“I’m afraid you’ve lost me, rather.”
I knew what she had seen.
“Why didn’t I ever see it before?” she said.
“What?”
“Have you ever come across the name Christopher Davidson?”
“No,” I said. “Should I have?”
“And you’ve never seen a photograph of him?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Come with me,” she said, placing her cup down on the table and standing up.
“Sorry?”
“Upstairs. I want to show you something.”
She almost ran out of the room and up the wide, wooden staircase.
“Are you going to tell me what you’re talking about?”
We walked down a corridor lined with prints of the house and Dorset landscapes.
“In a minute. I just want to show you something.”
At the end of the corridor, she fumbled in her bag for her key.
“Come in,” she said.
She threw her bag onto the large bed and walked across the room to the triple-mirrored dressing table. As I shut the door and followed her, joining her by the mirrors, our reflections looked back at us, a strange triptych. She started to search through a pile of papers, some of which were in plastic wallet files. So it was true—she had built up quite a substantial amount of material on Crace, documents that might prove very useful indeed.
“I know it’s in here somewhere,” she said, her brows furrowing once more.
“What are you looking for?”
“Here, I’ve got it,” she said, holding up a copy of a black-and-white photograph. “Have you seen this before? Seen a picture of him before?”
“No. Why?”
“Can’t you see?”
“See what?”
“You and him—that you could be twins.”
I took the photograph from her hand and pretended to study it.
“I suppose there is some kind of superficial resemblance,” I said.
“No, it’s more than that. In a certain light, you look exactly the same. And when you ran your hand through your hair—”
“So what? Who is this?”
“It’s Christopher Davidson. Gordon Crace’s lover.”
I did the best I could to look shocked.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Yes, I see what you mean. But—”
“Exactly. Why did Gordon Crace choose you?”
“What happened to him, to this Christopher Davidson?”
“He died—committed suicide in 1967.”
I didn’t say anything, just continued to stare at the photograph.
“Do you think you’re going to confront him with this?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It does seem odd, unsettling.”
“Yes, I can imagine,” she said, biting the corner of her lip. “Do you feel he’s been totally honest with you?”
“Come to think of it, no, I don’t—especially after seeing this,” I said, gesturing toward the photograph. “I can’t quite get my head around it.”
“I suggest you think it over,” she said. “Give it some time.”
I took a deep breath. I wanted to give her the impression I was thinking aloud.
“Even though it is very strange, I’m sure there has to be some logical explanation for this. There must be. And to be honest, I do have to go back to Venice anyway. I need to get on with my novel.”
“Oh, really? So what will you do?”
“So, I’m going to return to Mr. Crace and, for the time being, not say anything at all.”
“Are you really sure? I wouldn’t want you to do it just for my sake.”
“No, no, I’m totally confident that’s the right thing to do. And I can’t afford not to go back.”
“And what will you say about Christopher Davidson?”
“Nothing. I’ll keep it to myself. After all, Mr. Crace’s private life is hardly my business, is it?”
Lavinia sat on the bed and ran her fingers through her hair.
“It does seem rather noble of you. I mean, if I were you, I’m not certain how I would have reacted.”
“Best not to think about it, that’s always been my philosophy,” I said, looking around the room. “But as I am going to go back, I may as well as take those documents you were talking about.”
“Oh yes, of course.”
She stood up and went over to the dressing table once more, where she began rifling through her files.
“Which ones did you say would be helpful?”
“I think Mr. Crace said he was missing things like his birth certificate, genealogical records, material that he said would help fix his place in the world.”
“You should be able to find a few things in here.”
She passed me a plastic file bulging with pieces of paper. Inside was a copy of his birth certificate, a large folded A3-size piece of paper on which someone had traced a spider’s trail of a family tree and some typed notes about Crace’s early life growing up in Edinburgh and the school where his father had once taught science.
“Thank you,” I said. “Mr. Crace will find this very helpful indeed. And…”
“Yes?”
“Did you manage to lay your hands on the synopsis we talked about as well?”
“Oh, surely now Mr. Crace had made his decision, he won’t be needing to see that any longer.”
“I do think he would feel more comfortable if he did see a copy of it.”
“I’m afraid I can’t give it to you just at this moment.”
“Never mind,” I said. “I’ll get this copied, and perhaps when I give the papers back to you, you could have it ready then. I’m conscious about not leaving Mr. Crace for too long.”
“Very well,” she said as she walked me to the door. “Thank you again for lunch, Adam. It’s really very kind of you.”
“No, it was my pleasure.”
As I opened the door and turned to say good-bye, Lavinia stepped forward and kissed me, lightly, on the cheek. She smelt of honeysuckle, the same sickly sweet fragrance that Signora Gondolini had been wearing the first time I heard Crace’s name.
“Thank you,” she said. “For everything.”
