Death of a God

by S. T. Haymon

  ‘Know what you mean. Why don’t you sit down and let me make you a cuppa?’

  The woman managed a proper smile at last.

  ‘Miriam said just the same. People are good! But it’s good for me to keep busy.’ She nodded at a large carton denting the cushions of the couch. ‘She didn’t even ask if I wanted to take on a new order. Just brought it in, and dumped it there without a word. She’s a wonderful person. So understanding.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  A little bemused by this picture of his infuriating love as seen through others’ eyes, Jurnet followed Mrs Felsenstein into a small kitchen conspicuously lacking in the gadgetry of modern living. The woman filled a kettle at the stone sink and set it to boil on a stove old enough to make a Gas Board salesman feel he had lived in vain.

  The detective remarked with cheerful casualness, ‘I heard somewhere you can get grants for improving domestic facilities. City Hall could tell you.’

  ‘Loy wanted to have a fitted kitchen put in. He sent a sheaf of brochures. £2,000 the cheapest! Absurd!’

  Jurnet said, ‘First woman I knew to turn down the chance of a new kitchen when it was offered. You must be one of nature’s puritans.’

  Mrs Felsenstein stopped what she was doing, and turned to look at him, her expression surprised, as if she had just been told something about herself she had not previously suspected.

  ‘My father was a lay preacher. Perhaps that accounts for it. Anyway, we have everything we need.’ She took two mugs down from a shelf and placed them on a table of scrubbed deal, measured a teaspoonful of Nescafé into each.

  Jurnet eyed the two mugs and said, ‘Mr Felsenstein not about, then?’

  ‘He’s lying down.’ The eyes were suddenly brighter – with tears, was it, or anger? Mrs Felsenstein picked up a newspaper from a kitchen chair and thrust it at the detective. ‘Have you seen today’s Argus?’

  Jurnet took the paper from her, his first impression one of satisfaction that the violent death of Loy Tanner had been demoted from the lead story. ‘What exactly –’ he began, when the woman stabbed the page with a strong, square-nailed finger.

  There were two photographs: the Hob’s Hole Venus before and after, both pictures completely missing the magic of the original. As resurrected in the Angleby Argus, the big-bellied goddess from beyond the dawn of chronicled time looked about as charismatic as a garden gnome, and not half as pretty.

  Jurnet said, ‘I know about this. I was at the University after it happened, and spoke to a couple of the professors. Shocking vandalism.’ He regarded the woman curiously. ‘Why does it affect you particularly?’

  ‘I don’t suppose anybody told you it was Leo who discovered her. Professor Whinglass knows. He and Leo are good friends.’

  ‘Nobody said a word. How did it happen?’

  The water boiled. The woman turned the gas off, brought the kettle to the table and filled the mugs, stirring the liquid so that it sloshed over, a little. Out of a cupboard she fetched milk, a bowl filled with soft sugar, and some Osborne biscuits which she set out on a small plate. All this was done with a closed face, a distant manner which Jurnet found hard to account for. At one point she paused, head cocked to one side, listening for a sound from upstairs.

  ‘I thought I heard –’

  ‘Can I make a cup for Mr Felsenstein?’

  Mara Felsenstein looked at the detective; came out of her reverie as if she had made a decision. She smiled, a real smile. A transformation.

  ‘Sit down and drink your coffee while it’s hot.’ She herself took the wooden chair at the further side of the table, took up the other mug and curved her hands round it, warming them.

  ‘In those days,’ she said, taking it for granted the other would know which time she meant, ‘Leo was a splendid walker; though, even then, he wasn’t strong. Too much had been done to him in Auschwitz for him ever to be really strong again. But he was still young, and youth has its own strength, hasn’t it?’ With loving pride: ‘He was fifteen when he came to England, his whole education ruined by the war, but still he managed to qualify as a librarian. That will give you an idea of his determination, his unbroken spirit.

