by Alice Jolly
My voice is too loud and I can feel blood rising to my face.
‘Maggie,’ Dad says. ‘There’s no such thing as the truth. In fact, that’s the only thing that is true.’ Knives scrape across plates as we help ourselves to toast and cheese. Dad pours himself more wine. The violins saw through my head. As I chop at the cheese my knife slips from my hand and clatters onto the table.
‘Maggie,’ Geoffrey says, stretching out a hand towards me. ‘You’re being teased. Of course there are truths of a kind and, of course, people should search for them.’
After lunch Dad and Gus are going to watch the dog-racing in Catford and they want me to go. I say no to that. I need to go to the laundrette. In fact, I actually want to go to the laundrette. I like sitting there, in the warm breath of the dryers. There I can keep my head still. Saturday laundrette has become the equivalent of Sunday church-going. Except that today I’ll have to go later because Geoffrey wants to show me the orchids.
Dad and Gus say goodbye and good luck in Brussels and leave. Geoffrey takes me into the conservatory. It was built specially for Tiffany, as a wedding present. Like a miniature Kew Gardens with a domed roof, it takes up most of the back yard, a bubble of tropical air trapped under the grey London sky. Inside, the air sweats and sticks to my skin. ‘Maggie, look. You see these orchids from Thailand are blooming now? Just what Tiffany and I wanted.’
The orchids are arranged in rows, planted in gravel. A pump whirrs and bubbles, controlling the heat. The orchids are brash colours – electric blue, lime green, vermilion, and their faces have long noses, big ears and spotted throats. Why would anybody want these when they could have the flowers Freddy grows – white field daisies, cornflowers, poppies, and sunflowers? ‘Geoffrey …’ He’s turned away from me. I touch a green leaf, brittle and shiny like plastic.
‘And these ones as well,’ Geoffrey says. ‘Tiffany planted these. She would be so glad they’re doing so well. Smell this, Maggie, smell this.’ He cuts an orchid with secateurs and raises it to me. I swallow its sickly scent, like her perfume. It’s orange and pink with veins of yellow.
‘Geoffrey …’ Words curdle in my mouth. Geoffrey cuts another orchid and holds it out to me, his speckled hand shaking. I take the orchid from him and feel the sap of it spreading onto my hand. It’s a white flower, with red veins, like a bloodshot eye. An orange tongue pokes out from the centre of it. I look up at Geoffrey, his faded eyes smiling at the orchid in my hand.
‘Be careful, Maggie, or you’ll break the stalk.’ His hands stretch out to protect the flower. Then suddenly I’m crying, tears breaking down my face. I wipe at my eyes, tell myself to stop, put my hand over my face, but tears keep flooding down. I hear Geoffrey’s muffled tread, he lifts the bruised orchid from my hand and touches my shoulder.
‘Don’t, please don’t. You’ll make it worse.’ Tears, warm and silent, keep flowing down my cheeks. Geoffrey steers me out of the conservatory and back to the study, sits me in an armchair, and pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket. He sits down beside me and his brown eyes stare at me, full of pity. ‘Maggie, Maggie. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise you were so upset. Sorry, you were trying to tell me, and I wasn’t listening.’
I can’t say anything otherwise the tears will get worse. I hide my face from Geoffrey and clench my teeth, trying to keep the tears shut inside.
‘Maggie, I didn’t know you were feeling like this. You should have told me. You should have come to see me.’ Before Tiffany, Geoffrey wouldn’t have known what to do with a crying woman, but now he takes hold of my hand, and strokes it gently. When I open my eyes he’s sitting beside me on a low footstool, legs crossed, one foot rocking. ‘It matters to me to know you cared so much.’
‘Geoffrey. You don’t understand …’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘But Geoffrey, you need to understand how she died, don’t you?’
He smiles sadly and shakes his head. ‘Maggie, it was an accident, that’s all. No matter how much we know, it won’t do any good.’
Tears start again when I think of Tiffany’s brothers at the funeral, as similar as twins, men contained inside straight lines. Tall and thin, with sharp creases in the fronts of their trousers, lines in their dark hair where the comb had been, and strident rows of even white teeth. They wore dark glasses, both of them, and they did not speak to Dad, or to me.
