‘Stone,’ I repeat blankly.
Mary opens her mouth, says nothing. It hadn’t occurred to her.
Gemma Crowther, a healer. ‘Stephen was a chemist, a pharmacist, ’ I say. ‘She was a primary school teacher.’
‘Yeah, well, obviously they’d have had difficulty getting similar jobs after what they’d done. And not so much difficulty getting taken on by a garage, or some quack outfit like an alternative healing centre. Some places check out prospective employees’ backgrounds more diligently than others, presumably. ’ Mary throws her cigarette butt out of the window and rubs the small of her back with both hands.
‘Their new address—it was in Muswell Hill?’
She nods. ‘23b Ruskington Road. That’s where Aidan was going on Monday.’
‘But he didn’t know about . . .’
‘Yes, Ruth. He knew.’
Nothing will make me believe it. Aidan, seeing Stephen and Gemma behind my back? No.
‘When he turned on to Ruskington Road, Waterhouse overshot and carried on down the main road. By the time he’d realised his mistake and come back, Aidan had parked outside number 23. Right outside it, as if the space belonged to him. Waterhouse didn’t see me—and he was too busy concentrating on Aidan, who by this point was walking back to the main road. Neither of them saw me.’
‘Why?’ I blurt out. ‘Why would he park outside the house and then walk away?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ says Mary impatiently. ‘All I know is, Waterhouse followed him.’
‘Did you follow them?’
‘No. On foot, it was too risky. My hair’s hard to miss. Once they were gone, I went for a snoop. The bell for Gemma and Stephen’s flat had their names on it. Surnames only: Crowther and Elton, like the newspapers called them.’
Dong. Their doorbell at Cherub Cottage was called Dong.
Disgust warps Mary’s face. ‘Underneath the names, in tiny writing and in inverted commas, was the word “Woodmansterne”. ’
I clear my throat. ‘They lived on Woodmansterne Lane. In Lincolnshire. You mean . . .?’
‘If I had to guess, I’d say they decided to call their rented flat after their old street name.’
‘Yes. They’d do that. She would.’
‘I rang the doorbell,’ says Mary. ‘I was bloody amazed at my own nerve. Don’t ask me what I’d have said if someone had answered. I had no idea—it was an impulse thing. No one was in, though.’ She fumbles for another cigarette, lights it. ‘There’s a bay window to the right of the front door. Through it, I saw a framed photo of the happy couple, one of the ones you described in your letter: him kissing her cheek.’
Bile rises in my throat. That picture. Standing in Cherub Cottage’s pristine white sitting room, Stephen trying to kiss me . . .
‘I knew it was them. First Call had sent me press cuttings from the trial, photos, the works. I recognised their faces. Easy to see why you made it your mission in life to save him from captivity—that little-boy-lost look.’
‘They’re still together. He testified against her, she tried to pin the whole thing on him, and still they’re together, with those pictures on the walls.’ As if I never happened.
‘Tacky studio photos weren’t all they had up on the walls,’ says Mary with venom in her voice. ‘I saw something else go up.’
‘What do you mean?’ She made me write that letter, reliving everything I went through, when she knew. She already knew.
‘I waited, on the street. In my car. I’d gone as far as London—I wasn’t giving up that easily. After a while Simon Waterhouse came back.’
‘Did he see you?’
Mary shakes her head. ‘He was only interested in Crowther and Elton’s house. He had a snoop around, then went to sit in his car. Like me. At about half nine, Gemma Crowther and Aidan Seed walked up the road together.’
I try not to flinch.
‘Aidan opened the boot of his car, took something out, carried it into the house. I couldn’t see what it was—I wasn’t close enough, and there was a big white van parked behind Aidan’s car, blocking my view.’ Mary twists her hair round her hand. ‘The lights went on inside. Gemma closed the curtains. That’s when Waterhouse called it a night.’ Her smile is full of scorn for anyone who could give up so easily.
‘You didn’t?’ I guess.
‘No. There was a small gap in the curtains, but big enough to see through.’
Gemma Crowther and Aidan in a room together.
Mary waits for me to ask. When I don’t—can’t—she says, ‘There was a banging sound. He had a hammer in his hand. He was hanging a picture for her. Guess what picture?’
