He walked through to the hall and opened the door to her. ‘For God’s sake, woman!’ The shock of seeing her face so close was still ripe in him. ‘Why are you sneaking around like this?’
‘I rang the bell, didn’t I?’ she yelled back, equally frazzled. ‘You gone deaf, or something? Or was your head in the clouds, as per usual?’
Had he really not heard the bell? Perhaps he was going deaf – or did he let himself drift too far away at times? ‘Anyway,’ he said in a calmer voice, ‘it’s not Friday, is it? I didn’t expect to see you.’
‘No, well, I’m not here to work.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’ve come on a matter of business.’
‘Ah,’ he said, and felt a thickening in his throat.
‘A matter that concerns yourself.’
‘You’d better come inside, then,’ he said, stepping aside to let her pass.
To his alarm, she pushed right past him with unsettling determination and fell back into one of the armchairs by the cold fireplace with a great ‘Humph!’
He stood for a moment, huge and mute, like a forest troll, before following her, hesitantly, into the drawing room.
‘Well, then, is there any chance of a cup of tea?’ she asked, and pulled her fleece jacket over her breasts. ‘Or would that be too much trouble?’
He did not reply, but left the room promptly. When he returned, carrying the teacups and a few biscuits on a tray, she had settled into the chair with an air of importance. She was holding a folded paper in her lap. He placed the tray on a rickety side table and sat down in the chair opposite her. He considered the marble of the mantelpiece and the gilded mirror above it, reflecting their silence, and tried to think of something to say. ‘Well, here we are …’ he said softly, and smiled at nothing in particular. A dried twig with acorn, which he had picked up on one of his walks, was leaning against the little china clock on the mantelpiece; it was as brown and drab as the day.
She looked at him with something he interpreted as contempt, although it might just as well have been the opposite, before bending forward to help herself to a biscuit from the tray.
‘I expect you know why I’ve come,’ she said, at last.
‘I have a good idea, yes,’ he answered flatly.
‘I know it’s you – you have ruined us!’ It was not what she had planned to say – certainly not – but a part of her was enjoying the drama of the situation, and her potential part in it. But ‘us’? She heard herself use that word with disbelief.
‘I object,’ he protested, languidly, like some corrupted lawyer.
‘You what?’
‘I said that I object to such a simplified version of reality. I ruined your husband, but I gave you paid employment – reluctantly, perhaps, but I still think it ought to count in my favour. I didn’t know who you were, at first – not until you told me your husband’s name.’ There’s a certain comedy to all this, he thought to himself.
‘Oh.’ For a moment, she was dumbstruck by his straightforward confession. And a little disappointed – she had been looking forward to the interrogation part, to the drawing of blood as she presented her evidence, piece by piece. But he was right, of course. The document in her hand had nothing to do with her.
He stood up and crossed the room to turn on a lamp by the French windows. Outside, the wind was rising with the coming of darkness. Fallen leaves were whirling around the yard, riding their own dilapidated merry-go-rounds. Too fast; too fast. Sometimes a northerly gust would lift them away from their play and into the air, forcing some of them against the window, where they made a dry, scraping sound, like ghosts dragging their nails, wanting to make themselves known.
‘I know you take me for a plain woman, an uneducated thug’s wife,’ she said to his back. ‘Well, stupidity can be a great disguise, at times – but I believe in plain speaking.’ She was calmer now. Steady.
A blood-red stain was spilling through the trees in the west. He turned his back to the window and looked about the room, wondering vaguely why it looked so unlived in. How could it be that he had not managed to make more of an impression? The furniture stood about like pieces in a stage set, or like extras in a drama about to commence: a stooped chair, ready to pull itself straight; a table on spindly legs, ready to leap; a book opened on the floor, waiting to say its lines.
‘Are you listening?’
He nodded, unable to speak.
‘So, you’ve quite deliberately ruined him, eh? I wonder how long you’ve been plotting it – five years? Ten? Well, there’s no need to answer; doesn’t matter much now, does it? There’s more where this comes from, you know – a whole file of it,’ she said, waving the piece of paper – a sound like the leaves at the window; the ghosts from the past, pressing against him.
‘You were even behind the deal which made him have to give up the paddocks on the other side of the road to that holiday park … Those acres were part of the ancient tenement, you know. They have belonged to the farm for ever – it’s mentioned in the Domesday Book. I suppose you thought it would hurt him, giving up the land?’ She laughed softly, but then he thought he heard her sob. ‘Well, you were wrong there; he couldn’t care less about the land. Always hated it. Hated the farm, he did, but it was a convenient bolt-hole for a con man, wasn’t it? That old barn, full of this, that and the other … It’s quite clear that you did it all to get at this old pile, but what I don’t understand is why? You don’t seem like a man who has any need for … all this.’ She flicked her plump hand at the room. Perhaps she noticed how empty it was. ‘And then there’s the question of why you wanted to hurt. And how did you know that the only way to get at him was to stab at his pride?’
‘Hurt?’ he interrupted. ‘But you misunderstand … I never set out to hurt anyone – I just wanted to set things right. There was so much that had gone … well, wrong.’ He turned back to face the French windows.
