Staring At The Light Page 21

  ‘Is that what you want to do?’ he said roughly. ‘Stay here? Give up? Let me go? Opt for a quiet life? Oh, I’m sure Pauline would love to have you. Free labour and good food for ever. A halo at the end. Good luck to you.’ He tapped the last of the ash into his hand, held the remnants of the cigarette between thumb and finger, watching it die. The room was quiet, apart from the ticking of the clock, the item he loathed most of all. It began to chime midnight, with small, undignified sounds. It looked as if it had been given as a prize for twenty-five years’ faithful service and a pension. She leaned forward and touched his hair; he shook his head angrily. She rubbed her eyes, pressed them shut with her fingers, then blinked to dispel the tears. They ran through her fingers onto her wrists. He noticed the red of her hands against the white of her face.

  He knelt at her feet, leaning into her knees; he reached for her face and brushed at her tears, but she still held her fists pressed into her eyes. He buried his head in her lap and, smelling the animal smell of her, slid his hands beneath the skirt and stroked her thighs. She stiffened; the tears continued; she removed her hands to press against his, stop him. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t. Please don’t.’ He remained as he was, gazing at her.

  What was it light did to a face? Or was it the blurring of tears, his and hers? She was no longer harsh in feature, but childish in distress, sexless, vulnerable, hurt, small, furious. ‘Don’t,’ she repeated. ‘Don’t you dare.’ Then softened it by adding, ‘Please,’ fiddling in her pocket for a handkerchief, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose. He watched all this closely. Puzzled, severely alarmed. There was something so unfamiliar about her. The stutter had gone.

  They’re brave, these nuns,’ she muttered. ‘Some of them suffered more than you and I put together, see? Don’t criticize their style. Or not in front of me. They’re the closest thing to family I ever had. Do you wonder I should think to stay? It’s so frightening outside, so n-n-n-n-nice within.’ A deep breath. ‘So jj-j-just so … Oh, shit.’

  He was ashamed of himself for welcoming the return of the stutter. Maybe he had never wanted her to be free of it, in case she should find it easy to outstrip his use of words; it was the stutter that had drawn him in the first place. Him and the builders, sitting in a caff, with them mimicking her behind her back until he intervened. Watched her smile into his eyes, looking only at his eyes, nothing else.

  She took a deep breath. ‘I’m not going to cry any more,’ she stated, ‘but I’ve come to love these nuns. We’ve something in common. Their life is controlled absolutely by belief in God, mine by belief in you. It’s only natural that belief should suffer from doubt from time to time, isn’t it? You gave up on your brother; you might give up on me. And the longer I stay here, the less use I’ll be on the outside. I can’t go out because you tell me I shouldn’t. Soon it might be because I can’t. And all the time Johnnyboy gets smaller and smaller in my mind. Was it him who hurt me? He stood in the dark and watched, and the fat man hit me. I’ve tried to put it right out of mind … I don’t know who was giving the orders.’

  ‘He wouldn’t touch you. He’d always get someone else to do it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he never could bear to touch a woman.’

  She was suddenly completely still. ‘Ah,’ she said, after a long pause. ‘I thought desire and hatred overcame such things.’

  ‘Not in his case,’ Cannon said, suddenly exhausted. How many times and in how many ways would he have to explain to women what Johnnyboy was like? He did not have the words or the energy and, God knows, he had tried. Yesterday, to Sarah; a dozen times to Sarah, innumerable times to Julie and they had believed him with wide eyes and open mouths at first, willing to accept what he said. Shock was the great aid to belief. Julie believed because she had suffered at Johnny’s orders; how could she be incredulous now? A calm life away from him was lulling her into a sense of safety, that was all, the image of John Smith fading like the memory of a violent film developing into a series of cartoons.

  ‘No, Cannon, you’re wrong,’ she said, reading the expression on his face. ‘I’m not less afraid, I’m more afraid. It makes me weaker, not stronger, staying here. I’m preserved – like – like a jelly!’ She laughed. ‘They like jelly, the sisters, they like childish food.’ She stroked his forehead. ‘I don’t have to make decisions. I grow weaker rather than stronger, and that’s what makes me afraid. Not being any use to you. And if he did find me here, threatened me, threatened any of them, then I’d have to run, Cannon, I’d have to run. Far away and not come back.’

  She had been so ashamed of her injuries, as if she had inflicted them herself. He had wanted her to forget them; now he wanted her to remember. The clock ticked past the quarter hour loudly. There was absolutely nothing to say and it was time to go. The rain lashed against the door as she let him out, and she made to pull him back, but he kissed her quickly and pushed her back inside. The light of the street outside made him nervous and he hurried away. Ran down the road until the convent was out of sight, then huddled in a doorway, lit another cigarette. Why should anyone believe him simply because he told the truth? Because he told it incompletely, that was why. Was selective with what he told, for fear of giving offence. Never told Julie, never told Sarah what Johnnyboy said when he went to see him, after prison, long, long before the letter. You’ve got to leave her. You don’t belong with her; you belong with me; we’ve got things to do. You wait and see; you’ll come back. What? She was scarcely hurt at all. She asked for it. Let’s see if she’ll wait for you. I’ll test her for you. The worst pain, I’ll find it.

