Now there was no denying its intensity. She had not only plucked up courage, she had wound herself to a pitch of readiness that left her unable any longer to suppress the urge.
‘Yes, we should’ve told you.’
The words were blurted out in a rush, as if they were so much projectile vomit. In the immediate aftermath their smell seemed to stifle him. He had expected her to talk about herself, but the emphasis on ‘we’ had the effect of a shock. Then she repeated more slowly:
‘Yes, we should’ve told you.’
She seemed to be speaking to herself. He waited. Then:
‘Because we should never have married.’
This seemed to come from another planet or universe.
‘If we’d known.’
This quietly spoken admission was as fragmentary as an artefact from pre-Roman history.
‘Oh, I know we should’ve.’
This time she looked away towards the slowly moving drapes.
‘But we never did, Joey, and I know we should’ve done.’
He stared up at the ceiling. Two flies circled round a red lampshade that looked like an upturned bowl. What the hell was she talking about?
As a confession it perhaps paved the way for the much more serious admission that, as parents, they had never loved each other and had never brought love into their home. He was prepared to hear that. Leo, after all, had said that his mother had something to say. But this was nothing new. He knew all that.
Things, though, were beginning to get out of focus. The carousel was beginning to go dizzyingly round again. He was in danger of being thrown off. He was spinning. The silent flies had stopped their crazy circuits.
‘What?’ he protested. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I wish, I wish,’ his mother was saying in her fraught way. ‘I never wanted to talk about it. I wanted it to be a secret I had left behind, like a toy I didn’t want any more. I wished, I wished for that. But it kept on coming back. I kept on having to believe it.’
The pressure of her words left Joe frightened to stop her and yet at the same time they weighed on him so much he began to gasp for breath.
‘You see your father and I discovered something. We were shocked – I mean it, really shocked. His DNA, my DNA, they matched. We were told there was some high percentage of likelihood. And we couldn’t be sure. We couldn’t trace our backgrounds. We’d been fathered during the war but then we’d been adopted by different families. Mine had been Franco-Russian. Certain steps had been taken to hide the real birth father, you see. Your father had the Greville connection, which helped him, I think, to qualify. We met when he was an intern at Barts. I’d broken my leg and he was very good-looking. No, I’m, you know, straying from the point. The point is that our father, whoever he was, it must have been someone very rich to be able to get us adopted so well, you know what I mean?’
Joe managed to retain a little of what she was saying despite the increasing speed of the carousel in his head. He was spinning crazily from one moment to the next. Through her words came the loud purr of the electric fan, deafening one moment, soft the next, and he made out vaguely her claim that an agency employed to seek out possible heirs of the Hazell fortune had found Dr and Mrs Richter resident in Wimbledon, London. Once the relationship had been proved, documents had had to be signed ensuring no claims could be made. But to admit the likely criminality of the relationship or what it implied – that was impossible! It was too shameful!
She had nevertheless signed, but his father had refused. As a doctor, he couldn’t allow himself to sign, however secret it might be, and, more important, there was his own mother to be considered. So he took refuge in drink.
‘You know what he was like, Joey dear. Your father drank too much. He had always been a drinker, but it got worse over time. And then, to cut a long story short, I gave up. I came out here to LA in search of my real father or the person I thought was my real father, only to find he didn’t live here any more, but by a lucky chance I met dear Leo and found happiness here in Zuma Beach. I say “happiness” because I am happy here, but the stress of it all, well, it made the volcano erupt, do you know what I mean? I was diagnosed with the dreaded – well, you know what! But it’s worked, the treatment’s worked, thank heavens, and so I really have found happiness here. But you as Jacob Richter’s grandson, Joe dear, you have all the proof, everything… So that’s what I wanted to tell you.’
That’s what she wanted to tell me! That was his mother’s ‘truth’! He was yawning already as the ‘truth’ of his parents’ almost daily quarrels merged into the whizzing, ungovernable spin of the carousel.
‘Ha, I’m the grandson of a wizard!’
