The Cryptographer

by Tobias Hill

  ‘Hello, you. Where did you get to?’ Anna hears faintly. It is a woman’s voice, soft and curious, and overlapping it the girl’s answer, incomprehensible with distance and breathlessness. Anna leaves the car doors ajar and turns towards them. The woman and the child with the beautiful names. Feeling her own workday tiredness, her ordinary Anna-ness, the trudge of her feet drab on the stones.

  ‘… trespasser,’ Muriet is saying as Anna reaches her. They are both watching her, the woman slim as the girl is slight. In one hand Anneli holds a navy bath towel. By her feet lies a small pile of clothes. ‘– but it wasn’t. It was this woman called Anna.’ The voice lowered. ‘She’s a tax inspector.’

  ‘Is she?’ Anneli widens her eyes, smiling. She holds out one hand, the gesture not only one of welcome but also of charity, as if she means to help Anna up some invisible incline. Her voice carries an accent, northern European, softened by absence. Her hair is shorn short and bright. Her eyes are smiling half-moons, blue irises seeded with some darker, indefinite colour. Her head is a sculpture. She has the kind of beauty that Anna only ever recalls having seen on screens or celluloid, in a Bergman or a Hepburn, angelic, unfleshed. Her hand is cold in the cold air.

  ‘John was expecting you earlier. I hope you didn’t have too much trouble finding your way. I’m Anneli.’

  I know, Anna wants to say, and doesn’t. I know who you are. You’re Anneli Law, the wife, the first true love, so people say. They say you used to be a pianist, a prodigy. Every night a young man came to hear you. No one knew his name until he sent you a roomful of flowers. Somewhere in the flowers was his proposal. You refused him for three years. You like sailing. You love pearls. You have been married only once, but you have left your husband twice.

  The knowledge of her knowledge hangs unspoken in the air between them, decorously silent, faintly uneasy. It is there in the way it must always be, Anna thinks, between the Laws and the world. The world knowing everything, the Laws nothing. Like a weakness, she thinks, or an innocence.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late –’ is what she begins to say, but there is a sound of splashing from the lake, drowning her out, and Anneli nods and turns away.

  ‘This boy of mine will not come out of the water. Nathan!’ She raises her voice. ‘I would like you to get ready now.’

  ‘Why?’ The child’s voice is faint, uneven with echoes and suppressed laughter. Out over the misty water Anna catches sight of a head bobbing, shocking in the winter landscape, slick and dark as a seal’s.

  ‘You know why.’ And then; ‘Nathan? I don’t want to have to ask you again.’

  ‘He’s good at swimming,’ Muriet says equably to the women either side of her. ‘Last summer he bet John a million soft he could swim across the river.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ Anneli, her tone tightening. ‘But he didn’t.’

  ‘They didn’t mean it. It was a joke. They wouldn’t really have done it.’

  ‘I’ll come out.’ The boy’s voice wobbles. ‘But only if you come in. It’s cold, though. So you can keep your clothes on. If you like.’

  ‘Nathan,’ Anneli calls out. ‘You are going to catch cold. You will make yourself sick. And none of this is going to make Helen go away. Do you understand?’

  Silence. The water overgrown with mist.

  ‘Nathan. Nathan! I am going to count to three. If I don’t see you moving by then, there will be real trouble. One. Two. –’

  There is a cacophony of splashing from the lake. ‘I’m moving! I’m completely moving!’ Nathan shouts in mock terror. He sounds euphoric – ecstatic with the knowledge, Anna thinks, that no one can touch him, that he might as well be thirty feet up in the air as out from the shore – and beside her Muriet laughs openly, the boy’s buoyant laughter coming back like an echo. ‘Hey Muriet! Hey glitz-puppy!’

  ‘Hey.’ Muriet, her voice soft with smiling.

  ‘Who’s that beside you?’

  ‘She’s called Anna!’ As if it is the best joke. ‘She’s a tax inspector!’

  ‘Oh.’ The splashing dies down. After a moment Anna sees that the boy has started to swim towards the shore, the water rippling ahead of him.

  ‘Well.’ Anneli turns to Anna, openly curious. ‘You seem to have lured him out. Congratulations.’

