Staring At The Light Read online

  He smiled now. His face rearranged itself from one set of folds into another, reminiscent of someone pulling up a set of ruched curtains to let in the sunlight. When he was serious he looked like an idiot, with a chin that seemed to reach his chest, but as soon as he grinned there was a massive rearrangement of everything: his furrowed forehead seemed to disappear into his hairline, his dark eyes were almost lost, and he seemed like a rumpled boy. The volume of hair made his head look overlarge for his thin shoulders. When he smiled, he looked perfectly, malevolently mad. Which, in his sober moments, in this room, with his bed in the corner, he knew he was. One had to be mad to inflict this abuse. He felt wretchedly older than his thirty-three years. Such cruelty pained him. At the least, the very least, he should have tried his hard-earned domesticity and offered her coffee. Dreadful coffee, but still a gesture towards hospitality.

  ‘Are you cold?’ he asked. ‘I mustn’t let you get cold. Must I?’

  ‘No. But I have to move. Dammit, I can’t move.’

  But she did move, cautiously. Leaning forward, the torso twisting in a way that made him wince, she reached for a packet of cigarettes that lay in the ashtray on the footstool beside the chair. Lit one, inhaled and put it back in the ashtray. Then she stretched out one leg and clasped the toes, extended it fully, grasped the calf with both hands and stretched the whole limb, still in the chair, until her foot was level with her ear.

  ‘What do you mean, you can’t move? What do you call that?’

  ‘I mean I can’t stand up. Until I’ve done this.’ She grasped the other leg, held it with both hands behind the knee, straightened it. There was a small crick. Then she swung her feet onto the floor, raised herself on tiptoe and stretched. Thinner than he liked. As unselfconscious as a cat.

  The shifting of the tableau and the moving of the image saddened him. Sarah Fortune was the perfect model. No vanity. She was a perfect piece of design, and his fingers were tired with the painting of her.

  ‘Let me see,’ she asked, moving towards him with the cigarette in hand.

  ‘No!’ He was shrill. ‘And don’t come near me with that thing. It makes me want one, and I shouldn’t.’

  ‘Pooh. I don’t know why you think of it. You could do with a few more antiseptic cigarettes. Every single bloody thing you do is bad for your health. But I won’t look if you don’t want.’

  ‘Not yet, please. I’m ashamed of it.’

  He shielded the canvas with his body, not trusting her, quite, although in his way he trusted her absolutely. She had that effect: she was natural and warm and generous to a fault, but the habits of mistrust were so deeply ingrained in him that they had become the natural response. Just like his shuffling walk, like a man avoiding the middle of the pavement and clinging to doorways, always looking for shadow. She had long since supposed that he had always been a little like that. It was not merely a response to his current circumstances. He would always have looked far older than he was, even as a boy; over-matured and slightly shifty, even in his innocence. He was still innocent now or, more aptly, a man who had never mastered the social code that governed the rules, constantly, almost childishly, uncertain.

  ‘Do you know’, he said, with more than usual animation, ‘that you have one leg longer than the other? At least, you do in my version of you. I shall call it Miss Sarah Fortune with unequal legs.’

  ‘No,’ Sarah said. ‘I never knew I had one leg longer than the other. But thank you for telling me. I shall have to amend the way I walk. Do you know what time it is? We’re going to be late.’

  ‘Late? Does it matter?’ Cannon had a limited view of what mattered.

  She was pulling on her clothes, retrieving them from the three-legged chair over which they were draped, neatly, as if they were important, which, as she smoothed on the dark tights, fastened a bra of white lace, buttoned the tiny pearl-coloured buttons of her blouse, he had to suppose they were: they turned her into something else entirely. No suit of clothes had ever done that for him. He sat down, weak with fascination. I used to be a tart, she had told him, long since. Still am, but more of a hobby. Naked, he could imagine that; when she was clothed, he could not. A tart with a heart. Sarah Fortune seemed to know about love: she gave it briskly and unstintingly. But, judging from the state of her body, she was also familiar with brutality.

  ‘I don’t suppose it matters in the long run’, she was saying, ‘about being late. But it does create a poor impression. And it’s bad manners. Have you got any other clothes? Something cleaner?’

