Starlight Peninsula

by Grimshaw, Charlotte

  ‘We humans are not famous for being rational,’ Klaudia said.

  ‘The things she comes out with, bearing in mind my husband’s just had an affair and left me: “The poor mayor, his life’s so stressful he needed to have an affair just to get through the day.” It implies men are justified in having affairs, which implies Sean’s affair was justified. Maybe I wasn’t giving Sean enough. It fits with her new line that she accepted our father’s affairs, because she was a “realist”, when the truth is she was furious about his affairs. She attacks and plays the submissive wife in one breath.’

  ‘Very subtle.’

  ‘What we’re all supposed to know about her is that she’s not subtle, she’s an open book. An honest Mancunian. She’s unable to tell a lie. She’s so simple and innocent, she just comes out with things, inadvertently. It’s always, Ooh, what did I do? Did I say something wrong? I’m an open book, me.’

  ‘Hmm. It’s called plausible deniability.’

  ‘She’s so “honest” she “can’t stop herself” telling my niece about my sister’s wild youth, even though my sister’s asked her not to. My sister’s paranoid her daughter will get into trouble, because she knows how damaging it was to her. And our mother, she wants to regale the kid with that stuff. She used to encourage Carina to rebel at school, too. It was always, Did the teachers really say that to you? That’s bad. They’re right fascists. And then she’d tell everyone how badly behaved Carina was. Carina still gets our mother’s old friends coming up to her, saying, Is your daughter as difficult a girl as you were?’

  Eloise pressed on, feeling how absurd it was to be talking like this about her mother — at her age.

  ‘The Sean situation. My mother seemed sympathetic at first, but she started to introduce a line about how I had to accept that men have affairs. She told me about men she knew who’d gone off with younger women and never come back. She talked about ageing, wear and tear, how time ruins us. She said my husband’s new girlfriend must “give off a strong charge”, whatever that means. I started to think it was a trip for her, that I was in the down position.’

  Klaudia nodded, making notes.

  ‘I’m here because it’s all got too much. I told you about Arthur. He died. Then I married Sean, then he left, and just after that happened I had to confront the fact that my mother wasn’t supportive. The marriage was my safe haven and when it was gone I had no base, no defence.’

  Eloise paused. Klaudia would now say, Come now, this is paranoia, hysteria. Your mother cares for you deeply.

  ‘Sometimes I think she really dislikes me.’

  She waited to be corrected.

  ‘Sure,’ Klaudia said briskly. ‘From what I’m hearing, we’re talking at least ambivalence.’

  Eloise blinked. ‘Ambivalence?’

  ‘It’s family dynamics. Jealousy. Competitiveness. Perhaps she is narcissistic. Were you your father’s favourite child? Or perhaps your sister was?’

  ‘Ambivalence?’

  ‘Let’s call a spade a spade.’

  ‘So, I should go away feeling even worse than I felt when I came in? I thought this was supposed to make me feel better. Now you want to tell me I’m not imagining it, she really does dislike me?’

  ‘Possibly. But at the end of the day, it’s her shit not yours.’ Klaudia’s tone softened. ‘Somewhere deep down, she probably knows she messed up. So. I want you to learn to have empathy for the child you once were.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘I am German, so I am blunt. Excuse me. You tell me about walking all day. I think you have been walking away for a very long time.’

  ‘I met a man who told me I should confront things. We were a bit drunk at the time, or I was. I’m drinking rather a lot, by the way.’

  Klaudia laid down her pen. ‘Okay, sure. We’ll come to that. But perhaps the walking is a metaphor for escape. You have reinvented yourself in order to escape bad things that have happened in the past. There was the mother who was clearly ambivalent. The partner who so sadly died. You reinvented yourself to escape these blows, and now, with this fresh situation, you feel the old terrors are jumping out at you all at once.’

  ‘Well, it’s been bleak …’

  ‘You need to look back and find some empathy for that unloved child …’

  Eloise pinched the bridge of her nose with two fingers. ‘I’m starting to feel like I need a drink.’

  ‘Ah yes. Drink. How many units a day, please, and what time do you start? In the morning?’

