It was Eleonora who began our first conversation, on that train twenty years ago; during one of my many spells of inattention she asked me what I thought of the book, and was it worth reading, and then wanted to know where I came from. And so I told her my story, and how I was now earning a living by giving English lessons. And so she became my student, and then later my wife. I like to think of her, reading a book with her feet up. And those awful slippers.
What, I wonder, would my father have made of the woman I married? I disappointed him in so many ways. The fact that we produced no offspring would no doubt have provided another instance of this.
How sad it must have been for him, when every father longs only to see his child grow up to do better than himself in every way; yet he could only watch me fail to reach one after another all the high standards which he set for me. Perhaps during those visits we made long ago to the railway track, he thought about all the possible futures I might have; as many and various as all the alternative children my parents might equally well have produced in my place. But Nature chose me, and I chose Eleonora.
It was not my intention, however, to speak of her, or of my father. I wish to return to the story of Duncan and Giovanna. All I remember is that it wasn’t going at all in the way that I expected when it was a tale which lived only in my imagination. Strange, that the act of writing should deflect one’s ideas so much from their proper course – I thought I knew by now how I wanted to fashion that opening scene, and yet once I actually began putting pen to paper, it soon wandered off in quite the wrong direction. Sadly, I can see only one solution to the problem. I shall have to start again.
14
It sounded no different from pushing an old, empty car down over a hill in order to get rid of it; the speed at which it had approached the bend, and the efforts of the driver to save himself – if he had had time to make any – did nothing to alter the impression that it was only useless junk which was crashing heavily in the darkness through low bushes. And the hillside was being littered with the contents of a suitcase – socks, underwear, trousers – and the contents of a briefcase also, or perhaps a file or folder – papers were being scattered.
And when Duncan wasn’t looking out of the window of the train he was reading a story by Alfredo Galli.
For three days, Lorenzo had watched the car on the Via Salvatore, and the inexplicable movements of those whose world it overlapped. Those for whom it was not simply another parked vehicle, but for whom it had purpose, and significance.
For three days, he had watched in the hope that there would be some gesture, some manifestation of meaning in the scenes which his binoculars revealed to him – those spasmodic vignettes, framed by a circle of darkness, as one after another the passers-by entered and then left his field of vision, until at last he would see once more one of those whom he had come to recognize. There were two of them – a man and a woman. There was no logic in the times when they might choose to appear, but he had seen them repeatedly. One or other would come near the car, and hesitate as if waiting for something. Their movements made little sense, and yet he faithfully noted everything he saw; made a detailed record in his small black notebook. That the two were members of the June the Seventh Brigade seemed now to Lorenzo to be quite certain. All that remained, was to wait and see what it was they were going to do.
And when Duncan wasn’t reading, he was staring out of the window of the train, and thinking again about his father. Only the barest of memories – Duncan was just four when he died. And yet that half-remembered figure, hazy and god-like, has been watching over him ever since.
His father sitting at his desk, rattling away on the typewriter; or playing with him on his knee. Hard to say how much was really remembered, and how much invented. But whenever these pictures surfaced, Duncan felt once more inside himself that anger which would never leave him until he could find out exactly how, and why, and who.
Duncan’s mother took him to live in York after it happened – Cambridge had too many memories for her. And it is there that his own recollection of the past begins to crystallize into something having order and coherence. The many times he asked her to tell him about his father – what he was like, what he wore, did he smoke a pipe? And the gradual discovery of clues.
For three days, the darkened hotel room had been Lorenzo’s world – his only interest, the scene he saw through the binoculars, of the street below. Quite what Lorenzo’s life consisted of, does not concern us here. Whether he thought of his wife and children, or imagined himself to have a wife and children where none in fact existed – does this make any difference to his silent vigil? If he were to die in the course of duty, would it matter if he were to be mourned by many, or by none? And what difference also would it make, if those who mourned (supposing there to be any) were not informed of the true facts of Lorenzo’s death (since it would all have to be kept utterly secret), but were told instead that he had met an unfortunate accident?
His father had just begun writing a book when he died – an official history of revolution in England. Somehow, this fact seemed crucial. He had gone to Scotland to work on it, and crashed shortly after he began the journey back to Cambridge.
Duncan’s mother would never say much about it; over the years, Duncan had to work on his own theories. And gradually, a story emerged in fragments. He knew that Charles King, his father’s closest friend, left Cambridge to live in Leeds soon after the accident, and it seemed that perhaps he might know something. But Duncan’s mother was reluctant to have any contact with King and his wife, even though King tried to keep in touch. Which only made Duncan all the more eager to ask him about it.
Now Duncan saw that the train had reached the first station, and people were getting on. A foreign girl asked him if the seat opposite was free, and then sat down. Though he would have preferred to have been left alone with his thoughts, and his book.
