by Graham Swift
‘You don’t get anything to eat until you tell me where that book is. Understand? Not tonight, not tomorrow, not – ’
‘For goodness’ sake!’ Marian said.
‘I mean what I say. Martin only has to own up.’
‘But how do you – ?’
‘I know. Books don’t just disappear from shelves. Have you got a better explanation?’
About half an hour after this we had supper. I made Martin stand with his face to the wall like a naughty boy in class. I wasn’t going to give him even the partial respite of not being present while we ate. I made a point of asking for large helpings. Peter picked and spooned guiltily at his plate. Sometimes Peter is so tremulous, so mouse-like. I watched Martin. He didn’t turn his head. The backs of his thin legs beneath his shorts wobbled now and then, and I remembered the flavour of childhood punishments: the humiliation, the obscurity of adult motives; the vague feeling of outlawdom; the determination to resist. I did not expect him to own up that evening. In a strange way, I would almost have been disappointed if he had. He had had his tea, after all, and was probably too on edge at the moment to care about the loss of food. But the night would see to it. In the morning, I told myself, in the morning he will break.
At breakfast I followed the same procedure. Martin stood in the corner. He had adopted a martyrish pose which seemed to me wholly contrived. I noticed that he moved his head this time, in a quite deliberate way, as if designed for me to see, though not towards us so much as towards the front window beyond our breakfast table. It was another sunny day; between the cherry blossoms a council dust-cart was grinding down the road. Marian and I were silent with each other. I made a song and dance about enjoying my bacon and eggs. But as the minutes passed, as it drew nearer to the time when I must leave for work, I grew anxious. I knew that the boys left the house about a quarter of an hour after I did. In that quarter of an hour not only might Marian have time to shovel a hasty breakfast down Martin, but she would doubtless pack him off to school, coddled and consoled, with double rations of sandwiches. Martin knew this too. I considered whether it was worth being late to work in order not to lose the battle.
I finished my cup of coffee and got up from the table.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Now, are you going to tell me? I don’t have to rush to work. It’s your last chance. You can turn round now.’
Martin turned. He looked ruefully for some time at his feet and then up, deliberately again, at me.
‘All right.’
‘At last! Good boy!’ I really was relieved, glad – no longer vindictive.
‘I threw it in the dustbin.’ He cocked his head towards the window. The dust-cart had departed from the street. ‘It will have gone by now.’
‘You what?’ I said, advancing across the floor. ‘You what?!’
He pressed his lips together. His face tautened.
‘That was my book!’ With a genuine woundedness in my voice. ‘That was Grandpa’s book!’
‘Grandpa – ’
He didn’t have time to say more before the first slap caught him across the face. Then another. And another. The extraordinary thing was that he didn’t turn or duck away. His feet remained firmly planted on the carpet. It was as if he had bargained all along on these blows. Tears of shock rather than fright or pain filled his eyes, but he kept his head erect and his shoulders square, like a soldier looking to the front while the sergeant screams in his ear. Even as I hit him I couldn’t help but grudgingly admire him; and it was this, rather than Marian tugging at my other arm, that made me stop.
When I did, Martin simple turned, and without hurrying, without clapping his hands to his smarting cheeks or breaking into sobs, walked from the room. I sat down again at the table. I was going to be late for work now. I looked at Peter and Marian, who, surprised as I was at Martin’s self-control, had not rushed out immediately to comfort him.
‘Well, he deserved it, didn’t he? He stole my book.’
I was puffed – and petulant – from my exertions.
Marian looked at me in furious silence, then pushed back her chair and turned to leave the room. But she was scarcely on her feet before the door opened and Martin entered carrying a book. He walked towards me with an air of precarious dignity and put the book on the table.
‘You hit me for nothing, Dad. Nothing at all. I never threw it away.’
I looked at him. Then at the book. I opened it at the flyleaf: there was Dad’s writing. ‘Your loving …’ I looked at Martin again for several seconds. At the book.