  ‘Any chance he had, in those years before he knew me, he’d get away alone, walking all over East Anglia. Going to see barrows, following old trackways, things like that. Prehistory was his hobby, you see. And that’s how he found the Venus, at Hob ‘s Hole.’ The woman was silent a moment, then ended, with the air of one imparting a confidence to a friend: ‘He always says – even if he smiles a little when he says it – that so far as he is concerned, finding her justifies everything that happened to him up to that day – Hitler, Auschwitz, even the unspeakable things that were done to him there – because, when you came down to it, they were the very things which had conspired to bring him to Hob’s Hole at that precise moment of time. So you can see why we’re both so upset.’

  Mrs Felsenstein reached across the table and took back the Argus: cried a little, her tears-dropping on to the whole and the vandalized Venus impartially.

  Jurnet said, ‘I must have got it wrong. Somehow I’d got the idea the statue was only discovered a little while ago.’

  At that the woman went red, discarding ten years in her embarrassment. Flushed, she resurrected a kind of beauty. ‘Oh dear! I shouldn’t have said anything, should I? I don’t know what, as a policeman, you’re going to think of us. When it came to the point, Leo simply couldn’t bring himself to hand her over to the Museum. I think he fell in love with her at first sight and I –’ hesitantly – ‘I too, once I came to know her – I was very immature and I know it sounds silly – began to find her indispensable. I felt that somehow, in some way I can’t describe, she was teaching me how to be a woman. For years she stood on the mantelpiece here, watching us – watching over us.’

  ‘People must have commented.’

  The other shook her head. ‘Not really. The people we know aren’t sensitive about such things. A few who smoked stubbed out their cigarettes in the votive dish, taking it for an ashtray. And I remember the man who came from the Gas Board to mend the cooker asking me if I’d won it playing bingo on the pier at Havenlea. He said it was a diabolical liberty.’

  ‘What made your husband finally decide to turn her in after all?’

  She thought the question over. ‘I’m not sure. Unless it was really her idea. I’d grown up and she was ready to move on.’

  ‘And what did Loy think of the Hob’s Hole Venus?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said vaguely, startled by the name into the remembrance of grief, ‘he hardly noticed. You know what boys are.’

  Jurnet said, ‘I don’t know. Not one like Loy, anyway. And I need to, if I’m to find out who killed him. I’m truly sorry to give you pain, but I must ask you to tell me about him. Right from the beginning.’

  Mara Felsenstein said, ‘Nothing could give me more pain than I feel already.’ She got up, picked up the coffee mugs and took them over to the sink. ‘We saw so little of him, though, in recent years. Others can tell you much more.’

  The detective shook his head. ‘I’ve spoken to the people he worked with. What they’ve had to say has told me any amount about themselves. But about Loy, not all that much.’

  The woman stood by the sink in silence, looking down at the dirty mugs, making no attempt to wash them up. Then: ‘You said, right from the beginning. You didn’t really mean that.’

  ‘I did. Like I said, I need to know.’

  ‘So do I.’ She turned and looked full at Jurnet with those eyes he found so astonishing. ‘It sounds so ridiculous, doesn’t it? Me, his mother. But he was such a quiet child, so secretive –’

  ‘You see, you’re telling me things already.’

  ‘Very loving, though.’ She said it quickly, as if pre-empting contradiction. ‘And eager to be loved in return. You always had to show it, mind you – he’d never take it for granted. You actually had to say the words before he would be satisfied, and let you go.’
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  ‘Was Mr Felsenstein equally loving?’

  ‘Oh yes! He always treated Loy like a son.’

  ‘And did Loy treat him like a father?’

  ‘They were very good friends. It was lovely to see them together. Leo had unending patience, more than I had. If Loy wanted someone to play Snakes and Ladders with, to make a kite, anything, Leo was always the one he went to.’

  ‘Did the boy never ask you why his name was Tanner, not Felsenstein?’

  The woman was not disturbed, only mildly curious. ‘Do the police always keep records about women who give birth out of wedlock?’

  ‘Certainly not. As it happens, Miriam happened to say something –’

  The other’s face lit up with sudden understanding. ‘You’re the boy-friend!’

  ‘I haven’t yet thanked you for the tickets.’