  ‘Never until the sun’s over the yardarm.’

  Out there in the bright garden the old woman was using a hose, the water spooling out in beads of silver. A sudden gust flipped the leaves of the flax, making the spears shine. Eloise was surrounded by light and silence.

  ‘It’s a beautiful garden.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perhaps my mother doesn’t mean any harm. Perhaps she’s just a simple, honest person who blunders, tactlessly says the wrong thing.’

  ‘You say she’s interested in literature. She understands fiction — character, motivation, subtleties. If she understands these things, how can she be so simple?’

  ‘Maybe she’s like one of those mathemeticians who’s a genius at maths but simple and childlike in life.’

  ‘People can be childlike, sure. Childhood usually involves narcissism, lack of empathy and a sense of entitlement. And then the child grows out of it.’

  Another silence.

  ‘Or not,’ Klaudia added.

  Eloise shifted unhappily. ‘You said reinventing. When I married Sean I felt I’d become a different person and left the bad old self behind.’

  ‘It was not a bad old self, it was the same self. You don’t have to repress things, hide things. You can be more accepting of yourself. You can ask questions. Why did things happen the way they did? Sure, look back. Ask yourself, what do I know of those bad times? Be open. Are there things you don’t understand? Find out.’

  Eloise started to speak, thought better of it.

  ‘Go on?’

  She hesitated. But she could say anything in here, it was confidential. Why not? ‘Well, okay, I burned a whole lot of stuff on the weekend. It turned into a bit of a disaster. Long story. I may be prosecuted. Anyway, I was clearing out, and it made me think about the past. I remembered there are things belonging to Arthur that I took from his flat and never looked at. Stuff nobody knew I had.’

  Klaudia tilted her head.

  ‘What kind of things, please?’

  ‘Notes, papers, photos. I don’t know whether I’d have burned them if …’

  ‘You didn’t burn them?’ Klaudia said softly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You shouldn’t burn them. That would be a bad thing.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘What did you do with them?’

  ‘I … Well, I haven’t burned them.’

  Klaudia smoothed her writing pad, gently smiled.

  ‘Now. You say things have got a bit too much. You’re drinking too much, you’re doing the continuous walking. Are you sleeping?’

  ‘Yes. Although I wake up often.’

  ‘You wake early, can’t sleep again? I would like to recommend some medication.’

  ‘I don’t like the idea of sleeping pills.’

  ‘There’s no need for concern. I’ll get you a prescription from our psychiatrist. This will be good for you. Give me one moment.’

  She got up and went out, holding up her hand to forestall any argument.

  Eloise listened. Footsteps on the street outside, low voices. There was a wisteria vine growing up the veranda pillar outside. She walked to the open door and picked a leaf from the vine, rolling it in her fingers. The gardener backed across the lawn pulling the hose. She tugged it over to the garden shed, disappeared into the dark doorway.

  The footsteps came back along the hall. Klaudia said, ‘Here’s your prescription, something to help you sleep. Start tonight, you will feel much refreshed. After
four days, you can build up to two pills. It’s fine to drink one glass of alcohol with them, no more. I think you need to come and see me regularly. There’s a lot we need to get to the bottom of.’

  They went out together, along the hall with its antique mirror, past the closed doors, the other offices.

  Eloise paused at the door. ‘Do you get tired of listening to people? Do you start to hate some of them?’

  ‘Tired? Never! I love to go on a journey with my patients. To explore lives, motivations, it is the source of great interest. You know, my tutor in Germany once said to me, Don’t think of studying psychology until you’ve read the Russian novels!’

  ‘Well. Thanks. See you next time.’

  Klaudia said, ‘I meant to say, those items you remembered you had, belonging to Arthur. They’re part of your past. Keep them. But there’s no hurry. Don’t look at them until you’re ready. Be kind to yourself. Take your time.’