She ignored him. ‘So that’s when I remembered, didn’t I? That the great professor used to know my hubbie, way back …’
He could feel her eyes on his back, intense, probing.
‘And, anyway, as I said, I’m not as stupid as you may think; I can put two and two together. I knew from the time I saw that photograph of the little boy and his family at Oakstone that the Bradley boy was somehow related to you.’
He swallowed hard. She had known all along.
‘So, once I’d found the file in the safe and read it word by word – all those transactions; I’m surprised he kept the documentation of such thorough failure on his part – I reckoned there must be something more to this story, a missing link, if you read me. And then I remembered you skulking around Edencombe on that rainy day. So I thought, hang on a minute, don’t I know one of the nurses from up there … ? Oh, yes, I do: Mrs Smith from the WI.’
His limbs were suddenly fluid. He staggered back to the chair opposite her. She was watching him, sucking her teeth.
‘Of course the nurses aren’t allowed – strictly forbidden, in fact – to disclose any information about the patients, seeing as it is an institution of a somewhat … delicate nature. However, Mrs Smith is a rather frail character, recently bereaved, and it didn’t take me long to get her to spill the beans, the poor dear. It’s not that she likes me – oh, no – and I’m sure she’s, you know, moral and all that … I reckon she goes to that church on Sundays. But–’ she fixed him with her eyes and there was something urgent in her gaze – ‘but I suppose there are moments in all our lives, stripped, sort of colourless and, at least to the rest of the world, darned dull, when the nastiest, bloody agony –’ she caught her breath and continued – ‘I’m talking of proper pain here – heartache, that kind of thing – will make you go against yourself, I mean, go against who you are, your nature, right?’ Her voice was softer now, almost tender, as if she was no longer talking about Mrs Smith and Edencombe, or, indeed, about the ruining of her husband, but about something altogether more personal.
They sat for
a while staring past each other in glassy-eyed silence. How can I make her understand? he thought to himself. How can I make anyone understand why I had to do this, when I hardly understand it myself? Not compulsion, redemption, revenge – no. Setting the balance right. Joining things back together to make space for love. Nor would he be able to explain, he realised, why, now that he had recreated that place, he could not possess it. He could not unpack the boxes in the hall and he still hadn’t opened the doors to most of the rooms in the house. The bliss to which he had aspired was still beyond reach, shielded from view by a sadness of cobwebs. He could no longer find a purpose. He was confused. He wanted somebody to whom he could tell the truth. But he could not think who such a person might be. He was a ridiculous figure, a freak, and they would be sure to laugh at him and his pathetic efforts. Bunny-boy, trying to set things right. The whole idea, the notion that everything would somehow be okay if only he got Oakstone back, was indeed laughable. If only he could return once more to Ithaca. To his own surprise, he started laughing. Leaning back in his chair, he laughed until he realised – oh, the horror of it, the shame – that he was crying.
But Mrs Ludgate, compact and contained in her chair, her feet not quite reaching the floor, looked at him calmly and, if it had not been so unthinkable, he might have thought that there was compassion in her gaze. She spoke again in her new soft voice: ‘There are things – bad moments – which can change your life when it really matters. It’s happened to me, you know. I sort of stepped out of myself and became a ghost.’ Her cheeks had reddened a bit and she spoke quickly, as if embarrassed. ‘It’s like on all them chat shows on telly, when they keep telling you that you have to have ambitions in life and fulfil yourself and stuff like that. Well, it ain’t always that easy, is it? You forget all those things you were dreaming of doing, all those pathetic, lousy hopes. You forget yourself – and then you have to spend the rest of your time trying to find your way back.’ She stopped abruptly, looking away from him now.
Ah, yes, those moments she was speaking of – he knew them only too well and how inexorably linked they were with the search for love. Love. How truly helpless humans were in its hands. How it played upon our expectations. And yet, something else was at work here. However much one strove for it or against it, one’s efforts were never enough; the cause and effect seemed always to be beyond one’s powers. And the result – was it intentional or accidental?
Something – the fading disc of light from the lamp, which kept them in the dark, perhaps, or the unreal, Alice-in-Wonder-land quality of their new world – stirred a memory in him of another time, so long ago now, in this room, when he had kept himself just out of the circle of light, here by the fireplace: Mr Bradley’s funeral, when he had first understood that he was lost to himself and that it was all out of joint. Had he realised then how utterly overwhelming his task would be, and how wonderfully all-consuming?
On the road beyond the garden wall, a car passed; the beams from its headlights found their way through the forked trees and across the lawn, so that they finally hit the gilded mirror above the fireplace. Unruly shadows came to life and stirred around Mr Askew and Mrs Ludgate. Then these dancing shapes were gone and the room seemed darker than before. But there was something else; yes, there was something quite new and they both sensed it. There was an odd mood in the chilly room, a sense of intimacy and understanding, and the possibility of it was strangely encouraging to them both.
‘I am sorry, truly, that you got caught up in this. And I freely admit that I may have been prejudiced against you because of your association with him. It’s only natural, after all.’