‘There are some things that we will just never understand,’ Geoffrey says. I know I should tell him but the truth has become slippery. He fetches me some tea and we sit in silence, watched by all those smiling faces in the photographs. Outside the window the black, stunted tree grows dim as evening falls. In houses opposite lights come on, people pass across the windows, up and down the stairs. Normal life rolling shamelessly on. The tea slides down my throat, leaving a path of warmth all the way inside me. I sit back in the chair. For days and days now I’ve been packing, trying to get everything ready to go. My hands are ragged and sore. A yawn of tiredness swallows me.
‘Maggie, you know what I think?’ Geoffrey says. ‘I think that although we feel ourselves bound by the physical reality of separation, that isn’t really the case. We can decide. In my mind she’s still here.’ His eyes are alight far inside. He starts to talk about her. His hand lies beside mine on the faded velvet arm of the chair. Do you remember those afternoons at Brickley, when she used to play tennis for hours and hours with your dad? Do you remember that?’ His eyes are full of longing. I begin to see it as he describes it, I begin to see how it used to be. He tells me stories about her, all the things that were special to him. The funny things she said, and did. And it’s not long before I join in, and so we sit together in a comfortable little world of illusion, warming our brittle hands on the heat of lies.
When I get up to go it’s dark outside and the streetlights are on. I go through to the hall. Geoffrey is leaving as well. A car is coming to pick him up to take him to a dinner in his constituency.
‘Actually, I’ve got something for you,’ he says. He leans over and takes a pink mohair scarf off the coatstand. ‘I’ve been doing some clearing up,’ he says. ‘And I wanted to give you something of Tiffany’s. I’d thought of some jewellery but I haven’t got round to sorting things yet, so why don’t you take this, just for now.’
The scarf is fuchsia at one end, fading to a candyfloss pink at the other. I imagine her fingernails snagging in the static hair of it. ‘She’d have liked you to have that. And it’s just the right thing for this weather, keep you warm. You can wear it in Brussels.’
He reaches towards me as though he’s going to put the scarf around my neck.
‘No, really, Geoffrey. It’s very sweet of you, but you should keep it. You shouldn’t give it away.’
‘Well, most things I’m keeping but I’d like friends to have something to remember her by.’ He reaches forward and wraps the scarf round my neck. It smells of her chemical rose perfume. The fibres of it tickle my skin and my stomach squeezes up like a clenched fist. My neck shrinks away from it but Geoffrey pulls the scarf around me and knots it. I hold my head up high trying to keep my neck away from the touch of it. Geoffrey kisses me goodbye and goes out to the car. Static draws my hair to the fibres of the scarf.
I stand on the pavement.
Geoffrey, stop, don’t go, this is what I wanted to tell you, what I never told the police. What I’ve never said before. Say it, say it. Now. Dad was there that night, I saw his car. It was on the lower lane, nudging out from between the trees. It was a cloudy night, I could have been mistaken, if only I was mistaken, but it was a car with cigar-shaped headlights, torpedo-shaped, with an oval grin. Not a car you’d fail to recognise. If only knowing was a process you could put in reverse.
But I don’t say it, instead I watch you get into the waiting car, your shattered eyes, your pitted face against my cheek, as you kiss me goodbye. Her scarf still wrapped around my neck, enfolding us both in an air bubble of her perfume. Your long arms swinging, a shovel hand raised
to wave goodbye. Stop, wait, let me tell you. But the words are sealed in my head, and so we’ll all travel on through the never-never land Dad’s made for us.
Your long black car slides away, and I stand in the cold, tears sticking on my cheeks, and that court of law starts again inside my head, the banging of the judge’s gavel hitting the back of my throat. Jury, witnesses, police – all are assembled, and me alone in the witness box, suspended above them.
Ms Priestley, do you think that on the night of second October at Hyde Cottage in the hamlet of Brickley your father Max Priestley killed Tiffany Drummond?
Say it, say it.
Yes, I think he did.
JUNE
Max
My luck has turned. I knew it would. I knew they needed me. All because Bill Quigley died, poor sod. Some artery in his heart gave out. Took them some time to notice, of course. But then they got onto me straightaway. They needed a safe pair of hands, someone to fight a Euro by-election at short notice in a constituency where the going can be tough.
