His father’s name was Zsiga, and he had worked in the Pannónia factory in Csepel, alongside his brother, Gyuri. Bernát’s mother, Anikó, was a secretary in the same factory. When the Russians came in, Zsiga and Gyuri both fought on the streets. Gyuri was wounded on November 11, and before Christmas the brothers had fled, taking Anikó, Bernát and Bernát’s brother, Oszkár; Bernát was three years old, Oszkár four. After some months of wandering, they had settled in the West Midlands. Gyuri found work with Guy Motors, in Wolverhampton, and Zsiga was taken on by Villiers, a few miles away, on the other side of town; Anikó, however, was a housewife for many years, and it was hard for her, said Bernát, because she was adrift for a long time. She used her first language only with her husband and his brother and her children, who were growing up quickly in the language of England, which she was struggling to acquire, through exchanges with neighbours and shopkeepers. As time passed she would have felt that she was losing the words that had formed her, because they were not the words of the world she was now inhabiting. It was important to her that her children should not speak only the language of their place of refuge – she wanted them to retain the language of their true home, because she hoped that they would one day return to Budapest. It was not until 1992 that Zsiga and Anikó went back; Zsiga died in 1995, and Anikó four years later; Gyuri had followed them to Hungary in 1993, and still lived there; but Bernát and his brother had not returned, because they ‘belonged nowhere’, he said, says Naomi. Belonging nowhere, Naomi seems to be telling her sister, was as much a blessing as an affliction.
‘When my brother and I become extinct, the language of the motherland passes out of our family,’ said Bernát, with some regret, but not much. He had no children, and would never have children, and Oszkár’s sons knew no more than a few phrases of Hungarian; Uncle Gyuri had produced no offspring, because it had turned out that he did not like women in the way a man should like them, which was a big disgrace for Bernát’s father, whose ideas on such matters were not sophisticated. But his father was a fine man, said Bernát, and he had worshipped his wife as if she were a gift of heaven. And Anikó had taken some solace from his devotion; it was partial recompense for the discontents of exile.
His mother, said Bernát, was too much taken with the idea of Hungarian uniqueness. Hungarians, she would tell you, are ‘idealistic, quick-tempered, sometimes too soft-hearted, with a tendency to dreaminess’, and Anikó accordingly did her best to be idealistic, quick-tempered, soft-hearted and dreamy. ‘I am not many of those things,’ said Bernát, ‘but I do have her eyes.’ At this point, says Naomi, Bernát directed into her eyes a gaze that made her flinch, a gaze ‘stripped of all camouflage’; it was as if a trapdoor had been opened for a moment, she says; it was uncanny, like the revelation that some portraits throw at you; what she saw was a mind of terrible depth and unhappiness. Then he blinked, and smiled, and the trapdoor was shut.
Bernát continued with his story. His mother, he said, was delighted that he had become a mathematician, because to her way of thinking mathematics was a form of dreaming. Mathematicians were idealists, living in a pure and other-worldly realm of abstract symbols, where nothing was solid. Bernát went to a good university to study maths, and did well there. Tutors encouraged him to undertake postgraduate studies. His mother was therefore dismayed when Bernát instead went into finance; he was recruited by an investment bank in London. And for some time he enjoyed his work, he admitted to Naomi, she tells her sister, as if recounting a morality tale. He took pleasure in the analysis of immensities of data, and in the calculation of complex probabilities. His work was of benefit to all, he believed: at his word, money was bestowed on companies that in consequence thrived, and everyone profited, and so the great turbine of finance was kept spinning. But the wider benefit was rarely at the forefront of his mind, he confessed. He was a master of a mighty game, a game that required the application of knowledge and intelligence, and he was being paid royally for playing it.