She thought she was so clever. She thought she had me wrapped around her little finger. I imagined her in her hotel room, sitting quietly and smiling to herself, enjoying the twinned sensations of anticipation and achievement. Not only did she believe that she was going to write Crace’s biography, that she had been given approval by the reclusive author himself, but she had spotted the physical similarity between Christopher Davidson and myself and, as such, had started to understand that she had a much stranger—and even more salable—subject on her hands than she had previously thought.
All that rot about her not wanting to put me under any pressure—I wonder what she would have said if I’d completely freaked out and had refused to go back to Venice. It almost made me wish that I could play the scene again just so I could see her reaction.
The truth of the matter was that I had her exactly where I wanted her. She had given me everything I needed—dates, places, context, genealogical documents, all the basic research on Crace’s early life that I could ever possibly want. Combined with my first-hand research, my day-to-day experience of living with Crace and Levenson’s evidence, the book was beginning to take shape.
Back at the pub, I cradled the clutch of pound coins in my sweaty palm, took a deep breath and dialed my old mobile number, making sure to prefix the call with 141 so he wouldn’t know where I was calling from. I knew it might take a while for Crace to ease himself out of his chair, place his book or glass of wine down, find the mobile, pick it up and work out which button he had to press, so I let it ring. Finally there was click on the line, and I started to feed the phone with money.
“Buon giorno?”
“Hello, Gordon. It’s me, Adam.”
“Adam? My dear, dear boy, I’m afraid you’ll have to speak up.
”
“How are you?” I shouted.
“Much better now that I’ve heard from you. I thought you had run off and deserted me.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch, just with everything to do with the funeral, you know. And my mother has been in a real state—tears, constantly questioning why, reliving memories from her childhood.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. But yes, the death of a parent is an intimation of mortality.”
I told him the details I had prepared earlier so as to give the invented experience a gloss of authenticity.
“Anyway, it’s all over now,” I added. “And I should be able to get the return flight I booked.”
“Oh, thank God. It’s been a nightmare without you.”
“But you are all right, aren’t you?”
“I have been feeling a little weak. Nothing major, so don’t worry. Just off-color, that’s all.”
“But has the girl from the shop—what was her name…Lucia—has she been coming in to check on you like I’d arranged?”
“Oh yes, she’s all right, nothing more than a little slip of a thing. Drops off the food and then goes. Actually, I’m pleased she doesn’t want to hang around.”
I was down to my last pound coin.
“Listen, Gordon, I’m going to have to go now, my money is running out.”
“Oh, really?”
“I’m afraid so. But listen, I’ll be back soon and we can catch up then.”
“Well, I’m pleased everything has gone to order over there.”
“Thank you.”
“I know death hath ten thousand several doors for men to take their exits.”
“What was that?”
The phone started to pip.
“Death—”
And we were cut off. I looked in my wallet for more change but had none. I could have gone to the bar to get some from the landlady, but I decided against it. As I went upstairs to my room and looked out of the window over the dark, brooding landscape, I thought of what Crace had just said to me. Death hath ten thousand several doors for men to take their exits. I wrote the sentence in my notebook, wondering where it was from. And then just the one word—death—over and over again.
The next day was glorious, crisp and bright, and I spent the afternoon walking, turning the various options over and over in my head. On my return, as I made my way back to the village in the fading light, I passed a pretty, dark-haired girl walking a border collie. There was something about her that reminded me of Eliza. I smiled as she walked by, but she seemed nervous and on edge. The collie caught a whiff of something, the trace of a rabbit or the scent of another dog, and bounded over to a nearby tree. The girl called for the dog, but it ignored her. She tried shouting its name, Robbie, once more, but her voice cracked, betraying an undertone of fear. I looked around us; we were alone. Our eyes met and I knew, in that instant, that she was afraid of me. She turned her head and started to walk away. I felt like running up to her, putting my hands on her dark red velvet jacket, telling her that she had completely the wrong idea about me. I could almost feel her soft skin on the tips of my fingers, almost smell her sweet aroma.
“Sorry, I—” I said to myself as she walked away, her dog now running after her.
I watched as she moved into the distance, disappearing through the trees and into the forest beyond. If only I’d had a chance to stop and talk to her, who knows what might have happened?
I continued to walk into the village, thinking about Eliza. As I approached a couple of farm outbuildings, I saw a figure walking in the woods ahead of me. I spotted a flash of red among the glow of the autumnal russets. Was it the girl I had just seen? I caught another glimpse of the color and then it disappeared. I carried on through the trees, following the sound of someone ahead, and watched until the figure came into view. It was a man wearing a maroon V-neck sweater, holding the branch of a tree with his right hand as he tried to catch his breath. His face was obscured as he bent forward, his left hand resting on his knee, and he was wheezing. It was Shaw.
I was about to call out to him when he eased himself upward, took out his asthma spray, inhaled quickly, coughed a little and then started to move forward. He was walking in the wrong direction for his cottage. What was he up to? I kept well back, making sure I was hidden by the trees, and started to follow him.