And it was tough. I’d forgotten how bad an election campaign can be. No sleep for weeks, endless petty squabbles. Petty issues. Partly it’s just the hassle of getting up to speed on the details, but it’s also the stress of keeping the whole bloody circus rolling on. But anyway, I won with a majority of five thousand, which is better than Bill Quigley ever had. Of course, it’s a load of old eyewash, this election business. But it creates the illusion of choice, and one should never underestimate the importance of that.
What a relief. A job. An opportunity to get out of England. And work that I’ve never done before. Of course, Europe is a bit of a backwater, but I’m not complaining. Brussels is a pleasant enough place to live. Generally, I’m not much good at abroad. I have a horror of foreign places, particularly the south. There’s an excess about them which unsettles me. Olive oil, the rattle of alien voices, the smell of rubbish in the streets. It always brings on a strange sexual stirring. Makes me feel a bit perky. But this country isn’t like that. It’s comfortingly Northern. Flat and grey. And I’ve found the perfect place to live.
Good money, plenty of dinners, not too much work. Not that I actually do anything, because the European Parliament has no power. But I create the impression of doing something and that’s what counts. It’s all sleight of hand. Plaid-slippered and sherry-sipping, the voters of Ealing are terribly impressed. Yes, there is a modern equivalent to the Foreign Legion.
I walk back from the Parliament. A beautiful spring day. New, bright green leaves on the trees. Off the leash. And tonight the swallows are flying south. At last, at last. It’s been tricky, what with the election campaign, and having no flat in London. Logistics, logistics. But now she’s coming to stay. She’ll be able to come here as often as she likes. Rosa. Roo-saaah. I roll the name on my tongue. All the time I’ve been married, I’ve been seeing her. Eighteen years, on and off. Nothing to be proud of, but there we are.
It was in Green Park that we met, where I was escaping from some appalling meeting. She was sitting on a park bench, eating a sandwich, which was threatening to explode down her T-shirt. She was nineteen then, with surprised eyes and hair that looked like it had been cropped with a knife and fork. Grass stains on her jeans, no make-up. And a camera, of course. She asked if she could photograph me. She liked the image of a pompous older man in a pinstripe suit in a park. That was the flattering way she explained it later.
After the photographs, we had a coffee in some greasy spoon café. Me busily planning how to get her into bed, without much hope of success. Too young, too alternative, I thought. Then she said it. Just like that. Do you fancy a bit of a fiddle? Or words to that effect. So we went to a grubby flat, where she was staying, near the Tottenham Court Road. Bent the frame of the sofa bed. Afterwards she wanted me to take off my sock. I didn’t want to but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. She propped my foot on her knee and peeled off my sock with pale, cold hands. I looked away but she stared at the dent and the scar intently. It’s beautiful, she said. Like a stain, or a cracked piece of glass. Or a starfish. Yes, definitely a starfish. I laughed at that. Then she placed my foot on the bed, with the sheet underneath it, and took photographs of it. When I left she wrote down her number. Her name in bold writing. Rosa. Roo-saaah. And beside it a careful little picture of a starfish. Yellow paper, green ink.
*
Now I see her coming up the cobbled square, like a nomad, nothing more than a canvas bag and a camera. She looks as though she’s walked from England. She stops at the railing. Waves up at me. The whole of her sways, as though the weight of her waving arm is enough to unbalance her. Her head is tipped up towards me. She’s laughing. All day I’ve been feeling pretty perky, now I can’t wait.
I pull open the door as she comes up the steps. Hold the champagne bottle under my arm, point the cork at her. She raises her arms above her head in instant surrender. Pulling her into the house, I put the champagne down on the hall table, push her back against the front door. With one hand over her mouth, I slide the other under her jumper. She laughs and I unlock my fingers from her lips so I can kiss her. Her camera is between us. I try to take it but she won’t let me.
