Crime Story

by Gee, Maurice

  Ulla smiled. ‘Only my head can travel. It does not need aeroplanes.’

  Does your head, Gwen wanted to ask, know your body still? Can it shape all those parts down there? And is that sort of life any good to you?

  ‘Where does it go?’

  ‘Here and there.’

  ‘I hung the Anders Zorn in Olivia’s room. I thought she might like it.’

  ‘Does she?’

  ‘She hasn’t said.’

  What short sentences we speak – your turn, my turn, clip clop. Once it had been clever opinions flying back and forth; flicks and twists and dabs of extra meaning. How quick they’d been, modifiers, qualifiers always at the ready. Now they were bare. Nothing was said. There was really nothing to say. Unless we get down, she thought, to the real bareness, to the bone. I’m not sure we’ll ever be ready for that, not as a pair. And won’t it have to be in Swedish too?

  ‘Would you like me to try and find a book on him?’ But how can she appreciate now that her spine can’t tingle? That’s what I should ask, and then propose a scientific test. Ulla would have liked it once, I could have set it up. But everything is changed now; the world is shrunken to this room and bed, and little services are all that’s left. ‘The public library will have something, I’m sure.’

  ‘No,’ Ulla said.

  ‘Well, all those painters you used to tell me about, who were obsessed with light, and dark nights, and lakes that gleam. Would you like … Tell me their names.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There’s a table on a balcony, and glasses and a jug but no one there. I’ve seen that. With a blue night and a hollow lake and black pine trees.’

  ‘Gwen, be quiet, now. I know how hard it is.’

  ‘It’s not hard – ’

  ‘Just sit with me, you don’t have to talk.’

  ‘Can’t you talk then? Can’t you tell me what it’s like?’

  Ulla closed her eyes. She said, ‘I don’t have any words. My words are all cut off, down there.’

  ‘They can’t be. We live in our heads.’

  ‘No we don’t. There aren’t two places with a bridge between. There’s just one place.’

  ‘But people leave their bodies. There’s a whole literature – ’

  ‘Shsh, Gwen. I don’t want you crying or I’ll cry too. Then you’ll have to wipe my cheeks.’

  ‘I want to wipe them. I want to do that.’

  ‘And my bottom too?’

  ‘Yes. If I have to. I’ll try.’

  Ulla smiled. ‘I like it best when you tell the truth. So much that happens now is lying to me.’

  ‘I won’t lie.’

  ‘Then tell me how you think it is for me, to be like this.’

  ‘I think it’s hard. It’s – impossible.’

  ‘I am not the only one. Other people lie in beds.’

  ‘But you … ’

  ‘Everything I feel, these people recognise. I can’t surprise them. Yesterday I started talking Swedish just to have a place they couldn’t follow. The nurse said, “Where did you learn that, in Germany?”’

  ‘Silly.’

  ‘Oh no. A small language. Why should people know what it is?’

  ‘What did you say in it?’

  ‘I said, “I don’t want that part down there. Please take it away.” Then she said about Germany, and I said, “After that you can take my head.” But in English it would not surprise them. They know all the little steps.’

  ‘What comes next?’

  ‘Acceptance, at the end. I learn how to live with it. That is where they will take me to.’

  ‘Will you go?’

  ‘I’ll let them try. I must be fair, they work so hard.’

  ‘After Auckland I want you to come and live with me. Will you do that? I want to start converting the room – my dining room it will be.’

  ‘You turn it into my gymnasium?’

  ‘Yes, if you like.’

  ‘You will wash me, Gwen, and turn me and wipe me?’

  ‘We’ll get a nurse. Athol’s going to pay.’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘And Olivia will live there too. Upstairs. I’m going to turn the other bedroom into her sitting room.’

  ‘And we will be three girls and share our clothes and go to dances?’

  ‘Ulla, don’t. I can’t think of any other ways.’

  ‘I can.’

  Through that hollow lake, Gwen thought, and down below the edge of the world. She wants to die and she’s not going to change. The first part is a step they’ll recognise, but not the second. No one knows Ulla. She’ll go where she has to go.

