The Book of You: A Novel

by Claire Kendal

  Annie’s face was cherubic and heart-shaped. Her angelic features seemed to relax a bit. She tapped her sweet little chin several times with her index finger. “What did she think was going to happen, stealing those drugs from them?”

  Clarissa pulled out a Japanese pattern book. There was a nightdress with a crossover bodice she loved the look of—she had some silk the color of a bruise that she’d use. She’d make two and send one of them to Rowena once she’d managed to get Rafe safely out of her life.

  “My wife used to sew.”

  The owner of that voice must have noticed what she was looking at. Her face reddened as she hurriedly shut the book. In the chair opposite was the tall man who sat in front of her in the jury box. She liked his dark-brown hair, so short it made her wonder if he was in the military; she’d spent a lot of time over the last two days with that hair in her view; she thought it would feel bristly.

  “Does she not anymore?” she said.

  His jaw—strong and square and so unlike Henry’s—stiffened almost imperceptibly. She had the impression that he was considering what to tell her, though his pause probably seemed longer than it actually was. “She died. Two years ago.”

  “Oh—I’m so sorry.”

  His name was Robert. She told him her own name as the door into Court 12 opened and the usher invited them back in. She stood and lined up with the others, but Robert’s voice soon made her turn around.

  “You left this on your chair.” He was holding out the Japanese pattern book. The nightdress she’d been studying—very pretty, but a little revealing—was featured on the cover, hanging against a wooden wardrobe. The picture was covered by his large hand.

  She bit her lip slightly and shook her head in ironic embarrassment, surprised at the same time to find herself noticing how symmetrical his lips were, and that they were perfect—not too big and not too small, not too red and not too bloodless, but just right. His eyes were the brightest sapphire blue she’d ever seen in human eyes. She thought she might be blinded if she looked too long at them.

  Despite its remarkable features, his face was neutral, perhaps even expressionless. “I think you’re right,” he said. “I think she’ll be back.”

  AND SHE WAS, though her eyes were rimmed in red and she had to swallow hard several times as she spoke.

  “They made me lie down on the floor. They threw a quilt over me. They started . . . kicking me, hitting me. I was in a ball, trying to shield my breasts, my head. I thought they were actually going to kill me and they’d covered my face so they wouldn’t have to see me while they did it. I started screaming that I’d call my grandfather, that he’d give me the money.

  “Sparkle took the quilt away, handed me my phone. ‘Dial,’ he said. I told my grandfather I was desperate, that I needed fifteen hundred pounds, but he said no. I thought they’d start beating on me again then, but Sparkle said I could pay him back by dealing for him. He gave me three hundred pounds’ worth, so I could get started. Then he drove me to the train station and let me go.”

  Thursday, February 5, 8:30 p.m.

  At eight thirty the doorbell rings. And rings and rings and rings. I’ve known since this morning that you’d come after me for jilting you at the ballet. I don’t answer, of course. But I do experiment: I take the intercom phone off its cradle, but this fails to disable the buzzer; worse yet, your voice is now incessant. Without a word I put the intercom back in its place and refuse to pick it up again.

  I go into my bedroom and grab the handset for my landline. I press the 9 once. I press it twice. Remembering my call to the emergency operator last Friday, I pause before pressing it a third time.

  I am fifteen again, reporting the bag theft. The policewoman is firing her questions at me, and I’m wishing that my parents were beside me instead of in the waiting area with Rowena and the shouting relatives of criminals. Had my bag really been stolen? Perhaps I’d simply lost it and feared telling my parents the truth? Surely they’d be upset by the expense and inconvenience such carelessness would cause: getting the locks changed, replacing my schoolbooks, giving me another week’s worth of lunch money? I said that my parents would never mind about such things. I said I could never fear them. I said they cared only about my safety. The policewoman’s incredulity seemed to deepen with every word I spoke. I managed to persuade her to let me drag Rowena in, but the policewoman regarded her as an unreliable witness, a loyal friend to me whose confirmation of my story couldn’t be trusted.

  They didn’t find the girl who assaulted me. Of course they didn’t. I doubt they even looked for her.

