Undercurrent

by Frances Fyfield

  They were left to themselves in the foyer, although if she timed it right, one of the agency staff who took over at weekends wandered along with a tray of tea and a plate of the sort of tasteless dry biscuits Tanya would have rejected. Angela wondered if the biscuits were the choice of the staff or of the patients, who might have been raised to regard rich tea or ginger nuts as a treat.

  'Why do you sit out here, by yourself, instead of in the living room with the nice fire?'

  'I like it here. Get away from the others.' Today he twinkled at her.

  'So cold out there. Splendidly kind of you to come out in this. So lucky.' He settled himself.

  He had tremor in the hands and virtually no use of his legs, but he could dress himself. The clothes were endearingly old and good and he was pinkly clean. 'How is the gorgeous child?'

  'Well, she's acting up, but what's new? I dyed myhair to please her and she has the nerve to say she doesn't like it...'

  'Tut, tut,' delivered indulgently, smiling.

  'And she still talks about Francesca. At school, I gather. At home, even to strangers. She was doing that this morning .. .'

  'Give it time, give it time, my dear.'

  '. . . to an American, I ask you, up at the castle. A tourist Maggie brought in. I think Tanya was flirting with him a bit, but more to the point, he was certainly flirting with her ...'

  'Really!'

  'I don't want to get it wrong. I want her to be easy with strangers, but I don't want her being familiar. You never know with people, do you?'

  'No. You never know.'

  'Anyway, she's safe with Neil. I'll try and bring her again, one of these days.'

  'Oh yes, one of these days.' Not you should or you must.

  'Well, I don't know. She might be doing somersaults in the rain. She hates sitting still. Neil manages to make her, sometimes. Me, I have to make her run and jump until she's worn out, but I don't always like to do that, because she gets so fractious when she's tired. We set up a series of hurdles on the beach the other day, after school. She needed wearing out. She can run along the shingle, like it was a running track. Amazing. Sometimes I feel as if I'm exercising a great big dog.'

  'A dog!'

  'Yes. Just like exercising a dog. Relentless. Needs taking out twice a day and then feeding.

  She'd like to have a dog, she says, but never mind the money they cost, I'm not sure. To be honest,'

  she lowered her voice confidentially, even though there was no one to overhear, 'I'm not sure she has the patience. Not sure

  I would, either. What do you think?'

  'Dogs, yes ... dogs are good.'

  'Yes, but think - if I let her out with a dog by herself, everyone would stop and talk to her.

  Unless I got a horrid dog that nobody liked. One that snapped at everyone else but us . ..'

  'Yes!'

  'That would keep people away, wouldn't it? Sort of guard dog, yes it's quite a good idea when I think of it. But not that bloody dog Neil wanted us to have.

  Do you know, this morning he was so cheerful? He's not usually like that. He's usually tense and miserable, he always was. He annoyed me, though. I told him about the American making eyes at Tanya and he just shrugged. I said there was something creepy about him . . .'

  'Creepy American?'

  'Yes. Creepy. Men like that want locking up.'

  Uncle Joe adjusted himself in his chair and smiled widely at the nurse who brought tea. She smiled back. The progress of the cup towards his mouth was tortuous. It clattered back into the saucer. He leaned towards Angela and tapped his nose, wisely.

  'This American ... You should lock him up. With a dog!' He laughed loudly and Angela joined in. He always made her feel better; they often ended up giggling like kids. She could tell him anything. He wasn't really a chore, after all. He pushed the snowdrops to the side of the tray, not really caring for them either and knowing she wouldn't mind, because, really, they thought the same way about irrelevant things.

  She did not come here because Maggie would ask if she was fulfilling the promise; she came because he liked her and agreed with her when it seemed nobody else did. It was lonely out there, being watched all the time, to see if you got it wrong.

  'We are better without Francesca and Harry, aren't we?' she asked anxiously, taking two of the biscuits.

  Lunch had been scanty.

  'Better? Much better.'

  'I'm not a bad person, am I, Uncle Joe? I'm a good mother, aren't I?' He patted her hand and gazed at her fondly.

