by Nina Allan
Jen Lomax once told him that when Miranda was ten years old she had been abducted.
“She was snatched off the pavement, right in front of her own house,” Jen said. “That’s probably why she always acts so traumatised. Have you noticed the way she jumps when you say her name?”
Jenny Lomax was loud and confident and her desk resembled the aftermath of a minor apocalypse. She was brash, Martin supposed, but all the clients adored her and she was great at her job. Martin had no idea if she was speaking the truth about Miranda, but listening to her gossip made him uncomfortable. Jen was always teasing him with her coarse remarks and sexual innuendos. He had found this off-putting at first but in time he had grown accustomed to it. Jen lived in New Cross with a sharp suit who worked for Credit Suisse.
Miranda lived in Sidcup with her mother. Just before he went to lunch Martin poked his head round the door of her cubbyhole and asked if he could bring her anything from the coffee shop next door.
“No thank you, Martin,” she said. “I brought sandwiches.” Her wrists, temporarily suspended above her keyboard, looked fragile as reeds. For the first time he found himself noticing the watch she wore: yellow gold with a patina so rich it was almost buttery.
“I like your watch,” he said, and immediately felt stupid.
“Thank you,” said Miranda. “It belonged to my grandmother.”
Martin coughed, reminding himself idiotically of Lewis Usher. Then suddenly Miranda was slipping the watch from her wrist and passing it across to him. It had an Art Deco chain-link bracelet, a bold design that ought not to have suited her but somehow did. The gold was warm from the contact with her skin.
“My grandmother was German,” she said. “She was interned here during the war. She had to report to the police each week or risk being sent to prison. None of those policemen cared that she was Jewish, that the reason she’d come here in the first place was to get away from Hitler. Aren’t people strange?”
It was the most Martin had ever heard her speak. Her voice was light, with a sweet timbre, like the voice of her watch. He found himself wanting to take her hand, to slide the gold circle of the watch bracelet over the pearly twin protrusions of her wrist bones. He would feel the blue veins pulsing beneath her skin like tiny, mysterious rivers.
In the end he just handed it back.
“It’s lovely,” he said. Once again he felt like a fool. That evening when he’d finished supper he took down the photograph album and looked for the picture that Aunt Violet had taken of himself and Dora with the Circus Man, but couldn’t find it. Somewhere along the line it must have fallen out of the album and had since been lost.
It was possible that Dora herself had removed it. Dora had always been afraid of the Circus Man.
A mystery then, Dora said. You never liked mysteries much, did you? You prefer it when things add up.
He wondered if she was right, if he really was that boring, the kind of man that is called a dry old stick.
I’ll write to the Caseby woman, he thought. Tomorrow.
He thought about Miranda Coles, the way the pretty gold watch had slipped down over her hand.
He spent an hour in front of the television without paying any attention to what was on then dialled Miranda’s home number in Sidcup from his mobile. He had all the staff numbers stored there, hers included. He didn’t know if Miranda owned a mobile, only that he had never seen her using one.
A cross-sounding woman answered. When he asked to speak to Miranda the woman said she was out.
* * *
Their garden backed on to the railway line. Miranda’s mother was fond of saying that they were trapped, that the proximity of the railway made it impossible for them to sell the house even if they wanted to. Miranda had never believed it. There were plenty of people who liked trains, who found the noise they made comforting.
She had always liked the sound of the railway. As a young child and in the difficult years after her father died their measured, regular passage helped her to sleep at night. She knew the timetable by heart, and could tell the trains apart just from the sounds they made: the jaunty thrust and dash of the new metros, the slower lumbering of the older rolling stock that went on to Gillingham and Gravesend, the fast trains down to the coast that did not stop at all until they reached Orpington.
She had never been afraid of the dark, but it was never completely dark in London anyway. When at five years old she had asked her mother where the trains went at night her mother had told her Gravesend. The word and the images it evoked terrified her for years. Later she learned that Gravesend was just the name of a town in Kent.
Most of her afternoon had been spent preparing the brochure for the Crooms Hill property, the house that had been the home of the actress Zoë Clifford. She and Stephen had been to see her in a spy film called An Unknown Country, Clifford looking haggard and bewitching in an army greatcoat and mud up to her knees. Stephen had had a thing for her ever since.
Miranda turned away from the tracks and went inside. She hoped her mother would have gone up already but she was fussing about in the kitchen making cocoa, her mug and spoon and cinnamon neatly laid out.
“There was a phone call for you,” she said. “He didn’t leave his name.”
Did you ask for it? Miranda thought to herself but did not say. She knew it would be a mistake to sound too interested. The call had most likely been from Tom Stowells, wanting her to babysit again so he and Melanie could go to some party or other. Or Clive Trewitt, who sometimes called her up for a game of cards. Clive Trewitt was eighty-three but still a dab hand at bezique. Better than she would ever be at any rate.
“Why didn’t you call me?” she said. She felt a sudden certainty that the caller had been Martin. She resisted the temptation to ask her mother what the man had sounded like or what he had said.