His laugh hurt his chest. His mother, gesturing elegantly towards the window beside his bed, said: ‘Oh, I don’t think so! He was an old man when we learned about it and we should’ve told you.’
‘He was a wizard, wasn’t he?’
‘Perhaps, perhaps. But as your mother and father, it was our responsibility, you know, to tell you. Only we didn’t.’ She blew her nose again.
‘They fuck you up,’ he said.
‘What did you say, dear?’
‘I was quoting.’
‘Quoting?’
‘I was quoting Philip Larkin.’
‘Who?’
‘A poet.’
‘But that’s not poetry!’
‘Oh, yes, it is!’
By that evening he was feverish. He was not fit enough for several days to continue the police questioning. When it happened, many of the details, even the sequence of events seemed to swim about in his memory and puzzle him by failing to cohere into a proper narrative. After about an hour he was so exhausted that the interview was terminated. By which time, it transpired, other evidence had come to light. That had not been enough to take the heat out of any suspicion of Joe’s complicity, but his help in shedding light on what seemed to be a complex issue of Russian politics eventually cleared him of any blame. To the same extent, the detective had to be satisfied for the time being with admitting that the gunman had not been traced. He had ‘gone clean off the radar.’
For Joe this mattered less than his own guilt. Ben had wanted to disappear and he had disappeared. He had not told anyone his exact location, but Joe out of his own lack of forethought had shown the Old Believers where he might be. No doubt it was not the first time an ‘enemy’ of theirs had ‘disappeared’ conveniently. Anger, then, as much as fright came in the wake of the realization, strangely bolstered by the extraordinary thought that he, Joseph Richter, had been awarded an unexpected heritage of wizardry by what his mother had told him. If the cloak of invisibility had not saved Ben, then, guilt or no guilt, the justifiable vengeance of a Frankenstein de nos jours might prove stronger in the end than any bullet.
‘Joe, I have some news for you.’ It was Leo speaking. As ever immaculate, he sat looking at Joe where his mother had sat. ‘You okay? You had breakfast?’
‘I’m okay, Leo.’
‘So this is my news.’ He smiled exceedingly warmly as he spoke, savouring the pleasure of the words. ‘You remember Martha? Well, Martha’s changed her mind. One stubborn old lady, but she’s changed her mind. She’s ready to tell everything. She’s going to sing. She’s going to tell all about San Jorge, her late husband, what kind of a Frankenstein he was and all because – all because she knows you, Joe, have got the power.’
‘I’m not going back there, Leo.’
‘I’m saying you’ve got the power, that’s all I’m saying. And your mother, bless her, says you’re well enough now to sing for your supper. Just put it all on this gizmo here. Can you do this for me?’
A Tablet PC was handed across.
‘Another HE product?’
Leo smiled sarcastically. ‘It’s the best.’
Joe, still propped up as he was in the bed beside the window, no longer had wires attached, nor a bandage on his chest, just a sore abrasion and bruising. The fever having receded, he
could now recognise exactly where he was. He also recognised he had become normal after a period of assuming that after-shock and illness were the only true reality. He agreed to Leo’s request.
‘Just be factual,’ Leo said. He ran a hand round his chin. ‘Remember the whole show may be a fake. You’re no more likely to have Vladimir Ilych Lenin in your background than I am. The supposed DNA evidence could be corrupted. Where’d your friend get it from, eh? I just want you to state such facts as you know absolutely truthfully. You’ve got just one qualification, to my mind and that is quite simple: You’ve got the power! No one else has got that.’
He wrote what he remembered. No names were mentioned. Once it was in Leo’s hands he knew it would fairly quickly be re-edited for release on the Kamen website without any attribution of authorship. If Leo could smell money in a project, he would exploit it till it squeaked and the louder the squeak, the better. The story Joe had to tell had limited squeak potential, in his opinion. It could only have value in combination with Martha’s story. Then it might make a fairly loud squeak. After all, it was likely to be accompanied by the internationally far more prestigious story of the recent sale to a Russian oligarch of a controlling interest in the giant commercial empire known as HazelltronE Electronics.
