A Question of Guilt

Home > Other > A Question of Guilt > Page 20
A Question of Guilt Page 20

by Frances Fyfield


  ‘Sir? Those observations. On Jaskowski’s sons and the others … I didn’t really …’

  ‘I know. Was it all of them you missed, or only some?’

  ‘I did the first.’ Ryan was dismayed to find tears of shame pricking his pinkened eyelids. Silence, as he prepared to hand back the keys to sleep.

  ‘Go and get some rest, man, before you hit the traffic or the floor. Get out. I’ll book you off sick, and see you later.’ The quietness of the voice was not a dangerous softness, no threat in it. Ryan’s half-hearted, sheepish smile was met by a rarer smile conveying the resigned forgiveness Bailey half felt, but not the chronic unease which lay behind it as Ryan gratefully disappeared.

  Who to tell of this nagging, nameless doubt, this niggling dread of nastiness in the streets daft Ryan had failed to watch, and who would understand the frustrated sympathy he felt for him, a pity not born of approval, but the same old crippling pity he felt for anything alive and in need? Oh, for anger, for the luxury of banging a table with a fist and wanting to strike the man or woman who let you down, instead of his own pathetic blandness, feeble forgiveness, acceptance of all shades of grey without black or white. Ryan made Bailey feel wretched, frustrated by irritation and the urge to help. Felt himself a cold fish who never shouted, never even objected, never needed enough himself to do so until now. He sighed, tempted by the telephone. Phoning Helen was becoming a habit, but she always knew what to do.

  Ryan slept, coasting into dreams of awkward, guilty, erotic thoughts of the road where he lived, his wife biting the pillow and calculating alimony with sixteen shirts on the line; the street where Annie dwelt, still crying in her bed. May he be saved from such awful powers to influence lives.

  Passing through Annie’s street, Edward walked as he had walked for an hour in square circles, plotting a route, mapping the landscape like an explorer, adding and subtracting the distances, looking for trees and shadows, never far from target, planning the best way home, the best way in, so much more scientific than his father, less clammy in his clothes, using planning as a way of postponing, unscientifically afraid. Papa Jaskowski had retreated and advanced on the prey even before she had assumed the status of a sacrifice, he had been terrified of the dark: while Edward was in his element, one advantage over Dad, as well as freedom from all the moral inhibitions Dad had acquired with years. Not the inheritance of a son who cared for nothing, respected nothing, hated the existences he envied, knew no law which made sense, and no reason to regard life as precious.

  The very shape of his tutor pressed on him, walking beside him like a guardian angel, protecting him from the desire to run away, hiding him from any chance of failure, encouraging the self-conscious professionalism which made him want not only the end result, but the achievement of it in a series of tidy steps, each boosting confidence. An endless conversation in his mind, less lonely than addressing all the tactical issues to himself: Edward, how can you be so foolish, clever boy like you, you know you must make a swift escape; you know you can not walk out of the front door after like any casual visitor, find another way. Don’t go home tonight until you do, especially not my home, I would despise you. I do not pay you for stupidity or laziness.

  Armed thus, he first found the way out on the seventh casual circle of the block. Through the iron railings he could see the lights on the backs beyond, marvelled how they even illuminated the right house for him, counting the numbers carefully from the bottom of the road. All the rest would follow sooner rather than later, but then there was this sudden floppy tiredness, the knowledge of not wanting any of this until he was far older, braver and less ashamed of the fear. She was waving its red flag in front of him like a challenge, sneering at him. Cold, but too late to turn back: he would have to conquer it, but it chilled him to the marrow all the same.

  He rewarded the effort; pizza from the takeaway, with milkshake. Jaskowski Junior, impure child, measuring his own pace, granted himself small bribes for his own achievements.

  Peter’s breathing was laboured with the effort of thought. His brow was creased, tongue caught into one side of mouth as his face twisted in concentration, but despite it all, the egg yolk slipped from the half shell he had been using to catch it, leaving the white in the other half. That, she had explained, was the idea, although it did not always work. The yolk slithered: he tipped it deftly into his palm, and looked up at her with a half smile of regret, and a mouth of mild distaste at the slimy feel of it.

