by Maggie Gee
‘They’re not coming in my effing home,’ said Viola. ‘They’ve wormed their way into all the empty flats though. This place is, like, crawling with them. There are Muslims as well, with their funny writing. The same posters, just different writing. They thump around the stairs. They preach. They sing. It’s all doom and gloom and Last Days shit. They’ll look right tits when the water goes down.’
‘Viola,’ said Delorice, a moment later, touching her shoulder as they reached water-level, one floor below the one they had expected, because the floods were draining away, because sun and wind were working their magic; pushed aside the wide drenched sheet of plywood that blocked the shattered landing window, climbed out on to the slimy window-ledge from which the boat would have to pick up, and were dwarfed by the dazzle, the cutting wind-chill, deafened by the engines slogging closer, their throats roughened by the smell of fuel – suddenly the world was all around them, raw, bright-edged, uncontrollable; two seagulls screamed and wheeled above them, their yellow beaks with a hungry look, and all that mattered was survival. ‘Viola!’ Delorice found herself shouting to make herself heard above the din: out here in the emptiness, what did they count for, the little hurts, the embarrassment? Suddenly she was fifteen again. ‘Wait a second. Give us a hug. You’re my sister, innit. We lost our brother. We lost Winston, we can’t lose each other. Maybe – I dunno – you should tell Mum. You’ll always be my sister, Viola –’ They were hugging, kissing, both of them in tears, swaying together on the narrow window-ledge the boat was struggling to come alongside. ‘Nothing is ever going to change that, right?’
‘Right,’ said Viola. ‘Right. Safe.’
Some mornings, the water-buses looked like floating hospitals. Grey-faced people, packed together, slumped by pathetic small hills of possessions (there were regulations about how much they could bring, though the boatmen never seemed to know what they were). But the City Wonderama looked different, this morning. The passengers were smiling, and making jokes; hope had restored their sense of adventure; they could almost enjoy this, since it wasn’t for ever. It would go down in history, the time of the flood, the time when the Tower-dwellers all stood together. They were coalescing, the myths of comfort.
The engine died, and the boatman pulled the women, one by one, across into the boat. Without the engine, the deck lunged, then plummeted, and each time a little sigh of fear and excitement rose from the packed bodies on the chilly deck as the swell left each sister in turn clinging on, a small living thing above empty air. Briefly, death caught at their chests again, and then as the strong arm of the boatman landed them, there was a communal ripple of relieved laughter.
‘Safe,’ said Delorice, touching fists. ‘Safe.’
Ten
May sat in the little front room she had lived in for nearly fifty years with Alfred, clutching the arms of the maroon armchair; it was like her own body, once his, now hers. Here she could still feel the comfort of his fingers.
But today the familiar touch didn’t help her. Her hands looked frail and thin in the sunlight; she hadn’t much bothered with eating of late; the floods made it hard to get to the shops. In any case, she’d been getting thinner for years, since Alfred went, and with him, the pleasure of food.
May was staring at the newspaper. The same one Alfred had always taken, which she had gone on with, after his death, though she was more of an intellectual, more of a reader than her dear husband, a reader of real books, not papers. (She was getting on well with her Greek Myths, though the family stories were spectacularly bloody – the White family were quite tame by comparison. She liked the sounds of the old Greek names, which she said to herself as she waited for the kettle: Oedipus, Charon, Persephone: it comforted her, like a skipping rhyme.) But even the unread papers were useful, for soaking up the water that leaked into her kitchen or stuffing wet shoes so they kept their shape. While May was alive, their old life would go on, his slippers in the cupboard, the daily paper. That way she would carry him onwards. Alfred, love, I won’t let go.
Yet she sighed at the thought; men were so heavy. Alfred had taken things so hard.
And now there was this strange bit of news about Dirk, who she had imagined safe in prison –
She was shocked, winded. Her heart was racing. She read it again, unbelieving. ‘His lieutenant, Dirk White, 28 …’ ‘His lieutenant, Dirk White, 28 …’ Had they made his age up? She couldn’t remember. Surely he couldn’t have grown that old. The paper was dated four days ago.