  The worst pain was loss. That was the very worst he could envisage. Loss of her; loss of hope. The worst pain for Julie would be loss of him. Johnny would know that; he feared the rot of his loneliness more than anything else. He knew exactly what he was doing in the waiting game: waiting for love to rot. Christmas was too far.

  Cannon did not want to go home. There was no such thing. Home had always been a house owned by Johnnyboy; he had not progressed by a single step in all these years. He had regressed, because now he lived in one of Johnny’s houses as a trespasser, waiting for discovery. Cold and wet as he was, he could not bear the thought of the drip through the ceiling, the damp heat, the sense of imprisonment. Where, then? Who were his friends? Sarah, William, scarcely any other who did not belong also to Johnny, and few enough, always, of these. He would have turned back to the convent, climbed the back wall, huddled in the familiar yard, if only to be close, but he had a superstitious dread of that. The longer he stayed in the vicinity, the sooner Johnnyboy would sense where he was. And the same would apply to Sarah. He was bad news to women. He began to walk.

  On the main road, he saw the lights of the night bus, X12, Charing Cross, by the long route, offering for two pounds half an hour of warmth and oblivion and, for the price of the whisky in his pocket, a borrowed blanket with the homeless. It passed down the Edgware Road and into Oxford Street, a short walk from William’s. He thought of William’s basement room. The messy room with the teeth where he had been allowed to go to keep him out of the way of the real clients. William would never know; it was not for William to know. He could get in easy. Lie down somewhere; that old chair, maybe. Think of his precious painting upstairs. Bonnard, sketching his wife with love for the umpteenth time. A study for a painting rather than a painting, but fresh and lovely. Yes, he could think of that. And it would be nice to sleep in the home of someone who did not even know that Johnnyboy existed. Be a guest of someone who still had faith in him.

  The rain dripped through the ceiling, unnoticed. The door of the attic swung open to the push of a hand. There was no sound but that of the plip, plip, plop through the skylight and the sound of laboured breath. Too many stairs. Ah, a room bought with an artist in mind, for the promise of light. Steps across the floor, a body stooping to retrieve the scattered drawings. Ink depictions of a face; the hand holding them shaking. Looking at the features, the jowls, the mal
evolence, the age and the black teeth, snarling; the angry face; the face full of need. The lonely face; the hateful face, captured by someone who would not, could not, look at it without looking away. Finally, the face drawn with an element of affection.

  He still loves me.

  He tore up the black and white sketches, thoroughly and systematically, and placed them in a pile.

  The steps moved, the hands took the canvas from where it stood against the wall, placed it on the easel. Noted the abundant hair, more red than brown in this light. He could not remember her being described as red-haired; frowned. He had never looked at her before now. Glanced, looked away … hadn’t got close, couldn’t bear it. Looked again. Noted the full mouth and the long, slender legs with the prominent muscles in the calves. Athletic legs; a figure of strength. Examined with distaste the slightness of the breasts lying nonchalantly on the ribcage, the hand lying across the bush protectively. He wanted to slash the picture, pierce it at that point, extend the wide mouth, half open to show the white teeth, but it was only with the tip of a knife he wanted to touch; no closer. He bent, looked, memorized each detail of the face, the colour of the eyes, the way the hair swept back from the forehead, the small nuggets of gold in the ears. Traced the shape of the ears and the brows; moved his glance down, frowned at the pale flecks of paint around the neck, on the upper arms, the shoulders. Little scars, superimposed on the paint, added as a kind of signature, like tiny hallmarks. These distinguished her.

  The man went back to the wall and looked through the other canvases. Scenes, interiors, playgrounds full of children. No other women. A dozen sketches of the same woman.

  This, then, was the one. The one whose face he had always refused to see.

  He took her off the easel and put her back against the wall. Closed the door softly behind him.

  10

  You have to live; whatever else you have in mind, you have to live. Always eat when you are hungry; always drink when you are dry; always scratch when you are itchy; don’t stop breathing or you’ll die.

  Hardly a profound philosophy, but perfectly good enough. Cannon had not phoned. The year would soon be reaching its shortest day. Another foggy, early Tuesday morning, and this was it. Two bdrms; bath, wc, lge living room; no stairs. Convenient for transport. Convenient for everything, as if that made all the difference. A place to put a car three streets distant, but the car didn’t matter. Sarah hated her car: it distorted her view of the city; there was no-one to talk to in the car. This flat was walking distance from all that mattered. A mansion block, second floor; shabby without real decay; homely. An acquired taste, she was told. Someone had died in it recently.

  She knew it was home as soon as she turned the corner. A little worn; a little scarred; just like herself. Following the agent inside, Sarah saluted the late occupant with a surreptitious sign of the Cross and a hidden bow to her memory. The dead warranted respect and she needed the blessing.