  ‘Never mind. You’ve managed to save the white. Here, put the yolk in this cup. You did wash your hands, didn’t you? You did? We can still use it. OK. Now, what did I say we had to do next?’

  The face screwed itself into memory mould, a face he exaggerated because it so often made her laugh. ‘Mix,’ he stated firmly. ‘Mix with milk. Whip it up, with this,’ he snatched a fork from the table and presented it to her. ‘Then we put it all in the floury stuff. Then it’s done.’

  ‘Pretty good. Wait till you see what happens then. We get even stickier. Where did you put the flour?’

  ‘Here.’ He dipped one finger into the bag, and placed a white brand on his nose. There was a comic lurking: whoever he might have entertained apart from this select audience, Helen did not know, but he never failed to entertain her. She snatched the flour packet from his hand.

  ‘Now listen, all this goes over your head in a minute. Pay attention: watch, or however are you going to be able to make scones by yourself?’

  ‘I’m being good now,’ another pulled face. As impossible to reproach him now as it had been on the first meeting, even harder, when she cast corner-of-eye glances in his direction and saw the rapt, creased look he wore whenever he was trying to understand or attempting to commit something to his prodigious memory. The means of making scones might have been the key to the universe and smile as he now did, gesture to please, the boy called Peter took nothing lightly. Not even frivolous things, as if his natural selection programme was imperfect. He could not, for instance, treat the scratch he had made on an old table as anything other than a disaster: that was why she had suggested making scones, both to distract him from his tearful grief, and also because food supplies were exhausted, there never being enough to feed Peter, who never asked but always accepted on the second invitation, another of many rituals she had come to understand.

  But stung into dramatic apologies by such small things, he was relatively unmoved by serious questions, such as, Peter, you must go home – they’ll be so worried; Peter, are you listening, you cannot make people worried, your mother will want to see you. He would only shake his head. ‘No one will worry,’ he had said with such great conviction that she believed him, leaving herself without doubt, but with all the guilt in the world to accompany her sheer enjoyment of his company. On the topic of going home, she had given up: let him judge for himself, she found that best. At some point in the five or six evenings of their undemanding companionship, usually about ten-thirty, when his eyelids began to droop, he would jump away from whatever the occupation, grin, wave and leave, all in the space of a breath, forestalling questions with the speed of his departure.

  Helen did not know what to do. She did not know how to begin the questions and answers which would lead her to any conclusion. On the topic of being loved and missed, Peter was simply ignorant: the prospect of punishment for this truancy seemed too remote to bother him either, and yet she knew he was acutely sensitive, quick thinking, swift in observation, a child who mopped up experience like a sponge in the same way he absorbed facts.

  The cleverness surprised her only in its manifestations, and because she had been so wrong in her initial assumption about his age, gauging him nine years old, ten at the most judging from his size, until he proved her wrong. First, three almost speechless, entirely companionable hours in the garden, all Helen’s meagre skills copied by the shadowy, earnest little friend, who watched what she did and did it faithfully too. He had been reluctant, she noticed, to throw away weeds, indicating
they should merely be confined to a patch of their own, and she had agreed that weeds were not so bad, it was only that some growing things were more beautiful, others more greedy than their neighbours. Simple when seen like that. ‘These sleep for a long time first,’ she had told him, pointing to the bulbs they had planted. ‘You’ll be able to see them next year,’ and saw a solid understanding of the implied promise.

  On the next visit rain stopped play, and she had beckoned him into the house via the window. As a means of access, he seemed to prefer it to the door, just as he preferred his normal route to the garden and it did not seem important enough to deserve comment. There was little enough convention in the whole arrangement to justify fussing for any more. On that second evening, Helen worked at her desk and told him to do whatever he pleased, watched him pottering in comforting silence until he asked to try her typewriter, and there began her realisation that he was older than she thought, more literate than she could have imagined, and more dexterous even than in the garden. ‘At school I tried one of these,’ he had said in answer to an admiring question, proud to show off. ‘Really?’ she had asked, thinking, Yes, how sensible to teach these skills, I wish I had them: but they did not teach you all those words at school.

