Easy Silence

by Angela Huth

  ‘Lelia–’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘What’s her name, his mother?’

  ‘Lobelia–?’

  ‘Lobelia, it seems, is the one … who hasn’t escaped.’

  ‘Lobelia?’

  ‘From the way they’re carrying on, I assume she’s … From what I saw through the window.’ The Handles’ hands tightened. ‘Don’t ask me about it.’

  ‘No.–But Lucien: where’s Lucien?’

  ‘I know nothing, my Ace. No more than you. Nobody’s mentioned Lucien. Naturally this lot can’t say anything.’ He glanced at the policeman by the dining-room door. ‘I can only imagine that your poor new friend, Lola–’

  ‘Lobelia–’

  ‘–could be the culprit.’

  Grace unlocked her hand from William’s. She stared at the curiously ecclesiastical glass of the top half of the front door, an Edwardian entanglement of labourers, sheaves of corn, doves, poppies, and ribbons with no purpose other than ludicrously to entwine the elements of the pastoral fantasy The reds and blues seared her eyes. The orange ball of formalised sun pressed like a hard ball in her throat. In the chaos, the coloured glass window was the only thing that remained unmoving.

  ‘Lobelia was about to be my friend,’ she said.

  ‘I know, my Ace. I know.’

  ‘She’s probably all right.’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘She can’t be dead. Lucien would never have done anything like … He was a bit unbalanced, yes. But not dangerous. She must have done it herself. Lucien must have driven her over the edge, but not … There must be some mistake.’

  The doorbell rang. The policeman opened it. For a moment Grace’s eyes were relieved of the coloured glass. Two men in white overalls came in. One of them was pulling on a glove of thin, milky stuff that reminded Grace of a caul. In place, the hand looked ghastly, armed for its task. The men seemed to know by instinct their destination. The policeman merely nodded in the direction of the dining room and they slid discreetly through the door, shutting it firmly behind them.

  ‘Jesus,’ said William. ‘How many …? Now, my Ace …’ He put an arm round her shoulder.

  Another policeman appeared beside the one standing on guard. He whispered something, glanced at William and Grace.

  ‘You two on the stairs,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry to disturb you but we’ve got a job to get on with. You are?’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Handle,’ said William. ‘That’s an le, not an el.’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Handle: what, neighbours?’

  William nodded.

  ‘Number six. Reddish House.’

  The policeman took out a hand computer, tapped something into it.

  ‘We’ll be round to ask you a few questions later. But now, if you don’t mind, I must ask you to move. We’ve got to search the house.’

  ‘What for?’ asked Grace.

  ‘My wife’s feeling sick and faint,’ said William, speaking for himself.

  ‘Just a while longer, then. But don’t mind us if we get started.’

  The two policemen, suddenly athletic for their cumbersome size, lumbered up the stairs. Grace had to lean closely to William to let them pass. Her eyes returned to the sickening glass vista in the door, while her mind ran amok: strange how shock, disbelief, shatter firm images like gunshot. Lucien’s face was full of cracks in her mind’s eye. She could not recall his smile. Only the strange look, which had so often spurred her fear, in his eyes.

  They listened to the two men going from room to room on the first floor–opening and shutting cupboard doors, slapping at curtains as if Lucien might be hiding like a child. Grace hated the idea of Lobelia’s house being so violated. Though if she was not actually dead, and no one but William–whose opinion in a matter so far from real life was not to be relied on–had suggested she might be, then Grace could of course help restore order. But perhaps, after all this, she might reasonably want to move elsewhere, far away.

  They heard the men climb stairs to the third floor. Two doors open and close. Then, a thick laugh, like anthracite being flung from a coal scuttle. Grace had heard that laugh before–Lucien at his nastiest. It was followed by a command, indistinct beneath the shoals of laughter.

  Lucien must have been in his room, waiting for them. Grace glanced at William. William had been sitting here, alone on the stairs. Lucien had never liked him. In his unbalanced mood Lucien could have taken the chance for further revenge.