The jacket of the original edition has the picture of a man, in silhouette, dangling from an opening parachute. For the first time I seemed to see the terrible vulnerability of this position, and the attempt of the artist to make the image resemble a shuttlecock.
‘Why did you – ?’ I started fiercely. But my anger had spent itself. ‘Why did you take it?’
‘Because you took away the television.’
And I suppose, I thought, you want me to follow your example and bring it back.
‘I see. The television didn’t belong to you though, did it?’
But I knew we weren’t talking about just the television. I looked into his face. His cheeks were bright pink from the slapping he’d had. I thought of the cunning with which he must have planned this little operation, and the guile and resolution with which he had carried it out. Those glances out of the window; the readiness to go hungry, to provoke and endure punishment. He was brave, he was resourceful, all right. He was his grandfather’s grandson. His eyes bored into me. How much did he understand?
‘If someone takes something from you – even if that was wrong of them – it’s no answer to take something from them,’ I said feebly.
He nodded, uncontrite.
No, not just the television; but all that went with the television. The Bionic Man and Kojak and Captain Kirk, and all the other made-up heroes who were better than his father. For some unaccountable reason I felt in awe of my own son, as if I should make things up to him, beg his mercy, but I was unable – unworthy – to do so.
I was going to be very late for work.
‘Martin,’ I said. ‘All this was stupid, wasn’t it? Why did you do it?’ Then I added suddenly: ‘Why haven’t you ever read Grandpa’s book? You wouldn’t find it difficult.’
He shook his head – as if sorry for me. I knew he would never read the book. And I understood, too, his complex reasons – part suspicion and contempt, and part some nagging child’s fear (only now did I see it), all of which might have been expressed, and at that very moment, in one word: Loony.
[13]
Today (Monday) it struck me that Quinn could be inventing everything. Those inquiries. Supposing they are all in some extraordinary way figments of his imagination? How am I to know what’s true and what isn’t and what really stems from an official directive? Supposing he sits in his office picking out file numbers at random, adds a few fancy details of his own; has it all drawn up by a typist, who’d be none the wiser, on an instruction sheet, and then hands it on to me as part of some sadistic trick? It sounds far-fetched, I know – but if Quinn were really round the bend – ?
He called me in today. I thought he was going to speak again of my promotion – it is two weeks now since the subject was first mentioned – but he didn’t; though I could see him reading my expectations and playing with my hopes.
‘C9, Prentis, C9. I’ve been looking over your report. There’s nothing here about the past histories of X or Z’ (the blackmailer and the second civil servant). ‘If we’re trying to establish a connexion between the two, I would have thought that was the first thing to look at. Blackmailers don’t operate by chance – you have to discover the link in the past, the common ground.’
‘With respect, sir,’ (how I hate that phrase, ‘with respect’), ‘I didn’t know that was the reason for the inquiry.’
‘Is that so, Prentis? You mean it never crossed your mind?’
‘As a
possibility, yes sir. But doesn’t the evidence point towards a coincidence – a curious one – but nothing more?’ I hastily recalled the C9 inquiry, a pattern in which there were large holes and gaps where items were missing from the files – so perhaps not a pattern at all. ‘Y was fully exonerated. X’s circumstances – his previous sacking, alcoholism and so forth all suggest malicious slander, not calculated blackmail. There is no apparent link between Y and Z. And, besides, Z’s suicide can be adequately explained by other reasons.’
‘And what are they?’
I paused. Quinn was looking hard at me. I felt a sudden shiver.
‘His unsatisfactory home life.’
‘I take it, Prentis, you read the statements of Z’s colleagues and acquaintances?’
‘Yes.’
‘They all express unanimous shock at Z’s death. No apparent warning signs. No talk of ending it all. No evidence the man was unbalanced. By every account an energetic, successful, well-adjusted man, on top of his job, everything going for him. Then one day he jumps under a Tube train. What do you make of that?’
