Voices in the Dark

by Catherine Banner

  Two more lines followed, written so shakily that I could not make them out. He had not even signed his name. I dropped the letter and sank to my knees on the floor, biting my fist to stop myself from crying. Something about that paper brought the man back to me the way none of Jared’s stories could. I could tell they were all in the living room listening. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe in and then out again, but my chest was aching so badly that I could not. I picked up the letter instead and stared at the words again. And I realized suddenly that my life was not a story that I could somehow make all right. This was the truth, however strange and tragic, and it would never go away. This was all I had, this yellowing scrap of paper with a few sentences that were nothing like an explanation.

  I don’t know what I had expected. But not this rushed note, with almost every and written with a sign, as though he was sending me his week’s news. It read as though he was not sane. Or had too little time to explain anything. And suddenly what he had done came over me like a storm. I had told and retold his story, and my mother’s and Leo’s and my own. I had told them as if the telling made them somehow true. But the truth exists of its own accord, whether you know it or not.

  I could see my mother, a fourteen-year-old who knew too little about love, dancing at some party in new heeled shoes. And this man, thirty-four years old, who was captivated by her beauty because he had seen too much of death and violence and felt suddenly too old. Perhaps he felt contaminated by his life, and he was looking for purity. Perhaps he was just drunk and used to getting his own way. I did not want to think about it.

  Jasmine was saying something tearfully in the next room. I covered my face with my hands and tried to breathe. The alcohol and the cold and the shock were clouding my brain so that I felt nothing properly.

  My mother was terrified of this man and had refused to marry him. And this man, who had power over heaven and earth, had the whole Andros family brought down to nothing.

  ‘You wanted an epic story,’ said my own voice in my head. ‘You wanted to be at the heart of a clash between noble dynasties. This was what you always wanted. To be the son of a famous man.’

  My mother left her great house, and my grandfather was sent to the border. I could see the two of them – my mother and my grandmother – arguing mutedly as they packed up their few belongings. It was the way they would argue for the rest of their lives, never saying what had to be said and always divided from each other. And months passed, and I could see my mother in some apartment with cockroaches and peeling walls, fifteen years old with a baby she never asked for, and that baby, that mistake in all their lives, was me.

  I read the letter over and over until the words no longer made sense to me, until every sentence was cut into my memory. Then I lay down and stared up at the ceiling and tried to forget. But I did not. Instead, I thought of Leo. He had shot a man, he had told me. And Ahira had died outside our old front door, and no one knew who had killed him. And the price on Leo’s head was the price of a resistance leader. It was thousands and thousands of crowns.

  If there was anything that could make the truth about Ahira worse, it was this. It was suspecting that the one I loved, the one who was my true father, had fired the shot that killed the man whose face was mine.

  ‘Anselm,’ Jasmine whispered. It was past two o’clock. The whole building was in darkness. My own lamp had gone out. I went to the door and unbolted it. She was standing there wrapped in a blanket. ‘Anselm, I was worried about you,’ she whispered. ‘Grandmama made me go to bed, but I couldn’t sleep.’

  It was only when she reached up to brush the tears from my face that I realized I was crying. ‘Don’t be sad, Anselm,’ she whispered. ‘It’s going to be all right.’

  I went on crying.

  ‘Shh, Anselm,’ she said. ‘It’s all right; it’s all right. Papa is going to come back, and then we’ll all go to Holy Island and have a good life there. And be happy. Honestly, we will. So don’t cry. It seems bad now, but there will be a happy ending. You know that.’

  She probably had no idea what I was crying about, but she was young enough to have the wisdom not to question it. We sat there side by side, alone in the dark and the cold, and I cried and she tried to comfort me. I felt far away from everything. It was too difficult to understand, so I just drifted away from the world. It was still going on – my mother was still sick, Leo was still gone, my grandmother nagged, and Jasmine marched about pretending to be a great actress. But I had fallen out of it, like a drowning man going under, and no one had noticed me surrender.

  ‘Jasmine,’ I whispered. ‘I am so afraid that I will turn out to be a bad man.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You are a very good man, Anselm. Just like Papa.’

  I turned to her. Through my tears, her face swam insubstantially. I could make out Leo and my mother in it. ‘Jasmine,’ I said. ‘What would you do if you found out something about the past and afterwards you didn’t know if you could go on the same way?’

  ‘What would I do?’ Jasmine frowned and put her thumb in her mouth. ‘The past is the past,’ she said eventually. ‘It’s gone away.’