  The question surprised him. It was totally irrelevant to anything in his mind. He was watching the slow transformation of naked girl into woman. She brushed her hair and tied it back, shrugged on the jacket of the suit, reached for her fawn raincoat and the tidy leather briefcase. A set of innocent-looking pearls gleamed round her neck. The small nuggets of gold in her ears had never come off. He plucked the single daisy from the milk bottle in which it resided and handed it to her, hoping to make amends for the lack of hospitality, which shamed him even here.

  ‘Thank you. How kind. On second thoughts,’ she said, ‘you’re best off to show yourself exactly as you are. Only you’d better wear the coat that smells of smoke. Then no-one will want to come near you.’

  He smiled. Then the face fell back into its bloodhound folds. ‘Not many people do want to come near me,’ he said matter-of-factly.

  She patted his shoulder, ruffled his hair and planted a kiss on his cheek. ‘Hardly surprising, is it?’ she said. ‘You snarling the way you do. Come on, now.’ She paused. ‘I’m forgetting the most important thing of all. Have you still got his letter? The bits you have left?’

  He nodded, plundered the pocket of the coat to pull out a charred half-sheet of paper, badly crumpled.

  ‘You were crazy to tear it up,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep it, shall I?’

  ‘I’m crazy full stop.’

  ‘Does he mean what he says?’

  ‘Yes. Even Johnny has rules. Even Johnny has to set limits.’

  The day outside was cold and raw. He pulled the odoriferous scarf round his face and shoved his hands inside his pockets. They throbbed and hurt, but the pain, the glorious pain of them, was a comfort. It meant that they were functioning. He followed her meekly as she clattered downstairs from the attic, swept into the road and hailed a taxi. The driver slowed and listened to her crisp instructions to take them to the Strand, wondering, as he pulled away, what such a woman was doing with such a man. Maybe even a man down on his luck could afford a hooker these days. The cab seemed to smell of smoke. Woodsmoke and paraffin, overlaid with soap, and the high-class tart threading a daisy through the top buttonhole of her coat as if the faded thing was made of gold.

  ‘Hurry, Cannon, please hurry,’ she was saying, pushing him out first, proffering towards the cab driver a note that was far too much and a radiant smile that made him, sour though he was, smile back. ‘Stop sulking, Cannon. I tell you what,’ she continued, ‘smile at the buggers. Mesmerize them …’

  Obediently Cannon sustained his smile as they sidled past Security, where Miss Sarah Fortune’s evident familiarity shortened the process of bag searching, to which she still submitted with a brief exchange of banter. She towed him through behind her, although their gaze followed him with jealous suspicion. Briefly. The High Courts of Justice were well accustomed to eccentrics and at least this one was wearing clothes. An unnecessary number of clothes.

  It was important to be on time for Master Ralph, but also pointless because the appointment schedule never ran to order, usually erring on the side of lateness but very occasionally, the opposite. Sarah Fortune, solicitor of the Supreme Court in what her employers, Matthewson and Co., described as her spare time, knew these corridors well but, in common with half a million habitués, never quite conquered the unmasterable procedure. It was a place where unhelpfulness was an art form perfected into a refinement of itself. The Masters dealt with the dull preliminary business of civil litigation. Canno
n was before the court to be reminded of his obligations and Sarah, who hated this establishment with as much hatred as she could muster, was determined to enjoy it for once. She was good at enjoyment.

  Another surreptitious cigarette. The woman from the Crown Prosecution Service, who arrived to demand the immediate execution of the confiscation order against Walter James Smith, better known as Cannon, criminal manqué of this and larger parishes, was highly amenable; in other words, nice. A lame enough word, for a civil servant with a civic duty often executed, as Sarah knew, with a rigour bearing on the ruthless. Nice, in Sarah’s courtroom vernacular, meant approachable, reasonable, articulate, lacking in messianic zeal as well as egotism, and having the perfectly reasonable attitude of wanting to get out of these Gothic halls as soon as possible. Sarah knew that half the art of all this ritualistic confrontation was common sense and the achievement of a dialogue with the opposition. Get it down to basics. The Crown wanted immediate possession of Cannon’s house, and that was for starters. They wanted it on the basis that it was an asset accumulated from the proceeds of crime and that although Cannon had served his sentence for the crimes it was not the same thing as paying his debts.