  Gwen stayed another half hour, then went home through the drizzle. She wrote Damon a letter full of cheerful things, and cooked a meal for Olivia.

  ‘What’s wrong with Butch?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think he’s sick. I had to carry him downstairs.’

  ‘His breathing sounds funny.’

  ‘Then he couldn’t get in his basket. I had to help him.’

  ‘Well, he’s an old man. He must be in his eighties. Would you like to take him to the vet?’

  ‘He hates it so much. He tries to bite him.’

  ‘Let’s see how he is in the morning. You’d better leave him down here tonight.’

  ‘He’d be upset. He wouldn’t understand.’

  And he’d probably try to get upstairs in the night and die near the top. And one of us would trip over him and then there’d be another broken neck. Gwen shivered; she felt the fear of breaking travel down her spine. What a long train it was, what a series of couplings, and such a neat arrangement; so vital and tender and alert, the busy thread. She understood how Ulla was reduced, and the burden she must carry; the insult of her unfeeling parts. Physical living was denied, yet she was not excused from it. So if she said, Please may I leave the room, did anyone have the right to answer no?

  ‘Can I try him with a bit of pudding?’ Olivia said.

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘No. He won’t. Not even custard.’

  ‘Leave him. He probably just wants a good long sleep.’

  ‘I think he’s going to die.’

  Gwen went across the room and knelt by the basket. The dog lay on his side with his grey muzzle pointing up and his eyes half closed. A mucky eye, Gwen thought; it needed wiping. Olivia cleaned it with her handkerchief.

  ‘I don’t think he’s in pain,’ she said.

  ‘I think it’s just old age. His heart wants to give up, probably.’

  ‘Will you help me carry him up?’

  They lifted the basket between them and carried it upstairs and put it on the floor by Olivia’s bed.

  ‘I’ll do the rest.’

  ‘I don’t think you should have him on the bed.’

  ‘But he likes it.’

  ‘Olivia, he might make a mess.’

  ‘I’ll clean it up. Please. It might be the last time.’

  ‘All right,’ Gwen said. ‘Call me if you need a hand with him.’ She washed the dishes, read a book, listening for sounds of dying and distress. Olivia called goodnight down the stairs.

  ‘Goodnight, love. Is he all right?’

  ‘I think he likes the sound of rain on the roof. He’s perking up.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘I couldn’t take him out tonight so I let him do it in the shower. I’ll clean it tomorrow.’

  Gwen managed to say ‘All right’ to that. She listened to the rain herself as she lay in bed. The dog infiltrated more and more, but paid by dying. Nothing was for ever.

  I do want meaning so much, but Ulla keeps on telling me no.

  Butch was still alive in the morning.

  ‘I think we should take him to the vet,’ Gwen said.

  ‘No, I want to have him here.’

  They carried him in his basket downstairs and put him on the porch. Weak sunshine came through the glass and made a gleam in his half-closed eyes. He’s dying, Gwen thought, as locked up in himself as he’s ev
er been. There would be no final wag of the tail or lick of the hand. Butch would make Olivia no sign.

  She found a little sunshine for herself on the steps and sat there reading the Dominion. Neil Hopkins smiled out but Gordon was only named. There would be appeals of course and the thing would drag on, but they were marked as jailbirds and would never be clean again. Gordon, she wrote in her head, you must discover what the important things are. When it came to paper she would write something else. How strange that simple good advice was unacceptable. And love was so quickly brushed aside. She must write that she loved him, all the same.

  Butch died then. She heard him sigh. It brushed by her and seemed to go somewhere; and it was a final sound, she knew. So, she thought, something goes away. She went to the basket and looked at the odd little dog-shape lying there. Poor thing, she thought, and called Olivia.

  ‘Oh,’ said Olivia, ‘I thought he’d wait a bit.’ She knelt and touched Butch on the head. ‘Should I close his eyes?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Will you go away for a little while, please?’

  ‘Of course, love. Call me if you want me.’