  But that was not true. The past is what makes everything else, like the foundations of a city. And I felt like they had all deceived me. My whole life had been constructed on lies and deceit, and when all of them told me they cared for me, no one really meant what it looked like they meant. ‘Jasmine, all this is so confused,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’ll see. Mama will be all right; everything will be all right.’ She took the tears from my cheeks and put them on my ears like jewels. It was something my mother used to do whenever Jasmine cried. I remembered myself at six years old and a phase I had of drawing Mama, Papa, and Anselm all grinning in front of our house, as though nothing could divide us three. I wondered if I would ever see my childhood as I had seen it, whether on looking back it would for ever stand contaminated. Jasmine put her arms around my neck, and I let her. And we waited for the night to end.

  THE NIGHT OF

  THE SIXTH OF JANUARY

  As we drove into an isolated village on a cliff, just as night fell, a strange miracle rose before us. In the tiny square in front of the church, someone had laid out an Epiphany scene. Plaster figures of the Virgin Mary and St Joseph and the baby Jesus stood on a matting of straw, with lanterns shining around them and the statues of the kneeling kings and the animals grouped around. We all stood before it for a long time, in spite of the bitter cold. ‘Look at the fat donkey!’ the little boy, Matthew, was saying, jumping from one foot to the other and laughing delightedly. He reminded me of Jasmine.

  From the inn windows, we could still see that scene, a few streets away and shining through the dark. In this village, the invasion was still a distant rumour. There were no Imperial Order flags or boys in the streets with guns. Mr Hardy and I sat up talking, and I told him what was nearly the worst part of the story, the part about Ahira and that desolate night, when I suddenly saw all my childhood altered for ever, and nothing could make it right again.

  Afterwards, he got up and walked to the window. He was twisting his hands together as he had that other night. He doubled over coughing and wiped his streaming eyes. Then he stood and looked at me and shook his head. He went on shaking his head so long that I could tell it was not just pity. There was something else. ‘Anselm,’ he said eventually. His voice was very hoarse. ‘I am dying. I have been very ill. That was why I decided to go west and find my family. I have a few more weeks or months left. Or a year or two, God willing.’

  I listened in silence. It was just past two o’clock, but this night was not desolate, and the sea in the distance was silvery and kind. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Do you think they would want to see me after all this time? Do you think it would only make things worse for them?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘But’ – he twisted his hands again – ’but surely, after all this time—’

  ‘I think you should go,�
�� I said. ‘I think most people want to know the truth. Not knowing it destroys you as much as knowing it. I mean, in the end.’

  He opened his mouth as if to speak. Then he closed it again. It was true; he could say nothing. It was true even about Ahira, no matter the pain it caused me. I could never not have found out. There would have come a point when I could not go on in ignorance any longer.

  ‘Anselm, if you knew,’ he said, and looked at me tenderly, like Leo would have done. Then he sat for several minutes, unable to say a word. Afterwards, he asked me to tell him something else, but no more words came to me, so I took out Leo’s papers and read to him. He did not seem to be listening. His eyes were wandering from corner to corner of the room, as though he was in prison.

  After he found the old car again and after he lost his sketches, Ashley went home and got out his old maps and ripped them into pieces. First, he found the square where the Rolls-Royce was. It was in the heart of Belgravia. He thought, I must have been stupid to think that these places were magic because of their romantic names.

  His father’s necklace was lying on the bedside table, between a drawing of the pigeons on the roof and a worn-out radio. Ashley picked up the necklace and held it to the light. It had been years since he had worn this necklace, but when he slept, he kept his hand closed around it, and then he dreamed. In his dreams, he found that other city, the place he had been searching for when he was a little boy.

  Tonight, he was walking through a town where gunfire troubled the streets, and people kept telling him to take cover. But he went on walking, up a steep road to a castle on a rock surrounded by machine guns. No one stopped him at the gate, and he knew where to go, up the steps and across a marble hall and into a narrow room at the end of a corridor.

  A man with dark hair was sitting at a desk, looking out into the night. As Ashley went in, he turned and shut the door. The man had a lined face, and his clothes were crumpled. And there was something strange about this castle. Every room had old wooden furniture, and the walls were bare.

  The man was moving papers about on the desk and studying a map. Every few minutes, he let out a quick sigh. Then he swept the papers onto the floor and rested his head against his arms. Ashley watched him for a long time. Then he went up to him and put his hand on his shoulder. The man shivered slightly and sat up, but he did not see Ashley. He went to a cupboard in the corner and took down paper and a pen.

  Dear Ashley [he wrote] I dreamed about you, that you were almost grown up now and standing in front of me. Ashley, you will never read this, but you were my son. I would have been your father. This was all a mistake. I thought I would stop loving her, but I never did, and now I have nothing. I will not be the ruler of this country much longer. Ashley, where are you?

  Ashley did not read any more. He watched until the man laid his head on the desk again in exhaustion. As he did it, the dream faded, leaving Ashley alone, with the orange streetlamps outside and the soft London rain falling against the glass. But when he woke, a strange thought came to him. He had dreamed about his father because his father was dreaming about him.