A few minutes farther down the track that skirted along the edge of the wood and from where you could see the village, Shaw emerged at the corner of a recently ploughed field. I watched as he walked down the dirt path, near the fence, and over the stile at the end. Waiting until he had gone out of view, I ran across the field, making sure to hide myself as I approached its bottom. I crouched down by a hedgerow but peeked over it and saw him disappearing into what looked like the shell of a derelict house. I checked to see if anyone was looking and then walked down a track toward him. On one side was an old wooden gate with traces of blue paint visible underneath a mass of ivy that led down an overgrown garden; on the other, a small, two-story house that looked like it hadn’t been lived in for years. There was no front door to speak of, merely a dirty wooden panel covered in traces of graffiti. Shaw disappeared inside. I waited, listening for Shaw’s wheezing, but heard nothing, so after a couple of minutes, I put my head through the opening. There was nothing but darkness.
After a while my eyes became accustomed to the gloom. I thought I could make out the outlines of a table and some chairs; the floor was covered in newspaper and old beer cans, and the walls were marked with rings of damp and yet more graffiti.
I edged my way in, careful not to upset anything on the cluttered, rubbish-strewn floor. I heard something creak upstairs and then the sound of footsteps. I moved over to the far corner of the dark room, using my fingers to feel the way, until I came to the bottom of the stairs. I pressed my foot down lightly and slowly crept up, but as I stood on the second from the last step, the old wood emitted a painful groan, as deep and haunting as the last breaths of a dying man. My body froze, my breathing stopped. It was only a matter of seconds before Shaw came out from one of the rooms and found me on the stairs. I waited and waited, but nothing happened. I looked behind me and thought about how I should leave before he discovered me, but then, at more or less the same moment, it came to me: I realized exactly where I was. I was standing at the top of the stairs in Chris’s old house, outside one of the rooms where he most probably wrote his diary. There was no way I was going to turn back now.
I moved slowly onto the top step and felt my way around the landing, guiding myself forward by the groove of an old picture rail. I felt the rail join the frame of a door and listened. Nothing. I moved on down the small corridor, around the corner, and stopped outside another door. In the space between the bottom of the door and the floorboards, I saw a dim glow, a light that seemed to be moving around the room. Shaw had a torch.
I heard the sound of something being moved, a piece of furniture perhaps, and then the creaking of some wood. Then nothing but Shaw’s interminable wheezing, followed by a few snorts and coughs and footsteps. The light from his torch was getting brighter. He was walking toward me.
I stepped back into the darkness. As he opened the door, I knocked the torch from his hand. It fell onto the floorboards, casting shards of light up and around the dusty space and onto Shaw’s frightened face before I grabbed it and shone it right into his eyes. The light bleached out any remaining life from his already ghastly face.
“What—” he said, gasping for breath.
“Do you want to tell me what you’ve been looking at in there? Or do you want me to beat it out of you?”
Shaw was so scared he couldn’t say anything.
“Let’s go and have a look, shall we?” I said, grabbing his puny hand and pulling him back into the room.
“There’s n-nothing here,” he said finally.
“I’m afraid I don’t quite believe you,” I said, shining the torch over the room.
An old dre
ssing table, complete with a cracked, dirty mirror, was swathed in cobwebs; a small frame hung on the wall, its canvas so blackened it was impossible to make out the details of the image; and the walls, once covered in rose-print wallpaper, were streaked with what looked like burn marks.
“It’s just my little retreat, somewhere where I like to get away from it all,” said Shaw.
“If you’re not careful, you’ll end up here on a permanent vacation—under the fucking floorboards.”
His eyes twitched. I looked over toward the dressing table, shining the torch in that direction.
“There’s nothing under the floorboards. Nothing, I tell you.”
“Well, Mr. Shaw, why don’t you show me?”
I pushed him toward the other side of the room.
“This isn’t the place you were telling me about, by any chance?” I said. “Or should I say, the one you didn’t want to tell me about—where you kept Chris’s diary.”
“No, no,” he shook his head. “I don’t know you what you mean.”
“Don’t you think one thousand pounds is an awful lot of money, Mr. Shaw?”
“Pardon?”
“I said, don’t you think one thousand pounds is an awful lot of money?”
“I suppose so.”
“That’s something we agree on.”
“It’s not that I’m not grateful, Mr. Woods, for the money. I am, I really am.”
“I’m glad to hear it. But for one thousand pounds, I expect the truth. You wouldn’t want to keep anything back from me, would you?”
“No, no, of course not.”
“Good. So now show me.”
The sound of his wheezing seemed to fill the dusty room.
“It’s not good for me health.”
“No, it’s probably not. So the sooner you show me, the sooner both of us can get out of here.”
“I was going to show you, honest I was.”
“So you are telling me there’s something else. Something you neglected to show me.”
“Yes, but—”
“Good. Let’s see it then.”
“I was going to contact you tonight.”
“Oh, really?”
“Only that as it is something very special I thought Mr…. Mr. Crace might want to place a…a separate price on it.”
The Lying Tongue Page 21
