Trial by Fire

by Frances Fyfield

  At seventeen he could spend secret hours in the manufacture of wonderful, if tiny, things made from wire and glass fragments, glittery items half resembling rings, bracelets of bottle fragments, but he was far more selective in what he acquired. Bringing home his own bulk along with more under the arm was too conspicuous these days, even for parents such as his own. He purchased or stole in miniature, all of it acquired with a purpose, and never once did he see it as theft, not even when he took an item from a shop counter. He only grabbed from the shop when it was clear to him that taking one item left a dozen of the same, and no one could possibly want so many, surely. Theft was when you took it straight out of someone else's pocket. He had seen that done once, and it had shocked him.

  `How are you today?'

  `Very well, thank you. How's your cold?' Showing a mouthful of teeth in a smile as wide as a bay, William was known on the buses as a harmless freak. The motion made him talkative: he would chat to bus conductors if they existed, fellow travellers, if not. Yes, yes, they would say, never quite allowing him to engage their attention unless they were over sixty-five.

  The subjects of William's conversations were food prices, learned from home; poor bus service and lying timetables, learned as he went along; the weather, which was a constant disruption to his soul; public transport; and aches and pains, which he understood. He debated all these topics intelligently with the pensioners travelling on cheap off-peak tickets. On the last subject, William was highly sympathetic, even offered advice. He liked the elderly and the very young. Those in the middle were a sinister blur.

  Chingford. Should he alight here and find a quicker bus to base? No, he hated this bus shelter; wait a few more stops, then change; half an hour at least between buses, but a nicer shelter farther down the road on this drizzly, damp day. An old-fashioned shelter with yards of graffiti on the concrete walls, plenty to examine from proper wooden seats similarly decorated. Dear, dear — a phrase learned from the pensioners — Waltham would be crowded. School holidays, teenagers on the streets poking fun, boys moving in gangs, girls with thin legs, flouncy hair, fat lips. Little bottoms and tiny bosoms in all those funny clothes.

  Just like Evelyn, but nothing like Evelyn. Nothing, no one, no jewel or treasured thing in his whole wide world compared to Evelyn. He closed his eyes for a moment and missed the stop.

  William's treasure and father's darling child was trying to listen to her father, stuck in his stuffy office which did not compare with the posher front of the shop — the good plain carpet, carved desk and chairs, banks of plants in bamboo shelving, a mixture of traditional and the new, blueprint for Branston, et cetera. So John Blundell had instructed the eager designer, knocking her down to a cut price for the job, since she clearly hoped for, and he vaguely promised, other jobs to follow in his modest chain of offices and show houses.

  None did. Having cheated her slightly, Blundell was perfectly happy with the well-textured result. Since no one else but himself occupied the office behind his, it was not important enough for expenditure. A part of John Blundell was very parsimonious indeed.

  The most expensive for show, the cheapest for private consumption.

  `Daddy, don't be so bloody irritating.'

  `Don't swear, darling child, please.' Automatically said.

  `Well, don't be so slow, then. I do have ears, you know.' She was astride a pile of house particulars perched on a chair on the side of the desk that was normally his. He, like a supplicant, was slightly lower on the stool facing her.

  `Get on with it, please, Daddy. I'm not upset. You can see I'm not.' This in a wheedling tone, a placatory voice she had learned to use especially with the opposite sex of all ages, including teachers and relatives. A little-girl voice. He was always seduced by it; he cleared his throat.

  Àll right, all right, darling child, I was just trying to explain so that you won't be in the dark more than necessary. People will talk, you see; they always do. They'll tell you something I should tell you first.'

  She knew that principle already, but found the opposite to be true. If she went into any Branston shop, which she did frequently in the vacuum of school holidays, silence fell. She was aware it could have been the silence of sympathy, a response to her pale face, but she seethed with hostility, wanting to scream, Shut up, shut up being quiet. Shut up knowing things and talking about us. Shut up being so bloody sorry. Just talk, you bloody twits; pretend to talk if you can't really talk. Stop it, stop it, stop it.

  Her father saw the tension in her shoulders, paused.