A week later he strolled down to the Pacific Coast Highway and crossed over onto Zuma Beach. The surf was coming up nicely. The march of the white-fronted ranks of waves brought in surfers on their crests, just as the long stretch of sand attracted crowds of Angelenos, prone or supine, enjoying the indulgent Californian sun. The free car parks were filling up. Beach games were being played. Joe would have joined them if he had not felt embarrassed by the scarring on his chest and the pallor of his skin. He confined himself to leaning on railings overlooking the beach. A man came close to him. It was an invasion of his social space, maybe to be sold something, propositioned, mugged, he could not guess what, but he instantly tried to move away.
‘Don’t, Mr Richter. Don’t move. And don’t look round.’
‘What the hell?’
‘Don’t look round at me, Mr Richter. I want to tell you something.’
Joe stared at the lines of waves. The voice was accented. It came close to his ear but had a stage-whisper manner. It sounded quite clear against the background noise of traffic on the highway, cars moving along the lines of parked vehicles and the noise of crashing waves coming through a rustle of nearby laughter and cries.
‘Old Believers did not do it. The homicide in Andover Avenue reported recently. They didn’t do it. Don’t look round. I want to tell you they didn’t do it.’
Joe considered a moment. Who the hell was this anonymous informant? He did not look round. The intentness of the voice hinted clearly enough that the message was meant to be believed. There was an additional hint, improbable though it was, of friendliness.
‘So who did it?’
‘I am not here to tell you that. I am here to tell you that you have our support. No, don’t look round. You have our support because you have the power. Trust me. We know who you are. Please, Mr Richter, watch the waves. Don’t look round.’
The pressure of the man’s body against Joe’s eased at that point. He had obviously gone, but two children loudly yelling about ice creams dashed past behind Joe and a man on a stretch of sand below him started shouting up at a woman leaning on the same railing a few feet away, so when he did look round there was no obviously identifiable man to be picked out from among the crowds of people in their holiday clothes already thronging the sidewalk. The sun, in any case, was beginning to burn the back of his neck. He reckoned it was time to move on, which he did, more from a sense of being targeted than caution over the heat, so he turned round in readiness to cross the highway and was struck by the sight of house roofs on the rising plateaux of land above him surmounted by tall, stick-like palms with unruly hair-dos of fronds burning green against skies of immaculate cobalt blue.
21
The skies were overcast and an intermittent light drizzle soon activated the taxi’s wipers once it left Heathrow. He had no real sense of a return. All he had wanted for many days was Jenny’s smile and all the comfort of being with her. Now all he saw was a suburban two-storey world of semi-detached houses veiled in drizzle and stop-start traffic of every description and shopping precincts and then high-rise blocks of flats sticking up like rocks against a sea of cloud. He could tell himself ‘I love you, Jenny,’ but all manner of barriers to such candour stuck out in his own mind. Career-wise, for example, she so outshone him, he could scarcely feel self-pity at his own virtual eclipse. He smiled wryly out of the taxi’s windows.
For instance, he would have to go back to California as principal witness. That was clear. Leo had bankrolled the bail. As for the future, RGD had made a tentative offer to renew his job. This would take him back to square one and aroused another layer of complication. He had told himself he would have to be in touch with Gloria, which would mean trying to explain as sympathetically as possible what had happened to Ben and then, of course, there would be Martha, etc., etc., on top of which were the terms and conditions of anonymity imposed on him by Leo, not to mention the legacy bequeathed him by what his mother had said. He was shackled by the moral indebtedness of all these commitments.
On reaching Inchbald Terrace, he found another commitment. It had been agreed he could stay there and reoccupy the little pantry of a bedroom. The flat was empty, but the lines of trains visible through the bedroom window were still moving along the embankment as sinuously in their silent motion as long colourful snakes. Through the light midday rain he watched them before opening the mail Jenny had obviously left for him on the table beside her old laptop. These were an estimate of electricity supposedly used at the Courtier Street de luxe studio flat, a bank statement, an unwelcome message from HMRC, an invitation to a reunion at his old school and, finally, a letter addressed to him in an unfamiliar hand.