  'No. You're very good. Like dogs.'

  He always said what she wanted to hear and remembered nothing.

  The rain came down in sheets, altering the landscape; again to a leaden grey before the black of evening and the violence outside provided Henry with a comfortable excuse for lying still, listening to music and doing nothing. Then, with the rain beating out a steady, unrhythmic lullaby, he slept the sleep of the dead. Woke once to a sound and the red glow of the dying fire, saw the shawl where he had laid it on the bed, and then slept again, He would get Maggie to give Francesca the shawl. That would be the end of it.

  The morning sky made him consider the pleasures of living in a house like this where he would never need to draw the shades and could stretch, naked, in front of a window. Henry felt the small ridge of fat which was forming round his middle, pinched it ruefully and thought, to hell with it. Better be fat than believe in ghosts; better be a porker than a nut.

  He said a prayer for his father; not a prayer to any known deity, simply an address to whoever might be able to interpret it and pass the message on. I hope you're OK, Dad. You might like it here, especially the fishing, but I'm not sure I do ... It was simply a continuation of a daily conversation, keeping his father up to speed, seeking his opinion, not really expecting a reply, but encouraging himself to see things with his father's broad perspective.

  They had talked by phone so regularly, it had proved a habit difficult to relinquish and Henry had sat at his desk on many an afternoon with his hand ready to dial before he realized what he was doing. Waiting to chat to Dad, nothing much, just an exchange of words, sometimes a discussion. Dad loved nothing better than a debate.

  It seemed to Henry in this single moment that his intellect had gone to sleep since his father died, submerged in grief, loss, self-recrimination and, floating among it, this murky sediment of sheer sentimentality which had driven him over the Atlantic. He was appalled to remember himself reading poetry and crying like some juvenile, throwing himself back into sorrow and all of it reminding him of her and how hellish she must have felt.

  Making himself weep, if only to exhaust the supply of emotion and attempt to extract that hairball which seemed constantly lodged in his own throat. Any woman with half a brain would have left him; any child would have despised such unreliable thrashing about of the type which affected him even now. Dad would surely not like it. Henry sat up in bed with his arms clasped round his knees. That was what he was trying to remember during the night, the lost intellect and his own dedication to scientific fact. Don't simply accept so-called facts; go to the source before you have the arrogance to believe.

  He hit his forehead with the heel of his palm. Come on. Henry.

  All he had absorbed in the last couple of days was people telling him so-called facts, chilling facts or maybe fantasies, and why should he believe any of them? Sure, he was going to go home, but surely not on the basis of a lot of happy drunk dinner guests, a crazy Francesca cousin with a possible angle to her legends . . . Hearsay is not fact, any more than dreams; fact has no motive or axe to grind. Fact is in libraries and it did not become a man to forget the disciplines so essential to his own nature.

  In a new mood of virtue, Henry took his elaborate mix of vitamins and minerals which weighed a ton in the bulk he had carried, a waste of space for a short journey. He was planning the day, and that felt like his old self before all this stuff intervened. No more alcohol; no more fatty food; he was goi
ng to damn well sightsee, and not let all this stuff sour him, and he knew the way to the library. Henry felt like a drunk experiencing what it was like not to have a hangover, but all the same, he crept from the premises rather than roared.

  There was an envelope with his name on it, containing a key, left for him with the coffee.

  Just so you don't have to ring the bell. It touched him.

  Library. Old newspaper reports. The reference was computerized, but the source was the newspapers themselves, not yet old enough to be yellow. They were delivered by a face he had seen in the street.

  A small boy was recovered by men on a Ramsgate fishing boat, yesterday morning. He had suffered considerable injury. A member of crew reported seeing him floating on the tidal current and thought at first he was attempting to swim. Enquiries reveal that the dead boy was Henry Chisholm, son of Francesca Chisholm and her estranged husband, Jonathan Saunders, who resides abroad. The child had been reported missing by his distraught mother shortly before he was recovered. Ms Chisholm, who lives in a prestigious, two-bed flat on Warbling seafront, told police she had left open the door to their apartment 'to get some air' and did not realize the boy had gone. The boy was partially disabled, but extremely mobile. The mother is being treated for shock. The exact cause of death is unknown. Police would like to contact the fisherman who left his equipment on the pier.