  ‘I think we should go,’ she said, tears on her cheeks.

  But William did not move. They heard, now, three pairs of uncoordinated footsteps coming down the top staircase. Then crossing the landing. Simultaneously Grace and William looked up.

  Lucien was between the two policemen, handcuffed. His bloody shirt stuck to his chest. He moved calmly, unperturbed. The laughter had stopped but he was smiling (not the encouraging smile Grace knew, that used to raise her spirits). This was no defiantly brave face. He was enjoying himself enormously.

  Grace and William rose quickly, shakily, hand in hand. They hurried to the bottom of the stairs. There they leant against a wall of hanging coats for support. Grace heard the creaking of an old mackintosh behind her. She could not take her eyes from Lucien’s cheerful face.

  They watched as the awkward threesome negotiated the narrow stairs. At the bottom, Lucien stopped. He wriggled his hands as well as he was able, constricted by the handcuffs. His palms were crimson, the nails black as they had always been of late.

  ‘Left my bloody signature, didn’t I?’ he said, his look somewhere between Grace and William. ‘I signed my best piece of work–Lobelia.’ His eyes slammed directly into Grace’s. ‘Can’t imagine what the fuck would’ve happened now you two got together, you and her.’ The smile whipped away. Grace winced, as if struck. The mackintosh behind her moaned. Lucien’s captors urged him to move again. He did not resist. The three of them went through the front door. William and Grace could hear jeers, whistles (peculiar for such a discreet neighbourhood) as he was led to the waiting police van.

  The front door was shut again. Grace and William stood helpless in the dark hall. Grace saw that on the table, beside a dying poin-settia, stood a collecting tin for some charity. She remembered that it was because of her own charitable work, collecting from the neighbours, she had first encountered Lucien–a strange, endearing creature with an irresistible smile: nothing to do with the cold grim figure, stiff with self-satisfaction, who had just so bloodily gone through the door in handcuffs.–A criminal, a murderer.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she whispered.

  ‘I think we should go home now, my Ace,’ said William. ‘Through the back.’

  The dining-room door opened again and a paramedic with a kindly face appeared. In the instant that the door was open William was able to see that the blood hands had been wiped from the window.

  ‘I’ve a moment,’ said the man. ‘Can I drive you two home? You want to take it easy.’

  William tucked Grace’s arm into his, met the man’s well–meaning eyes.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ he said, and drew himself up. ‘But we only live a few yards down the road. We’ll be all right, see ourselves home.’

  ‘Tea, with plenty of sugar for the shock,’ said the man.

  ‘Thank you,’ said William again, surprised by the firmness of his own voice, but still confused by what it all meant. ‘Plenty of sugar, then the rehearsal this afternoon. Beethoven B flat major, the Op. 130 …’

  The paramedic looked on without understanding as the Handles made their way to Lobelia’s back door. He knew that shock takes many forms.

  William, with Grace heavy on his arm, began to let the first bars of the Beethoven into his mind. Outside, the sky was a pure but fragile blue, and the earlier warmth of the morning had increased by several degrees.

  Grace sat in her chair by the telephone like an angel. Back lit from the light outside, William saw her as he had seen her so many times in her youth: soft, quietl
y pretty, visible strength beneath the gentleness and patience. She had rung Rufus, Grant and Bonnie: explained there had been an emergency–‘a friend of William’s and mine died this morning.’ William would be a little late for the rehearsal. (No one had actually told her that Lobelia was dead. From William’s silence–he said nothing of what he had seen–she assumed this was so.) Each member of the Quartet suggested the rehearsal was cancelled. But William was insistent it should go on. He wanted as much as possible for life to continue as normal. An hour or two sitting quietly, a couple of aspirin and a bowl of Grace’s soup, and he would stop the confounded shaking. Grace looked reasonably calm, but then she had not set her eyes on the carnage.

  ‘Are you quite sure you don’t mind being on your own for a while this afternoon?’ he asked.