There was a group picture, rather blurred, of people holding up a banner. ‘Open your hearts, and come home,’ she spelled, and then said it aloud, and the words upset her, because in her heart she knew here was his home, but could she ever have the boy back again, after what had happened, what he had done? The truth was, May was afraid of him.
But I mustn’t be frightened of my own son.
Her head was spinning; she made a cup of tea. She’d started taking sugar since Alfred had died. She was losing weight, and she needed the comfort.
But the picture was still there when she came back.
She screwed up her eyes at the grey and white faces. Perhaps that was Dirk, almost dead centre, next to the man who was dressed like a priest. (But he’d never been religious. That was more Shirley. Dirk hadn’t really got the brains for it.) That was surely him, though. His thin bony face, the lantern jaw that had come in adolescence.
She couldn’t help thinking it was silly of them to put him at the front, where everyone could see him. When she photographed the family, she’d done just the opposite, since Shirley had always been very pretty, and Darren, her elder boy, was a looker. Dirk was the smallest, but they stood him at the back. In the shots she kept, you just glimpsed the top of his head, his bright blond hair, which was his one good point. It wasn’t Dirk’s fault, but he lowered the standard, not that she’d ever say that to him … There’d been such a big gap. She and Alfred were foolish, but then, they’d always liked – being together, and Alfred preferred them not being careful. People talked cruelly of ‘the runt of the litter’. She was older, more tired, with less time for him, though of course May White loved all her children. Easier, though, with Shirley, who was lovely, and Darren, who was witty, and bright.
Nobody had ever called Dirk bright.
She had tried her best with him, hadn’t she? She had even gone to see him in prison, for the first few years, every month or two. She couldn’t do more, because she was grieving, she had lost her Alfred, it was like a black hole down which everything was sucked, even poetry, even Tennyson, the other love of her life, Alfred Tennyson, her other Alfred. She had lost her rudder. Hope was gone.
And then there was the horror of the murder. Half of her still didn’t believe he could have done it, flesh of her flesh, her own son.
He had killed a man. Who was black, homosexual, but a decent young man, by all accounts. Ignorant people said Dirk was queer too, but obviously he wasn’t, he didn’t even like them. She ought to know; she was his mother.
Everything had changed for the White family, then. Who had once had their pride. Been a decent family. Alfred, as park keeper, was famous, locally. And Shirley was a beauty, and Darren was rich. May held her head high in the local shops.
Now she stayed at home, as much as possible, because she imagined them whispering: ‘There goes that woman whose boy is a murderer. Makes you wonder; it has to come from somewhere’ (though a lot of them, in their heart of hearts, wouldn’t mind there being one less black man).
She supposed they blamed her, since Alfred was dead. Yet Alfred had tried to make amends. Whatever he’d done wrong – and God knows he wasn’t perfect – he had turned his own son in to the police, which went against nature; she herself couldn’t do it. The strain of it all had finished Alfred. May couldn’t help blaming Dirk for that.
The curious thing was, the lad had always refused to accept that his father had shopped him to the police. ‘Dad wouldn’t do that,’ he had shouted at her, when
the subject came up, on her first prison visit. ‘Dad always loved me. You didn’t.’ (And Alfred had loved him, Dirk got that right.)
All the same, it was Alfred who’d insisted on justice. All of a sudden, colour didn’t matter. All of a sudden there was only duty. ‘Blood’s thicker than water,’ May had pleaded, but Alfred, as usual, overruled her. The man was dying, but he went to the police. In any case, Dirk blamed it all on her.
May’s visits to the prison soon grew less frequent. What was the point? Dirk barely talked to her (not that he’d talked a lot at home). Bit by bit, she had stopped going. At first she had written, but he never replied. She had taught him to read, a lifetime ago, but it took for ever, and you never saw him reading. Perhaps her letters were a dead loss.
Sometimes she found herself forgetting she’d had him. As if there had only been Shirley and Darren. A mist of guilt drifted over Dirk’s name. He must be, well, odd. Ill in the head. It could happen, even in a decent family. Perhaps there had been something on Alfred’s side.
That was how May explained it to herself. And if he was ill, they should keep him locked up. There were murderers, poor things, who died in prison. Or she, of course, might die before Dirk did.