  `Go on, then,' she challenged, irritation subdued to the slightest of edges.

  ÒK, darling child. This is how it is.' He coughed, rendering his own face an unimpressive red to match the viscous red of his eyes. She looked on without sympathy, waiting.

  `Your mother. The case about her murder. Henry Harmoner, our solicitor, has just phoned me to say what's going to happen. The bastard.' He muttered the last two words under his breath, remembering too late his strictures to the child about language. Ànyway, he thinks

  — God, he thinks a lot, Henry — that the case will come up before the magistrates in Waltham in about two, three weeks, for a hearing of sorts.'

  `That's quick. I thought these things took ages and ages.' He looked at her, perplexed.

  He'd had a dim idea of the same, not so explicit, and wondered as he often did how it was she knew so much. To him, the interval since his wife's murder seemed a lifetime, but he was able to recall that life moved slower for a child.

  Ùsually much slower than this, I gather. They must have speeded things up.' Perhaps there had been some deference to his feelings in this. He liked to think so, while knowing at the back of his mind it was scarcely likely. Victims of victims always come last, like the poor house-buyer at the end of some chain. That was how Henry explained it.

  `What kind of hearing?'

  `Don't really know, but not the real trial. A sort of trial before the trial. Won't be in the newspapers, but they mean to call some pathologist chap in to show how Mummy died or something. I'm afraid' — he swallowed, tears appearing at the rims of his eyes — 'she was stabbed before she was buried.' He looked at the pale and precocious face with its calm and disbelieving regard. 'I'm sorry darling. It isn't very nice. That man, the one who did it' — he could not bring himself to say the name — 'says he didn't. Didn't have the right kind of knife or something silly. It won't be very nice,' he repeated finally.

  Ìs that man in prison?' she demanded with sudden venom.

  `Yes.'

  `Will he stay there?'

  `Yes.'

  She stood and walked around the office so that he would not see the look of grim satisfaction on her face, then went back to the chair, picking up papers and putting them down as she went. "S'all right, Daddy. 'S'all right,' she muttered through perfect little teeth until she was back in the chair again looking like a miniature consultant. "S'all right, Daddy, even if it does go in the papers. I'm going to be a doctor, after all.'

  Àre you, darling?' First he knew. A moment's surprise distracted him.

  `Yes, I am,' she said firmly. 'Also a writer. I have to know about these things so I won't be shocked, Daddy. 'S'all right.'

  No, it wasn't all right. He was acutely uncomfortable with her calm authority and ghastly adult composure, felt the same frisson of dislike he had occasionally felt for her, oh, so dissimilar mother. Blundell was not a thoughtful man, merely cunning; he wondered for the first time what they had done, Yvonne and he, to create such a paragon. Should have been more children, he always said, there should have been more. ‘Can I have a son, please?' But no, she hadn't liked the idea. Producing Evelyn had been traumatic; leaving the crowded East End in search of more money and clearer air for the child he had then adored had been more traumatic still.

  He wondered if the women in his life had been in competition and, if so, why? What was it all about with both of them, and were the survivors only pretending to grieve? Why had hi
s darling daughter found her mother's death so easy to accept, mirroring his own lack of anguish? Tears of sheer frustration began to form again. He wanted a drink. His moist eyes slid to the cabinet in the corner, but he was interrupted by her words.

  `Can I go, Dad? To this hearing, I mean?'

  `To the what? The murder hearing?' His small mouth spluttered the words as his mind took in the meaning of her question. Surprise turned into outrage as his eyes slowly focused on her.

  'The hearing?' he repeated, incredulity in each syllable. 'What? With all that — '

  Ì want to know what happened, and I'm going to write medical books, Daddy.'

  `No,' he shouted. 'No you can't bloody go to any hearing for Christ's sake. How could you —

  Stop being so bloody . . . so bloody grown up.'

  `Don't swear, darling Daddy,' she replied lightly.

