Breaking Light
Page 31
Well, where do I begin? I have no way of knowing how much you have been told about your origins. Do you remember anything? Did you know that you were born at Oakstone – in the master bedroom, overlooking the lawn and the elms at the end of the garden? It was in July, as you know, just before dawn. I was outside, smoking and stomping around in the blue shadows, feeling as powerless as I have ever felt in my entire life. Dr Lennon was in the room with your mother and would not let me in for a while after you were born. I knew that you were alive, but they told me that something wasn’t right. He did not realise, at first, that the hole in your face was just a cleft palate! A doctor! It’s laughable to think that such a small defect should put such fear into a village doctor. Anyway, I got to hold you at last and that was one of my happiest moments. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to stay to get to know you. My leave was up the following day and I had to go back to the continent. I was moving in the shadows, in those days, alone behind enemy lines … but that’s another story.
Things were not going so well between your mother and me at that time. We got married too quickly before the war – it was the way it happened back then; people were nervous, I suppose. I reckon I just never realised that she loved me quite so much. I never really loved her, you see, or perhaps I did, in a way. But I want you to know that your birth was one of the happiest days of my life.
I am a weak man, Gabriel, and, in the eyes of the world, I have committed a crime. My offence: I fell in love with another woman. I fell in love with Amélie as soon as I set eyes on her. It was shortly after Germany invaded France, in May 1940. She was like a hook in my heart from then on – no, hook sounds wrong – something softer … Oh, sod it, I am not a poet, but she was there, in my heart. I swear I could feel it as a physical presence – the most tender, most alive, darling thing. Perhaps, one day, you will understand about that kind of love – I hope so. One thing led to another and, barely a year after you were born, Amélie gave birth to a little boy. I called him Michael, because he was your brother. You were two perfect parts.
Mrs Ludgate drew in her breath. ‘Ah, now I get it,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Poor, poor boy.’ And then, ‘Poor Professor.’ She folded the paper gingerly and put it back inside the envelope. ‘I think you ought to give this letter to the professor straight away – I don’t want to read any more … You read it all?’
‘Yes.’ She was ashamed, but not altogether sorry. She felt closer to him than before and, at once, she was grateful to Mrs Ludgate for not reading on. She took the letter from her hands.
‘You should take it to him straight away,’ Mrs Ludgate repeated. ‘He needs to see this letter.’
‘I’ll bring it over tomorrow.’
‘No, you should go now.’ She stood up, looking at her watch. ‘I need to catch the last bus, anyway. Let’s walk together to the top of the lane.’
As they reached the bus stop, Mrs Sarobi said, ‘I was just thinking, perhaps you would like to come over for Christmas dinner?’ The thought had only just occurred. ‘I’ll invite Mr Askew, too,’ she added quickly.
‘I’d love to.’
Mrs Sarobi started walking away, but turned after a few paces. ‘You will be all right, Doris?’
Mrs Ludgate looked up. ‘Of course.’ She smiled, her eyes dazzled already by the glow and tinsel of their Christmas. For a long time she stood looking after Mrs Sarobi, who walked into the snow, towards Oakstone. This is like living again, she thought, as she heard the bus coming up the high street.
As he took her fare, Mr Carpenter, the bus driver, noticed that Mrs Ludgate’s eyes glittered. For some reason, it made him think of the ingenuity of a magpie – a survivor. It pleased him.
‘You’re looking jolly tonight, Doris. Had a good time at Chandler’s party?’
‘What? Oh, that. Nah … I’m just looking forward to Christmas.’
‘Jolly good,’ he muttered, somewhat embarrassed. Everyone knew by now that her husband would spend Christmas in jail. In fact, he would be in prison for quite a while, if you were to believe the rumours. ‘Jolly good.’ You had to give it to the old bag – she was quite a fighter.
*
By the time Mrs Sarobi reached Oakstone, the snow had stopped falling and the lawn in front of the dark house lay silvery beneath a pattern of winter stars. She stopped abruptly, regretting coming here at this hour. But then she saw a slit of light in the curtains and walked on towards it.