  The police cannot act unless there is evidence that a crime has been committed.

  I press the red button instead of the third 9 and toss the handset on my bed, knowing I can’t go to the police yet. I still don’t have enough evidence. And by the time they got here you’d be gone—then they wouldn’t take me seriously. You’re not stupid enough to let them catch you at my front door. Maybe they’d even charge me with wasting police time for making another inappropriate 999 call only six days after the last one. They’d think you’re a phantom just like that girl who punched me on the seafront.

  By nine o’clock the endless scream of the bell is more than I can stand. I pick up the intercom phone, but I say nothing. Knowing it won’t be long, I wait for your voice.

  “Clarissa?” you say. “Clarissa? I waited for you, Clarissa. Is something wrong, Clarissa? How could you be so horrible to me, Clarissa? I thought you’d be sorry after how you treated me last night, but now this.”

  Until you, I loved my name. I don’t want you to take that away from me, too. I can’t let you do that, though I cringe each time you repeat it.

  The way you veer between solicitousness and anger, conciliating and scolding, makes me so fearful I hug myself and rock back and forth.

  I go into the bathroom and shut the door, though it hardly does anything to block out the noise. I turn on the tap at full force, and that helps but doesn’t completely drown you out. I shake lavender bath salts over the tub: Gary’s Christmas present, which is the same every year, making us both laugh as he hands it over. I do not feel like laughing right now. I drop my clothes on the floor, and as soon as the bath’s full enough for the water to cover my ears, I get in with a clumsy splash.

  That does the trick entirely. I can’t hear you at all now. But the bath salts do nothing to relax me, and after only a few minutes I’m weak and faint from the heat, and the steam is making it impossible to breathe. Not being able to hear anything at all is frightening in a different way. I have a tiny kernel of hope that when I break the water’s surface and reemerge there will be silence, but you are still there, of course, making your noise. I get out too quickly and feel dizzy.

  The nice word for you is methodical. Obsessive-compulsive is the meaner phrase, and one you’ve truly earned. Nobody lives up to that one better than you. You press the buzzer for a shrill sixty seconds exactly, then allow me precisely two minutes of precious quiet before repeating the cycle. You probably keep a stopwatch in your bag of tools. It’s a good thing Miss Norton is near deaf and goes to bed early, taking her hearing aids out before sleep. I am grateful that I’m not in a public place where you can ambush me like you did with Rowena.

  I swaddle myself in towels and go into my bedroom. Again I shut the door, and again it does almost nothing to muzzle the screech of the bell. I turn on the radio. They’re playing a Chopin prelude. I turn up the volume, and you’re seriously muffled but for the pauses between the piano’s notes. It’s only when I crawl under the bedclothes and pull them over my head that you entirely disappear.

  Soon, though, my ears are hurting in a different way. This music was not meant to be blasted. You have ruined the Chopin for me forever. To have it at such a high decibel level, competing absurdly with your finger on the buzzer, makes it ugly and uncivilized—it was never meant to be used as a weapon. I’m suffocating again, unable to get enough air into my lungs with the comforter
over my nose, and I must quickly abandon this homemade sensory deprivation unit, too. Once more, there is the stab of you in my eardrums.

  By ten I cannot endure another minute. I grab the intercom phone. You win again. It is impossible to stay silent.

  “I will never let you in. I don’t want to go out with you; I never asked for that ticket; I’d never have shown up at that restaurant last night if I’d known you’d be there.”

  You say, “I don’t want to upset you, Clarissa.” You say, “I’m just trying to make you happy, Clarissa.” You say, “That’s all I want. But you’ve hurt me, Clarissa.” You say, “I know you’re lonely, Clarissa. I’m lonely, too.” You say, “I’m just trying to help us both, Clarissa.” You say, “I know your heart’s been broken, Clarissa. Mine’s been broken, too. Again and again by you.” You say, “I’m going now, Clarissa.”

  I jerk the handset onto its cradle in such distress it falls off and dangles and I have to put it back. The new noiselessness is so quiet it makes a low hum in my ears. But I can’t get rid of my anxiety that you are still standing there.