“I’m not yelling down the garden like a fishwife. And I had nothing on my feet. Anyway, it’s too late for people to be ringing.” She made a sniffing sound that Miranda recognised as disapproval and added three teaspoons of sugar to the boiling milk.
Nimmie Coles was skinny as a rake, and still young, in spite of the strenuous effort she put into her mean old woman act. She was just sixty-eight, and tenacious as ragwort. Miranda had no idea why she had adopted the role of tragic widow; Nimmie had stopped loving her husband years before he died.
Her mother picked up the mug of cocoa. Her long feet in their worn moccasins poked from the bottom of her dressing gown, her still-fair hair looped untidily behind her ears. “Don’t forget to turn out the lights,” she said.
“I won’t,” said Miranda. She watched her mother shuffle towards the stairs. She’s like a crane fly, she thought. All angles. She knew she should leave, just get out of there. Stephen said she could join him in Cape Town at any time, but the idea frightened her. She and Stephen had been close as children, but inevitably they had drifted apart and the truth was that in all but the surface detail they had become strangers.
She stared at the phone on the wall, willing it to ring again, knowing that it would not, that it really was too late now, almost midnight. She wondered what Martin was doing, then wondered if it was rude to wonder, a kind of eavesdropping.
She didn’t know why she persisted in thinking about him. Nothing had happened between them, or at least nothing serious.
Something might have, though, she thought. Only you blew it.
Miranda had assumed at first that Martin was married but Jenny Lomax had told her that no, he lived with his sister.
“He never talks about her,” Jen said. “I think she’s sick or something.”
She raised one eyebrow as if to imply that Martin was peculiar and that made him a perfect and righteous target for office gossip. Miranda did not take the bait, even though she knew that this could only worsen her relations with Jenny Lomax. She liked Martin. She did not want to gossip about him with Jen or with anyone. But at least now she knew he was not married.
She
wondered what the sister was like, whether it was true that she was ill or just another piece of gossip.
But then Martin was off work for three weeks, and Scott Unsworth, the deputy manager, told them he was on compassionate leave following a death in the family.
Martin had not been the same after that, not for a long while. Then suddenly and out of nowhere he asked Miranda to go to the cinema with him. It was a film she had wanted to see, but Martin’s unaccustomed proximity made her nervous and when the film was over she realised she couldn’t remember a thing about it.
Once they were outside on the street she lost her nerve completely. She told Martin she had to get home because of her mother.
She couldn’t decide if he looked disappointed or relieved. She supposed it was probably better to keep things as they were. Change was something she had grown unused to.
She wasn’t sure she had the courage to invite it.
Martin had seemed excited though when he came back from the Clifford house. And then there had been that odd conversation about her wristwatch, that moment when she thought he was going to kiss her. It was strange, the way she felt close to him, even though she felt sure that so far as romance went they were doomed. She had seen it in films, read it in books, the couple who were clearly meant to be together but somehow never managed to make things work out.
She brushed her teeth and got ready for bed. Later she dreamed she was in Martin’s office. She had gone there thinking she would give Martin her watch, but Martin was nowhere in sight. She opened the door to the stationery cupboard, thinking he might be inside, only to discover that it wasn’t the stationery cupboard at all but the downstairs cloakroom at home.
She could hear the watch ticking beneath her pillow. It sounded like a bomb about to go off.
* * *
Dear Ms Caseby, Martin wrote. I was recently given your address by Lewis Usher. I understand that his late wife Zoë Clifford was a friend of yours. Mr Usher is currently in the process of moving house, and has employed me as estate agent to market his property in Greenwich. In the course of preparing the details I happened to notice a photograph belonging to Mr Usher, a picture of yourself and Zoë Clifford on the seafront in Hastings when you were schoolgirls. This photograph brought back a lot of memories for me as my sister and I spent summers in Hastings at what must have been about the same time, and I was wondering if you were able to tell me anything about your time there. Do you know, for example, the identity of the man in the Panama hat with the little dog? I remember him well, although I never knew his name.
He finished off the letter with some meaningless pleasantries, taking care to include his email and mobile number as well as his return address. He wondered how soon he might hear from her, if the woman was still alive even. There was also the chance that she might take exception to Usher giving out her address and refuse to communicate. He was surprised to receive an email from her the following day:
I know the gentleman you mean, of course. His name was Owen Andrews, and he earned his living in the town doing clock and watch repairs. He was a very good friend of my grandmother, who kept house for him for a time before she was married. I have some old photos of hers, if you are interested, though I would have to insist on your travelling here to see them. My grandmother’s papers are in a fragile condition and I would not feel happy about them leaving the house.
How extraordinary, thought Martin. She is still alive.
Why extraordinary? said Dora. Zoë Clifford was only sixty when she died, wasn’t she? This friend of hers can’t be much older.
He knew she was right, but it felt extraordinary anyway to read Juliet Caseby’s message, like opening a door into the past. He had never heard anyone refer to the Circus Man as Owen Andrews, although the name caused a stirring inside his head, a trace memory of something he had read perhaps, or seen in a museum. Part of him wanted not to go to Hastings. In a sense things were perfect the way they were, the door ajar with just a chink of light showing. What was he hoping to gain by passing through it?