  Hours of Peter only added to the confusion and built a conviction that nothing could be done without his approval since the trust was too profound, too important, and too exclusive for betrayal. Geoffrey was the only person to whom she could have begun to explain, in full anticipation of disbelief, but confident of final understanding, She no longer dreaded the reaction to the telling, only the effort. Wanting to wait until Peter was readier for outside intervention. If ever. He hovered within touching distance, but never touched, while she yearned to hug that skinny little frame and could not: wanted to clothe it, talk to it, plan for it, and all she could do was feed it with food and calm like a stray cat, until one day it might climb into her lap and say, I think you just might do for now.

  All of that and more contributed to the eccentric behaviour of cooking scones after ten o’clock in the evening. Scones with cheese would be eaten with tummy-ache after; anxious thought which fed them into the oven. Peter kept watch, inches away from the heat despite the advice to go outside and come in again, because you could only tell when they were nearly done by the smell. Her cooking had always been based on such erratic principles, when it’s brown it’s done, after that sprinkle everything with a different colour, it makes it look as if you tried, haute cuisine which worked often enough to justify even less effort, but the boy needed to watch, observing the claggy mixture rise like a god creating a universe. Before they were cool enough to handle, half were eaten, and the concave stomach, visible as such beneath too large jeans remained as flat as ever, unswollen by the onslaught as he patted it, grinned with pleasure, waved away offers of more.

  ‘Go on, piglet, eat six: I’m frightened you’ll waste away by morning,’ teasing, eating to keep him company, watching for the eyelids’ droop, her anxiety wishing him to go where he could sleep, but not willing on him the prospect of parting. ‘Time to go home, Peter?’

  Nodding, not sleepy yet, knowing he would be soon. Rising from his chair with his usual energetic movement as if he had not eaten for a day, hesitating. Helen who never embarrassed his departures, deliberately casual as always, turned her back at the sink, busy with dishes.

  ‘You off then, Peter? See you soon I hope,’ ready to turn and smile at the stuttered but unfailing thanks, instead, feeling his arms creeping round her waist, a shy face turned, profile against her spine. Still an uncertain gesture as she wiped her hands, turned slowly while he remained immobile until she hugged him with arms crossed around thin shoulders, his hands locked behind her, head buried just below her chest in one deep, juddering sigh.

  ‘Don’t want to go,’ mumbled into her blouse, fingers locked.

  ‘No, sweetheart, but I know you must,’ stroking his hair, rocking him as he swayed with the strength of his own embrace.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘must, I suppose.’

  She pulled a face, answering the deliberately exaggerated expression, letting him release himself as slowly as he wished, a quick kiss on his forehead, greeted with that reserve which was half embarrassment, half delight.

  ‘Be very careful going home,’ she warned. ‘It’s late.’

  ‘You be careful too,’ establishing equality. ‘G’night.’

  ‘Sleep tight: mind the bugs don’t bite …’

  ‘And if they do, squeeze them tight, then they won’t another night … I remembered, see, I remembered …!’

  ‘You’re my favourite boy then.’

  It was his longest speech ever, this recitation of the rhyme she had told him the second time. ‘See you soon,’ the chorus of them both, never specifying when as she waved him goodbye.

  It might have been the signal, but she still could not see a direction. Worse than bringing a clandestine affair into the world’s unforgiving view, no room for it. Love was what it was: she knew that. It was always love, for man, woman, or child, if it stopped your sleep with the sheer weight of longing to see them happy.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A blank page, a blank mind, and Helen was angry with Geoffrey, angrier because he did not deserve it: feeling she should savour the fury since she knew it could not last, nor would she be able to afford it again. Whilst before this she had held close to herself the feeling of strength and comfort which follows from being alone in a watertight existence, she had come to need him now, removing herself from all the other helpers because they bore no comparison. Of course she could not tell him anything of the kind, although if she spoke it out loud immediately, no one here would notice. No one in this room paid attention to what Carey was saying; he knew it, but carried on regardless, less sensitive than he would have been before a jury. Helen wanted to tell Geoffrey she didn’t know what to do; familiar enough dilemma, but far worse since she had found a waif or stray, couldn’t say which, who thought she understood him and believed in her. A burden she longed to share, if only this murder would loose its stranglehold on them all.