  Mrs Felsenstein said, ‘Sad, isn’t it, I never heard him sing? Professionally, that is. ‘Turning on the detective the candid gaze which he found so powerfully affecting: ‘I expect you find that strange – suspicious even, from one who calls herself a loving mother. But long before then, when he was still living at home, if he sang, it was always in his room, strumming his guitar, and keeping his voice down. It wasn’t that Leo and I weren’t both tremendously proud of his gift; just that, for some reason we didn’t understand but had to respect, he chose not to let us be part of it. Later on, I suppose, we could have bought ourselves a record player and played his records, but we didn’t. It would have seemed like snooping.’

  ‘You missed an experience.’

  ‘We must have, from all that the papers have been writing about him now he’s dead. But perhaps it’s just as well. Perhaps never having heard him makes it less unbearable. At least there’s no voice haunting my memories. That is –’ amending what she had just said, with a grave concern for accuracy –‘assuming there are grades of unbearable, which I really don’t think there are.’

  Jurnet said, in all sincerity, ‘For someone who has to bear the unbearable, you’re making out pretty well.’

  ‘I never knew policemen were so kind. Miriam’s very lucky. When I see her again I shall tell her so. Of course I told Loy about his name,’ Mrs Felsenstein went on. ‘As soon as he was old enough to understand – both about his father, and also what was so special about being a Tanner. One thing more than cancelled out the other.’

  ‘Was there ever any question of your husband formally adopting him?’

  ‘Oh, Leo was terribly keen. I was the one who said no. It didn’t seem right to me, after all he had gone through, to load him with the responsibility for another man’s child.’

  Her voice was bleak but stoical. Jurnet, disregarding the greyness and fatigue, sensed the woman’s strength of spirit, and was moved by it. ‘You must have been very young.’

  ‘Ye-es.’ Mara Felsenstein spoke hesitantly, as if ‘young’ was a word of whose meaning she was not 100 per cent certain. ‘Young and foolish. Maybe, if Loy had been Loy Felsenstein instead of Loy Tanner, none of this would have happened. It would all have been different. I sometimes think, I had the chance to choose and I made the wrong choice.’

  Jurnet shook his head.

  ‘Don’t let it bother you. The only real choices life offers you are different ways of making a fool of yourself.’

  Chapter Twenty One

  ‘Not many friends,’ Mrs Felsenstein admitted, in answer to Jurnet’s inquiry. ‘I suppose he was what you would call a loner.’ Adding quickly, ‘Not one of those children, though, other children take against, for some reason or none. When there were families still living in the Terrace, there were always children scrambling about on the bomb site. Loy would stand there on the pavement watching them, and often, I’d look out of the bedroom window, my heart aching to see him there, so small and isolated, and all the others rushing about and shouting. But after a while it dawned on me that the solitariness was of his own choosing. Time after time they’d call over to him to join in the game, but he always smiled and shook his head. So of course, after a while they stopped asking.’

  ‘Was it the same later on, as he got older?’

  ‘When he was at the Comprehensive there were one or two boys whose homes he used to go round to, to listen to their records, or they’d get together to play their guitars. He was mad about guitars. Leo always used to say the most post that came through the letter-box was guitar catalogues Loy’d written away for.’ Her eyes clouded with tears again. ‘The Christmas he was fifteen Leo bought him a beauty, really much too good for a teenager, but there! We wanted to give him pleasure. Only, on Boxing Day he took it round to show one of his guitar-playing pals, and one of the boys there accidentally stood on it. Ruined it completely.’

  The heavy lids with their thick lashes of light brown came down, squeezed tight against the cheeks. When she raised them, the tears were gone, the eyes with their dazzling whites as bright as ever.

  ‘Fortunately, it was soon after that that he started going with Francesca, which took his mind off everything else.’

  ‘His first girl-friend?’

  ‘Let’s say, the only one I knew about. I can’t tell you how pleased I was. Not just because she was a darling, which she was – pretty as a picture in a demure, delicate way, a real little convent girl – but because she was so good for Loy. He blossomed, that’s the only word for it. Sometimes, when I’d see them out in the street together, when they hadn’t seen me first, I wouldn’t know whether to laugh or to cry – Loy so manly and protective, she so sweet, a little nun, just beginning to awaken to the possibilities of what life might hold for a woman –’ Mrs Felsenstein was silent a moment. Then finished: ‘I should have cried, shouldn’t I?’