  She sat in the living room with her paper. It escapes, she thought, whatever it is. And with Butch too, only a dog. Her easiness seemed part of her understanding. But she worried that Olivia would grieve in some dangerous way. The dog had seemed the only thing she was sure about.

  Later she saw the girl in the garden digging a grave. She used the spade neatly, chopping down, levering out, and made a hole almost as deep as the handle. Gwen watched from the kitchen. Olivia had put her gumboots on and wore her parka for the drizzle that was starting from the north again. She scraped mud from her soles before coming on to the porch for Butch. Gwen did not go out. She wanted to be called, to play a part. She had walked the dog each day after all. But Olivia wrapped him in his sheepskin, folding the ends like a parcel, and carried him down the steps and into the garden as though it were some ritual she must carry out alone. She knelt and lowered him into the hole, then spaded earth over him like sugar from a spoon – mounded the top of the grave and beat it flat with the back of the spade. No words, no tears. She washed the spade under the garden tap and hung it on its nail in the shed. Gwen went on to the porch.

  ‘So that’s Butch gone.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He was a nice little dog.’ Something had to be said, but surely more adequate than that. Olivia looked at her blankly and picked up the basket with its blanket scraps inside. ‘What are you doing now?’

  ‘I’m going to burn it. It smells.’

  ‘Olivia … ’ The drizzle had wet her cheeks and made them shine.

  ‘I’m all right. Don’t worry about me.’

  How it made you worry when someone said that.

  ‘Leave it till the rain stops.’

  ‘I want to do everything straight away. Will you get me a box of matches?’ Gwen went to the kitchen. ‘And some old newspaper,’ Olivia called.

  Gwen brought the morning paper, with its robberies and murders, and Olivia went off, holding it over her head against the rain, down past the new grave to the incinerator. She crumpled paper and stuffed it in, lit it, pushed the basket down on top, and put her parka hood up while it burned.

  Athol came through the hedge, bending to avoid wet leaves. He mounted the steps two at a time.

  ‘What’s that smell?’

  ‘Burning blankets.’

  ‘What’s she doing?’

  ‘Butch died. Olivia is burning all his stuff.’

  ‘What a stink. The neighbours won’t like that.’

  ‘Too bad.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Nothing. He just died. Old age.’

  ‘Will she get a new one?’

  ‘A new model?’

  ‘I’m only asking. I suppose you saw about Gordon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s lucky.’

  ‘I suppose he is.’

  ‘Well, I just thought I’d check.’ He went down the steps, then turned back sharply. ‘She’s not burning the dog?’

  ‘No, Athol. She buried that.’

  ‘Ah, good. I’ll see you all later.’

  He went back home, and Gwen thought, What a nice little visit. What a nice family we are, looking out for each other.

  In the early afternoon she said, ‘I’m going to see your mother. Will you come?’

  ‘I’ve got some things I want to do,’ Olivia said. ‘Tell her I’ll come tomorrow.’

  ‘She’d like it, you know.’

  ‘I want to come. I really do. Tomorrow. Give her my love.’

  Gwen stopped at the library and asked for books about Swedish painting. The assistant found two and she sat at a table, turning the pages, saying the names, Lillefors, Fjaestad, Prins Eugene, and looking at the water and the melting snow and the lakes and skies. They really knew about cold and light and emptiness. Why did she suppose that Ulla had gone there? She had had these same books home herself several months ago – studied them silently, not shared. Not sharing meant that she was going deep down; so Gwen had thought, and had waited for the time when Ulla would want to talk about it. What would she say? What had she been looking for there? Was she trying to make a path back home to travel on when she died? Did she have a premonition? And do these men tell her now, Come home, here is your place? Ulla, I won’t stop you if you really have to go. But, my dear, there are other ways that you should try. We have blue empty nights as well, and black hills and cold sea, just look out there, past the buildings and across the harbour. Yours, I know, are the ones that you understand. But see some people before you go. Make them know you love them. Make them know you don’t despair.

  Could she say all that? Would Ulla listen?

