The Cryptographer

by Tobias Hill

It is something she has never grown accustomed to, the effect her profession has on others. She has never been at ease with their unease: not like Carl, or Janet, who has learned to take such relish in their loathing. But she wonders dully now whether it was her presence in itself that frightened Nathan, or whether she was more incidental than she seemed. She is piecing together what it might have been that could have scared him into silence as he swam towards the people on the shore. Something shared between father and son. A secret composed of numbers. Unmentionable, unthinkable.

  It doesn’t seem to her hard to imagine, now. She wonders if she has not known all along. But then she is a slow thinker, Anna, suited to her work. Not brilliant, only sedulous. It is her talent to miss nothing, given time.

  The night’s conversations come back to her haphazardly. She screws up her eyes, trying to make some new sense of them, but they are voices raised in a small room, echoing, unintelligible, indecipherable, pulling, nagging at her, saying her name again and again.

  ‘Anna. Anna? Anna –’

  ‘What now?’

  The harshness of her own voice surprises her. Muriet is beside her, caught off guard in her eagerness. There is a bamboo platter in her hands, ludicrously ornamental, covered by a folded cloth.

  ‘I brought you food. They kept it for you. They didn’t want to but I made them. And then you left and I couldn’t find you. I think it’s still cold –’ Her voice diminishing, crestfallen. ‘You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to.’

  ‘No,’ she says feebly. ‘I do.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Here. Are you alright?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you want to sit down?’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘Are you angry with me?’

  ‘No.’ She takes the plate. ‘I’m sorry, love. It’s nothing to do with you. I’ve drunk too much. And I was thinking of someone else.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Muriet says again. And then, the edge of curiosity creeping back into her voice, ‘Who?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘It can’t have been no one, when you said it was someone.’

  As if it matters, she thinks. As if it matters what I say. An inspector with nothing left to inspect, only good at being spoken to. Like a child, and with no one left to listen but a child.

  She uncovers the plate, begins to eat. The ceviche is cold and delicate as snow, the flesh sweetened with vinegar. ‘I was thinking of Nathan, and Nathan’s father.’

  ‘Oh. Are you angry with them?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘How can you not know if you’re angry?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’ And then, before the girl can ask the inevitable, ‘This is good.’

  ‘Really?’ She beams. ‘Nathan said it was toxic’

  She is happy for the chance to laugh. ‘I see. Toxic. And so you saved some especially for me?’

  Muriet shrugs. ‘Have you finished?’

  ‘I’m finished.’

  ‘Good. Now look. Aren’t they brilliant?’ Muriet says, and Anna follows her gaze. In the harbour a dozen sailing vessels lie still at their deep-water moorings, rigging belling with faint and desolate intermittence. In the half-light it is difficult to make out their scale. The largest are more ships than yachts, the nearest more than a hundred feet from bow to stern, the mainmast half as much again in height.

  ‘That one’s Nathan’s,’ Muriet says – breathes, as if the vessels are horses that might be startled – and for a moment Anna doesn’t understand, the question is on her lips, before she realises that, of course, the nearest ship is Law’s own. It is like seeing John himself for the first time – something spoken of so often it has become almost unbelievable. The yacht with thirty-seven rooms, some of which will play you music, so people say. Anything, you just have to ask.

  ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’

  ‘Very,’ Anna says, but without the conviction the word requires. Beside her Muriet stirs.

  ‘I think it is.’

  ‘Oh no, it is.’

  ‘That’s what I want. When I’m rich I’ll have that.’

  ‘What will you do with it?’

  ‘I’ll take Nathan. I’ll take him and we’ll sail away into the sunset.’ She recites the phrase as if it has been learned by rote. As if the words have capitals, Sail Away.

  ‘I was looking for him,’ Anna says, and Muriet groans.

  ‘You’re always looking for someone.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Anna,’ patiently, ‘people are trying to have a party.’

  ‘Maybe I want to have a party with Nathan.’

  ‘Well you can’t, because you’re having one with me.’