He helped her out of her coat and led her through to the sitting room. Their shared awkwardness seemed to fill the large room, which would otherwise have been quite sparse. If he was surprised, he did not show it. They talked a little, too shy to really listen to each other, and all the while she was trying to get to the point. How did you hand somebody a letter like that? But, at last, he was reading it – reading the letter that should have reached him forty-five years ago. Silently, she removed her headscarf, in an effort to bare herself like him – to help him cope with this new exposure.
Gabriel Askew read the letter that confirmed what he already knew, but he had never known it in so many words. At one point, he looked up and saw that she had removed her headscarf. He smiled at her, at all her beauty, and read on:
People will tell you that I did wrong in abandoning you and your mother in order to marry Amélie. But I see it differently. War changes us – it brings out the best and the worst in people, and it shows humanity in its most naked form. One does good deeds and bad deeds; one can be a hero or a coward, all in the same day. And a day is all you get on this earth. War shows you that life is a short race. The bravest thing I ever did was to follow my heart. That was my most heroic deed. And yet, to the rest of the world, it will have made me look like a weak, selfish coward.
I will put this letter in an envelope now and write on it that, should I die before my time, this letter shall be handed to you on your eighteenth birthday. By then, you will be old enough to make up your own mind about your parents. You and Michael will inherit Oakstone eventually, of course. My greatest wish is that the two of you will find each other and that your love will make up for the wrongdoings of your parents.
Blessings, my son –
From your loving – albeit absent – father,
George Bradley
Post scriptum
I watched you today, like I watch you most days when I am in Mortford. Hiding behind some shrubs, like a common thief, I watched you and Michael walking together in the lane towards Gerald’s house. You looked so incredibly vulnerable and I had to bite into my hand not to cry out to you. On my knees, cursing myself. I hear they tease you about your face. You are a beautiful boy. You and Michael are so alike. My little angels.
15
On Christmas morning, he drove to Edencombe. The day was extraordinarily still, a northern day, silenced by the cold – a Brueghel day. Up here on the higher lands, the snow had drifted into ditches and pressed against stone walls. There was a fresh sugaring of frost where the sun had not touched the heather, a few yellow gorse flowers sharp against the sky. As he crested the last hill, the sea lay deadpan before him, offering a flawless reflection of the sky, as if the world was sinking into the sea – or growing out of it. The white house on the cliffs looked like a seaside hotel or a luxury villa on the Riviera. Or the Berghof. It was not a bad location for a private nursing home. Not bad at all, he reckoned.
On entering the double glass doors from the porch, he was pleased, and a little relieved, to see that Ms Turpin was on reception duty.
‘Ah, Ms Turpin – merry Christmas,’ he said, somewhat exuberantly, opening his arms like a priest. He still held the car keys in one gloved hand, a net carrier bag in the other.
‘Mr Askew – have you been tasting the port already?’
‘Oh, no, no, my dear – it’s far too early for that kind of nonsense, wouldn’t you say? I’m just in a good mood. ’Tis the season to be jolly, after all.’
‘Fa, la, la,’ Ms Turpin replied – but managed a smile.
‘How lovely of you to think of me!’ Her dull cheeks pinked and revealed, for an instant, that stubborn young girl who never would settle for less.
‘Ah, it’s nothing, really. You deserve a knighthood. How is she today?’
‘Much the same.’
Mr Askew nodded.
‘Here, give the stuff to me. I’ll take it in to her later and let her know you were here.’
‘No – no, I would like to go in myself today. I … I have something to tell her.’
‘Of course …’ If she was surprised, she hid it well.
‘Will she hear me, do you think? I mean, will she understand?’ He looked at the brooch on her chest – a sparkling bow, or a butterfly – away from her watchful eyes and their solid grey. Too honest.