Lorenzo could check the hour not only by his watch, but also by the clock on the bank across the street. And he soon came to know how the changing of the hours was reflected in the changing light of the street, and the changing pattern of traffic which moved through it. Sitting patiently by the window, he began to feel that he too was part of some great cycle of which he had previously been only vaguely aware. He saw the arc of the sun each day as it crossed the narrow strip of sky above him, and he thought of the earth’s slow rotation, and the gradual turning of the seasons, and the unending course of birth and death in the midst of which he found himself, a single lonely soul, linked mysteriously with the two people who came and went and revealed themselves to the lenses of his binoculars.
When Duncan was old enough to go to university he was given a place at Leeds to study history. King suggested that Duncan come and live with them, and despite everything his mother said to try and dissuade him, Duncan was keen to have such an opportunity of getting to know the man who had been so close to his father.
But he soon found that whatever King knew about the circumstances of Robert Waters’ death, he would reveal nothing. It seemed almost as if King had something to hide.
‘I see you’re reading Alfredo Galli.’ The girl is speaking to him – and although Duncan makes no more than a minimal response, she seems disposed to continue. ‘I read the Theft; that’s an interesting book. It’s about two people who never meet. She works in a library, and he always comes in on a Friday, which is her day off, and every week he steals a book. You know, Galli has this idea that our whole life is just a story, and there are all these other ways the story could go, but they somehow get stolen from us. It’s a nice idea, I think.’
While she speaks, Duncan is reminded of the image (photographed, in lurid colours) of the father who had been stolen from him, and the life which had been stolen from him. Yes, he says, it’s a nice idea. And he returns to his book.
15
Two of them – a man and a woman. Young and good looking. Lorenzo imagined them to be lovers; there was no evidence for this, it wa
s a thought which entered his mind and remained there with the spurious weight of fact. Nevertheless, it was not difficult for him to weave around them a myriad of lives which would explain how they had come to be involved in this sordid business. He pitied them both; they looked so ordinary – gentle, even – and yet he knew that they must be implicated in acts of callous violence.
That anger; diffuse and unable to be directed or controlled. The car tumbling – the callous violence of this act. The white Morris Commonwealth crashing through the barrier. And the refusal of those who understood it to admit their involvement.
For three days, Lorenzo observed patiently, making all the while a careful note of what he saw. He never left his hotel room, except to go to the toilet further along the corridor. And he made sure that whenever he did this, there was no-one else about, who might recognize him. While he was in the hotel, it was as if he no longer existed – as though he had been temporarily removed from the world, in order that he could be nothing but an unseen pair of eyes.
Three times a day he would hear the trundling wheels in the corridor, of the trolley on which his food was brought. There would be a knock on the door, and then the sound of the trolley moving away. When all was quiet, he would open the door of his dark, curtained room, and the artificial light of the corridor would meet him. On the floor, he would see his meal on a tray. If his surveillance continued long enough, then no doubt he would begin to detect another level in the hierarchy of recurring cycles. He would begin to identify the days according to the menu.
King’s refusal ever to discuss the matter – almost as if he were hiding something. But it was plain that the crash could not have been an accident (no other vehicle involved, no witnesses). And the sheaf of typed notes, dirty and crumpled, which were sent back afterwards (supposedly those found at the scene) – these could not have been the work of Robert Waters.
Had Duncan any wish to talk to the girl sitting opposite him, he might have told her his theory about the crash, a theory against which he still had found no contradictory evidence:
Robert Waters was working on an official book; a privileged position for which he would have needed security clearance. Secret papers would have been open to his inspection. And in the course of his work he found out more than they wanted him to (what might he have found out?). He wrote about things they didn’t want discussed – refused to play the game of rewriting history to suit the Party. He became dangerous to them; and so they had to kill him. They sabotaged his car; made it crash, then stole all his notes – all his dangerous discoveries. They picked over the wreckage on the hillside, and cared nothing for the man they had killed (or left for dead). All they wanted were his papers. And the ones which were sent back weeks later – those crumpled pages – were the work of a third-rate hack; a parody of Robert Waters’ style. Perhaps it was written after the crash, in an office somewhere, then made to look soiled. Or they might have prepared it all beforehand, then stood on the hillside in the night, beside the overturned car, and thrown the sheets one at a time into the drizzle, for someone else to find. Perhaps this is how it was.
But Duncan had no wish to talk to the girl. He told her none of this.
For three days Lorenzo had been living amongst the shadows of his curtained hotel room. He had watched the two suspects come separately to the car – stand near it; pause and look around. The man might light a cigarette; the woman check her watch. Each would hesitate purposefully. Why should they wait like this, beside the car? What event did they expect?