  Cannon took a seat on the uncomfortable bench. He did not look like a criminal as much as like an outmoded anarchist of a vaguely Middle European school. He was still smiling, content to sit with his arms crossed, hands still in gloves, surveying the scene. ‘Do you think’, Helen West said to Sarah Fortune, each of them greeting the other with the kind of mutual recognition and liking it was natural to disguise from their clients, in case amity was seen as complicity, ‘that you could get him to stop doing that? I’m so afraid his face might get frozen, like a salesman.’

  ‘He does something with his jaw,’ Sarah muttered. ‘And he’s very proud of his teeth. He can keep up that smile for hours. I can’t control it.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you can. His coat smells. Did you arrange that, too?’

  They were in a line for Master Ralph. Some litigants could spend a while in there, while others were spat out with all the ceremony of phlegm. Sarah did not want a conflict with Helen West, not when she held all the cards and a client who was unpunishable by law because he was, for the law’s purposes only, as mad as a snake. Helen West was wincing, not paying attention to any kind of portentous news, feeling her jaw, pinching it with the spread fingers of her capable-looking right hand, as if pressure alone would stop it hurting. ‘Bloody tooth. Hurts like hell. Sorry.’

  ‘Nurofen?’

  ‘I want my head cut off. I’ve had every damn thing done to this damn tooth. Still hurts. Look, give me a break. Just get him to sign over his house as part payment of his bloody debts. Then we’ll all be happy. I don’t understand why he delays.’

  ‘He wasn’t living in it and it was never really his,’ Sarah murmured, rooting in her handbag for pills.

  ‘Never his? Like he never made any money? Oh, yes? They all say that.’

  ‘He grew up in Belfast, you see. Making bombs was playtime … His brother—’

  ‘Nobody’s saying he’s a terrorist. Simply a destructive exploiter of knowledge. What kind of excuse is that for selling the stuff? What does your client want out of life?’

  ‘Babies. He’s crazy for a baby. Got a good dentist, have you?’

  ‘Not if you judge by this.’

  ‘Look; about the house …’

  The queue before them seemed to dissolve. An angry posse marched out, arguing and blaming. Then they were in, Cannon hanging back like a tail and Helen West hissing, Why did you have to bring him? Does he ever stop smiling? and Sarah felt a moment of sincere regret.

  Master Ralph was a disappointed man, who found the incessant struggle to administer decisions to the ignorant inside a room that resembled a dungeon with a high ceiling too much of a challenge, even before the realization that every person who came before him was less informed than he and always would be. Every legal ingénue went this route until they were old enough to send someone else, leaving him to witness an endless parade of inexperience, all wanting something they could not have. It was not the iron that had entered his soul, but rust.

  ‘I appear for the Crown,’ said Helen West in her quiet and authoritative voice. ‘The Master is familiar with this case.’ Out of the corner of her eye, she had the vague impression that Sarah Fortune and plain Master Ralph had actually winked at one another. Master Ralph was suddenly uncharacteristically cheerful.

  ‘Mr Cannon has been concerned in the illegal manufacture of explosives. He has been convicted of unlicensed supply to the building trade and others, served a sentence, and all that is history. Since he profited from this, the Crown wants his money. You have all these facts, sir, from previous appearances. Mr Cannon, otherwise known as Smith, was in business with his twin brother but, alas, they are not alike. Under the cover of his brother’s respectable property development and building industry, this Mr Smith diversified into the manufacture of explosives. He was an expert for hire to the worst end of the trade, because he liked it. He would have been an asset to the Army. He also used the legitimate business to capitalize himself with a property and, we suspect, valuable paintings, by effectively stealing from his brother’s business. Mr Smith, Cannon, considers himself an artist.’

  ‘He is an artist,’ Sarah mumbled. ‘A framed artist.’

  ‘Did my learned friend say something?’

  ‘I heard nothing,’ Master Ralph said. ‘Go on, Miss West.’