  ‘Maybe he’s cold,’ Muriet says.

  ‘Maybe he is, but I think we’re in Anna’s debt all the same. You must be used to that. I wonder –’

  There is a commotion at the shore. Nathan rises dripping out of the lake behind them, pallid with cold, skinny where his father is gaunt, shivering as his mother wraps the towel around him. Muriet bends beside him, whispering, incomprehensible, and the boy mutters back. Then for a moment there is silence, the women and the girl watching him. As if they are waiting for his explanation.

  ‘It’s colder out here,’ he says finally, the words punctuated by the chatter of his teeth. His eyes skim lightly over Anna on their way from Anneli to Muriet. Anna guesses he is at most a year older than his friend, although he stands a full head higher than the girl. Already he is lanky, tall in the bones.

  ‘Is it really?’ Now Anneli has the boy in her arms her temper reveals itself more clearly. Not lost but effortfully held. ‘Well, that’s not terribly interesting, Nathan. I have to tell you it hasn’t been worth the wait. Since we’ve been standing here we already know it’s cold. We could have been at lunch by now –’

  ‘It’s fish. I don’t like fish.’

  ‘You’ll eat what Rebecca makes you. Did you think it was summer out here? Did you think Muriet and Anna would be sunbathing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is that what you thought?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry,’ Nathan says, but almost inaudibly, and if Anneli hears him she makes no show of it. She is drying him roughly, not only his thin arms and chest but each foot. The boy cowed, bracing himself against her hands. With slight unease Anna realises the other woman is close to real anger, and she wonders why.

  ‘Did you think of us at all?’

  ‘I said I’m sorry.’

  ‘Not to me. To our guest.’

  He looks up. His eyes meeting Anna’s. Kennedy grey. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s alright.’ Anna smiles, but the boy’s gaze stays on hers, familiar as a photograph. She finds it hard to tell if he is angry himself or only curious. There is a shyness in his stance, the towel pulled together like a cape, although his eyes don’t flinch. Anneli sighs and straightens.

  ‘There, you’re dry. Now get dressed, please.’

  ‘Not here.’ Finally Nathan’s eyes slide away from Anna.

  ‘Oh, such modesty. What is it, do you think you’ll frighten Anna away?’

  ‘No. I’m not a child.’

  ‘Then don’t act like one. Hurry up. I’ll hold the towel for you. Quickly.’ And then there is only the sound of the water, the boy dressing in abject silence, a boat horn on the river as it passes through Law’s domain.

  ‘Anna,’ Anneli says. Her voice is softer now, more charming, confidentially-between-adults. ‘I was wondering, since I’m already in your debt, whether I could ask a favour. I was meaning to walk back from here, but with Nathan so cold –’

  ‘I’ll drive you.’

  ‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘She was lost,’ Muriet butts in with mercenary eagerness.

  ‘Were you?’ ‘Actually, yes.’

  ‘I was showing her the way. She didn’t know where she was. We almost had an accident –’ and hearing the girl say it Anna feels herself blush, her skin warming in the cold sunlight ‘–but we didn’t.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Anneli says without turning. Her voice absently reassured, as if Muriet has told her of a disaster averted years ago or countries away. As if Anneli herself were inattentive, Anna thinks, and she wonders whether she is, or if the lack of interest is just excessive politeness. Nathan reappears from behind the towel, spike-haired and sullen in jeans and sweat
shirt. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You didn’t bring your keys? Phone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You should have, but at least now we don’t have to find them. You know,’ Anneli says, folding the towel, no longer attending to her son, ‘strangers do get lost here. It’s the landscape. John had it done so that no one would notice the city. He thought people would like that, it’s what he likes himself. Which is typical of him.’

  She takes Anna’s arm, walks her back towards the car. I am a stranger, she thinks, but not a trespasser. Not the lowest of the low. She thinks, so this is what John Law does with his money. He makes cities disappear. The children lag behind, their voices ricocheting through the trees.

  ‘It makes people imagine they don’t know where they are. When we moved in I used to give garden parties all the time, wonderful nights, except that the guests kept on getting lost. We could see them on the cameras, lumbering into trees, which was occasionally entertaining, but not much help. We don’t have visitors so often any more. Not on that scale. Once we had a couple who slept in the woods for two days.’ She leans closer. ‘Actually, though, I think they wanted it that way. You don’t look much like the last tax inspector we had here, by the way, he was much more high and mighty. And not nearly as pretty. Have you had lunch? You must eat with us.’