I hesitated, then tried to sound professional and objective. ‘It’s a fact, sir, that suicides often appear relaxed and calm before taking their lives – some of the cases we ourselves have handled testify to that. People – ’
I hesitated again. Quinn was eyeing me with anticipatory keenness.
‘Yes, Prentis?’
‘People are known to crack without warning.’
‘Indeed, Prentis.’ No flicker of the eyelids. ‘Sound psychology, I’m sure. But wouldn’t a simpler, not to say more likely explanation be that Z’s suicide was the result of some quite sudden external factor – for example, a blackmail threat?’
Why was Quinn – the very man who censured it in others – jumping to conclusions?
‘In that case, sir, what about the wife’s evidence?’
‘Oh you mean the wife’s story.…’ And it was at this point that Quinn’s manner became detectably impetuous and excitable. He took his eyes from me for the first time.
‘A story, Prentis. Why not? We all know that the best way to hide one guilty secret is seemingly to confess to another. Don’t we? Now supposing Z wasn’t being blackmailed by X – though X was out to make Z suffer nonetheless. Supposing, as you so rightly suggest, X wasn’t a fully-fledged blackmailer; he wasn’t after money, he was just a man with a massive chip on his shoulder who simply wanted to get his own back by hurting his betters and concocting groundless slanders. Look at him – an alcoholic, an incompetent, a dead-beat of a man.’ Quinn turned his eyes on me again – his face was pink and heated – almost as if he were inviting disagreement. ‘Supposing X merely informs Z of something he knows will shatter Z – so shattering, as it turns out, that Z commits suicide. That something relates to Z’s wife. The wife is the one with the guilty secret. After her husband’s death she herself is in danger of some unpleasant exposure. So, with the perfect cover of the distress of the moment – her grief quite genuine, who knows? – she invents some story about marital havoc, complete with candid and gruesome details. So candid and so intimate that no one dares doubt the truth of it and no one seeks another explanation. Well, isn’t it possible? And what do you think of this fellow Z? A perfectly normal man on the evidence of his own colleagues, more than that, successful, a fine career behind – and before him. Treating his wife like that? Attacking his own son? Is it credible?’
Another attack of shivers. If Quinn had worked so long in our office, dealt with the things we dealt with, why was he asking me this? His own phrase: ‘lurid imagination’.
‘It sounds – if you’ll forgive me, sir – a little … speculative.’
‘Speculative! You saw all the evidence in the files.’
‘Sir? Which – ?’
‘You know about Z’s son?’
‘Z’s son?’
‘Yes. Are you telling me you didn’t chase that up too? Z’s son, Prentis, has been on hostile terms with his mother ever since his father’s death. Now why should that be? Think of it, Prentis.’ Quinn’s voice grew louder. He had got up and was pacing round the room as he spoke, one hand in his pocket, one hand gesturing in the air. ‘Think of it. Z was cleared professionally. But all that stuff was dragged out. And suicide. A man with a position and a reputation. You seem in some doubt, Prentis, about the reason for this investigation.’ He came right up close to me. ‘When your father commits suicide and his name is slurred, isn’t that sufficient reason for investigation?’
I felt as the suspect must feel when the hard lights are turned on his eyes. Quinn’s face was a mere foot from my own. The flush in his cheeks was matched by the flower in his lapel. Another rose; a small blood-red one.
‘I didn’t know – ’
‘It seems to me, Prentis, you don’t know quite a lot. Think I’m making this up?’
He bent forwards, both hands in his pockets, like a cross-examining lawyer.
‘But if the widow’s evidence claimed that Z attacked his own son, it hardly seems – ’
‘Another of her fabrications – precisely to hide the fact that the son was on the father’s side. What’s true, Prentis, tell me: what really happens or what people will accept as true?’ He began to pace again. ‘In any case, even if father and son had once been enemies, it doesn’t mean that now – Stranger things happen. We know that. Don’t we?’
The old bastard.