He liked having money, Bernát admitted to Naomi, she tells her sister. For a long time he had wanted to live in London, and London was an expensive city – particularly if you had to live in a safe part of town and wouldn’t settle for anything less than the best seats at the opera, Bernát joked. And his parents were proud of his success. They accepted a car from him; they allowed him to pay for holidays. But there was some ambivalence in their pride, said Bernát. It took a long time for his mother to wholly relinquish her fantasy of a professorship for her son, while his father would never abandon his belief in the supreme moral value of virile labour. To his father’s way of thinking, Bernát knew, making money from money was not true work. And Bernát, increasingly, was ambivalent about himself. Factories were becoming ruins all around the town where Bernát and his brother had grown up, and their father had come to understand that the company bosses in England were as bad as the party bosses back home, or worse. Where the steel mill had stood for a hundred years there was now a shopping centre; in the centre of town, in consequence, shops were going out of business. ‘A victim of the vampire,’ his father commented, as they passed another defunct premises. Bernát might have attempted to talk about ‘the bigger picture’ and the better times that would follow this ‘difficult period of restructuring’, he thought, he told Naomi, who is at pains to ensure that her sister hears the inverted commas. Father and son had disagreements. Heavily armoured by theory, Bernát emerged from these arguments unscathed, or so it would have appeared. But, he told Naomi, with each argument he suffered a fresh wound, a wound that was invisible but could not be healed. With each visit to the home town he was weakening. The visits became infrequent; this was attributable, he later realised, to a burgeoning but unacknowledged shame.
Queen Victoria is said to have pulled down the blinds of her train carriage to protect herself from the sight of the Black Country, and that’s what Bernát was like, he told Naomi: he pulled down the blinds rather than think about what he had seen there. But in the end the blinds came up. It was no longer possible to carry on as if this money-making had no victims. With capitalism there are always victims, by definition, Bernát acknowledged to himself at last, Naomi reports, relaying the slogan to her sister as if it were the insight of a provocative mind. But Bernát did not leave the system: he repositioned himself within it, putting his money – and no one else’s – into ‘sustainable enterprises’. In this way, he said, he made amends for his sins and assuaged his guilt, to an extent. Bernát was hard on himself, says Naomi. It was easy enough to recalibrate his position, he said, having already earned so much. He lacked the courage for anything more radical, and he did not believe that there was any prospect of victory anyway. The banks crash and whole countries are ruined, and we are told that nothing will be the same again, that the system has to change now that people are going hungry in the cities of the civilised world. But time goes by and things remain the same, albeit with some background noise of protest. The masters are invulnerable, says Naomi, quoting Bernát.
In lieu of more direct action, Bernát also paid a tithe, he revealed. Ten percent of his income went to charities.
‘So he told you about his generosity,’ Kate comments.
This is an ungenerous response, her sister tells her. Bernát was not praising himself – far from it. He was entering a plea in mitigation, she suggests. ‘And I don’t find him attractive,’ she says, in answer to an imagined remark. ‘Not in that way.’
Naomi’s naivety can surprise her sister, still. ‘But you’re going to live with him,’ says Kate.
‘We’re going to be living in the same place, yes.’
‘Just the two of you.’
‘Yes, just the two of us. One plus one. Not a couple,’ she says, getting up. ‘Bizarre, eh?’
‘I wouldn’t go that far. Unusual, though.’
Naomi bends to put a kiss on the crown of her sister’s head. ‘See you later,’ she says. ‘Get back to work.’
8.
Richa
rd Staunton, father of Naomi and Kate, was an actuary. Marine insurance was his field of expertise, and he was highly competent; within a decade he was made a director of the company for which he worked. His daughters, to whom the details of his work were as incomprehensible as the formulas of astrophysics, admired him; there was some fear in the admiration, especially in the case of the older daughter, who had seen her father angered. His intellect was unfathomable; his job involved the consideration of potential misfortune, but he looked on those misfortunes as if they were abstract propositions; he was a master of esoteric knowledge, and this knowledge had an aura of the fateful. He was a man of some gravitas, and his gaze was acute – it was not possible to lie to him, the daughters found. He was tall, lean and not prone to laughter; in a film, the older daughter thought, he might play a knighted surgeon, or a secret agent in wartime. Deliberation seemed to precede everything he did; his voice was quiet and steeped in certainty. Spontaneous demonstrations of affection were rare; the younger daughter was favoured, to a small degree, perhaps because she more closely resembled her mother and was more docile, and less robust, than her sibling. His protection, Naomi knew, was one of life’s few constants.