  ‘No, I should –’

  ‘I insist.’

  ‘I really should see –’

  ‘Anneli?’

  ‘Well, if you should you must. John was telling me about your last meeting. If you follow the track back out and left. Yes, Muriet?’

  ‘I’ve eaten cans of caviar and sausage dogs in a Rolls.’

  ‘Have you really? And I thought you had such simple tastes.’

  ‘No, it’s a line from a film. We disguised it, you have to guess it.’

  ‘No.’ Abruptly short. ‘I’m tired of games. Ask Anna.’

  ‘I don’t really know much about –’

  ‘They’ve been studying cinema, I’m sorry to say. It’s Hitchcock, isn’t it? Turn right here. You’ll come to a hedge, the house is beyond it. Is it Hitchcock?’

  ‘It might be,’ Nathan says from the Naugahyde depths of the back seat.

  ‘No clues!’

  ‘Clues? We don’t need clues.’

  ‘Yes you do. What is it, then?’

  ‘I’ve eaten caviar at Cannes and sausage rolls at the dogs.’

  ‘How did she know?’

  ‘Anneli only remembers lines about caviar.’

  ‘Thank you, Nathan. And was Mister Coldham a good tutor?’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Super-wonderful.’

  ‘Then we must have him back again.’

  The voices distract Anna as she drives. They are casual, directionless, as if any enquiry might be meant for her, or as if she is not there at all. She says nothing herself, can think of nothing she would have to say. There is something exhilarating in only listening. The sense of a new place, desirable and incomprehensible.

  Outside the midday sun is strengthening, burning off the last mist from acres of lawns. The river comes into view, a momentary brightness between plane trees, and the trees themselves, Anna sees, are London planes in every way, grown bulbous and gigantic on the polluted urban air. That at least, she thinks, is something Law can’t wall away.

  ‘We liked him.’

  ‘Yes we did. Mister Coldhamsandwiches.’

  ‘Muriet. Don’t make fun of your tutors’ names.’

  ‘But they’re always funny.’

  ‘They aren’t.’

  ‘They are. Like Mister Pim.’

  ‘There was nothing funny about Mister Pim.’

  ‘There was. Because that’s what he looked like.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like a Pim.’

  ‘Muriet … what are you talking about? What do you mean? Stop laughing. You shouldn’t laugh at people.’

  ‘We don’t always.’ Another pause for thought, and then –

  ‘Yes we do,’ Nathan says.

  ‘Yes, we do,’ says Muriet. They sit close as conspirators. Anna watches them in the rear-view mirror. At the periphery of her driving vision she is also aware of Anneli, hands tight in her lap. Embarrassed over nothing, over the lightest of conversations and the presence of a stranger.

  ‘What about Helen?’ Anna says it for Anneli’s sake. ‘I didn’t hear either of you laughing about Helen.’

  No one answers immediately. The car, so packed with talk since the beach, feels emptied without it. There is the smell of Nathan’s damp hair, of the bath towel folded on Anneli’s lap, of the car’s synthetics. Then, ‘Helen isn’t a teacher,’ Anneli says, too brightly, all the playfulness in the car drained away, in its place nothing but a gathering silence, and Anna knows she has said the wrong thing.

  I have assumed too much, she thinks. I have joined in as if I know these people, as if I understand what remains unspoken between them. And I don’t, after all. She risks a look in the mirror. Muriet is gazing out of the window with an assumed expression of blank television interest. Nathan is back in his corner, his face shadowed and indefinite.

  ‘Is this yours?’ he asks finally, his voice sharp. The question hangs uneasily for a moment before Anna realises it relates to the car, and is therefore addressed to her.

  ‘Yes. More or less. I mean it belongs to the people I work for, but I’ve had it for years. Do you like cars?’

  ‘Yes.’ Without conviction.

  ‘Me neither. I don’t like cars but I like driving. And you don’t like fish but you like swimming.’