  The heat struck up off the asphalt and the car had turned into an oven. Eloise gripped the steering wheel — it was hot. She looked back at the old shop, its rooms full of secrets. These ‘items belonging to Arthur’ — actually, what were they? That day at Arthur’s flat, she’d arrived with the woman detective who followed her closely, making sure she took only clothes and some kitchen items that belonged to her. She remembered the air was still, musty, dead, Arthur’s presence sucked out of it, as if the place where they had lived happily had been inundated, and she had dived down and was peering from room to room in the blurry, silent space. She viewed light switches silvered with fingerprint powder, Arthur’s desk with a yellow arrow taped to items on it, a pair of surgical gloves on the kitchen bench, a man standing on the back deck talking on a cell phone; he was the woman detective’s taciturn partner, whose eyes followed Eloise as she passed the open door. In the silence she opened a drawer, took out clothes and put them in her gym bag. Why this anger?

  When someone dies an unexplained death, the world enters every private space. Everything sacred is trampled on, everything you loved is covered in footprints, and the explanation you make of a life, all its subtle and delicate detail, is turned crass, ugly and inadequate. Sudden resentment at the presence of the woman detective turned, when the woman’s phone beeped and she stepped onto the back deck with her partner, into a determination to find something of Arthur’s and keep it for herself. Her eyes fell on the cardboard file in a shelf under the desk, where Arthur kept his current projects. She put it in her bag just before the detectives came back into the room.

  Arthur could be secretive. He guarded his writing; no one was allowed to read a piece of work until it was finished. He was a perfectionist. After he died, the police had questions. They asked, Did Arthur have enemies? Had he annoyed anyone? Once the woman detective asked Eloise, Had she ever wondered about any of Arthur’s male contacts? Was he bisexual or gay? Like many of the questions the detective asked, it gave Eloise the impression she had something specific in mind.

  She asked them, Are you thinking of someone in particular? They hadn’t told her anything. Arthur was one hundred per cent heterosexual. So what had they meant?

  The male detective had offered to carry the bag down the steps to the car. She zipped it up and handed it over with a show of carelessness, feeling trapped and furtive and cunning. She remembered passing the back door, Da Silva on her cell phone, twirling one golden strand of her wiry hair between her fingers, one corner of her mouth turned up in a sarky grin, and Eloise heard her pronounce a word, as though repeating the punchline of a joke: ‘Gynaecologist!’

  Their eyes met and the detective lowered her voice and turned away. It was one of many fragmented memories, of random words, and questions and phrases overheard, odd details that she had stored in her mind but neither processed nor pursued. Arthur, with his usual daring and originality and boldness, had gone too far this time; he’d been caught in a forbidden and terrible place, and this pair of cops, with their tough faces and sharp eyes, knew that Eloise had crossed over, too; she was implicated, always would be, in Arthur’s transgression. It was a strange discovery: that calamity brought with it this burden of fear and shame.

  Shame had made her fail Arthur. She should have paid attention to details, tried to find out what had happened. Shame had made her defiant. She took Arthur’s file back to her flat and hid it in the ceiling, frightened that the police would come looking for it. Later she’d given it to Carina. She imagined herself denying to those two dour, good-looking cops, Da Silva and — what was his name? O’Kelly? — that she had any idea how it had come into her possession. In all the years since, she had never looked at what the file contained.

  EIGHT

  ‘How was your weekend? You and Sean get up to much?’

  Eloise looked, she hoped, blandly non-committal. ‘Oh, you know. Nothing special.’

  Scott was wearing a bright blue three-piece suit, with turquoise lining. His hair, thick and glistening with gel, sat on top of his head like a brown turban. The bridge of his teeth was too narrow for his mouth; now he smiled, showing pale pink gums.

  ‘You like this suit? I hope I don’t look like a banker. God, I love suits. Ronald at RJB has this new range, just absolute masterpieces.’

  ‘What a nice waistcoat.’

  Eloise had just received two messages on her cell phone: one from Carina wanting to know if she would be staying again, and the other from a real estate agent. Sean had passed on her number. The agent wanted to discuss the sale of the house. Prospects were excellent. Values on the Starlight Peninsula had rocketed; the area was hot right now. Would look forward to her call.

  She deleted the message.

