by Tim Parks
Judge Savage was startled by a tapping on the window. You want? the girl asked. She opened the door. I get in? She sat beside him. A girl of indeterminate colour. She wore a short pink dress. What you like? The accent was foreign. She was chewing gum. He still hadn’t replied. The question he had always asked himself when he drove by these women was, will I ever end up there? With a prostitute. He hated gum chewing. Her hair was short, but not curly. ‘End up’ were the words he always used. Her lips were generous. I was bound to, he thought now. One day. I was bound to write that letter.
The girl gestured to the road. We go to nice place? She was brash and anxious. She was working. Daniel was locked in himself. He was churning tension. As he drove, she took out a phone, pressed buttons, spoke rapidly. What language was it? What if the police stopped him? To the right, she interrupted herself. Portuguese? Could it be? Her left hand made an elegant gesture. I’m attracted to slim elegant forearms, Daniel thought. Oriental dancers and young black nurses pouring tea. Now they were driving through streets of council housing not far from the Dalton Estate. Here. You pay now, she said.
There was a Hispanic man at the bottom of the stairs. Forty pounds, sir. Ancient terraced housing. Judge Savage was struck by the sir. A sir-vice industry. End up. She led him by the hand. The room was a bare mattress on the floor, a small boarded fireplace, and on the mantelpiece, boxes of condoms. Already she was naked. The light was pale through curtains patterned with cartoon figures. A slim narrow body stepped out of its clothes. His eye rested on her sex. There was a small white dresser, the kind you carry home in a box and put together yourself. The kind Hilary despises. You like? She asked. She was almost too slim. But she made no attempt to embrace him. She took a sheet from a pile and already she was lying on it, adjusting the thing under her buttocks. She raised one knee. The Disney curtains must have been for a child’s room. Naked, she was clothed in indifference. The knee swayed provocatively open and closed. There were Tom and Jerry. And the rooster. Still chewing, she said, Come. She knows, he sensed, how to be here and not be here. This girl is more balanced than my daughter, Daniel thought. She held out a condom.
Judge Savage lay on her violently. He was rough and quite violent, his face averted. She had her strong young fingers in his hair, but he knew she was still chewing. Stop chewing, he shouted. He had always forbidden the children gum. He always ordered witnesses to remove chewing gum from their mouths. Stop fucking chewing! It seemed to galvanise the girl. She began to move. His eye throbbed beneath its patch. She’d spat the gum out. Then he was staring at her dark skin as the room tumbled into place. Her collar bone, her shoulder. It was a fine body. Gently, he touched her neck. We have the same coloured skin, he said. He was aware of speaking softly. She shook her head. Her hand was reaching for her dress. Where are you from? he asked. When their eyes met, hers were blank. She was perfectly protected. You take me back now. Back to the road? His own movements were sluggish. She looked at her watch. Yes.
When she climbed out of the car, he noticed the bridge. He turned off the engine and sat still. The girl walked away. The Whitakers’ car had been heading clockwise, as he recalled. He too was now pointing clockwise, towards the bridge. He drove forward a few yards to where the girl had already taken up her stance again. Did you ever see people throw stones from the bridge? He pointed. She was puzzled, made a face. It turned into a smile. All at once, she seemed carefree. The professional sullenness was gone. She was smiling. She seemed pleased. She has no need to hide now. Then at last he desired her. If only she could speak, he would have spoken to her. Could she be Brazilian? He would have expressed affection. He loved women, women of all kinds. Perhaps he would have asked her advice. You come again, she said. He couldn’t tell if it was a question or an invitation. She waved quite cheerfully.
So the prostitutes stood in the lay-by right beside the bridge. Judge Savage pulled out into the road. The killers stood on the bridge beside their girlfriends and threw the rocks they’d brought in full view of the prostitutes. The bridge is a stage, Judge Savage realised, for a public of prostitutes. Had the police thought of this? For an audience of destitute immigrants. Illegal no doubt. The white boys show off to the black girls. Had they interviewed them? These young people – what were the words of the report? – had no idea how to rid themselves of their innocence. All those arrested were white he remembered. Young white men with their young white women.