  She went on, ‘The only asset we have been able to trace is his house in Langdale Crescent. We want that house. This hearing is purely about that house. The other money we must pursue as best we can. But Mr Smith – Cannon – has agreed he owes us the house. When he finds the deeds and chooses to leave it.’ Here, Helen West gave a look of disapproval to Sarah Fortune. ‘Mr Cannon has asked for an adjournment of the order. He is, of course, quite consistent in such a request. As he would be.’ She grimaced, a brief illumination of currently pale, beautiful features.

  Sarah rose to her feet. Hers was an infectious grin. ‘On the contrary, sir, my client has seen the sweet light of reason. My client no longer wishes to adjourn the issue. The only reason he’s delayed with the handing over of the deeds is because he could not find them. They were not in his hands. He did not live in the house. The Crown is welcome to the house. What’s left of it.’ She sat.

  The Master raised his hand for silence and began to examine the documents in front of him, the better, it seemed, to delay the disappearance of anyone who could formulate a sentence. He glanced up from time to time, enjoying the view.

  ‘What do you mean,’ Helen muttered, ‘what’s left of it?’

  Silently, Sarah handed her a Polaroid photograph. Helen fumbled for her glasses. ‘That’s his house?’

  The photo showed a ruin, one quarter of a house clinging precariously to the end of a crescent. The most prominent feature was the stairwell, with a bath balanced on the top step. There was something so entirely ludicrous about it, like a surreal painting, that Helen began to laugh. Mirth inside the Master’s room was as dangerous as laughter at a funeral. It became infectious, subversive, travelled round the body like a missile, rapidly out of control, ready to emerge as a noise more animal than human. Then both women were half double, making small weepy sounds, like puppies, and for some unfathomable reason, without even knowing the joke, Master Ralph joined in.

  ‘Look,’ said Sarah Fortune, on the steps to the high court. ‘You can’t go back to work like this. I know a fantastic dentist. If I phone him, he’ll see you straight away, I’m sure he will.’

  ‘No, thank you. It’s gone. Well, it’s gone for now. I need a dentist who copes with hysteria. I’m terrified. As soon as pain goes, I find an excuse … And it’s gone. Well, it’s gone for now. Where is he, this dentist?’

  Sarah jerked her head in Cannon’s direction. ‘A dentist who can cope with Cannon can cope with anyone. Wimpole Street.’

  ‘Can’t afford i
t.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not too ruinous. Although it has to be said,’ Sarah added in confidential tones, ‘it is far cheaper if you sleep with him.’

  Helen was not entirely sure she had heard correctly: she was dizzy with the end of the pain. She took the offered card, watched Sarah Fortune summon her client with an imperious wave, received the last blessing of that wide, outrageous smile and realized, once they were out of sight, how she had failed to record details of W. J. Cannon’s current address. Yes, he was an artist; she remembered that. An almost incredible combination, but at his trial he had sketched them all, capturing their likenesses with uncanny flair. A man transfixed between opposing urges to create and destroy; a thief who probably made explosives for other thieves, stole from a twin brother, and even the gaolers liked him. Married to a wife who was going to reform him, common enough mitigation, speciously received. They all said that. She remembered more. He had looked different then. There’d been a suicide attempt in prison, so why did he look so much better three months out from two years inside? She gazed after them. That was the difference. That smile. His teeth. She did not want to think about teeth and she did not want to go to the dentist. She would wait, like a fool, until the next time.

  Cold outside. Warm within. A morning of contrasts. A garret; a courtroom; an office.

  I am lord of all I survey, Ernest Matthewson told himself each morning when he passed the plaque bearing his name on the office wall, knowing each time he said it that it was a lie. He was merely an ageing senior partner in the monolith that had grown from the microcosm of his once modest legal practice and he did not really control anything. He could not control the staff or their relationships; he could no longer control the character of the clients, and he often reflected how the firm provided unique opportunities for the wrong people to meet each other in sometimes advantageous, sometimes poisonous ways. One tried to choose the clients, but he no longer knew who they were and could only remember the nastier ones between the many. Charles Tysall, who had stalked and hurt Sarah; Ernest would always feel guilty about that. John Smith, the builder without manners he had passed on to ambitious Andrew Mitchum; clients with nameless needs, not always legal. Useless clients, ungrateful clients and barking-mad clients, who seemed to suit Sarah.