She shook her head, letting something surface in those grey pools, something he could not bear to interpret. ‘I have told you this before, Mr Askew; the doctors say it’s unlikely that she understands anything at all. She’s almost ninety, for Christ’s sake – it’s quite something that she’s still here at all … It’s as if she’s waiting for something.’ A brief pause. ‘But one can never be a hundred per cent certain …’
‘No?’
‘Look, you know the odds as well as I do … All I’m saying is that there has got to be some room for doubt in all our lives. Otherwise we’d be a sorry lot, us humans.’
How well they understood each other. They accepted it all. As close as any two strangers looking unflinchingly at the world could be – and as alone. But the day, at least, was bright. One must not stoop into a mood.
‘We certainly would, Ms Turpin,’ he said, cheerfully, knowing for sure that uncertainty could never be quite destroyed. ‘We most certainly would.’
*
The room, when he entered it, was a painting – a bright seascape of blues and specks of white. Diamonds of sunlight. There were three large windows, all facing the sea, although, because Edencombe sat high on the rocks, it was the horizon that could be seen rather than the waves themselves. The image was fixed in its frame, forever caught in the moment. There was no flux, nothing stirred, apart from the plankton of dust filtering slowly down. A bed in the middle of the room, its head against the wall to the left: white, standard-issue with a lifting device. A tartan rug had been spread over the washed-out white sheets. This unexpected blotch of colour seemed slightly out of place, too bold, almost reckless. Twelve ships with bows red painted. Next to the bed was a stool and small table, untidy, cluttered, as if a small child had, briefly, been let into the best room with its toys; there was a box of latex gloves, a couple of packets of tissues, a blue plastic pill organiser, a glass of water (half full), some browning grapes on a plate, a biro and an abandoned Sudoku puzzle, ripped out of a magazine and left behind by a yawning night nurse, perhaps. A scene within a scene; a still life, at once symbolically explicit and unbearably private. A television set had been pushed into a corner. It was unplugged and somebody – a cleaner? – had draped the lead over the top of the screen. A door on the opposite wall from the bed led into a bathroom large enough to accommodate the wheelchair that was parked, for now, by the door. That was it, apart from the large leather armchair, which had been drawn up to the window, its solid back facing the visitor.
Mr Askew, who had stopped for a moment inside the door, watched the crown of the head of the woman in the armchair. Amazingly, the thick hair still had some brown in it; the overall impression was muddier, perhaps, but not yet altogether grey. It was almost as if her aging had stopped when she was placed here – or as if her life had been suspended. There’s life in the old dog yet. What an absurd expression, Mr Askew thought to himself as he picked up the stool by the bed and carried it over to the window. It made him contemplate his own life. When was his life? Was it in the beginning? Was it now? Would there be a future? Ah, all those questions. Those questions … When young, we are in such a hurry to experience, he thought now as he sat down and looked for a moment at the sea outside, to free ourselves from the dredge of the present, that our gaze is already ahead of us. Should we, at any point, look over our shoulder at our own past, we would be surprised to find ourselves still there, in real time, but already fading. There’s something so vague, almost dull, about it all – in spite of the extraordinary setting.
‘Yes, the setting is extraordinary,’ he said aloud, with emphasis, and then, leaning in, he said, ‘Happy Christmas!’ His voice seemed somewhat too loud and it carried that awful tone of a sickroom. He cleared his throat.
The old woman in the chair did not stir. The skin of her face was pale, finely lined, but not unhealthy. Her eyes were dead, fixed. Someone, probably Ms Turpin, had set her hair and dressed her in proper clothes: a dark green dress of soft wool, which he thought he might have seen before, thick stockings and felt slippers. Her wedding ring was hanging on a gold chain from her neck. Proper, but not accurate – she would never have worn such stockings and slippers. She had always been very elegant. But Ms Turpin wasn’t to know that. For a moment, Mr Askew wondered if Ms Turpin had bought the warm stockings and slippers herself. He suspected perhaps she had. Dignity mattered to her. And warmth. An expensive-looking grey woollen shawl had been draped loosely around the woman’s shoulders. She seemed to be watching the horizon. Mr Askew smiled; she still had that soft beauty.