  ‘Quite sure. I daresay I’ll collapse a bit, do my weeping.’ She patted her chest. ‘Then I’ll be fine.’

  William made an effort. He knew he must ask the sort of question he most disliked–the kind it was his habit to avoid, and to replace with understanding silence.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like me to be with you when … you do your weeping?’

  ‘What on earth for? Certainly not. What a funny question.’

  She was an angel, Grace. Letting him off the hook, even in a crisis.

  ‘I just thought … Well. It’s all so horrible. Lucien: your friend. I didn’t much like him, as you know. But he was your friend.’

  Grace turned to look out of the window. William regarded her profile keenly, as if for the first time: familiar, it was, and yet there seemed to be a new sharpness. So odd, how unexpected events can change or enhance physical things. He had never understood that.

  ‘You know, if I hadn’t followed you to Bournemouth …’ Grace was saying. ‘Some instinct made me leave very fast. I had a feeling he was coming round here … Of course, it might have been perfectly all right. It so often was. But I was afraid, I’ll never know why. It’s horrible to fear someone you’re fond of … and if I had been here, I might have deflected him in some way. It might never have happened. That’s what will haunt me for ever.’

  ‘Thank God for your decision. You, here, alone with a deranged … It doesn’t bear thinking about. Don’t let’s think about might-have-beens, my Ace. Too dreadful to contemplate. I mean, it could so easily have been …’ He quivered. ‘Just thank God you were spared.’

  Grace saw two level tears appear in his eyes.

  ‘But Lobelia … to think he brought about the thing that he then couldn’t cope with. He urged us to meet so that he could enjoy his sick joke, play the last card in his appalling game. Then regret–or whatever it was–drove him overboard. I don’t understand. Especially as Lobelia said he had been so sweet and calm just two days ago.’

  ‘No point in trying to understand an irrational mind. He was a dangerous psychopath, the sort of man who shouldn’t be allowed out for his own good. Or for the sake of others’ safety.’

  ‘We don’t know that.’

  ‘I think we do, my Ace.’

  ‘I don’t know why I was so drawn to him.’ Grace was speaking almost to herself. ‘I felt he needed protecting. I thought I could help a bit.’

  ‘Who’s to say why we’re drawn to people? When the match is unlikely …’ William paused, also thinking aloud. He wasn’t much good at this sort of thing, but he felt he ought to keep trying. ‘When the match is unlikely, when irrational passion or affection are the only link, rather than anything more cementing, practical, well, it can cause all sorts of trouble. Suffering.’

  Grace seemed not to notice the effort in his voice. She could not, of course, ever guess the evidence on which he based his small homily. Of that, William would make sure, she would remain innocent for ever. She went on looking out of the window.

  ‘Oh, William,’ she said at last. He could see she was near to breaking.

  ‘It’s not often ordinary people like us are neighbours to such atrocity,’ he said, feeling himself beginning to flounder, ‘but we mustn’t let it darken our days. Whatever you feel about having let Lucien down, you must see that you were blameless. I doubt that having been here would have stopped him in his murderous path. In all innocence you befriended an evil, mentally disturbed man.–Probably nothing as dramatic as all this will happen in our lives again, thank God.’ He stood up. ‘Now, I must be getting on.’ He paused, waiting for Grace to move, too, offer to warm his soup. But she still sat looking out of the window, an unbreachable distance from him. So after a while he left the room and began inefficiently fumbling at the stove. It was the first time he had made his own lunch for years, and in the horror of the morning it gave him an unexpected feeling of satisfaction. As he left the house, he heard the telephone ring.

  William arrived early–not late as Grace had warned–at Grant’s barn, so he drove on some way till he came to a bench on a small common. The feelings that had raged within him on the drive over–detracting dangerously from his concentration on the road–had to be quelled before he confronted the others. He had no intention of embarrassing them by his shaken state.