Sometimes May found herself wishing for death. What was the point of it, without her Alfred, with her children gone, with Dirk a convict? Nothing in her life had prepared her for that. When a Christmas had passed without either of them writing, she knew it was over, she buried it, and lay there at night clutching her pillow, trying to stifle his face, his voice.
But now Dirk was back. He was out of prison.
The blurred pale face swam out of the darkness.
(Compared to the news about her son, the full page headed ‘Planetary Pile-up Looms’ made little impression upon May. She scanned it, briefly; they were going to line up, apparently, and there was an artist’s impression of how it would look, little grey planets strung out like beads across a garish purple sky, but once she saw it was some TV show, May lost interest. It was bound to be rubbish.)
The two men sat across the wide black desk in Isaac Court’s steely, minimalist office. One of them had just attacked the other, and they didn’t quite know where to go from there. Isaac’s fingers were just getting a hold on a bony, bobbing Adam’s apple when his secretary knocked and he had to stop. Both of them were panting, lightly.
‘Everything all right, Mr Court?’ she said. She had heard raised voices; her boss was puffed up like a mating toad, face dark with blood, his short thick neck craning forwards oddly.
‘Could you fuck off and leave us alone, Alice?’
She turned on her heel, thinking: boyfriend trouble. She put up with her boss, although he was a pig, because he was so successful; he had galleries all over the continent, but she had her eye on the New Work branch.
Isaac was too embarrassed to attack Dirk again. Because she’d interrupted him, the impetus was gone. But it felt like a lost opportunity.
‘It was a fucking fake,’ Isaac said again. ‘You bloody made a fool of me. I can’t believe you didn’t know yourself.’
‘Well you’re the expert,’ said Dirk, sulkily. ‘You didn’t exactly spot it, did you?’
It was just after lunch; Isaac had bad indigestion. Foie gras with an elderly, obese female collector who had sat and yacked and picked yellow teeth and stared at him like a round glittering crab, waving cracked pincers encrusted with gold, while he laughed, flattered, pretended interest – and then at the last moment she didn’t buy the Auerbach whose sale he had been setting up for months. (In any case, it was too good for her.)
Now this crim had turned up out of the blue at the gallery, sweating and furtive, reminding him of failure, of the stolen Bonnard that turned out to be a copy. He was small and twisted with thinning blond hair. Isaac stared at him hard for a moment of distaste and wondered briefly if he was gay. He had to be insane to come back here.
Isaac fixed Dirk with his little sharp eyes. ‘So have you brought my money back, cunt?’
‘That’s not a nice word,’ said Dirk, indignant. He didn’t like swearing since he’d become religious. ‘You should have fucking known about the wotsit, Boner. I mean, you’re the expert. I’m just the one who nicked it. Your sister said you knew about art.’
‘My sister is a stupid cow,’ said Isaac, under his breath, to himself. A few years ago, Susannah had gone and got herself mixed up with nutters who believed in the end of the world; a few years ago he had got dozens of the cult thrown out of the house their parents had once lived in. Now they had the nerve to come flogging him rubbish.
‘That’s not very kind,’ Dirk told him, smugly. Isaac glared at him again. Dirk made an effort to be agreeable. ‘You have a point, though, she did seem a bit cow-like.’ (The woman had stood there, fat, open-mouthed, when he and Bruno made her a visit, gawping as if she was seeing ghosts. Bruno had known her years ago when the Sisters and Brothers were just getting started. She answered him like somebody not very bright, but then, Bruno had that effect on people – Dirk grinned to think of how scared she had looked. To make them go away, she’d given them Isaac’s address.)
‘You talk about my sister, I’ll kill you. I can’t believe I’m listening to you! Why are you here? Have you got a death wish?’
‘Got something to show you,’ said Dirk, surprised.
Isaac had never been able to resist the chance of getting something for nothing. His parents gave him nothing for nothing, so he always felt life owed him one. ‘What are you trying to get rid of this time?’ he asked, abruptly, leaning forward and pinching the flesh above his trousers. His roll-neck felt tight under his chin.
‘Well it’s another picture,’ Dirk grunted.
‘Probably another fucking copy,’ said Isaac.