  But he had burst into a kind of howl, sat on the stool like a lonely dunce, head in his arms, well beyond his own slight control, all of him heaving with anger and sorrow, fat with the desire to scream. Wearily she stepped out again from behind the desk to stand behind his bent back patting it like a fragile and unfamiliar thing, absent half-blows, half-strokes, as if trying to raise a cough. "S'all right, Daddy, really. 'S'all right. Honest. Closing time now, Daddy. Go home to bed. Have a drink. It's good for you.'

  Evelyn knew what was good for Daddy. She could have chanted a list of what was good for Daddy, and did it to quell her own fury. William had guessed, as soon as they met at ten p.m., that Evelyn was very cross and very tired. He wondered if this not unfamiliar condition was one he could choose to ignore. 'Such a busy day,' she had said. 'Daddy's in bed now, goes to bed like a dog when it gets dark. What's the matter, William? 'S'all right, William, really it is. Stop opening your mouth.'

  How could it have been a busy day if her daddy was in bed already by nine-thirty?

  William's father never seemed to go to bed sober, which was a nuisance, and he cried sometimes and drank a lot, like Evelyn's dad. Still, he couldn't see how her day could have been as action-packed as his own, the detailed recitation of which, including all the buses and every single one of the shops, had taken half an hour and clearly bored her. She was stiff with crossness and, for once, openly strained.

  `Look,' he said placatingly, wheedling while postponing the other news, which he knew obscurely to be unpleasant, sensing without fully knowing why, that it would displease Evie more than most, dreading the disclosure. 'Look,' he said again, 'look what I've brought you.' Feeling in his pockets with stubby fingers, putting on the bed between them his small hoard of glittering things, trying to please desperately, giving it all away in one fell swoop.

  'These were down my trousers,' he boasted. 'I stitched two pairs of trousers together, see? All these things were right at the bottom, by the hem. They didn't find these . . .' He faltered on the last words, knowing he had blown it, told it all instead of waiting.

  They were sitting in the summerhouse den, Evelyn cross-legged on the mattress, lit by the butane lamp, dark hair falling on her shoulders, ears sparkling like the objects on the bed, which she was sweeping to the floor in a luminous arc. One violent movement of her arm and the diamante bits sprang into the air, hitting ceiling and wall, falling to the earthen floor in a series of uneven sounds. A gesture of contempt to his gesture of giving. Her face was the colour of clay, two red spots and a tight slit of a mouth.

  `Who's they, William? What do you mean, they? They what? They when? They where?'

  He shifted away from her, cowering, starting to shake. 'They,' he said stupidly. 'Them, I mean.'

  `Who's them?'

  `Policemen them.'

  Òh, shit,' she hissed. 'You got arrested again, you disgusting little berk. '

  `Please, ' said William. 'Please, Evelyn, I didn't say anything. Just told them I'd found some things outside a shop. Griffith's shop in Woodford, you know, the one you like. A man stopped me, then a woman came, then —

  She leaned towards him and slapped his face very hard. The plain ring on her finger as well as the fingers themselves left an imprint on his face, stigma of a small, remarkably strong hand. William shrieked briefly, a grunting little shriek of pain, louder than the sound of the falling objects, followed by a storm of sobbing. He crouched, knees to chin and head in knees, arms pulling self into self, hiding, hurting, and weeping, making his body as small as possible, shrinking away in despair with her strident voice in his ears penetrating his own enormous sobs.

  `What did you say to them, William? What did you say?'

  `Nothing, nothing, nothing. Only about the things I had and they found, nothing else.

  They didn't ask; I didn't chatter. Like you said. Like that big fat lawyer man said last time. If I said anything else, you said I wouldn't be able to see you, Evie, and I couldn't bear that. Didn't say nothing, nothing, nothing.'

  The last was a rising wail. Evelyn began to recover. 'Promise?' she asked. 'Promise, promise, promise?' The din he made was terrific. They might have been heard for miles: they had tested the den for sound, found it safe, but there was still too much noise.

