Naomi's Room

by Jonathan Aycliffe

  But one night those two pretty children

  Flew away, flew away, into the sky, into the moon . . .

  When she had finished, Naomi looked up at me and smiled. Daddy’s little girl smiling for Daddy coming home.

  ‘Hello, Daddy,’ she said.

  I shut my eyes. I could not bear to see her, to listen to her. In the past weeks I had been through so much, but this was unendurable.

  ‘Mummy’s not well,’ she said. ‘She wants to sleep all the time. And Auntie Carol’s terrible sick as well. Like Caroline and Victoria and their mummy sometimes. What are we going to do, Daddy?’

  I could not keep my eyes closed. Reluctantly, I opened them and looked at her.

  ‘I don’t know, darling,’ I said.

  ‘Why are you crying, Daddy? Is it because Mummy’s not well?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. How could she not know? I thought the dead knew everything. Of course, I know better now. The dead know as little as ourselves. They are ourselves: transfigured, but not made new.

  Laura and Carol were in a semi-stupor. It will be kinder this way, I thought. But I had forgotten him, him and his needs. I went to look at Carol. Even with the heroin, I could see she was in great pain.

  ‘I have to go now, Daddy,’ Naomi said. I thought of her as Naomi now, I had dropped the pretence that she was a monstrosity in my daughter’s shape.

  I looked round. She was no longer there. I switched off my torch and in the light of the lamp started brushing rubble from the main attic into the bricked-off chamber. Any complete or near-complete bricks I found in the pile, I separated from the rest, stacking them neatly. I kept back a small pyramid of dust and grit, just to one side of the opening, in the main attic.

  When I had done all this, I took my torch and broom and returned downstairs. The light had all but faded from the sky. It was like a face from which the colour and the life had been drained. Like Jessica’s face in the light of my torch. I found a hammer and chisel in my toolbox.

  In the southwest corner of the garden, there was an old wall surrounding a small vegetable patch. It was in a state of poor repair, and it took me little effort to prise away all the bricks I thought I would need. Most of them just came away in my hand, the mortar crumbling, as though by natural collapse.

  From the garage I took a trowel and a small sack of cement. I carried the entire load upstairs in half a dozen trips, set it down, and rested, sitting on the stack of bricks I had made. It was then I heard him, his dark breathing behind me, then his voice that still froze my blood.

  ‘I perceive all you do, sir. You mean to make an end of it, do you not?’

  I said nothing. How tired I was, how tired.

  ‘Come, sir, come, we are past this. Do not be so aloof.’

  ‘They were nearly found today,’ I said. ‘The man who came here was a police Inspector.’

  ‘I know nothing of police, sir. Are you not master in your own house? There were men who came here in my own time. I promise you, they did not venture so far.’

  ‘Things have changed,’ I said. ‘He can bring a warrant if he wishes, search the house from top to bottom. It’s better this way.’

  ‘He could be dealt with.’

  ‘No!’ I exclaimed. I was sharp with him. In all this time, I had not once turned round. ‘That would be stupid, it would lead them straight here. Leave things as they are. Don’t interfere.’

  ‘We have tonight,’ he said.

  I put my hands over my ears, but I could still hear him, soft and insidious, his voice mellifluous as honey. He came round from behind until he was right in front of me. I could not help but look at him.

  ‘They will not return until tomorrow morning at the earliest. The work you have in mind will not take long. There is time enough to pleasure us.’

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ I asked. It would only be a matter of time, I thought, before Allison found out.

  Liddley was silent for a moment.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course. I have always known. Before you knew yourself.’

  ‘You used me,’ I complained.

  ‘We use each other. It has always been that way. The living use the dead, the dead the living.’

  ‘That’s no excuse.’

  ‘I do not excuse myself. My actions need no excuse. Once the bounds are broken . . .’

  I tried to stand. He stared me down, he used a force stronger than anything material.

  ‘Tonight,’ he said. ‘To remember them by.’

  Even as he spoke, I could feel his strength filling me. I could feel my duality become pure singleness. Another night would pass quickly. Too quickly.

  * * *

  In the morning, soon after dawn by my watch, I mixed the cement and laid the bricks row upon row as well as I was able. It was by no means a perfect job, but it did not have to be. I smeared dirt and grime on the fresh mortar. When I had finished, I took with the greatest care strands of cobweb from other parts of the attic and laid them on the brick wall. In the light of my torch, the join could scarcely be seen. Inside, they were still alive. But only just.

  Allison returned later that morning. He was not a happy man. Since his return to London the day before, he had hardly spent a moment away from the station. De la Mere had torn a strip from the blanket in his cell, rolled it into a tight ball, and rammed it down his own throat, choking himself to death. The presence of vomit in the cell suggested that it had taken him several attempts. Inspector Allison was not in a good mood.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before about your mother?’ That was the first question he asked. He had been quicker than I had anticipated.

  ‘My mother? Why didn’t I tell you what?’

  ‘That her maiden name was Liddley.’

  I looked long at him, as though realization were dawning. But I had known all along, of course.

  ‘It never occurred to me that it could be relevant to this,’ I lied. ‘It’s not an uncommon name. You can’t think to implicate my mother in this.’

  ‘I don’t know what to think, Dr Hillenbrand. Is your mother another descendant of John Liddley? Or is John Liddley just a figment of your imagination? I suggested earlier that you might be Liddley yourself. That hypothesis begins to look more and more attractive to me. It would be plausible for you to adopt your mother’s name.’