  ‘We can be a party of three, can’t we? Have you seen him?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Muriet undoes her hair. Tails it, untails it.

  ‘You don’t know if you’ve seen him?’

  ‘I think I’ve forgotten,’ she says, and then, less discontentedly, ‘Come on.’

  ‘Where are we going now?’

  ‘Nowhere. You need to walk.’ She starts off eastwards, Anna falling in beside her. Making small talk, the boards slick and dark underfoot.

  ‘What will you do when you reach your sunset?’

  ‘Whatever we want. We’ll have supplies. Food, medicine, computer games, money.’

  ‘Like the Owl and the Pussycat. All wrapped up in a five-pound note.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. It sounds like a good plan.’

  ‘You can come too, if you like.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You can be my personal tax inspector. Except there won’t be any taxes. You’ll have more fun that way.’

  ‘You’re right, I will.’

  In the dark her laughter sounds deeper, as if she has been sleeping. For a moment she says nothing else. She is feeling better already, the food and kindness have sobered her, her drunkenness is on the ebb and her headache with it. She can feel the girl beside her as they walk, fixedly imagining her world. Off with the sunsets.

  They have come round to the back of the north wing. There are no more alcoves here, and no people that Anna can see. The wind is beginning to pick up, finally blowing the London January in across the river, and Muriet moves closer. Like a cat seeking warmth, Anna thinks, and her thoughts run on to the rhyme again, and to John’s son, owlish, bone-thin, and the things his father tells him.

  ‘What about Nathan?’ she says. But carefully, which is to say she is no longer only asking questions. ‘What will Nathan be?’

  ‘Whatever he likes. He knows everything.’

  ‘No one knows everything.’

  ‘Of course not, it’s a figure of speech. But he knows how to sail. He knows how to read stars. He knows how to make code. His father taught him. He knows everything about numbers.’ And then, almost as an afterthought, ‘He knows you want to talk to him.’

  ‘Does he?’

  She feels the child shrug without seeing it. ‘He knew it as soon as you came here. By the lake, he knew it then. He doesn’t want to talk to you.’

  ‘Did he say what I want to talk to him about?’

  ‘What Mister Law tells him.’ She states it matter-of-factly, as if the things Mister Law might tell are as uninteresting as evening conversation. They are at the railing now, side by side, leaning in jasmine.

  ‘What did John tell him?’

  ‘That’s funny, you calling him John. Everybody else calls him Mister Law.’

  ‘What did Mister Law tell Nathan?’ She is stilted with impatience.

  ‘I don’t know, he didn’t tell me,’ Muriet says; not mischievously, but as if she is willing to be entertained. ‘And if he did, I wouldn’t tell you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s a secret.’

  ‘Not secrets again!’

  ‘Yes. And you know what? Everyone should have secrets. And you ask people too many questions.’

  ‘Maybe I
do. Alright then, can you keep a secret?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘If I didn’t have to, I wouldn’t ask anyone anything.’

  A stop. Muriet’s face turning in the dark, astonished as the moon. ‘But that’s your job, finding out about people. It’s what you like, that’s what you said. Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Oh.’ Muriet goes quiet. ‘Don’t you like your job any more?’

  ‘Sometimes. I end up knowing a lot of things about a lot of people. It can be hard work, finding secrets, and even harder keeping them.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Because of Nathan,’ Muriet says, speaking her thoughts, her voice running on into the night air.

  ‘Because of Nathan. It should make him happy, though. Sharing things with his father. He must be proud.’

  Silence. It seems to Anna that there is a new edge to Muriet’s expression. An element of reluctance or unease, as if something has happened to the conversation, the discussion of sunsets, which she almost understands, but not yet, not quite.

  ‘It doesn’t make him happy?’

  ‘No.’ The voice shrinking. ‘It’s cold, I want to go in now.’

  ‘In a minute,’ Anna says: and if a stranger were watching her at that moment he might notice the way she looks down at the child. It is an inspector’s look, not cold or unkind or cruel, but soft and searching and definite. Like a surgeon locating the jugular.