  He sat on the bench, eyes on a block of council offices across the common. Then they shifted to a small boy kicking a football. He watched every innocent move of the boy’s foot, listened to the small sound of boot against leather. There was very little time to work out what he must do, and he realised that in his shocked state it was not going to be easy. But plainly the most important thing was to protect Grace, persuade her that guilt was the last thing she should feel. He could see that would be a struggle, but he would not give up. Even harder, because it must remain unspoken, would be the dealing with his own unforgivable past behaviour. How could he, a sane, gentle musician, ever have allowed himself to contemplate the murder of a much-loved wife, simply because of some irrational desire for a young girl? Perhaps his intention had never been deadly serious: until this morning he had never understood murder. It was something you read about in the papers, distant from your own life, the stuff of a different world, or fiction. He had thought it could be easy, tidy, painless: peanuts, a fall from a cliff (not that tidy), drowning quickly in the bath. He had never dwelt on the possibility of blood–the obscene gallons of blood that can spurt from a human body, drenching the killer, lacerating yards of wall, carpet, cloth … He had never intended anything like that for Grace. His imagining had been of a bloodless end. He had planned it would all be easy–if he really had planned–had he? Had he? Looking back, it was now hard to be sure of his intentions, of anything. His strategies, as he always really knew, had been half-hearted–impractical, foolish, bound not to work. What on earth had he been playing at? Perhaps his intent to murder was no more real than his intent to win Bonnie. But nefarious thoughts are scarcely less evil than nefarious deeds: he, too, therefore, was no less a criminal, no less a despicable human being than Lucien. Self–hate, disbelief at his own unbalanced behaviour, shame, all thrust through him so powerfully that death itself for a moment seemed compelling.

  So William got up from the bench, walked back across the park to the car. The boy with the football smiled at him. Innocence crossing the path of wickedness, William thought. But the boy’s cheerful face spurred a little hope: not only would no one ever need to know what had been cankering his being for the last few months, but also there was time for redemption. The asking of forgiveness, the receiving of pardon. From this very moment–he unlocked the car door with his usual difficulty–he would repair his misdoings. The remembrance of them is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable. He waved to the boy, who looked surprised.

  In the barn the players were tuning their instruments, shuffling through scores. William stood at the door looking at the familiar scene–players at one end, the usual muddle at this, the kitchen end of the place–and the picture acted as a placebo. It occurred to William that though he could never understand how Grant could thrive in so disorganised a habitat, he could see the comfort of it. Drawers were open: things hung,
swung, seemed close to falling: the back of each chair was padded with jackets and scarves. There was a feeling of pleasurable life here. Grant’s joie de vivre pervaded. (At Reddish House, the sense of order in all but William’s own room meant a certain lacking of vitality.) This horrible day, walking into the warm chaos provided by Grant, William felt grateful for his unconscious way of making his barn a place of welcome and peace. William went over to join the others, noting Grant’s neat piles of alphabetically arranged scores and CDs–in anything concerning work, his neatness and efficiency could not be faulted.

  Rufus, Bonnie and Grant asked no questions when he reached them. They waited for him to tune his violin, and within moments they launched into Schubert’s Quartet in A minor, whose andante always brought William the same solace it did to Grace, though this afternoon he had not dared to believe it would come to him so soon. He scarcely looked at Bonnie. When he did he saw that she was just a bright young girl, an exceptionally talented viola player, a girl he still loved (and supposed he always would, in a way) but whom he had no further inclination either to fantasise about or to pursue. God in His mercy had relieved him of that. From out of darkness once more had come light.

  When they broke for tea Grant announced there had been several calls for William.

  ‘Various reporters,’ he said. ‘Seems it was murder. They heard you were first on the scene.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said William.

  ‘Phone’s switched off now. Anything we can do to help?’

  William smiled. ‘Don’t worry. I’m innocent of murder.’ He looked from one to another of them. ‘Rather an unbalanced young man, befriended by Grace, stabbed his mother. Of course I ran round to let the police and ambulance men in. Grace followed.’

  William saw Bonnie bite her lip. There was a glitter of tears in her eyes. Then one of them overspilled and ran down her cheek, a small thread of tinsel.