‘I like this one better,’ said Dirk, ‘as it happens.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Isaac, sneering furiously. ‘You like it better, do you? Why?’
‘Well it’s bigger for a start.’ Dirk threw caution to the winds. ‘The last one was very small, for the money … I think he’s better at painting, too. You can actually see what he’s trying to paint. I mean, it’s a woman. With some of her kit off.’
‘Don’t speak,’ said Isaac, covering his ears. ‘Shut up and let me see it.’
But the thing that was finally revealed to Isaac, wrapped in swathes of grey plastic, in the back of a van that was standing almost hub-deep in water, made the dealer exclaim and fall silent for a moment. He recognized its dimmed, familiar beauty.
Hopper painted the city like no one else. The woman with her unreal, carnival face stared out at the sunlight and the high red buildings. How did Hopper paint all times, all places? She could almost be looking out over the floods – Hopper had somehow foreseen it all. The beauty of the painting reached out to Isaac from its dirty setting, yearned towards him, but Isaac flinched and looked away. Yet part of his mind still thought like the painter he had wanted to be, a lifetime ago, before his stupid parents had abandoned their children, gone on holiday and never come back, leaving him lonely, resentful, suspicious, and Susannah at the mercy of Tom, Dick and Harry … Was Hopper’s woman lonely? She was raw, exposed, an unshelled animal, irradiated. Isaac could never bear so much sunlight. And yet, the woman luxuriated in it. She was happy, half-naked, as he could never be. He guided her gently back on to the plastic.
‘Morning Sun,’ he muttered. ‘Yes, yes.’
His hands were shaking, and his voice wasn’t right.
The newspapers had been full of the theft. Worth millions, of course. The police would be searching. ‘But you’re mad to think I can get rid of it. It can never be hung, never be shown. There’s only one man in the world who will take it. I’m not sure even he would touch it.’
But I would like it, he thought to himself. How I should like to keep it myself.
The two men tracked across the shining slime of the art-dealers’ quarter, back towards the gallery. Isaac wiped his feet on the pallet of rags that wa
s stretched across the foyer to protect the carpets. ‘You can’t get the bloody stuff off your shoes,’ he complained, sniffing distastefully. Before he could stop her, Alice brought coffee, and hovered, nosily, in the door of his office till Isaac told her to go away. Its bitter strength filled Isaac’s gut with acid.
‘You should turn it in,’ he said loftily to Dirk. ‘Leave it on the steps of the City Gallery. This painting is a Hopper, which won’t mean much to you, but I can assure you it belongs to the world.’
‘No, mate,’ Dirk said, shaking his head with vigour. ‘Belonged to some rich bitch of a woman. She can buy herself another one any old day … Iss the real thing, this time, wouldn’t you say?’
His air of being a fellow connoisseur afflicted Isaac with a violent desire to laugh, or punch him, or kick him in the bollocks. He made up his mind in a split second. ‘Right, fuck off out of here. Take the thing with you. Be grateful if I don’t call the police.’
Dirk looked indignant, and sat there for a moment, mouth working, evidently thinking up a riposte. The moment extended painfully. ‘You can fuck off, an’ all,’ he said at last, and looked delighted. ‘Wanker,’ he added, for good value. ‘I was just going, in any case.’ At the door he stopped, reversed, turned round and did something horrible which Isaac realised was supposed to be some kind of smile. It got into position, stuck, then grew. It was obviously meant to ingratiate. ‘No hard feelings though, mate, eh? Can you give us the other picture back as well?’
Isaac sat there burping and massaging his gut, rolling a pencil across his desk-top, remembering the horrors of the One Way cult. His sister was a sucker for anything like that. He wasn’t like Susannah, simple, helpless, a victim of frauds, hucksters, charlatans, people who battened on loneliness. He, Isaac, was stronger than her. (Yet he knew all too well why she was like that. Isaac had learned to protect himself, with money and rudeness and savoir faire, from the world which might possibly see him still as an overweight teenager in big round glasses, abandoned by his father and step-mother. He and his sister were left here to cope while the love-birds fucked off around the world. The kind of kids nobody liked or wanted – that was the message he and Susy got. But he had discovered the world of sex, while she had abortions and fell in with nutters.)