What lay on the other side could only be commonplace, old furniture under dustsheets in a room that had not been used for many years. But he acknowledged Juliet Caseby’s email, thanking her for her reply and adding that he would definitely be interested in seeing her grandmother’s photographs. I will be in touch with you soon to confirm a date, he wrote. Thank you again.
When he arrived at work Miranda informed him that three lots of people had made appointments to view the Crooms Hill house.
“One of them was the guy who runs the Picturehouse,” she said. “He went on and on about Zoë Clifford, the actress. She used to live in that house, did you know that?”
“I did, actually,” said Martin. “The gentleman who’s selling is her husband.” He guessed the Picturehouse man had no intention of putting in an offer, he was just curious to have a poke around. You couldn’t let on that you knew that, though. Being polite to timewasters was part of the job.
It seemed that Zoë Clifford was everywhere all of a sudden. Almost before he realised he meant to, he found himself telling Miranda about the email from Juliet Caseby.
“She was Zoë Clifford’s best friend,” he said. “She lives in Hastings. My sister and I used to go there on holiday when we were children.” He paused. “I saw a photograph of her with Zoë when I was doing the valuation and I asked if I could have her address. There was someone else in the photograph, someone I recognised. I want to find out what this Caseby woman knows about him.”
The next moment, he was asking Miranda if she would like to go to Hastings with him.
“It would be nice to have some company,” he said. “If you think you could put up with me, that is.”
Miranda blushed, her cheeks filling up with the powder-puff, pigeon-breast pink of fine Capodimonte porcelain.
“My dad took us to Hastings once, to visit the castle,” she said. “It would be lovely to see it again.”
Martin gazed at her in surprise. He noticed that her hands were trembling slightly, that her jaw was set in a rigid line, as if she had bitten down on something sour or very cold.
“Are you sure?” he said, still not certain she had actually said yes. “It would be better if we stayed overnight, really. We wouldn’t have much time there otherwise.”
She smiled then, and Martin thought he saw tears in her eyes. He remembered the feeling that had come over him when Dora called him into her room and told him she was going to die.
Don’t look like that, she had said. We’ve had a good run for our money. She had cried later on that night, though never again in his presence. Dora used to love travelling, but for those final eighteen months she had barely left the house.
Miranda Coles had spent the whole of the past decade shuffling back and forth between her mother’s house in Sidcup and the office in Greenwich, the whole time they had known one another. Most people would see that as a kind of living death, but perhaps it wasn’t and perhaps they were wrong.
It was daunting, how little he knew her. He wondered how they would get on alone together, whether things would have changed between them by the time they returned to London. The rest of the day passed in a blur. At around three o’clock he told Miranda he was popping out for a sandwich and spent most of the next hour wandering around the back streets of Greenwich. The sun blazed down, the back gardens and building lots hummed with the sound of crickets. The layout of streets was stamped upon his brain, an interlocking grid of neat black lines. It was the job that had done that, although his decision to become an estate agent had been a complete accident, a way of avoiding stacking shelves at the local supermarket.
What are you going to do, Martin? You can’t just do nothing. His mother’s voice, grown steadily more accusing with each passing day.
You in a suit, Dora said. I can’t believe it.
Dora spent the last days of her life in hospital but for the whole of the time leading up to that Martin had looked after her at home. On
the evening of her death Martin returned to the house and removed every visible trace of her illness: the medicines and syringes, the rolls of lint and kitchen towels, the glass tumbler, still smeary with the dregs of the glucose drink that was the only nourishment she would take in her final weeks.
He loathed the smell of these things, their sinister combination of sweetness and acridity. He thought of it as the smell of death itself.
For God’s sake don’t think about it, Dora said. It’s over.
It will never be over, Martin thought. Not while my brain still works and there are thoughts in my head. He turned back in the direction of the office, then called Jenny Lomax on his mobile and told her he wouldn’t be back for the rest of the day. He began to call Miranda and then didn’t.
He phoned Ray Levin instead and told him he was going away for the weekend with a woman.
“Hey, Marty,” Ray said. “Way to go.”
“Nothing’s going to happen, she’s just a colleague from work.”
“For God’s sake don’t put the mufflers on before you get started. Just see how it goes.”
He had known Ray since school. He was the only one who knew about him and Dora.
“You should forget all that now,” Ray had once said to him. “You two were just kids. What’s done is done.”
“I slept with my sister, Ray,” Martin replied. “I ruined her life.”
“Are you telling me you forced her?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Well there you are then. Time to move on.”
If it had happened just the once that might have been possible but the truth was they had become addicted to one another. The first time had been in the aftermath of her broken engagement to Michael Klein. The last had been five weeks before her death.
Martin sometimes imagined the only way he could be at peace with himself would be to serve time in prison for what he had done. Sometimes, ridiculously, he felt he was responsible for Dora’s illness and therefore her death.