  Her head ached. She began to pat his back, a circular motion with the palm of her striking hand but otherwise similar to the action she had used on her father only a few hours before. "S'all right, William. 'S'all right, really,' repeated again and again in her best there-there voice, "S'all right.' She was sick of saying it, speaking words like this and patting people, especially now with that monstrous fear stuck in her chest like an arrow bleeding into her lungs, making her gulp for air in the stuffy warmth of these dirty walls. All too much: she was not a grown-up after all.

  She pulled his hands from his face, turned his head towards her own, stared at him intently. 'Promise, William?'

  Òh, Evie, I did promise before. Please believe me, please.' Broken words from a tear-stained, dirt-stained face.

  She did believe. She had to believe, and in the reaction of relief that withdrew the arrow, she crouched behind him and hugged him fiercely, mind in an overdrive of impatience.

  Thinking how soon she could go home, plan, write her diary, sleep, maybe enjoy the luxury of crying herself, wondering if her bike, a possession quite secret from William, was still in the bushes where she had left it.

  'S'all right. Will, really. Honestly it is. Which shop was it, William? Tell me exactly which shop. It's important. Don't ask why, it just is. Sorry, sorry sorry.' She repeated the word like a litany, until the crying stopped.

  Ì hate them all,' said William finally. 'Hate them, hate them, want to burn them down. I'll show them.'

  `Nothing wrong in that,' said Evelyn. 'Tell me which shop.'

  Wide awake at three a.m., Helen wished that Branston were somewhere else, a foreign village, the kind she had visited and wanted to visit again, like a Spanish country village, where for all the silence and lack of light at this hour, the darkness seemed alive, a comfort rather than a dismissal. One long street where a dog would bark for a passerby, alerting the next dog in the next house, and the next, suspicious of movement, endlessly protective.

  Where sleep thus guarded was an end in itself, not a closing-down against the world as it was here, where all inhabitants were battened in hatches, pretending to sleep, their pets and children as silent as themselves behind double glazing, curtains drawn, blinds at full stretch.

  In contrast to the alien barking dogs and palpable breathing of real villages, Helen remembered next her own flat in Islington, a street where sleep was never universal. From her basement at any time of night she could hear traffic, distant trains, and from the other side of the house, footsteps on the pavement, late revellers, early starters, walkers, joggers, products of the night shift and city enterprises, living in a timeless zone. The bonus of the metropolis: constant humanity barring the sensation of loneliness, while in Branston people closed doors on their separate walls, switched a series of switches, and slept like battery hens.

  Shuffling the pillow, pu
tting one arm beneath it for comfort, her body turned sideways, she pictured the rooms of her London flat one by one. Did that ancient cooker still work? Would her plants live? Would the tenants have taken down her pictures? Did they tend the jungle of garden? Did children still climb over the wall from the school beyond, a Montessori for vandals who were too young yet to do harm. Her arm ached from lying across it, a dull discomfort provoked further by sharp recall of one terrifying night in her own home, remembering at the same time for how long after that she had clutched Bailey in the twilight hours to mitigate the nightmares, while now she merely clutched the pillow. The shock of her own withdrawal made her shut her eyes, afraid to wake him.

  `Helen?' His murmured and sleepy voice, a slight stirring from him, suddenly intensified with the speaking of her name, himself instinctively aware of her wakefulness, guarding her. 'Helen, love, what is it? You're wide awake . . . Come here, love.' Crossing what had seemed a mile of bed, folding his long arms around her, turning her, pressing her against his prickly chest, kissing her forehead and eyes. 'What is it, darling?' Saying to himself, If you will not come to me, I am still here and I shall not let you go. 'What is it?'

  She might have begun to tell him the half of it then in that silent dawn, grateful for his knowledge of her need to be hugged, for his constant reassurance, but as she snuggled into the embrace, ready to speak secrets, he to listen, the phone shrilled. Bailey was on call-out duty, worse than a doctor, a sound in the telephone buzz suggesting shattering relationships and bad news.

  He kissed her once, disentangled himself gently, moved out of bed with the lithe speed that always distinguished his passage from sleep to action, answered with a few terse words, including a question: 'Can it wait?' A silence for the explanation. 'I see. It can't wait; fire still burning. I'll be there, fifteen minutes.'