  ‘That’s not the same. That’s different. You’re here to see my father, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s not really something I can –’

  ‘I’ll ask him, then. He’ll tell me. Do you know cryptography?’

  ‘Yes.’ Anna slows. ‘I don’t understand everything your father does or –’

  ‘They should send someone who can. They should send someone cleverer than you.’ He is still watching Anna in the mirror. His voice has turned fierce. He seems abruptly younger to Anna: not in the way Muriet became as she admired Anna’s hair, but in the way adults become so. He is like a man taking petty revenge while he can. ‘You don’t know anything –’

  ‘Nathan?’ Anneli says, calmly, the name a threat. ‘Not another word.’ And there isn’t. The car lapses back into silence with an ominous finality. The hedge looms up, a curtain wall of yew carved in the shape of clouds, of boulders, the gravel road passing under its deep green arch – Anna can smell it through the air conditioning, aromatic and poisonous – and beyond the hedge she sees the house, its enclosing wings all titanium and glass, the upper floors obscured by cedars and umbrella pines. Lights through the evergreens. The sound of unseen fountains. The drive opening into a crescent of raked gravel.

  ‘Here we are,’ Anneli says, as if nothing has happened. ‘Anna, thank you, you can park anywhere. Muriet?’

  ‘Yes?’ The voice no longer conspiratorial, shrunken with timidity.

  ‘I’d like you to clean up for lunch. Take Nathan and make sure he does the same. Off you go, both of you.’

  There is the double slam of car doors, the chuff of gravel. Nathan stalks across the drive, Muriet at his side, their heads bent together in conversation. As Anna watches, the boy shakes his head violently and Muriet turns away and trots back to the car. Anneli leans across her driver.

  ‘What is it, Muriet?’

  ‘I just wanted to say something. To Anna.’

  Anneli sits back. ‘Quickly, then.’

  The girl bows closer to Anna. ‘Thanks for driving me. I liked meeting you. I think you’re cool,’ she adds, as if there are others who do not, and then before Anna can answer she is retreating, the echoes of her footsteps in the forecourt beginning to fall over themselves. Calling after Nathan as he disappears inside.

  ‘Well,�
� Anneli says, and then nothing. When Anna looks at her again the other woman is gazing out towards the house with an expression much like Muriet’s, absently engaged. From somewhere she has produced cigarettes, a cheap, ordinary brand. She taps the pack against her palm. ‘– do you mind?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  She nods, opens the passenger door. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘About Nathan.’

  ‘It’s alright. It’s not unusual. We’re not everyone’s favourite guests.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ She tears the foil seal, lights up. ‘Do you have children? No. It’s odd,’ Anneli says, exhaling. ‘I always wanted a boy. A golden boy. I didn’t want him to be like me, I wouldn’t wish that on a child of mine, but I didn’t expect him to be so different. So hard to understand. He’s good with secrets, like his father. And I married a man whose life’s work is to stop people understanding anything. I suppose I got what I deserved. Did I?’

  In the absence of an answer – it seems to Anna there isn’t one she can give – Anneli nods, as if collecting her thoughts. ‘Helen is my son’s nurse. Before he was born we were told there was a chance of diabetes. They showed us the most beautiful images. They were very proud of the images, but there was nothing they could do about the condition. Diabetes involves a large number of genes, apparently too many for any of the new surgery. It runs in John’s family, this thing. Like the gift for numbers.’

  She picks at the words, testing them between her teeth, like strands of tobacco, physical things. ‘I knew that. John told me. We were hoping it might pass Nathan by, and then when there was no sign of it for years … it didn’t start until he was seven. He’s almost used to it now. It’s severe, he has insulin with every meal. There’s nothing else they can do for him, except show him their images. He knows how to medicate himself. He never complained. He took it well. He was always sensible, even as a baby. And quiet. Too quiet, people said, I never thought so.’

  Her gaze has strayed back to the house, where it lingers, the sun catching in her eyes, searching out the mottled depths of the irises. To Anna it seems as if there is something possessive about her. A faint and unselfconscious anxiety, as if she is checking that the house is where she left it, or whether it is still true. The children are gone and there is no sound of them; only, somewhere out of sight, the measured, pendulous echoes of a game of tennis, incongruous in the spare winter landscape.