I freeze. It has to be, otherwise Mary would tell me. She wouldn’t make me guess. She blames me.
‘Yours,’ I say. ‘Abberton.’
‘My painting,’ says Mary, unemotional. ‘Yes. In the home of strangers. In the home of those strangers.’
‘I gave it to Aidan to prove to him that he couldn’t have killed you,’ I try to explain. ‘He kept insisting he had, no matter what I said. Abberton had your name on it, and the date: 2007. He told me he’d killed you years ago.’
‘How did you know I’d signed and dated it?’ Mary turns on me. ‘I hadn’t when I brought it in to Saul’s place last June.’
I tell her, as coherently as I can, about the Access 2 Art fair.
‘My God,’ Mary mutters, chewing her lip until drops of blood appear. When she next takes a drag of her cigarette, it comes away red at the end, as if she’s wearing lipstick.
‘I gave Aidan the picture and never saw it again,’ I tell her. ‘He wouldn’t tell me what he’d done with it. Mary, I’m sorry . . .’
‘A present’s a present,’ she says in a brittle voice. ‘I gave it to you, you gave it to him, he gave it to her.’
‘What did you do? When you saw it, I mean?’
‘What could I do? I got in my car and drove home. When I left, Gemma Crowther was alive and she was with Aidan Seed. That should tell you everything you need to know about your boyfriend.’
‘Why did the police talk to you?’ Why not me? Maybe they’d tried. I ignored everyone who came to the workshop yesterday; maybe one of those knocks was the police.
‘Some nosey bastard neighbour saw me and came and asked who I was—I should have lied but I didn’t think quickly enough. As it turned out, it was lucky she saw me. She watched me leave, and heard the two gunshots after I’d gone. Waterhouse had gone, I’d gone—the only person still there with Gemma was Aidan. Even the cops should be able to work it out.’
Something hard and huge is welling up inside me. Why do I feel as if I’ve let Mary down? It’s crazy. I owe her no loyalty. Aidan’s the person I love and ought to trust. He’s never intentionally hurt me, and she has.
It hits me then: I’ve forgiven her. If I can forgive Mary, then I can forgive Aidan, whatever he’s done. And after that? Where would I stop?
‘Ruth? What’s the matter?’
‘I’m the one,’ I tell her.
‘What do you mean?’
‘All this time, I’ve had this . . . this fear. I was scared of not being able to forgive Aidan once I knew the truth—or rather, that’s what I thought it was, but I was wrong. It’s the exact opposite: I’m afraid I’ll forgive him too easily, and not only him—everything and everybody. Aidan, you, even Stephen and Gemma. Once you start to imagine what another person’s pain and terror must have felt like . . .’ My throat blocks. I can’t speak.
‘How can you stop yourself forgiving them? Is that what you were going to say?’
I’m aware that I’m crying. It doesn’t seem to matter. ‘My parents used to say, “We’re Christians, Ruth. Christians forgive, always,” but I don’t want to forgive anybody!’
‘Why not?’ Mary’s voice is stern.
‘Because then there’d only be me who . . . who . . .’
‘You think you’re unforgivable. You don’t want to be the only one.’
Her understa
nding strikes me as a small miracle. ‘I tried to brainwash Stephen against Gemma. I did everything I could to split them up, all the time thinking I was virtuous and honourable for refusing to have sex with him.’ I wipe my eyes with the palms of my hands. ‘I couldn’t see . . . Sex is just sex. Or, when it’s not, it’s love. Either way, it’s not toxic, like trying to control someone else’s mind. All the tactics my parents used on me, I used on Stephen. I know there’s no justification for what he and Gemma did to me—doesn’t mean it wasn’t my fault or that I didn’t deserve it.’
‘If you start forgiving everyone, you might get carried away and forgive your parents,’ says Mary. ‘Where would that leave you? They haven’t forgiven you, have they, in spite of their Christians-always-forgive slogans? You sent them an address and they’ve never used it. Quick to give up on you, weren’t they? And these are people who’ve devoted their whole lives to preaching mercy.’
‘Not only preaching it. Practising it too. After what happened to me, when they came to see me in hospital, they told me they’d forgiven Stephen and Gemma. They said I should too. In their whole lives, I’m the only person they haven’t forgiven.’