  OK. FACT. He could feel fact in the pit of his stomach. They were right. The child was dead.

  That ugly little brute had passed into another zone. Mrs Saunders has identified the body of her son. . .

  Asked if she had any explanation of his injuries, she said she did not know. And an editorial , LET THIS

  BE A LESSON TO US ALL!!! Children must be attended at all times. . .

  He read on, into the next day, a small piece detailing the continuation of enquiries, and adding a moral tone, to the effect that nationwide, the death or neglect of children was not confined to the lower classes, but occurred in the best and richest of families, single parenthood was a classless disease, etc.

  There was a description of Francesca's flat, in the block next to the castle, with spacious living accommodation and fine sea views, as if this had somehow contributed to the tragedy. Henry could not recall the block, as viewed from the pier, as anything other than dull and ordinary, but all the same there was, in the article, a hint of loose-living privilege. Had Francesca been rich? Surely not. Not rich enough today for regular help, it seemed.

  She let her boy be looked after by poofters. She was a primary school teacher from an upper-class family, and Henry had learned already that in English terms, class and cash do not necessarily coincide. Then the day after. A woman has been arrested in connection with . . . and will appear at Dover Court tomorrow. It was the photograph for the day following which caught his eye, along with a brief description. Mother remanded in custody for her own safety, and there she was, with a blanket over her head, being pushed into the back of a police car while cops with stern faces kept back a small but vociferous crowd of screaming women apparently intent on tearing her to pieces. Bitch, bitch, bitch. Henry closed his eyes, imagining.

  The date of the trial surprised him. Just short of a year ago, so near and yet so far, made it seem all the closer. The guilty plea had not been unexpected, although there was another, moralistic addendum about Francesca's slight virtue by refusing to deny this terrible offence and thus saving public money.

  Friends and relatives had been adamant in their refusal to speak to journalists. Less circumspect neighbours, mostly old and retired, said the defendant was generally very nice. No photographs of the boy. He had been cremated, service for family and friends only, no pictures of that, either. There was a brief discussion of his hemiplegia which Henry read carefully. Then he went back to the photograph of Francesca being pushed inside the car outside the court.

  He found it unbearably moving. Without thinking very much about it, apart from being surprised at his own vandalism. Henry tore it out carefully, folded it and put it in his pocket.

  Then he moved to the poetry shelves, not much patronized on a Monday morning. Looked up one he remembered.

  A sweet disorder in the dress

  Kindles in clothes a wantonness .. .

  A careless shoe-string, in whose tie

  I see a wild civility;

  Do more bewitch me, than when Art

  Is too precise in every part.

  A blanket over the head could never be elegant. It was not the same as a shawl. Why hadn't they let her have her shawl? Why not let her comfort her own misery?

  Henry felt exceedingly old and not a little foolish to be lurking by these shelves. It seemed to him that poetry was the province of the very young, forced to learn it as part of their heritage, or the very old, who had come to understand that nothing else lasted as long. It was only the slight failures in life who had recourse to the stuff in adulthood and carried a volume to India in a backpack, to aid the romance of the journey. Or girls like Francesca Chisholm, whose father had made her learn so much of it by heart to give her an unselfconscious love of verse. Not always solemn verse; silly verse, too.

  The thunder God went for a ride. Upon his favourite filly. I'm THOR! he cried. The horse replied.

  You forgot your thaddle, thilly.

  Henry found himself smiling. He put back the book in his hand, feeling conspicuous for lurking although he was not alone. There were others drifting round shelves, looking vaguely shifty.

  Henry patted the pocket with the torn newspaper piece. He would throw it away, later.