  Friday

  IT WAS DIFFICULT to focus on Azarola’s barrister after barely sleeping the night before.

  “Please confirm your description of the man you said they picked up en route to London.” Mr. Williams made Clarissa think of an actor in a legal drama who’d mastered his lines and moves. “You said, ‘About five foot nine, mixed race, slight build, with long plaits.’ ”

  Azarola leaned forward. He was well over six feet. His skin was golden, his eyes were hazel, and his hair was straight and short and thick and medium brown. His shoulders and chest were broad, like Robert’s, beneath his fitted black sweater, which she thought looked expensive and fine, and was probably cashmere. He made her think of a Spanish pop star.

  “Yes. That was my description,” Miss Lockyer said.

  There was no way that description matched. Could Clarissa herself make such a mistake, if she were in too much fear to look? Or had the police got the wrong man?

  TOMLINSON’S BARRISTER LOOKED like a seasoned Shakespearean actor. “Mr. Tomlinson had consensual sex with you. It was not the violent encounter you portrayed. It was a cold-blooded commercial transaction for drugs. You are a professional, Miss Lockyer. You even gave Mr. Tomlinson a condom.”

  Clarissa shuddered. She hadn’t been able to remember enough of that November night to know if Rafe had worn a condom. Knowing him, he probably hadn’t. She’d been inexpressibly relieved when her period had started a week later, as expected: a novel experience for her to wish not to be pregnant. What would Mr. Belford make of her, if she were sitting in that witness chair?

  CLARISSA SPOKE QUIETLY to Annie as they got their coats and slowly made their way out of the building. “That’s what happens when you press charges, when you complain. They just rape you up there all over again and say you’re a prostitute.”

  “But she was a prostitute, Clarissa,” Annie said. “Nobody could possibly believe her when she says she wasn’t.”

  CLARISSA STUFFED HER tattered copy of Keats’s Collected Poems into her bag. The book was a relic of her abandoned PhD, and something she always reached for when the world around her seemed especially dark and uncivilized. She glanced out the train window. Robert strode assuredly along the platform and disappeared down the stairs. She hadn’t realized he’d been on the train; it hadn’t occurred to her that he might live in Bath, too. Somehow he’d climbed off and got himself almost out of the station before the other passengers had even begun to alight.

  She surveyed the platform for Rafe, peering into the crowd that was pressing her toward the stairs. Her body was aching from sitting all day. She wanted fresh air. She wanted to move. She’d already had to give up her morning walks. She didn’t want to lose the walk home, too. The fact that the taxi queue was so impossibly long helped her to make up her mind, but she was glad there were so many people about.

  Still, she was nervous when she stepped into the railway arch behind the station. She paused to look inside the tunnel: no Rafe. And on the bridge, before she stepped onto it to cross the river: again he wasn’t there.

  But there was someone in the middle of the bridge, crumpled inside a heap of shabby blankets and encircled by empty beer cans, clutching a bottle of cheap spirits. There were several plastic bags around her, with her meager belongings.

  Normally, Clarissa would keep as much distance between them as she could. This time, she approached the woman, though she fought a stab of the same mixture of fear and pity that Miss Lockyer made her feel. She gripped her bag more tightly.

  The woman’s hair was so greasy and matted Clarissa couldn’t tell what color it was. Her flimsy shell jacket was torn and filthy on her skeleton frame. Her wrinkled skin was so rough and red and flaky it must have hurt; she appeared at first glance to be an old woman, but probably wasn’t more than forty. Would this be Miss Lockyer, someday? There was a stench of sour flesh—an unmistakable mix of unwashed genitals and anus and armpit sweat—that made Clarissa gag and try to breathe through her mouth, hoping the woman didn’t notice.

  “Money for the shelter?” The woman held out a hand that was almost blue with cold. Clarissa took off a mitten and drew out a twenty-pound note, knowing it would probably be used to purchase a wrap of crack cocaine and a wrap of heroin. “Bless you,” the woman said.