  ‘I told you before, that’s perfectly ridiculous.’

  ‘Is it? Do you teach such logic to your students?’

  ‘I am not a logician.’

  ‘Clearly.’

  ‘You saw the photographs.’

  ‘I’m a police officer, Dr Hillenbrand, not a magician.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I beseech you to use your imagination.’

  ‘So you admit that’s all Liddley is: someone you dreamed up?’

  I grew irritable.

  ‘I admit nothing of the sort. Liddley was real. Is real. That fact can be proved in any decent library. You can see his letters in Downing College.’

  ‘Perhaps. But we can talk about that later. In the meantime, I have a warrant to search these premises.’

  ‘Be my guest,’ I said. What had I to fear?

  ‘And I wish to speak to your wife. Has she got back from Northampton yet?’

  I had decided to make little of Laura’s disappearance.

  ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, but she isn’t here. She isn’t in Northampton either. I rang her yesterday as you asked, but I got no reply. I tried again all yesterday evening. And this morning. I’ve tried Carol’s office, but nobody there knows anything.’

  ‘First your daughter goes missing, then your wife and sister.’

  ‘What are you implying, Inspector?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet. First of all, I’d like to make that search.’

  He brought a constable from the car, and together they went to the attic. I accompanied them, watching from the shadows as they went about their task. They were uneasy. It never occurred to them to open the shutters. They carried out their search b
y the light of torches, passing again and again in front of the wall behind which Laura and Carol lay bleeding to death. They found nothing, of course.

  ‘Can you give me yout sister’s address in Northampton, Dr Hillenbrand?’

  I gave it to him and watched him leave. I knew he would come again and again to question me, but I was confident that he would find nothing. When he had left, I telephoned my parents to say that Laura and Carol had gone missing and to ask if they had seen them or heard from them. When I replaced the receiver my hand was shaking like a leaf. Blood was pounding in my head. The house was silent. It has never been so silent since.

  28

  I have been unable to stray from this house in twenty years. There have been no holidays, no weekend breaks, not even evenings in London or Cambridge. I go out to teach, or shop, or to attend church. Sometimes I attend college or faculty meetings. That is all. My colleagues think of me as a little strange, as a recluse. They stopped inviting me to dinner parties many years ago. I never eat at high table, not even on Founder’s Day. I am not shunned, but I am not welcome. Of course, they put it down to Naomi’s death and Laura’s disappearance. They know no better; why should they?

  The police found the car at the airport as they had been intended to. When asked, I told them that Laura’s passport was missing. There was an official record of a ten-year passport in Carol’s name, but no sign of it in her house. Of course, they checked all flights for that period and found no trace of two women and a child.

  The fingerprints puzzled them, as I had expected them to. The recently-purchased foodstuffs, the till receipt from Sainsbury’s, the washing-up, the details on the parking ticket (which I had left in the glove compartment of the car), all testified to a timing that ruled me out as a suspect.

  Despite that, Allison hounded me for a long time. He persisted in his belief that Liddley and I were one, that I had picked on De la Mere for reasons of my own and seduced or paid him to kill my daughter, Lewis, and Ruthven. But he had no proof. De la Mere was dead and could not testify. I had been in Cambridge when Laura, Carol and Jessica disappeared in Birmingham. My character references were impeccable.

  I do not know how long Allison’s persecution of me would have gone on had he been free to pursue it at his pleasure, but it came to an abrupt end when he was taken ill six months after his first visit to the house. He died in hospital nine months later. The diagnosis was cancer. His successor closed the files on Naomi, Lewis, and Ruthven, ascribing the killings to De la Mere, who had, after all, confessed. The disappearances were kept open, of course, but with time they ceased to exercise anyone’s imagination.

  At first I tried to return to a normal life, or one as normal as was possible under the circumstances. I began teaching again that autumn. I embarked on a piece of major research, a comparative study of Grail romances in Middle English, Middle High German, and Middle French. It has never been completed. For twenty years I have written almost nothing. I have, as one senior colleague once ruefully remarked not quite out of my hearing, ‘not fulfilled my potential’. They pay me a salary that is more than adequate for my modest expenses, they let me teach a handful of undergraduates, they steer research students away from me, they pass me politely in the street. I am not offended by them, nor they more than a little disgraced by me.

  I have returned the photographs to their tin box. If this record is ever found, they will be germane to its testimony. Some have faded badly over the years, but for the most part they are accurate portrayals of what we saw. If Lewis were to return with his Leica, I daresay he could create another portfolio out of what he might find here now. But better not, better not.

  Of course, they have not changed, not aged by a moment, while I have become white-haired. I do not know how much longer I can keep going. It would be pleasant to think that death might come as a release, but I know better than that.

  I have instead devised a strategy. It is not much of a strategy, God knows, but I believe it may accomplish something. I have decided to sell the house. It is really too big for me. A much smaller place will suit me much better. Laura, Carol and Jessica will not take up much room, of course. I opened the attic again yesterday, just to see how they were. They will fit into my old trunk, the one I bought when I was an undergraduate. I never thought then that I would have such a use for it.

  I have already found prospective purchasers, a local family who need a larger house. The father is a medical man, a consultant at Papworth Hospital. He has two little girls, one aged seven and one aged nine. They are charming little girls, very like their mother. The younger daughter reminds me of Naomi.

  The family’s name is Galsworthy. They are an old Cambridge family, I believe. There have been members in the church for generations.

  John tells me he is satisfied with the arrangement. He and Dr Galsworthy will have a great deal to talk about.