  She is an inspector, after all. She has been interviewing Muriet for some time: she knows it, even if the child does not. She has spent a third of her life in the acquisition of information, after all, it is what she knows, and without any doubt she knows there is information here to be acquired.

  There is at least one more secret she would like to find, and to keep, if she can, if she could. Not for the Revenue, because she is not here as the Revenue. She is here as herself. She would like to understand John Law for herself.

  ‘I talked to Anneli. She told me why Nathan was swimming that day.’

  ‘She doesn’t know why. Why?’

  ‘Because of Helen.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘The way he hurts himself.’

  ‘He doesn’t hurt himself.’ Righteous indignation. ‘That’s a stupid lie.’

  ‘That’s what she said. She said he changes his medicine.’

  ‘Yes, but–’

  ‘She told me he started doing it last summer.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s alright because he knows how to do it, it’s an experiment, he understands all about it, he measures everything –’

  ‘Muriet,’ she says, ‘he could have died.’ And it is true, of course. A true blackmail, though truth doesn’t make it feel any better. It only makes it more effective.

  Even so there is a moment when she thinks she has misjudged her timing. Seconds pass before the girl looks up, her face startled into woefulness. ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I’ll find out what’s upsetting him.’

  ‘Will you make him happy again?’

  She almost says yes. It is on her lips to do so. ‘I can’t promise that.’

  ‘Will you try? Promise to try.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ she says, ‘I promise. Where is he?’

  ‘Hiding,’ Muriet says, and doesn’t add, from you, as if that at least should be obvious.

  ‘Will you take me?’

  And she does: though this time, when she leads Anna away, she doesn’t take her hand, but only walks ahead of her, as if shy to be seen with Law’s inspector. They go back in silence, up through unlit rooms, backtracking, trying at locked doors, the crowd muted if audible at all, the floors and wings of Erith Reach changing, as if other architectures have been purchased and reassembled inside its walls, Frank Lloyd Wrights, le Corbusiers, French and Tuscan palaces, the child at Anna’s side muttering to herself like an old woman in a cellar with a dropped key, where was it, here was it, no this way, and finally stopping at a door, opening it, peering in, and inside a long room full of slatted boxes, as if someone is about to leave or to arrive, a lifetime’s supply of unopened possessions – small as books, big as trucks – and among them, sitting on them, a gaming board propped between them, are the people Anna is looking for: the man and the boy, looking up at the same time, with the same intent surprise.

  ‘Anna,’ John finally says, not as if she is wholly unanticipated, a pair of dice still in his palm, so that it is as if he has been waiting for her advice on the game at hand. She sees that they are playing, not chess, as she would have expected, but snakes and ladders. It is almost comical to see them there, with the old, simple game on its old, battered board. One of them is winning. One of them waits on the head of a snake.

  ‘I didn’t mean to –’ Anna begins, not even sure what it is she has meant not to do, but Muriet drowns her out, loud with unhappiness.

  ‘I didn’t tell her, she just knew. I didn’t bring her,’ she cries, disregarding the evidence standing over her, and who in fact she is now trying to hide behind, her hands gripping Anna’s waist. Only Nathan doesn’t say anything. He gets to his feet, quiet and deathly pale, moving to stand in front of John, putting himself between his father and their visitor.

  There is a second, a lull, when Anna feels a missing piece fall into place. It is to do with the way the players looked as she first saw them from the doorway, before they noticed her arrival. She recalls the way John was watching his son. In her memory he is waiting for the boy to make a move he has already foreseen himself, it is very clear, an after-image. In a game of so much chance and little skill it is not a good move, Anna thinks, not something to be proud of for more than a moment, but even so, there is pride in the way John watches his son. Pride, pity and love, so that Anna, remembering, finds quite suddenly that she knows the answer to her question. She knows who John Law is rich for. The money hidden in the name of the son because it has always been meant for the son.