Towards midday, more or less at the same time as he should have been sitting down to discuss sentencing schedules at the courtroom, or alternatively sitting down with Mattheson to discuss his own life sentence, Judge Savage turned his car into the drive of his new home. His eye was aching. He hadn’t had an accident. In the end he felt okay. Sarah is seeking to rid herself of her innocence, he thought. Does that make sense? A gardener was raking wood chips around the freshly planted bushes. Daniel stopped a moment to watch him, then hurried to the door.
Mum’s out, Tom sang. The boy didn’t look up from his Playstation. Daniel stood at the door to his room, watching his young, intent face in the glow of the screen. Game of Super Star? Judge Savage proposed. Dad! Tom was thrilled. Great! Let’s play. It was almost three o’clock before Mattheson arrived. By then England had beaten every major football team in the world. Dream on, Judge Savage told his son, and informed the policeman that he had an important appointment at the solicitors at six. I don’t expect I shall keep you more than an hour or so. Inspector Mattheson said.
That evening, after the papers were signed, the contracts exchanged, Hilary announced: Now that’s done, I think we should go straight to the flat and talk it over with Sarah, all together! An estate agent had suggested that an average rent would be in the region of eight hundred pounds a month. Quite a sum. Christine stood on the pavement confused. I don’t know where I’ve left my car, she said. It’s so silly! She was shaking her head. She is as lost as I am, Daniel realised. He had realised it a half an hour before across the solicitor’s desk when their buyer couldn’t understand where she was supposed to sign. Where the cross is, the solicitor kept saying through his hay-fever. That’s where you sign. Sorry, I’m being silly, what cross? Euphoric, Hilary hadn’t noticed. We all have our crosses, she giggled. She had her husband back, her financial problems were settled. Her daughter had been outflanked. When we explain it’s eight hundred, perhaps the child will see reason, she repeated. Christine repeated that she really ought to be getting on to the hospital. She had to see poor Martin. But she didn’t move. She doesn’t want to go to the hospital, Daniel realised. She’s had enough of Martin.
I still don’t understand why they bought the place, Hilary chattered once they were alone in the car. Christine would follow them. They would see Sarah all together. His wife was squinting in the rear-view mirror. Does it matter, he asked, now they’ve paid? I was so sure they were going to let us down somehow. That we’d be ruined, you know. I had visions of us losing house and home. Just paranoid, I suppose, Hilary laughed. You always said I was paranoid. The more secure you want to be, the more vulnerable you feel. I’ve bought champagne, she chattered on. Hilary is determined to be happy, Daniel saw. She hasn’t noticed I’m a million miles away. For years she is frustrated and now she is happy. Christine too had been a million miles away. Hilary has abandoned any serious professional ambition, Daniel realised. Soon they would be in Carlton Street. This had allowed her to be happy. With my attentions, my success. With a pleasant student or two. She is determined to disbelieve the things she has heard about me. She is an excellent wife. I read in a magazine, Mattheson had said as they shook hands at the end of their conversation, about this film director bloke, does thrillers with shootouts and assassinations, can’t remember his name, anyway, it seems he was so scared of telling his wife that he wanted to leave her, one day he says he’ll be back at such and such a time for lunch, right? and when she goes to open the door there’s a lawyer and a removal van to take away all his stuff. Mattheson laughed. Bloke said he found it e
asier to imagine an assassination, or even a torture scene, all sorts of awful things, than a confrontation with the missus. Funny, no? I don’t want to leave my wife, Daniel reminded him. The inspector had divorced twice. When exactly did this relationship with the girl begin? he had asked. Daniel told him the truth. During a trial. And now, as she turned into Carlton Street, Hilary was talking about Brahms. Can I drag you along to hear Brahms? Oh Dan, why don’t we go on holiday together, she cried. Just us two. Her hand left the shift to rub along his leg. Someone was doing the Liebeslieder waltzes. We can leave Tom with Crosby. I must say something, he thought. Just us two, she repeated. It had been such a pleasure to play all afternoon with Tom. Minnie will be in the flat. He knew that. How will Hilary react? What will be said? We could have a week in a hotel together. Venice, Vienna. Do what we want all day. He imagined a life where he played cricket and computer games with his son. They were about to confront Minnie. The truth about Martin and Christine, he was suddenly speaking very earnestly, is that there’s some key fact they’re not telling us, isn’t there? There must be. Do you think so? Hilary asked. But now they had arrived. We would understand why they bought the place, why they paid the first instalment late, he said, if we knew whatever it is there is to know and that they’re never going to tell us. Christine’s car appeared immediately after them. Christine looks rather prettier distracted, he thought. Who cares now they’ve paid, his wife chuckled.