  She borrowed the books and put them in her bag, thinking she probably wouldn’t take them out at the hospital. There was an equilibrium that should not be upset, and all sorts of dangers she did not know. Keeping Ulla calm was what she should aim for, even if it denied her the sharp parts of herself. Strange, Gwen thought, that I can think of her ‘self’ as though she still has the whole of it.

  She walked through the corridors and sat by the bed. Kissed Ulla on the mouth. It was not a nice mouth any more, it tasted stale.

  ‘Hallo, love.’

  ‘Your sleeve is wet.’

  ‘It’s raining out there. Wellington weather. Weather and news. Do you want news?’

  ‘Is there some?’

  ‘Gordon’s gone to jail for eighteen months. The paper said he didn’t show any emotion. I meant to tell you yesterday.’

  ‘Poor Gordon.’

  ‘He was a roly-poly little boy and you thought he’d be happy but somehow he never was. You found him in corners all the time and under beds. He was slower than Athol. Athol you found up trees. Or on the roof. He stood on top of the chimney once, on one leg, with his arms held out.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To be the highest thing, I suppose. And the most dangerous.’

  ‘He’s not like that now.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What frightened him?’ She said it without interest. There was a dead place where her interest should have sounded.

  Before Gwen could answer, a nurse came in, bringing the detective whose lower jaw opened like a drawer.

  ‘Mrs Peet. Mrs Peet’ – giving equal nods.

  ‘Mr Hopgood wants to ask you some questions, Ulla. Just a few,’ the nurse said. ‘Is that all right?’

  ‘Only one,’ the detective said. ‘It won’t take long.’

  He drew a cloth out of his pocket, unfolded it, dangled an amber necklace in front of Ulla. ‘Are these your beads, Mrs Peet?’

  Gwen saw them reflected in Ulla’s eyes. They were lovely beads, full of light.

  ‘No,’ Ulla said.

  ‘You’re sure about that?’ His red tongue in his open mouth shrank in disappointment.

  ‘Yes. Mine were rough. And yellower.’


  ‘All right.’ He folded the necklace in the cloth, but seemed not to want to let his opportunity go. ‘Anything you can add, Mrs Peet, to what you told us a few weeks ago?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ve had time to think. You got a look at him.’

  ‘Nothing. He was quick. He was like a squirrel.’

  ‘More dangerous than that, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Have you found out something more?’ Gwen said. ‘Where did you get those beads?’

  Hopgood looked at her but had a clever way of seeming not to see. He doesn’t like me, she thought. Why is that?

  ‘From a known fence,’ he said. ‘There’s a possible connection. Sorry to have troubled you, Mrs Peet.’ Mrs Peet was Ulla. He went away.

  ‘That was a short visit. You should have said they were yours. I like amber.’

  Ulla said nothing.

  ‘I never saw you wearing yours.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were they valuable?’

  ‘Not very. I got them from my grandmother. My grandfather bought them in Danzig.’

  ‘Is that an amber place?’

  ‘Yes. I never went there.’

  ‘Across the Baltic,’ Gwen said. She felt she had to keep talking. ‘It’s a sea with so much history. What do you call it again?’

  ‘Ostsjon.’

  ‘Erstshern,’ Gwen said. Nothing had ever sounded so foreign. ‘You’re so like us, you Swedes. And yet your language sounds like nothing on earth.’

  ‘You should hear Finnish,’ Ulla said. ‘What frightened him? Athol?’

  Gwen was quiet. The question was alive now. She wanted to be honest, and fair to them both. ‘He seemed to reach the end of the things he could do. I don’t know. The things within himself. I suppose the word is potentialities. That’s the jargon. But he had the imagination to see there was so much more. He could see up ahead somehow. Does this make sense? And it was dangerous. You were there. He took that risk.’ Gwen was not satisfied. She missed the mark. But she could not find a way to be accurate. ‘I think with you he proved himself, in his own mind. And then he settled back. But nothing stays still. Things started to shrink – and his boundaries came back, and you were outside again. You and the children too. Love was too much. Too dangerous.’

  ‘But inside were things that pleased him very much,’ Ulla said.