  Then they are all talking at once. ‘It’s alright,’ Muriet is saying to Nathan, ‘she doesn’t mean anything bad –’ and again Anna is trying to say something – is it meant to be something as ridiculous as Hello? – to the man who has now risen from his seat, and who is saying her name again, conciliatory, she can’t hear it, she can only see it, Anna, like a smile. But it is Nathan’s voice which cuts through them all.

  ‘You don’t know anything! You don’t know, you don’t know!’

  It is a chant, a child’s catcall, mocking, celebratory and fearful. Anna looks up from him to see John turning back to his son, startled.

  ‘Why are you here? Why did you come?’ Derisive vehemence. ‘We don’t want you here –’

  ‘Nathan!’ John says. ‘That’s enough.’ But Nathan turns back on him, half as tall, twice as fierce.

  ‘She shouldn’t have come.’

  ‘Anna? Why on earth not?’

  ‘She’s not your friend!’

  ‘But you knew she was invited, didn’t you? I thought you said –’ And then, his eyes clearing, ‘Is that why we’ve been traipsing around up here for so long, ignoring our guests? Because of Anna?’ He laughs into his son’s wounded silence. ‘Are we hiding from the tax inspector?’

  ‘You can’t talk to her.’

  ‘But I can. I invited her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I like her. And I talk to who I like.’ The jaw locking onto the repetition, the reined-in temper showing through the accent. How cruel we can be to children, Anna thinks. How kind they can be to us. ‘She’s my guest, Nathan, and you’ll do me the favour of treating her like one.’

  ‘She’s not!’ Nathan cries. ‘How can she be your guest when she’s not even your friend…’ But his voice is failing. His eyes are unsettled. He looks as if he has been punished for something he doesn’t understand, Anna thinks, and she feels Muriet’s hands loosen around her.

  ‘Come on. Nath.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve got to go now.’


  ‘Why? No.’

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘You don’t understand –’

  ‘She’s alright.’ Muriet, whispering. ‘She’s not bad. Not really bad.’ And after a moment Nathan looks up at John, as if searching for clues or instructions.

  ‘Go on,’ John says, quiet now.

  ‘She’s not your friend,’ Nathan says for a third time, defeated, not looking at his father any more, and as he goes, Muriet trailing beside him, it is John’s voice that comes back to Anna. Are you my enemy, Anna, do you think?

  They wait until the children are gone. The door leans ajar behind them. Some trick of acoustics brings the sound of a piano, far distant. Someone is playing Rachmaninov, flourishing his phrases, showboating. All hands and no heart, Anna’s father would have said, though it is a music her mother has always liked. She wonders if the pianist is Anneli.

  ‘I didn’t know if you were coming,’ John says with abrupt awkwardness. He stands where the children have left him, looking in the direction of their departure, as if not sure what to do with himself now they are gone. ‘I hoped. But when I didn’t hear from you –’

  ‘Well,’ Anna says, ‘here I am.’ Which can hardly be a lie, she thinks, but is nevertheless an omission, a kind of untruth, since she suspects that John has been more than hopeful of her attendance. He has been sure enough to put money on the chance – if Terence Cutler is to be believed – which he isn’t, Anna thinks, though he isn’t the only one to deserve little in the way of trust: and she shivers. Not at the thought of Terence or of John, but at the smooth and pervasive presence of deception.

  She looks up to find his attention on her. He is studying her face as he always does – so intensely it is as if he might see her better than she sees herself – and she turns away, as she also always seems to do. The room is larger than she would have expected from its echo, a warehouse of an attic stretching into shadows, its landscape of crates softened by dust.

  ‘Here I am,’ she says again. ‘But where am I?’ and he laughs, following her gaze.

  ‘To tell the truth, I’m not quite sure. I haven’t been up here in a while. I’d hazard a guess this is where all the gifts go.’

  ‘Gifts?’

  ‘From people, you know. Corporations. Governments. And there are the things Anneli buys for us. She used to buy lots of things, when we were first married. Not so much now.’ His face has fallen a little. He turns back. ‘I’m glad you came. I’ve been thinking of you. How are you?’