His work was a source of great satisfaction and pride to him, and he devoted long hours to it, often staying at his desk late into the evening. His duty to the company was like an officer’s to his regiment. Leaving home on Thursday, November 19, 1987, he reminded his wife that she should not expect him home before ten o’clock. At eleven she went to bed, alone but unperturbed. This had happened before, many times. Less than an hour later, the doorbell rang; she opened the door to two police officers, male and female, who informed her that Mr Staunton had been injured in a traffic incident, and had been taken to the Royal Marsden. She drove to the hospital, where she stayed until the Saturday morning, when her husband, having never regained consciousness, died.
He had been found in Clive Road, West Dulwich, by a resident of that street, who, having heard what sounded like a large box being dropped, followed by the tyre squeal of a car departing at speed, looked out of his window and saw a man spreadeagled on the road. A stolen car, abandoned less than a mile away, had damage that was compatible with its having struck a pedestrian; a man named Nelson Tansley, aged 29, was promptly arrested, after a tip-off. At the trial, the defence contended that Mr Staunton, in conditions of poor visibility (it was dark, and the nearest streetlight was defective, and it was raining), had stepped into the road without looking, so close to the defendant’s vehicle that a collision would have been unavoidable even in clear and dry conditions. It was denied that the vehicle was moving at an excessive speed, but was conceded that the defendant had stolen the car that had killed Mr Staunton, and had driven away from the scene of the accident – an unthinking reaction that the jury was invited to understand, if not condone. Nelson Tansley presented his evidence with the air of a man who expected to be disbelieved, because such was his fate; after the verdict it was learned that he had a number of thefts and assaults to his name. Coaxed by his counsel, Nelson Tansley expressed regret for what had happened. When sentenced, he raised an eyebrow and shrugged; leaving the dock, he patted the guard on the shoulder as though they were going off to do a job together. By Christmas of the following year he was free.
Before Nelson Tansley had left the courtroom, Kate conceived the idea of killing him on his release, or at least causing an accident that would break some major bones. Were it not for the fact that she would immediately have been one of the chief suspects, she would, she believed, have run him down without compunction. For several years, intermittently, she entertained this idea of retribution. Soon after the sentencing, however, the punishment of Nelson Tansley ceased to be her primary concern.
Richard Staunton had been crossing Clive Road to his car when Tansley drove into him. Why Richard Staunton should have parked in Clive Road, a road that no conceivable route between office and home would have taken him near, was a question that perplexed his family, and their perplexity was augmented by the quickly established fact that Richard Staunton had left his office no later than 7pm on the night of the accident. His elder daughter, then seventeen, took it upon herself to investigate: carrying a photograph of her father, she spent a Saturday knocking on every door in Clive Road and the adjoining streets. One woman thought she had seen the man in the picture, four or five months ago, getting into an expensive car, possibly an Audi. Richard Staunton drove an Audi. The next day, she canvassed a wider area; eventually, in Martell Road, she spoke to a woman who was certain that she’d passed the man in the photograph, only a few months earlier, in the early evening, as he was ringing the doorbell of a house further down the street. She stepped outside to point out the house in question. Nobody was at home; Kate returned the following weekend, to be confronted by a surly individual who begrudgingly regarded the picture for a couple of seconds, scowled, and muttered: ‘Next door.’
Two minutes later Kate was talking to Janice Wilson, formerly an employee of the firm of which Richard Staunton had been a director. Tears came to Janice Wilson’s eyes when she looked at the photograph; or rather, tears fell when she looked at it – the eyes had moistened moments after she’d opened the door to Kate. It was not necessary for Kate to introduce herself: Janice Wilson knew who Kate was and she knew about the accident that had killed Mr Staunton. ‘Mr Staunton’ she called him, not ‘Richard’, but Kate comprehended the situation at once. Janice Wilson invited her into the living room, and left her there while she went to make a pot of coffee. Floral motifs were strongly present in the décor; a glass-fronted cabinet contained a precisely disposed array of figurines and trinkets. Pink cushions augmented the armchairs and sofa; rose-patterned curtains, ruched, hung from a rose-patterned pelmet. Flowerpots stood on doilies of lace. It was like a doll’s house, thought Kate; she could not imagine her father in this room.