‘I brought you something special from Oakstone … to brighten this place up a bit,’ Gabriel said. ‘Better than grapes, at least. Found them in a box in the attic. Now, hang on …’ He stooped to reach the net bag at his feet and pulled out a small bundle. Ever so carefully, he untangled strips of red and yellow fabric.
‘Ta-da! Do you remember these?’ The streamers were flowing from his hands like Christmas tinsel. ‘I made them for Michael. Did he ever tell you? Mother was very cross.’ He laughed. ‘I’d cut up some precious old nightie of hers. I think he liked them, though, no?’
Mrs Bradley’s blank eyes were fixed on the horizon. Could she even see the ribbons?
Gabriel gave them a last shake. ‘I’ll put them over there, on your bedstead,’ he said, indicating. ‘That’s if you don’t mind, of course …’ He sat back on the stool and stole a sideways glance at Mrs Bradley’s face – such familiar territory and yet so uninhabited. ‘I made them for Michael to say sorry for something awful that happened to him … I didn’t know what else to do at the time. We were just kids … None of us should blame ourselves.
‘Ah, well, no use crying over spilt milk, eh?’ He nudged her ever so slightly with his elbow. And then, after a moment’s hesitation, he reached out his hand and put it over hers, which lay folded limply on her lap.
‘There was something else I wanted to tell you … I’ve been asking Ms Turpin to fill you in on things that have been happening over the years, since you moved here. Well, as I was saying, I have some pretty great news for you … Blackaton got ten years. That’d be enough to finish him off, I’d say. Old Jim is not as strong as he once was …’ He gave Mrs Bradley’s hands a squeeze. They were dry and not very warm. ‘I finally got to testify against him, as I knew I would. It was a long time coming, but, in the end it was my testimony that brought him down. I’m not saying that to brag, just to … well, just to say that he’s nothing to us any more. To you and me and Michael – and Mother and Mr Bradley and Uncle Gerry. To our family.’ He was silent for a moment, thinking, remembering that day the previous year at Exeter Crown Court.
The first thing that had struck him as he saw Jim of Blackaton being led into the courtroom was how insubstantial he seemed these days. Once the black-faced Harlequin, roaming the moor with his demons, Blackaton had been reduced to somebody you might glance at through the smudged and sooty window of a train slowing into a station – a figure of blurred edges, of drizzle and strips of plastic bags, moving vaguely this way and
that.
Documents had appeared in the court proceeding, pieces of evidence retrieved from Blackaton’s secret files. In amongst them had been a note for Gabriel on a scrap of paper. His name and the address of his department had been written at the top, perhaps at a later date. It was impossible to know when, of course, as it was never posted, or if there had been others like it over the years that had never reached the recipient. This one, Gabriel Askew calculated, must have been written shortly after they met in the Pelican Club for what proved to be the last time. Michael had written:
… These days, I sometimes surface with a tune in my ears – a slow, dragging song, dawdling this way and that, pulsing through smoke and chatter. It’s not clear to me whether this music is supposed to be a comfort or a threat. Is it the singing of angels I hear, or is it the monster under my bed humming our tune? Whether tramping the corridors of a labyrinth or roaming the bounds of the Mappa Mundi, the monster is the evocation of all our phobias and fears. You think you’re a rational being, and yet you feel uneasy when you swim across a black pond or when you’re trapped in an unknown, windowless room. Can monsters be human? Do they have souls? Aristotle thought that a monster was a failed human, one that was never fully formed. He said that humanity was a fragile mantle and that everyone had the potential to become monstrous. You and I have both known such monsters, Gabe. Once we were halved, we were split in two. Now I want you to be whole again – for my sake. We did as well as we could, only I got lost inside the corridor of mirrors. There are corridors here, too, in this anteroom, I know, and many rooms filled with stale air. And there are others like me, brought here from the edge of the world by heroes. We are all slumbering now in these rooms where acceptance becomes like a long sleep. I am tired, Gabe, but you must stay awake. We are brothers. I’m going away – you must return to our home …