  Whatever else grew distant as he sat up and turned on the light, one thing was certain: that castle had been in a real country, a country that was not Australia, and wherever it was, that was where he had to go to set his heart at rest. Ashley no longer had his sketchbook, so he got out a scrap of paper instead. On it, before he forgot, he drew two faces. One was the old man from the train, and the other was the man in the castle. Then he lay down and listened to the rain falling and knew that he had to get away from here.

  It was several days before Richard would let Juliette out of his sight. He kept her home from school, and they sat and played cards on the floor of her hotel room while the rain fell outside. ‘Father,’ she said one afternoon after a long time had passed in silence. ‘Have you ever met a boy called Ashley Devere?’

  Richard dropped the cards in his hand. ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Ashley Devere.’

  Richard looked at her for several long seconds. Then he gathered up the cards and said, ‘Tell me what you know about that boy.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You must have heard the name somewhere.’

  ‘Nowhere. I mean, I can’t remember.’

  ‘Juliette, tell me.’

  She hesitated. ‘He’s a friend of a friend of mine,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘He lives in this city?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And why do you think I would know him?’

  ‘I don’t know, Father. I just wondered.’

  Richard put the cards back into their box, went to the window, and glanced down into the street. He did this several times a day, to check that James was still out there on guard. ‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘You are never to speak to that boy, do you hear? You are not to go looking for him, and you are not to speak to him. Ever. Do you hear?’

  ‘No,’ said Juliette. ‘I don’t hear. Because that’s stupid.’

  Richard stared at her as though she had hit him. Then he pushed his glasses up and tried to reach his hand out to her. ‘I’m sorry, Juliette,’ he said. ‘I’ve been on edge lately; I know. It was only this dream.’

  ‘What dream?’

  ‘I dreamed about an old acquaintance of mine. It was so real. He was sitting there in the room, talking to me. And ever since then, I can’t help worrying.’

  ‘You’ve hardly slept in a week,’ said Juliette. ‘Maybe it would do you good, Father.’

  ‘No,’ said Richard. ‘Not in the middle of all this.’

  Juliette knew better than to argue. But that night, sleep got the better of him anyway. He fell asleep over a worn-out book some other guest had left, The Return of the Native, with the pages falling out. He did it suddenly, without ceremony. His head slumped onto the table, and the book hit the ground with a low thud.

  Juliette hesitated for several minutes. Then she whispered, ‘Sorry, Father,’ and opened the window and climbed out. Richard did not wake. Once she was down in the street, she took Ashley Devere’s sketchbook out from her coat and examined it. But she did not know where Forest Park Mansions were, and she had never walked about the city by herself – except for that other night, she had always been with someone else. She remembered a play in Covent Garden, when England was still new to her. She knew how to get there at least, and that was where the boy drew.

  Without thinking much about it, she set out that way instead.

  On the evenings when there were no tourists, now that autumn was closing in, Ashley sat in the park next to the old church and sketched other things. The park was paved with flat stones, and benches stood by the fence, and a few wind-ruffled pigeons hopped around the benches. He threw them a handful of crisps and bent his head over the sketchbook. He was drawing a ruined house today. He had been drawing for several minutes uninterrupted when someone stopped in front of him. She was a girl his own age, with blonde ringlets and a haughty kind of look. ‘Yes?’ he said.

  She held out his sketchbook.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Ashley, then recognized it.

  ‘It’s yours,’ she said. ‘So I brought it back.’

  Ashley turned over the pages without breathing. He had fully believed that he would never see these pictures again. He glanced up to thank her, but she was already halfway to leaving. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Listen, thank you. You’re the girl who was there that night, aren’t you? The girl who asked me if I was all right.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Juliette.’

  Juliette was how she said it. Ashley could hear the last two letters in the way she pronounced it, like it was the most important name in the world. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘And I’m Ashley.’

  The girl sat down and twisted the sleeve of her coat in her hands, first one way, then the other. ‘How did you know where I would be?’ said Ashley. ‘How did you find me to give the book back?’

&nbs
p; ‘I heard you say you drew portraits here.’ She hesitated. ‘Who was that man with the gun?’

  ‘I’ve never met him before in my life,’ said Ashley. ‘I was only looking at the car. I don’t know what that was about.’

  The girl went on twisting her coat sleeve. Then she said, ‘I think he was looking for my father.’

  ‘Why?’ said Ashley. ‘Is your father the man who owns the car?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So why do they want to find him?’

  Juliette hesitated, and when she spoke, he heard her voice shaking. ‘I don’t know. But it means nothing good.’

  ‘No,’ said Ashley. ‘Bloody hell.’

  Luckily, the girl did not think this inadequate. She gave a half-smile and said, ‘How much for a portrait?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘To you. If you really want one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was a strange thing to ask, but he turned over a new page anyway and studied her face, then tapped the pencil against the spine of the sketchbook, trying to think.