Janice Wilson took a long time to prepare the coffee. When she reappeared, bearing pot, cups, milk and shortbread on a dish, she had recomposed herself. She seemed relieved to have been discovered. There was one thing, she told Kate, that she should understand above all: her father had been a good man. On her very first day with the company, her boss had told her that Richard Staunton was a good man, and by this he had meant more than that Mr Staunton was good for the company’s bottom line. Some of the senior people wouldn’t give a secretary the time of day, but not Kate’s father: his office was across the corridor, so she’d see him every day and he would always give her a smile, and maybe a few words. He could be a little intimidating, but he was never stand-offish. It wasn’t until she had her bad year, however, that his kindness became apparent. ‘I don’t offer this as an excuse,’ she said, having steadied herself with a long breath and a dose of coffee. ‘Please don’t think that. But it was a dreadful time.’
She’d gone through a nasty divorce (‘But aren’t they all nasty?’ she corrected herself, anticipating an objection that Kate had no intention of making), then both of her parents had died within the space of three months. ‘We were close, very close,’ she told Kate; the eyes remoistened. As if that weren’t enough, just nine months later she had found a lump. ‘The grand slam,’ she stoically jested, puffing her cheeks. Surgery and chemotherapy had almost destroyed her, and for a long time she was depressed, very depressed. She had to leave her job. It was disappointing, how people reacted. So-called friends became too busy to visit. They seemed to think that you could catch cancer from someone who had it. Or they were worried that they wouldn’t know what to say, and so let themselves be governed by their discomfiture. Of her former colleagues, few took the trouble to stay in touch. But Kate’s father was better than all of them. He phoned her, even when she was too depressed to talk, and his calls became very important to her. He was very kind, and wise. One day, when she was feeling extremely low, she asked Richard (now it was ‘Richard’) if she could see him. She wanted it to be noted: it had been her idea, not his. Nothing inappropriate occurred: they walke
d and talked, and when Janice went home she felt that she could, after all, go on with her life. But ‘one thing led to another’, she sighed; again the water welled on the eyelids. They had briefly (‘very briefly’, she insisted) become too close. It had been her fault. This was the important thing. She had taken advantage of Richard’s kindness; despair had done something strange to her. Immediately they had regretted it, ‘bitterly regretted it’, she said, with eyes downcast in plausible contrition and her voice very small.
It pained her, she said, that Kate might now think ill of her father. ‘You must not,’ she ordered, in a whisper. ‘Judge me, but not him,’ she said. They had made a mistake, a mistake into which she had almost forced him, and after the mistake had been made it had been impossible for him to extricate himself from the deception. ‘I am the guilty party,’ she said. Watery remorse ensued. When the apologies had expired, Kate took her leave.
Recounting the story to her mother, Kate omitted the supposedly isolated incidence of sexual congress: in this re-edited version of events, her father had been intimate with Janice Wilson, but the intimacy – though of an order that had made its disclosure inadvisable – had been that of confidant and spiritual support. Kate was adept at the construction of narratives that possessed a viable quotient of credibility; a jury might have been persuaded. Her mother listened until Kate had no more to tell. ‘My God,’ she murmured. ‘All that time, he had a mistress.’
‘I’m not sure that “mistress” is the right word,’ suggested Kate.
‘Oh, I’m sure it is,’ her mother answered, in a sleepwalker’s voice. She looked out of the window for a full minute, her gaze tethered to nothing. ‘I think I might have met her, years ago, at a garden party,’ she said. She thought she could remember the name, but no face came to mind. ‘What is she like?’ she asked, to the window. ‘What does she look like, I mean.’
The river is the river Page 4