  Four days to trial after this last conference, and all of them dreaming. Even Bailey, so meticulous with words, stumbled on his own, distracted by the vision of Stanislaus whom he had seen on Carey’s instructions. Stocky Jaskowski, coarser, paler, sufficiently accustomed to prison to have learned the vernacular, and so used to the lack of privacy that he greeted Bailey with embraces even in the presence of a gaoler, so grateful was he to break the monotony of the day. Time hung on him as heavy as his body; duller, since he still abided by rules in the hope of favours, did not yet entertain himself with plots, and was still anxious to please. ‘Ask him,’ Carey had said, ‘to remember as many details of Mrs Cartwright’s house as he can. Another statement, please. The more he can recall, the more convincing he appears. See how he is; report back.’ Using him, of course, witnesses are there to be used, but in reporting back, Bailey wondered if Carey could see a quarter of what he had seen himself, Stanislaus, murderer, in the concrete visiting room, remembering instead the overstuffed Cartwright chairs, the antimacassars, the three Victorian dolls, the solid furniture, the gin, not whisky, the pictures on the walls, three of them, one a Highland cow, remembered well, dictated well for the salvation of his soul, since as Jaskowski explained himself, he had become a repentant sinner, the only one Bailey knew. That apart, he had basked in the glow of approval and a rare sensation of self-importance, but none of that had explained why he had been so reluctant for Bailey to leave, anxious he should stay, even after the surrender of the gift of one half-ounce of tobacco.

  ‘Mr Bailey, sir?’ a long agonised hesitation, one hand on Bailey’s arm. The gaoler moved restlessly. ‘Something else …’

  ‘What’s the matter, Stan?’ Gentle, but not gentle enough.

  ‘Nothing, is nothing, you know? Just something.’

  ‘Something worrying you?’

  ‘Me? Worry? Too late for a
ll that now,’ moving away, suddenly dismissive ‘But Mr Bailey, promise me something: look out for my boy, Edward, you know? Just look out for him.’

  ‘Why Stan? Any particular reason?’

  ‘Just do. Goodbye now. Just you do that, I have this worry: he may do something bad, very bad …’ The eyes were tear-filled.

  ‘Why, do you think?’

  Another wave of frustrated defeat.

  ‘You find out: I don’t know, but bad …’

  These last farewells Bailey did not choose to report for the entertainment of the conference, hesitating over his omission, unable to repeat to Carey or anyone else this strange, only possibly significant confirmation of a nagging, undefined caution of his own; unable to describe to them the tingling suspicion which had tensed his muscles on two or three meetings with Ed in the innocent family context, the same doubt which had prompted that fruitless command to Ryan to watch the house-hold. Time had escaped: the imminence of trial had frozen it. Perhaps it was all imagination, but Bailey sitting in conference had ceased to listen to anything more than the father’s request, knowing his evening would be spent in fulfilling it. A sergeant to be seen during the night shift, one who knew Ed well according to Bailey’s information, which was no more than collators’ records and that peculiar, inexact grapevine of police gossip, might know him well enough to give the comfort of sharing impressions, casting some light on that troubled family. He shifted in his spindly seat, angry for wasted time, the frustration of sitting still now that preparations for trial were almost complete, irritated that Carey had only called a last conference to reassure himself like a prima donna at a rehearsal marshalling all his dressers to ensure that his costume was complete.

  Beside him, equally uncomfortable, Ryan listened to the warm, wet world outside, thinking of Annie as he always did during Temple conferences. During the first of them, he had sat planning the next subterfuge: calmer latterly, he simply looked forward to his escape, not daring to recognise how life had improved in the last ten days since he had acquired his own room, half a street from where Miss West lived, scarcely further from Annie, not luxurious unless compared with the frozen wastes of the Essex living-room, or the shirtless prospect of Annie’s place. A breathing space of his own, where thoughts tumbled into some kind of perspective and sleep was easier. Section House lodgings, difficult to find, organised by Bailey pulling strings of rank on Helen’s clear advice, and while Ryan had wondered cynically if this was merely to ensure the revival of his concentration for the important duration of the trial, he knew there had been a genuine kindness in it. He was still in the woods, but he could see the trees. The trial, the bloody trial, preface to uncomfortable decisions, long might it last.

 

‹ Prev