  Clarissa peeled off her other mitten and offered the pair, uncertain if her mother’s knitting would be wanted. The woman hesitated, then took them and put them on, slowly and clumsily. “Bless you,” she said again, not meeting Clarissa’s eye, and Clarissa moved forward, pressing her now-frozen fists deeply into the pockets of the warm coat she’d cut out when Henry had still been there.

  Henry, smiling faintly then, a glass of wine and the paper in his hands as she kneeled on the living-room floor, bending over the indigo wool she’d quilted into diamonds, immersed in her plans for it. Henry, crackling with energy even when he was still. Henry, shaving the few hairs he had left in the shower each morning so he was entirely bald—a style choice rather than unwanted fate, and yet more evidence of his infallible aesthetic judgment. Henry, in Cambridge now, a world away from this woman and from Clarissa.

  Clarissa hurried on, wanting to get home as fast as she could. She reached the old churchyard within minutes. Miss Lockyer must have passed it countless times, including the day they took her. Had she ever noticed the only tomb that hadn’t been torn out? Green with mildew, the gray stone box marking the location of the bodies was the size of a large trunk. Many centuries ago the graveyard had been a wood. It was another of Clarissa’s special places. She liked to think it was a source of magic for her, and that someday that magic would take effect, though it hadn’t happened yet.

  A woman had been buried there with her two babies in the middle of the nineteenth century. Three deaths in two years. Clarissa couldn’t see the inscriptions in the dark, and the engraved letters were losing their definition, but she knew them by heart.

  Matilda Bourn, Died 21st August 1850, Aged 4 Months

  Louisa Bourn, Died 16th September 1851, Aged 6 Weeks

  Jane Bourn, Mother of the Above Children,

  Died 22nd December 1852, Aged 43 Years & 6 Months

  Clarissa always imagined the two babies cradled in their mother’s arms beneath that damp earth, and the mother happy at last to be able to hold them to her. Had they been her only babies? Probably there’d been many others; that was more likely. Probably her health had been ruined by too many pregnancies too close together—that might have been what killed her. Clarissa could have researched it, but she didn’t really want to know. She preferred the story she told herself, in which the woman waited and yearned, childless, for a long time. Then, miraculously, she had her babies after she turned forty, the age Clarissa would be in a year and a half. Only to lose them.

  No husband was mentioned. No father. As if the only relationship that mattered was the one between the dead mother and her de
ad babies. But somebody had valued them enough to put up that stone.

  Clarissa’s surname was a variant of theirs, but she knew that that wasn’t why she felt such a powerful connection to the dead mother and her dead babies. She had an almost superstitious ritual of praying for them—and to them—whenever she passed the grave. Sometimes she climbed over the iron gate at the far end to clear away crumpled cans or greasy fast-food wrappings.

  Tonight, it was pitch-black there. The people who’d seemed to share her walk home from the train station had somehow melted away without her noticing; she’d loitered too long with the woman on the bridge. Regretting her decision to give up on the taxi queue, she considered doubling back. But she quickly calculated that that wouldn’t help matters—she’d be as alone and isolated retracing her steps as she’d be pressing on.

  She tried to reason with herself that Rafe knew nothing about her daily trips to Bristol; he had no reason to suspect she’d be walking home from the station in the evenings. Nonetheless, she couldn’t help but imagine shadows moving along the walls, where they’d leaned all the old gravestones; those who’d wept over them were long dead; they’d probably never imagined that the carefully wrought markers would be ripped from their places.

  She plunged ahead, only just holding herself back from running in case she slipped on the icy footpath. She was certain he would suddenly step into her line of sight, materializing out of the starless night.

  She only began to breathe freely when she reached her street. She wouldn’t walk anymore on her own after daylight. Not anywhere. No matter how long she had to wait for a taxi. And when she did walk, she would go only to places that were dependably teeming with people.

  Friday, February 6, 6:15 p.m.

  A small padded envelope waits for me on the shelf in the communal entrance hall. In it is a tiny box. You’ve wrapped it in gold embossed paper and decorated it carefully with curled silver ribbons. You’ve enclosed a heavy cream-colored card imprinted with a rose. I notice what you love. Wear this for me.