‘Which makes you the only unforgivable person in the world, right? The worst person in the world.’
‘Yes.’ Now that Mary’s said it, I feel deflated. As if something swollen inside me has been punctured. Is this what I’ve been so afraid of, this realisation? It’s a relief now that the fear’s gone and there’s nothing left except flat, grey exhaustion. My eyes start to close.
Mary taps me on the shoulder. ‘Wrong,’ she says. ‘If you want a unique selling point, how about this? You’re the only person who’s ever laid into them personally. You yelled at them, said some things that were pretty hard for them to take—probably no one else has ever done that. It’s easy to forgive attacks when you yourself aren’t the victim. “Stephen and Gemma? No problem: all they did was nearly kill our daughter. Someone shouting at us and telling us we’re wrong about things? Sorry: unforgivable.” Do you see what I’m trying to say?’
I think I do. If I can bring myself to forgive Stephen and Gemma, I’ll be better than my parents, more Christian than they are, even though I’m not a Christian and don’t believe in God. Aidan, Mary, Stephen, Gemma, Mum, Dad, me. I can maybe forgive us all.
‘My point is,’ says Mary, ‘your parents are two great big stonking pieces of shit. Fuck them.’
I manage a weak smile. ‘Tell me about Aidan and Martha,’ I say.
Instantly, the gleam in Mary’s eyes starts to fade, as if she’s been cut off from her energy supply. ‘On one condition,’ she says. ‘This is my story, so I get to be judge, jury and executioner. If you’re tempted to exonerate anybody, do it in the privacy of your own head. I’m not as enlightened as you.’
I nod. Mary is freer than I am. She doesn’t worry about balancing the blame books. She takes her unhappiness and does what she wants with it. Could I be like her from now on, or will I always feel as if there’s some kind of external moral arbitrator watching every move I make, unseen and infallible?
Mary lights a cigarette. ‘Martha and Aidan met at a job interview. Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts, Trinity College, Cambridge. Aidan got it, Martha didn’t. She put a brave face on it, went on until everyone was sick to death of her about how she didn’t get it because she wasn’t common enough.’ She smiles. ‘We had a student teacher once who asked us how many television sets our families owned. Martha had the most: seven. The teacher was shocked. She was a bit of a luddite grow-your-own-vegetables type. She asked Martha what rooms the tellies were in, and Martha listed six: one of the lounges, the kitchen, her bedroom, her parents’ bedroom, her den, the summer house. The teacher was waiting to hear about the seventh, and Martha must have realised how it would sound, so she clammed up. The teacher asked her outright. Martha turned as red as a tomato, and had to admit that it was on the jet.’
‘A private jet?’
‘She was the only Villiers girl at the time whose parents had one. Loads of families had helicopters, but their own jet? They’ve probably all got them now. Anyway, Martha’s privileged background had nothing to do with her not getting the job at Trinity. Aidan was a better painter than she was a writer, and she knew it.’
The room closes in on me. ‘Aidan was a painter?’
‘Didn’t he tell you?’
‘No.’
‘You never saw him painting? Never saw any of his work?’
‘He didn’t . . . he doesn’t paint.’ I am listening to a story about a stranger, trying to match the details to someone I thought I knew. ‘I’d know if he did. He . . .’ I shouldn’t want to tell her, but I do. There’s no reason not to. ‘When I met him, he was living in one room behind his workshop. There were empty frames all over the walls, frames he’d made—they’re still there, but there’s nothing in them.’
‘So he stopped,’ Mary says softly, rocking back and forth. ‘Good.’
‘Why would he do that? Why would he frame nothing?’ Why didn’t he tell me he knew about Gemma and Stephen? How did he know?
‘How many empty frames?’
‘I . . . I don’t know. I’ve never counted them.’
‘More than ten?’
‘Yes.’
‘As many as a hundred?’
‘No, nowhere near that. I don’t know, maybe fifteen, twenty.’
‘I know how many. Count them when you next get the chance—you’ll see I’m right.’
