s nearly four. They’re still in the Fulham flat, the curtains drawn. And in a moment I’ll be down below, in the car, watching, waiting. The light fading. Okay, you two, time’s up.
She looks at me as if she’s looking for something beyond me, something
more than me. It hurts me. As if today I shouldn’t have come alone, I should have picked someone up on the way (I tried). Look who’s here. Look who’s with me …
And if that’s what it would take, and I could do it, I’d do that too.
Look, it’s Bob after all. Look everyone: Bob Nash. It was all a mistake.
I’d say: Okay, you two—good luck to you both. Now I’ll be slipping away, now my job’s finally done.
But it hurts me.
I should feel hurt today. The absurdest things: I’m jealous of the man she killed. I want him out of her life. And he is. But today he has visiting rights. It’s his day, I can’t deny it.
Four o’clock …
But he’s still with the woman he said he couldn’t live without.
“Did you go to the office?” she says.
Small talk, casual talk, skirting the subject. You sit by a hospital bed and talk about the weather. Around us, maybe twenty other conversations. The one question that makes no sense in here: How was your day?
“Just for an hour or so—before I left for the cemetery.”
“Rita’s there now?”
“At the office? Of course.”
“She knows where you were going?”
“Before here? Of course. She knows what day it is, she hasn’t forgotten.”
Her eyes go a little edgy. Sometimes I think Sarah would like a word, a message, from Rita—another woman’s word. And I’d bring that too, if I could, Rita’s word.
Rita says, “Hello.” Oh and, by the way, she says to forgive you.
I haven’t told Sarah everything about Rita—not about the pink fluffy dressing-gown. But she knows, I know she knows, she can guess. It’s a game we play. The absurdest things. A game of jealousy. As if Sarah should be jealous, as if she has a right. Or a cause.