She looked up, with a genuine air of surprise. ‘Oh, no, please don’t be sorry. I wish he was dead!’ she said with vehemence.
He stared at her for a moment and it was as if he had seen her for the first time. She was not all that ugly, he noticed. Quite pretty, really, if it hadn’t been for that caked make-up. Her eyes were of such an unusual blue. ‘That bad, was it? Yes?’
She said nothing.
‘Why didn’t you leave him?’
‘We had a child. A daughter.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, I remember now …’
‘I was trapped, like a fly in one of them orange stones …’
‘Amber.’
‘Yeah, that’s the one. And, once she had got away – once she was safe – I didn’t really care. I was nothing to him; he left me alone for ages when he was out … roaming with Billy and those other friends of his. Or when he lived in London for weeks on end.’ How she hated them all and their bloody ‘business’ – the stink of it, the rubbish they talked about it. ‘There was some freedom then, which I enjoyed. I had the farm to myself. And I convinced myself it was all I wanted. That I mustn’t rock the boat. That loneliness wasn’t the worst of it.’
How come he had not seen it before, that extraordinary integrity in the face of her predicament? And then, in a flash, he recognised, behind her mask, the young girl in the pink uniform, serving in the pub on the moor, and he remembered her kind eyes from so long ago. Could it be that she had always been on his side?
‘Why did you answer my ad?’
‘Oh, several reasons, really.’ She was blushing. ‘I remembered you from all those years ago in the Moor Cross Inn … I felt bad for you that time. You were so helpless. It was quite brave of you to walk into that shit hole.’
He looked up at her quickly and saw that she was concentrating to find the right words, so he listened.
‘I thought, at the time, that I had never seen anyone as alone. Then, when I saw you again at the trial – after all those years – I thought about all the parts of my life I had lost since I last saw you. And it stirred something in me. I thought perhaps we were rather similar – and I thought that, whatever we have lost, perhaps we could help each other find ourselves again.’ She had reddened, he saw, before she added, ‘Except that you’re so bloody arrogant at times.’
He nodded, ignoring the last remark. ‘Yes, I think you’re right … I think we probably are, in some respects – alike.’ He looked at her and smiled. What an odd turn of events. ‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ he said. ‘I did force him to sign over the farm into your name.’
She looked at him and laughed in genuine appreciation. ‘How very crafty of you, Professor!’
He rolled his eyes and waved a hand in mock smugness.
‘But … there’s something else, isn’t there? Something to do with that … that person in Edencombe?’
He looked up at her in alarm and she let it drop.
‘You still haven’t told me …’ she continued instead. ‘I know he was awful to that boy, your friend, the one they called Fluffy, but what did he do to you?’
‘My brother. That boy was my brother.’
He stood abruptly and crossed the room to the French windows, opening the doors. The cold night entered, smelling of burnt bracken and the coming of winter. As he turned back to her, the warm glow from the lamp embraced him, but the light had gone out in his face. ‘What did he do to me? Oh, I don’t know, nothing that you’d call criminal, I’m sure. He made me betray … everything.’
*
Gabriel’s resolution to save Michael from Jim of Blackaton and set things right had been made in St James’s Park on a Saturday morning in summer, after his first year at university. It was a moment of perfect tranquillity and clarity. The sun was steaming the dew off the lawns and the two old spinsters living in Duck Island Cottage were already up and about, scattering feed for the early birds. A couple of geese flew in over the lake and landed in a sudden, spectacular show – a sequined crescendo. A rainbow formed briefly in their wake, but it disappeared before revealing its treasures. Hundreds of years previously, when the park was still no more than a swamp, two crocodiles had lived amongst the waterfowl. Imported from a warmer climate, they would yawn in bewilderment on a morning like this. Gabriel, his crumpled suit sodden with dew, yawned too as he sat up on the bench, where he had end
ed up after a night on the tear. He offered his face to the sun and smiled in revelation. It was obvious that he would have to treat his mission with great discretion, patience and perseverance. He had, at last, a real purpose.
*
The catalyst to this revelation was an ugly thing – a rather obscene episode – but, in reality, it was a series of unlikely events over the previous forty-eight hours which had led him to this park bench, where he had finally fallen asleep after walking all night until just before dawn.
It had all started with him overhearing a conversation in an Irish pub in King’s Cross. Two thuggish-looking men in three-piece suits and greased hair were discussing a new nightclub they’d been to in Soho. Something – a tone or the way their voices would hush deliberately at certain points in the conversation – made Gabriel listen harder. It was clearly a club where you could catch an act that was quite out of the ordinary. One of the men mentioned a dancer called Dolly May and her pianist, who was ‘a bit of a daftie’.
Gabriel shifted closer to the two men under the pretext of taking a look out of the smudged window. The light had started to dim over the streets outside the pub and the taxicabs were putting their headlamps on. Suddenly he realised that the two men had stopped talking. He turned round, only to stare into the face of one of them.
The man looked him up and down, taking his time. ‘Hey, this one looks as if he could do with a bit of excitement, don’t you think?’ he said, nudging his friend.
The friend grinned and turned to Gabriel. ‘Enjoying our conversation, were you?’
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