They climbed in the lift. Hilary put her arm round his waist. What I have to know, Judge Savage had asked the police inspector, is whether I must tell my wife. She was squeezing him. You’re overweight Savage, she laughed. I mean, what will come out and what won’t? Martin was all skin and bones, Christine told Hilary. He wasn’t getting better at all. He can’t keep anything down. Even water he vomits. Again she said it seemed he had caught some weird thing from his moths. They had him on a battery of drips: nutrients, drugs. Hilary tried to listen. Or it could have been the funguses. He has this romantic thing, Christine was trying to smile, about the most humble life forms. It was in line with his spending his whole life defending riff-raff, I think. She is lying, Daniel thought. Given the course of action you’ve chosen, Mattheson said, I don’t see how you can avoid its coming out. A courageous course of action, he repeated, in all sorts of ways. He had insisted on knowing exactly when the relationship with the girl had begun. They said it might be why he’s been so odd this last year and more, Christine was saying. Again Judge Savage had told him the truth. The fourth or fifth day of the trial. Can I see you? he whispered to Christine as Hilary rang the bell and called Sarah. Alone.
The door swung open. Sarah was beaming. She was radiant. She announced: Oh, Dad, Mum, this is Minnie Kwan, she’s a friend of mine. She just came over for a bit. Keep me company. And the girl directed a huge wink at her father. It was a wink, he immediately understood, of ugly complicity. This from the girl who a few months ago hadn’t even wanted to share the secret of a present he had bought, a grand piano for a twentieth wedding anniversary now only weeks away. Minnie did not seek his eyes as she shook hands. The Korean girl seemed confused and uncertain. How do you do Mrs Shields? Sarah meanwhile was embracing her mother with an exuberance that was unsettling. Again she winked broadly at her father, actually over her mother’s shoulder. Mumsie! she cried. It’s ugly, Daniel thought. She pressed her dark young cheek against her mother’s grey-blonde hair. Minnie stood back, then took one formal step forward to smile and shake hands when Hilary had freed herself. We were thinking maybe she could stay and share the rent, Mum, Sarah was saying. She put an arm round her mother’s shoulder. She’d like to leave home, you see. How rare it was for Sarah to call Hilary Mum! If Auntie Christine will let us stay, that is. Since when had she called anyone auntie? At least until we find somewhere else. We can start looking right away. Again she winked at her father. Daniel realised that she might equally well start shouting out the truth. She might leap in one bound from exuberance to hysteria. He would not accept the alliance offered. One day she would betray him. He would be forever vulnerable, always on edge. The police know who did it, he told Hilary that evening after Tom had finally gone to bed. What, Dan? The police know, he said. They know who did it.
Exactly how the ensuing conversation with his wife had gone, Daniel Savage wouldn’t properly remember. Why would one try to remember such things? But it was clear that it ended forever a great phase of his life. They had taken the dog out, this creature who in just a few days had become the symbol of their middle-aged domestic happiness. She let it off the lead at the beginning of the path that led up across the field to the top of the hill. Of all animals, the dog is the most easily domesticated. The evening was pleasant. There was a harvest moon in the sky. Hilary wanted to walk, to enjoy the feeling of the last problem resolved, of relief at last. This happy, sensible, middle-aged couple, Judge Savage thought, who’ve been through it all, are taking a walk in the country near the handsome, but not extravagant new house they have bought. The police know who did it, he began.
A half hour later she was sitting with her back to a tree, hugging her knees. He tried to touch her. Leave me alone! She started shouting. Leave me! You’ve killed me. What do you want to do, kiss a corpse? Leave me here, I don’t want to talk to you. Where’s Woolfie? he asked. I don’t care where the stupid dog is. How can you think of a stupid dog? Go!