The refusal of everyone to talk about the crash – all too scared for their own skins, in those days. But now at last the old order had fallen, and all the files had been opened. King didn’t want Duncan to go. ‘We all did things in those days we’d prefer to forget about.’ That’s what he said – or something like it. So that they got into that stupid argument.
The ticket collector is coming down the carriage. Duncan brings the ticket from his wallet, and the girl reaches for her bag.
‘Thank you. Right. There you are love. Thank you sir.’ The scrutiny of the ticket collector. ‘Ah. You’ve got a white saver here.’
‘Yes. It’s a white day today, isn’t it?’
‘No, it’s pink savers or standard fare today sir. I’m afraid you’ll have to pay the difference.’ The ticket collector consults the yellowed pages of his fare manual. ‘That’s another two pounds please.’
Duncan looks in his wallet and finds a one pound note and four shillings in change. The ticket collector offers to take his name and address so he can send the money. The girl butts in.
‘Please, how much do you need?’
‘Oh, no, it’s alright.’
‘Please, what do you need? I have two pounds, look. Take it, please.’
She insists, so he takes six shillings; the collector pockets the money and moves on. Duncan offers to pay it back, but knows he never will.
‘You know,’ she says, ‘in Italy it wouldn’t be enough to buy a stamp.’
This is meant to make him feel better, but instead it only reminds Duncan of how poor he must seem to her.
‘I left myself a bit short,’ he says. ‘I spent more than I intended while I was in London.’
‘Ah yes, I noticed there are a lot of foreign goods in the shops now.’
‘It wasn’t shopping that did it – I had to pay to see some files.’
The Office of Public Records was not the sort of building Duncan had expected. Smaller than he had imagined. And only a shabby waiting room for the public, with a wooden counter at one end, and a glimpse of filing cabinets, rows of them, stretching from floor to ceiling. But only a glimpse. This was nothing more than an ante-chamber. This was nothing more than the part they allowed you to see, and hence automatically insignificant.
At first no one, then at last a clerk appeared, and took the details from Duncan’s identity card before he could even explain why he was there. And then Duncan said it was his father’s file he wanted to see, and the clerk told him you could only see your own file, unless you had a court order. And to Duncan, these grinding obstacles seemed all too familiar. Bureaucracy is always the last thing to change.
He waited for a quarter of an hour while the clerk went to look for his file. When the clerk came back, he told him there was nothing in his name, and Duncan felt almost disappointed. Then Duncan said again that it was his father’s file he was interested in, Robert Waters, and the clerk told him again that in that case the normal procedure was to obtain a court order first. And when the clerk mentioned the ‘normal procedure’, Duncan realized that nothing had changed. He asked the clerk if he could at least tell him whether a file on his father existed, and the clerk said that he could go and look, but there would be a fee. How much? The clerk was looking at Duncan and trying to guess his worth. One pound, he said. And would any part of the file be open for inspection without a court order? The clerk rubbed his chin and thought about it. Perhaps; it would depend. And would there be a fee for that as well? Oh yes, said the clerk, of course. And now the clerk scribbled something on a piece of paper, and looked at it earnestly, and thought for a moment. Five pounds, he said, and I’ll bring you whatever I can.
The clerk took Duncan’s last five pound note, and went away again. Duncan sat down on the bench and waited, staring at the varied yellows and browns of the stained walls. The clerk had probably gone away to read the newspaper while he tried to make his mind up whether he could screw this one for any more. But five pounds is a lot to hand over in one go. He would have to come up with something.
Half an hour later, the clerk came back again behind the counter. Now he was carrying a grey folder, like a slim box. He told Duncan to step through the side door and follow him. They walked in silence along a narrow, featureless corridor, Duncan’s shoes squeaking on the floor as he kept pace. Then they reached the reading room, where an attendant sat dozing in a corner. The clerk put the file on the long table in the centre of the room, told Duncan to give it
back to the attendant when he was finished, and then left. Duncan sat down and opened the file. A bundle of papers was held down by a clip at the side which he loosened so as to lift out the sheets.
‘Sssst!’ The attendant shook his finger at him. There was no one else in the silent room, but the attendant acted as if they were in a crowded library; using only angry gestures to make Duncan realize that he must not remove anything from the file.
But Duncan soon realized that things already had been removed; the page numbers were haphazard, and reference was made to items not present. The clerk had probably kept back most of the contents so as to earn himself some more money later on. What was left told Duncan nothing new. There were the bare facts; date of birth, places of residence, employment details. Then part of the report from the inquest: his father was driving alone, and he had left the road at speed, going through the barrier and down the hillside. Death from multiple injuries sustained during the crash. All documents found at the scene had been given security clearance and released to the next of kin. No other vehicle involved, and driving conditions good, although the road required care, particularly at night. Verdict: misadventure. All of this, Duncan knew already.
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