I love the elfin shape of her face. She’s cool and green, like an underwater creature. Her hands are small and cold. I can hide them completely in mine. I run my fingers over the veins and tendons of her wrist, like the strings of that guitar I used to play back in some other life. She’s hardly changed at all since that day in the park, eighteen years ago, except for three silver hairs just at the side of her forehead. Perhaps she never notices them. I always do and feel a tenderness for them.
‘I’m so glad you’re here.’
She runs her tongue along my upper lip. ‘I’m sure that soon sex will be available in pill form,’ she says. ‘That would be so much more convenient for you, don’t you think?’ She pulls away from me, twists around on one foot, peers up at the four flights of stairs above us, and the cobwebbed chandelier. I always imagine her as a dancer. She has that same lithe quality, that grace and balance in the way she stands and moves. The body of a boy. Appeals to the paedophile who lurks within.
‘What a great house,’ she says.
I put my finger inside the waistband of her skirt. She twists my hand away, then kisses me. ‘How did you get this house?’
I knew she’d be impressed. She wriggles away from my lips and goes into the sitting room. She stands in the bay window, thick with palms, their leaves pressing against the curved glass. Looks down over the square where there’s a park and a green statue of a goddess lounges in an empty pond. Below us the wheels of a pushchair rumble over the cobbled pavement. The sun is sliding down over the houses opposite.
‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ she says.
‘Yes, pollution does improve a sunset.’
She laughs, raises a hand to trace the twisted art nouveau window frames and stained-glass panels. In the bay window there’s a life-sized black and white china dog, who looks out over the square. ‘I’ve called him Rex,’ I tell her. She walks through the three rooms which run from the front to the back of the house, joined with double doors. She stares at the chandeliers, parquet floors, green wallpaper patterned with leaves and flowers. ‘It’s like one of those Victorian glass domes full of dusty flowers or stuffed animals,’ she says.
Above us a brass birdcage – mercifully untenanted – swings. On every piece of fabric there’s a bobble or a frill, and on every wooden edge there’s a knob or a twist.
‘Whose is it?’
‘A chap I used to know at Cambridge. Willy van der Veken – an oarsman with flamboyant taste in trousers and possible homosexual leanings. Haven’t seen him for years actually but I always thought he might come in useful.’
‘But is he here now?’
‘No, fortunately, he’s in Indonesia.’
‘Oooh là là! Good old Willy.’
She looks at some of James’s pictures which are lying on a chair. He did
them at school and Fiona packed them up in a tube for me so I could bring them here. I stand behind her and pull down the neck of her jumper, kiss the bone at the top of her spine. Bury my face in her freshly laundered hair.
‘I must take some photographs,’ she says.
‘Later.’
‘Yes, later.’
She wriggles a hand behind her and touches my leg.
‘Let me shut the curtains.’ She’s always careful, much more so than me. But the curtains are made of thick brocade and look as though they’ll crumble to dust if we touch them. So I steer her into the middle room, pull her camera over her head. The black strap of it catches against the lobe of her ear. I pour her champagne. As we raise our glasses, we see ourselves duplicated, again and again, reflected in mirrored doors, and above the fireplace. Rosa stands against the wall and shakes off her espadrilles. Then she slides a hand under her skirt, pulls her knickers down, loops them over her feet.
I scrabble around trying to find an object of an appropriate height. There’s a footstool but it’s too high. I open a cupboard and find a pile of telephone directories. Just the thing. Rosa rummages in her bag and pulls out a tape measure. I stack three telephone directories against the wall. Stand her on them. It’s a question of geometry. The angle has got to be right. She passes me the tape measure. Eight inches is the height we need. I lay the blade of the tape measure against the telephone directories. Seven inches. Surely that will do. I kiss her stubbly shins and then her knees. I can’t wait any longer. I want to fuck her.
But no. Seven inches won’t do. It’s got to be eight. She sends me to look for a book. Dusty volumes slip to the ground as I fumble through shelves. One has a spine about an inch wide. I put it under her feet. Measure again. Exactly eight. I take off her jumper. She hasn’t got a bra on. My breath stops inside me. Her eyes are level with mine, cool and green. Like a pond on a hot day. I kiss the place where her skin changes from white to brown, where the neck of a shirt would normally be. I let the moment hang, holding back, delaying. Now, every time, I think this may be our last chance.