  Jurnet proffered inadequately, ‘None of us can foretell the future.’

  The woman hugged herself, tight; as if she felt the need of somebody’s arms about her, if only her own. Said: ‘Falcone. Francesca Falcone. Does the name mean anything to you?’

  ‘There’s a Mrs Annie Falcone runs the Red Shirt in Bergate –’

  ‘Francesca was her daughter – the last girl you’d expect to have a mother running a pub. I shouldn’t say that, should I? – I’m sure it’s a perfectly respectable profession – but the Red Shirt does have a certain reputation here in the town –’

  ‘Not much you can tell me about the Red Shirt,’ said Jurnet in a closed, official voice.

  ‘I shouldn’t say a word against Mrs Falcone. She looked after Francesca beautifully. I gathered she was never allowed anywhere near the business part of the premises. The living quarters were on top, but the way in was through a courtyard round the side – the girl never needed to come through the bar, or anything like that. Until she met Loy I don’t believe she ever went out anywhere except to school or to Mass.’

  ‘How did she come to meet your son?’

  ‘Loy never said. I can only guess. They go in for a lot of live entertainment at the Red Shirt, don’t they? Topless, and all that. And of course there are always groups singing there – new boys doing it for the beer, Loy said, in hopes of being talent-spotted by someone from London. It’s the same today, except that I’m told the toplessness stretches further down than it used to. If you go past the Red Shirt at night, as I’m sure you know, Inspector, there’s always a crowd of boys, most of them too young to be allowed in, milling about outside –’

  ‘So long as that’s where they are.’ It was the copper speaking.

  ‘I’m sure that’s where Loy was. I imagine that’s how he first saw Francesca, coming home from somewhere, and turning out of Bergate into the courtyard –’

  ‘Sounds likely. And was Mrs Falcone, do you know, as pleased about Loy as you were about Francesca?’

  ‘I don’t know. I never met her till afterwards.’

  ‘Afterwards?’ Jurnet rummaged in his memory and drew a blank.

  ‘After the girl was dead.’

  Suddenly, Jurnet remembered. Giving no hint of it, he asked, ‘What happened?�
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  ‘She and Loy had arranged to meet on Yarrow Bridge. They often met there – it’s just down the hill from Bergate, but well away from the pub, and I suppose it seemed a romantic spot, the bridge so old, the rosy red brick, and the river flowing below. Loy told me they used to squeeze themselves into one of those little niches there are on either side – you know? – and talk; perhaps kiss when nobody was passing. I’m sure it was all very innocent.

  ‘The evening it happened, Francesca got to the bridge first. It was July, still light, and Loy, when he came along, saw her waiting there on the upstream side as he came down the hill. The bridge was deserted, nobody in sight. He called out to her, but she didn’t seem to hear him because – or so he thought – something in the river had caught her attention and she was leaning over the bridge wall in order to get a better look. Those niches have a step up, so she was quite a bit above the brickwork. Loy called out to her again, partly in greeting, partly because he thought it looked dangerous and he wanted her to come away. Instead, she leaned over even further – as if, Loy told us, whatever it was she was looking at was disappearing under the bridge and she wanted to keep it in sight as long as possible. The next moment, to his horror, she had overbalanced and gone over the side, and she could only swim a couple of lengths, if that. The Virgo Fidelis didn’t have a pool of its own then, and didn’t like taking their girls to the public baths. Loy scrambled down the slope to the river, kicked off his trainers, dived in, and brought her to land.’

  ‘Good for Loy.’

  Mrs Felsenstein shook her head. ‘Bad for him. Worse for Francesca. Either falling, or when she was struggling in the water, she must have hit her head against one of the bridge buttresses, and she didn’t seem to know what she was doing. The currents round the piers there are very tricky – more than one boat has crashed into them, as you probably know – and Loy had a terrible time. Francesca was fighting and screaming – it’s a wonder she didn’t drag him under with her. When he was back home again and I saw him naked, I was shocked by the way his chest was a mass of bruises where she had pummelled him. But he held on like grim death. He wouldn’t let her go.