It was unfamiliar because it was Emily Boscombe’s handwriting. He tore it open. Dated three weeks previously, it announced that both she and his grandmother had returned to Brighton, but she was very troubled about Mrs Greville’s health. There was a subtext, though.
‘She is now in her late eighties, you know, and full of complaints about her health (she never likes to admit it), which is not so very surprising, knowing her, and I hope you will not take exception to my mentioning it. Recently she has also become very disagreeable because her flat overlooking the front was not left very clean after the holiday tenants went. She complains the cleaning woman is about as much use as a chocolate ashtray. And poor old Brighton is flocking with gays, stiff with them, she says. She spends every day watching the seafront, which she says she will go on doing as long as she can afford it.
‘This brings me to the reason why I am writing. She has asked me to write to you, Mr Joseph, on her behalf to inquire whether, on the sale of the Wimbledon property, there might be some financial help available, as times are now very hard.
‘Please forgive me for writing so briefly. Sincerely yours, in haste, and with apologies, Emily Boscombe (Mrs)’
So that was it! He could well understand that his grandmother had browbeaten Emily into holding out this sort of begging bowl. It was her Greville manner. In fact, she had probably lived most of her life as a lie in denying or simply ignoring her son’s birth father by relegating the shame and blame of it to a dustbin labelled ‘old Richter stuff’. The last thing she would have done is admit the truth. Joe had sympathy for that. He knew it explained a great deal. He also knew he had another immediate priority, which was to visit the Shangri-La of his boyhood and adolescence, his home, empty now for several weeks.
The trees overhanging the short driveway were hanging very low in the wet when he stepped out of the taxi from Wimbledon station. Shrubbery glistened equally wetly in the small front garden where the unmown patch of lawn had grown almost a foot high. In the house itself things were different, as he would have expected, know
ing Emily Boscombe and her fits of fastidiousness. He found all the furniture neatly put back in its customary place, carpets vacuumed and ornaments dusted. For the first time in his life he realized that what had been his home had quietly morphed itself into the equivalent of a museum dedicated to a dead past. Room after room in the late afternoon quiet had the strange, sterile feel of a place specially arranged for exhibition purposes and waiting to be gawped at and mused over.
He could see himself reflected in mirrors; his shadow moved across a wall; his weight made the staircase creak just as his father’s footsteps had done; the doors squeaked as he opened them. He was admitted vaguely into a past that had left bits of it behind as reminders. His own bedroom, for instance, unoccupied for three or more years, especially since his father’s death, contained the notorious ‘bank box’ on a table by the window, though otherwise it was as he remembered it. The cup he had won for boxing was still on the mantelpiece. Above it on the wall was the framed and glazed photograph of his school’s cricket team, his own face among two rows of serious teenage faces staring straight ahead, all in impeccable whites and blue striped caps. The reunion invite would bring him into contact with some of them again. Then there was a long familiar, dark-stained chest-of-drawers. The small group of books on top of it were propped up in place by china bookends shaped into small statuettes of Admiral Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington, objects inherited, so he had been told, from a Greville relative. The only other items of furniture were a large wardrobe exuding a faint aroma of mothballs when opened, a wicker chair and, of course, the bed, covered now in a faded yellow counterpane. Long disuse, dust (Emily Boscombe had evidently given up on it) and the ageing smell of old carpet lent the air of the room a historic validity of sorts. In antiquarian terms, it was obviously right. It was Joseph Richter’s. It could never be anyone else’s. But he was not living in it any more.
Not that he liked it or wanted to preserve it. It had no keepsake value for him. He had lived in this room and this house most of his boyhood and all his adolescence, but now he realized for the first time why it had never seemed a home. There had always been the unspeakable in the atmosphere. Perhaps it had permeated the brickwork, the plasterwork, the floorboards. It had leached into the air of every room and imposed a kind of censorship on its occupants.
Mr Frankenstein Page 30