He obeyed. In the sitting room at home, he poured out a whisky. Quite a few, I suppose, he had told her. It doesn’t matter. Yes it does. How many? I don’t know, a dozen. Or more? I can’t see the point in counting. I bet you did though. He grew angry. Twenty-one, he said brutally. Okay? Obscurely, he felt she deserved it. Who? She demanded. He was furious. They were girls, he said, who do you think? There were friends’ wives. They were clerks. Who else would they be? Oh, let’s name them, shall we? she shouted, let’s name the sluts! You asked for the truth, he said. You asked for it. It had been an ugly scene. Now Judge Savage sat on the sofa his wife had chosen. He knew how carefully she would have chosen the fabrics. To make the house beautiful. Or can’t you remember them? she shouted. Hilary liked to put together an environment carefully, he thought, the same way she liked to study a piece of music, meticulously, to build it up line by line, to colour it, to feel the weight of the right hand, the left, the pedal. To make it beautiful. There are so many you can’t even remember their names! she was shouting. Is that it? Actually, it was. He poured another drink. He had sensed from the way she had reacted that she wasn’t so much disbelieving of what he was telling her, as of the simple fact that he was telling her, he had made her life impossible. She could no longer go on believing that rumours were just rumours. For how many years has she been hearing rumours, he wondered. She depended on me to lie.
Sitting on the sofa, Judge Savage thought: she likes to eliminate clutter and mistakes. He looked round the tidy room, draining his glass. The embroidery hung over the piano. She wants a man who is a man, but she wants tidiness too. The whisky rose rapidly to his head. There’s a discrepancy there. Though he very much appreciated how she kept the house. I don’t usually drink two whiskies. Now he was pouring a third. The shock is that I did say it, he thought, gazing at the embroidery. Probably she believed what Sarah had told her. She half believed. But it was clutter out of sight. On one side of the cloth you have a strong and carefully woven picture – Daniel Savage MBE no less – and on the other, unseen, the knots and the messy snippings. What a lot of clutter I’ve brought into this house, he thought. He actually laughed. What a lot of mess!
Standing at the piano Judge Savage played a scale and a chord. For years he had taken lessons. The fingers wouldn’t move. Major and minor chords. It’s a question of understanding progressions, Hilary had explained. Judge Savage tried to remember how to switch a major chord to a minor. There was a trick. Every major calls to its minor, Hilary said. She had been explaining this to Tom only recently. They don’t exist apart. One grew weary of her explaining things. The whole business wit
h Wagner was another. You grew weary of her talking about it. As she had grown weary of his reflections on the courtroom. Marriage. What a bore, Daniel Savage repeated. He banged down the lid over the keys. At the same instant the dog came barking across the room. He turned. The door was open. You’re a fool, Hilary announced. She was brittle and icy.
She had tidied her hair, he saw. She was trying to control her breathing. Hilary! Why on earth did you tell the police, she hissed. You’re a fool! A great fool! She still loves me, he saw. The whisky had taken away his normal anxiety. Now they’re going to fire you, she said. They’ll have to, won’t they? You’re finished.
She stood by the fireplace hissing at him across the top of the piano. Quite apart from anything else, how are we going to pay for all this? Tell me that, Daniel Savage. When they’ve fired you? Not to mention eight hundred a month for your pampered daughter and pregnant ex-slut. Why in God’s name did you tell the police? Why did you go and see the little whore? Daniel was silent. She left home, obviously, because kind stupid uncle-lover Savage went to see her and gave her a lesson on human rights, the superiority of Western culture. Daniel said: Quite probably. Idiot! If you’d told me first, if you’d discussed the whole thing with me the moment you started getting those phone-calls, then we could have helped the girl together, couldn’t we, we could have got her a job in a different town. Without going to the police.
Daniel was silent. Another tone had crept into his wife’s voice. Why are you so afraid of me? she demanded. It was a mocking tone. She faced him across the piano. That’s what’s caused it all. Don’t be afraid of the notes, she used to tell him when he sat at the piano. You’re in a funk, she said. Not at all, he replied. You’re terrified of the black notes, she laughed once. Look at you, she repeated. You’re terrified. If I was afraid, Hilary, he said quietly, I’d never have told you, would I? You want me to be afraid. How stupid, she repeated, If you’d told me when this idiot girl started bothering you – we could have sorted the problem out together. Together, she repeated. Together we could have sorted it out.