  Scott stroked his blue sleeve. ‘Ronald talked me into the suit. Thee freaked out at the price. Then she calmed down and said, Oh well, as Shakespeare said, “The apparel oft proclaims the man.” Isn’t that great?’

  She looked at him: his wonder-of-the-world grin, his big hair, the blink he did, the blink that set off the smile that showed how much he relished life, how genuine he was, how enthusiastic and passionate. Sometimes she had a sense of a small busy person inside him, pulling the levers for smile, blink, beam, bray.

  ‘Reports are coming in that Jack Anthony got a shock off the urinal. Apocryphal at this stage.’

  ‘Ouch,’ Eloise said.

  ‘Also Selena says over at Q the coat hangers in hair and make-up are making clicking and sizzling noises, and there’s an electric smell. Why haven’t we all gone out on strike?’

  ‘I know. Someone’s going to get killed.’

  ‘I wonder if it’s like, carcinogenic,’ Ian the cameraman said.

  ‘What if you’re pregnant? Karen’s pregnant. So is Hine at reception. You don’t want to be getting shocks when you’re …’

  They waited for the car outside reception. Under a cloudless sky the light was impressively clear, the shadow of a plane tree making a perfect shape on the asphalt, the reflections of leaves sliding over the car windscreen as it drove up. They loaded their gear and got in, Scott on the phone to Kurt Hartmann’s man, Chad Loafer, who was getting a lot of talking done.

  ‘Chad,’ Scott said, rolling his eyes at Eloise, ‘mate, I understand.’

  An hour later they entered the gates of the Hartmann estate and approached the mansion, with its grey-pink castle battlements and dinky turrets, its flagpole and helicopter pad, and garaging for thirty cars.

  A security guard bustled out of the topiary and waved them towards the front door, where they were met by a small black-clad man with a shaven head.

  ‘Chad Loafer, head of Mr Hartmann’s security,’ he told them.

  A great door creaked open, all oaken and Narnian and faux-gnarled, and Loafer led them into a large reception lit by lamps in the shape of flaming torches. He withdrew, silently. The room was filled with large squashy white sofas flanked by pedestals on which sat dishes of colourful sweets. Eloise imagined Hartmann arriving in a witch’s hat, on a sleigh, driven by a dwarf.

  �
��Jesus,’ Scott whispered, looking around the room. One whole wall was a mirror. They eyed themselves, wary.

  ‘I wonder if he’s watching us.’

  ‘Yeah, cameras. No wait, the mirror’s two-way. He’s behind it. In, like, a control room with a big chair.’

  They could see into another room beyond the reception, in which armchairs faced large computer screens. The internet mogul and his business partners were enthusiastic gamers; in fact Hartmann had first discovered he was being spied on by the security services when his computer games started running slow by one seventh of a second. He picked this up straight away, had the problem investigated, and found his entire system was being routed through an external system run by the spy agency, the GCSB.

  Next to the chairs and screens were more stands holding dishes filled with sweets. It was a child’s fantasy: the sweets, the screens, the fake swords crossed above the doors, the suits of armour standing at attention by the dungeon-style doors. One entire wall of the gaming room was covered by a photo of Hartmann’s face.

  A door opened and Hartmann entered, followed by his head of security. Loafer was dwarfed by his charge, who was obese and six foot six.

  ‘Good morning,’ Hartmann said, lightly wringing his hands. He had a massive face, a shaven head, a smile full of wicked little teeth and an air of amused, cartoonish criminality. Loafer did a rapid check of the room, touched his ear and spoke into his sleeve. Scott blinked and beamed. Eloise’s mouth involuntarily twitched. It was impossible not to feel a certain hilarious amazement, here in the fairytale castle, standing before the elven king of criminal kitsch. Loafer smiled; for a moment they were all grinning.

  Through the window there was a view of a glowing green lawn, and topiary in the shape of battlements.

  ‘Roger that,’ Loafer growled into his sleeve.

  ‘Welcome,’ Hartmann said. There were introductions all round. After shaking hands, Hartmann drew a bottle of hand santiser from his pocket and briskly lathered.

  He said, ‘First we are going to do something I love. Chad, would you please?