Everyone but me knows things they can’t possibly know. I don’t know even the things I could so easily have known. Should have known. Was Aidan’s family poor? Was he common, to use Mary’s word? I try to collect together in my mind everything he’s told me about his childhood: he loved animals, would have liked a cat as a pet but wasn’t allowed one. He never had his own bedroom, and wanted that more than anything: privacy. His brother and sister were much older than him, as remote as strangers.
‘There are eighteen,’ says Mary. ‘Eighteen empty frames.’
The Times, 23 December 1999
FUTURE FAMOUS FIVE
You might not know these names yet, but you soon will. From novelists and painters to actors, from singers to comedians, Senga McAllister talks fame and fortune with the young British talent heading your way.
Today I’m at Hoxton Street Studios to meet five unbelievably talented people. They’re doing a photo-shoot for a double-page spread in Vogue as part of its New Talent, New Style promotion, but they kindly spared a few minutes each, in between having their hair sprayed and their eyebrows plucked, to chat to me about how it feels to scale the dizzy heights of success.
Aidan Seed, 32, painter. Aidan is a precocious talent. Artist in residence at London’s National Portrait Gallery, before that he spent two years enjoying the enviable title of Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge. Aidan tells me this post was open to writers, artists and composers, so it wasn’t only other painters he had to beat off in order to get it. He laughs. ‘There was no beating involved. I doubt I was the most talented artist who applied that year—I got lucky, that’s all. Someone liked my stuff.’ Self-deprecation aside, the art world is buzzing with hype about Aidan’s immense talent. Next February he has his first one-man show at London’s prestigious TiqTaq Gallery. Owner and art dealer Jan Garner describes him as ‘astonishingly gifted’. I ask him what being a Fellow Commoner involved. Aidan tells me, ‘Trinity’s got its strongest reputation as a sciences college, and the post I held is its way of supporting the arts. Literally, being a patron of the arts in the old-fashioned sense. They didn’t expect me to do anything apart from paint, and they paid me a salary. It was a dream job.’ So why ‘Commoner’? ‘It means I’m not a scholar,’ says Aidan. ‘They didn’t give me the post because of any academic achievements.’ He smiles. ‘It doesn’t mean they thought I was common, though I am.’
Aidan is proud of his working-class background. His mother, Pauline, who died when he was
twelve, was a cleaner, and he grew up on a council estate in the Culver Valley. ‘I didn’t have a toothbrush until I was eleven,’ he tells me. ‘As soon as I had one, I used it to mix paint.’ Pauline, a single parent, was too poor to buy him paints or canvas; he was forced to steal what materials he could from school. ‘I knew stealing was wrong, but painting was a compulsion for me—I had to do it, no matter what.’ His family would have discouraged any artistic interests, so Aidan stashed all his early work at his friend Jim’s house. ‘Jim’s parents were from a different world to mine,’ Aidan tells me. ‘They always encouraged me to paint.’ As a child and young adult, Aidan painted on any surface he could find: cardboard boxes, cigarette packets. When he left school at sixteen, he got a job in a meat-packing factory where he worked for long enough to save the money he needed to fund his art degree. ‘The years at the factory were hard,’ he said, ‘but I’m glad I did it. I had a brilliant art teacher at college who said to me, “Aidan, if you want to be a painter, you have to have a life.” I think that’s really true.’
Although obviously gifted, the most extraordinary thing about Aidan is that he has never sold a painting, despite many offers from eager prospective buyers. He paints over canvases he isn’t entirely satisfied with, of which there have been many throughout the years. He works slowly and laboriously, and won’t part with work until he thinks it’s perfect. I have the impression that he’s a hard man to please when it comes to his own output. ‘I’m working on a number of paintings concurrently. They’re all ones that have been evolving for some time now, the only ones I’ve ever done that I think are truly worthwhile, fit for presentation to the public.’ These pictures are the ones that will make up his show at TiqTaq in February. They’re dark, brooding, atmospheric and unfashionably figurative. ‘I don’t give a toss about fashion,’ says Aidan with unmistakeable pride. ‘You can use traditional techniques and still produce modern work. I don’t understand artists who want to chuck out centuries of painterly knowledge and expertise as if they never happened. My aim is to build on what’s gone before, historically, not start from scratch. To me, that’d feel like arrogance.’
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