  He wandered out into the street and followed a sign to the old gaol. It was atmosphere he wanted, to help digest facts, and besides, with the help of these facts, he might be going home even sooner. He would have to have something to report, as well as something to mitigate the memory of these other facts: He could not just turn round and go with nothing to remember but an old friend on the equivalent of death row.

  He was a tourist, not a maudlin fool, and the seeing of sights and absorbing of history had always been on the agenda. He had made a plan before he got here: he wanted to look at castles and things he could not see anywhere else; he was damn well going to do it.

  In terms of tourist attractions, the Old Town Gaol was unpretentious and he was the only visitor. There was an antiquated courtroom, full of life-sized models, eerily lit, so that the details of their dusty waistcoats and wigs could be seen in full splendour.

  This, Henry read in his leaflet, was the place for the trial of local thieves in Victorian times. A mob had torn it apart to rescue smugglers incarcerated in the cells. The stench of humanity would be overpowering enough to make the magistrate retch when the hatch was opened and the prison below was full.

  Henry went down steps to the cells, intrigued without being fascinated, feeling that in some way he was simply doing his duty. Sightseeing often felt like that.

  He reached the barred door to the first cell and touched the cold, rusting metal as he looked through into a tiny room of spartan quality. Cold stone walls, an iron bedstead, a shelf and a wax figure reclining listlessly on a thin mattress, clutching a bible. Henry could feel the chill of the floor rise up through the stones; there was room to stand, but not to walk; the width of the cell was merely the hand span of a small man.

  He moved down a row with cells either side, each with its own model of a skeletal prisoner, Touched his forehead and felt it sweat. NO.

  There was the time with Francesca, when they had gone to see the caves and she had led him out, gibbering and fainting with indefinable fear, times when he had forced himself out of the railway carriage, careless of who he shoved, because he had known without shadow of doubt that he would die if he did not escape. The same, feeling now, the hot grip of claustrophobia swelling his throat. There was something, someone small, stroking his thigh. He stumbled forward, past more of the cells, searching for the exit sign, scrambling up stone steps, bursting out past a startled girl at the
entry desk, and into the street.

  He walked with a ludicrous jerky, fast walk until he was in sight of the sea, and once that was in range, leaned against the wall and breathed deeply. He balled his hands into fists to stop them shaking. The seagulls whirled and screamed in derision; Henry looked at them until the feeling subsided, leaving him weak. He scrambled down to the edge of the water and waited until the world came back in focus.

  No breakfast; low blood sugar. A cup of coffee somewhere in between the library and the gaol to send it soaring, and then the lights and the fusty warmth, the dust and gloom, all factors contributing to the lack of control he recognized; all of them part of an explanation, but not a reason and never an excuse. He had felt the dead boy's hand brush at his leg, pulling him back, but knew there was nothing but a vision of Francesca, wearing her shawl, sitting in a cell for ever and ever, unable to move, opening her mouth to whisper, I can't talk now; I can't talk now. And he had known her.

  She would never have risked a fate like that unless she had been entirely mad. If she had been caught, she would have lied and lied and lied.

  'I don't owe you anything,' he shouted. Nothing! Leave me alone, why don't you leave me alone?'

  I'm not asking you for anything. Henry. I never did.

  'If you were to remove the glass case from that bloody stuffed fish, Eddie,' Maggie was saying to him, 'I could throw darts at it. I don't know how you live with it.'

  'Because I never look at it. Always have my back to the wall. What's wrong with it, anyway?'

  'It looks quite incredibly smug. And it isn't a suitable adornment for the office of a fine legal brain. It speaks of savagery, hunting and fishing, to say nothing of poor taste and laziness.'

  'Laziness?'

  'Exactly. It looks as if you're too lazy even to get up and knock it off the wall. As well as insensitive. You obviously don't care if the clients loathe it.'

  The cigarette smoke rose from the ashtray on his side of the frayed desk. Edward looked pained, a expression which twisted his face into a strange contortion. Any minute now, she feared he might clean the wax from his overlarge ears, but instead he busied himself threading paperclips into a chain then stopped, stubbed out the cigarette and lit another.