He turned, moved back towards his desk but did not sit. I watched his limp – a slight drag of the right foot, a lean forward with the shoulder. Crippled body: warped mind? Each of his little probing questions was delivered in an odd, contorted way, as if aimed simultaneously to provoke and deter.
‘But – with respect, sir – I don’t see why this is an official inquiry. The interests of Z’s son aren’t an official matter. They don’t concern us.’
‘Oh you think that, do you? Don’t you think that’s a rather easy distinction, Prentis – the personal, the official? We upset people’s private lives with our inquiries and then we have the gall to say that private matters don’t concern us – not official business. Our investigations caused all the stir, they created the mess – don’t you think we should clear it up?’
‘I – er – I’m confused.’
‘You’re confused. You’re confused!’
He gave me a merciless look. ‘You’re confused. You don’t know what to think?’
Then a strange thing happened. Standing by his desk, he made a delicate, sweeping, almost magician-like gesture with his hand, as if smoothing out some imaginary rough surface. His face changed, relaxed and put on that old mask of benevolence (or had the mask just been dropped?). I thought: this is madness too. Like the inmates in Dad’s hospital: one day they smile and babble affectionately, the next day they glare at you with eyes of steel.
And suddenly I remembered very clearly the face of Mr Forster (hands delving in the bright green cage): a subtle gaze; sly mouth; that strawberry mark above the lip: the face of someone who knows what you don’t.
‘Well, Prentis.’ Quinn pulled back his leather chair. ‘Shall we shelve the matter then, you and I? Go no further? Leave well alone? You know what it’s like in my job.’ He raised both hands, palms upwards. ‘You have to carry the can for ordering investigations, for giving information, which might have God knows what consequences.’
I thought: this is it. All this is a fantastic preamble to the subject of my promotion.
He lowered himself into the chair. As he sat down his air of good intention, familiarity increased. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes and forehead. A gesture of simple tiredness – or of final, candid concession? Quinn is cracking; he isn’t in command at all. He is going to tell everything, confess everything, to treat me (‘You and I’) as an equal. It may sound odd, but I had the feeling a child has when it knows its parents are happy and everything in the household is harmonious and secure. From along the corridor came the patter of typewriters; the ring
of phones; outside, the cherry tree swayed. Quinn rubbed his brow, head lowered, so that I faced the bald, pink part of his scalp. So unprotected. Martin’s head under my cricket bat. For the first time I thought of Quinn outside the office, as a private person. At home he would wear cardigans, take in the milk in his dressing-gown. But all this – don’t think I had entirely lost my guard – was tempered by the fear that at any moment he might say something to make that icy feeling return. An idea was forming in my mind that I was half afraid Quinn could somehow see. The strange pertinency of his questions, and the C9 case. What did he know about me? About Dad, Marian and the boys. All this talk of investigation. Supposing Quinn were investigating me?
He raised his head, replaced his glasses and spread his hands on the desk. Now –
But he did not speak of my promotion. Every line in my face must have shown him that I was hoping he would do so.
‘So we drop it then? Let it lie?’
He pushed his head forward and peered hard at me. Grey-blue, alert eyes, like Martin’s. What did he want me to say? The eyes flickered, behind the lenses of his glasses, as if some crucial issue rested on my answer; as if some conflict in Quinn’s own conscience hung upon it.
I gave the coward’s response.
‘I really don’t know, sir. Is this such a special case?’
‘Every one of our cases is special for someone, Prentis.’
He looked me up and down. An officer assessing some picked man.
‘To get back to my original point, Prentis. About the past histories of X and Z – and Z’s son, if it comes to it. I take it that you did look at what there was on that?’
‘I’m afraid – there wasn’t anything, sir.’
‘Wasn’t anything? But you looked at file E?’
‘File E, sir?’
‘File E.’
I tried to meet his eyes. ‘File E wasn’t on the shelves, sir.’
‘Oh, not on the shelves? Is that so? Is that so, Prentis?’