  The place had the stamp of an elderly occupant who had been less than mobile. There was a high armchair by a fireplace in the huge living room, next to a table, flanked by a sewing box and a footstool, facing a television, a self-contained island of furniture in an otherwise empty space. There was a radio on the table. Between this assembly, suitable for long sitting with everything to hand, there was a well-worn path across the floor to the kitchen which was small to the point of miniature, with old-fashioned appliances and open shelves within easy reach. There was a cooker of ancient but efficient vintage, an antique fridge and every indication that the occupant saw no necessity to change anything. No aspirations to anything other than adequacy and established routine; comfort without frills, nothing that required complex instructions. Someone had been here who cooked the same things, in the same way, every day; Sarah felt a profound affinity with her.

  ‘Of course, you’d need to gut this and start again,’ the agent was saying, as they peered into the bathroom. Old bath, stained and clean, disused; newish shower shoved in the corner; hardly enough space to turn round. A bedroom with a large, low bed, depressed on one side nearest the door. A lady who had learned to economize with furniture as well as with movement; she had dispensed with obstacles and would have walked through her flat in a series of the shortest routes in a rigorous but dignified routine that sustained and allowed her independence. They went back to the living room. There were two large windows, a high ceiling with a flaking cornice decorated with grapes and tastefully tinged with smoky yellow; pale, unadorned walls. The sense of empathy was as powerful as a sweet smell. The air was clean and fragrantly dry. Happiness beckoned.

  ‘What the family should do is get some money together, do it up and then sell it. They’d make so much more, but they haven’t time, and it’s chicken and egg – they don’t have money until they sell …’

  ‘Who lives either side?’

  ‘Old block for old people. They’re mostly deaf. I’m not sure anyone else even knows she’s died.’

  I know. The light streaming through the south-facing windows turned the old carpet to full, faded gold. The empty walls were an open invitation. Shall I die here? Sarah thought. I may die friendless, but I do want to live here. Now. This minute. Perhaps I have never wanted anything quite so much in all my life. She sat in the old lady’s armchair and asked again for her blessing. She looked at the wall above the fire and imagined the favourite ornament she might have seen.

  An empty flat; deaf neighbours. Cannon could live here until Christmas, if she could get him in. She put to the back of her mind the fact that Cannon had not phoned.

  *

  ‘I want to buy it now,’ she said to Matthewson, standing in his office with arms crossed, a strange attitude he thought, in someone who had come to ask for advice. She should have been humbler. ‘How do I secure it? How do I make them take it off the market?’ She was so fierce he almost wanted to laugh. He had rarely seen her so passionate, although when she was he scarcely listened, because it was always about some hopeless cause of a person and she had the loser’s habit of defending the indefensible.

  ‘Throw money at them. It usually helps. Most vendors find it irresistible,’ he barked.

  ‘Why can’t I exchange contracts today?’ For God’s sake, she had never even mastered the finer points of conveyancing, such as delay, prudence, patience, caveat emptor – the essential rule of let the buyer beware.

  ‘You could, if you were sillier than I thought. You can make a contract on the back of an envelope, if you want. I agree to buy 1 Acacia Avenue for X pounds sterling, and he, she or it agrees to sell signed by both. Perfectly valid, and perfectly senseless, of course. You could be sold a wreck with a motorway through it … pub next door … service charges. Those places have monstrous service charges. A survey, of course – got to check the roof and the drains. All that. Weeks. Get someone in the firm to do it. Usual discount, of course.’

  ‘I don’t care about the roof and the drains. I want to buy it now.’ She sounded like a child demanding to be taken to a party.

  He shrugged. She was behaving like the most intractable kind of client who would not listen. ‘There’s one small point,’ he murmured, relishing the fact that she had asked his opinion. ‘I don’t like to mention it, but have you got the money?’

  She glared at him.

  ‘Have you sold your flat?’ he persisted.

  ‘Almost.’

  ‘Ah.’ That was news. Mrs Matthewson would want to hear about that. He sensed that Mrs Matthewson would feel a vague sense of unease if she did not know where Sarah was. So would his wretched son.

  ‘Money?’ he said again.

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Well, give it to them,’ he shouted. ‘Give them a thousand to take it off the market and promise exchange and completion within a month. Only don’t sign a contract. Please.’

  ‘Not even on the back of an envelope?’ She was smiling now, somehow comforted by the yelling. How is it, he would ask Mrs Matthewson, that she takes her reassur
ance in such strange ways? The mere fact that Ernest had failed to say Don’t do it at any price was enough to provide some kind of moral support for impetuosity – but, then, he had liked the sound of the address. Montague Mansions, Marylebone. Faded grandeur, but still grandeur: Mrs Matthewson would approve of an easy walk to Selfridges.

  ‘It’s very convenient for my dentist,’ Sarah said.

  The cigarette was back in hand, sure sign of defiance, tension or relaxation, he wasn’t sure, only that it was indicative of something alien. The sight of it infuriated him all over again. ‘I don’t care who it’s near. Unless it’s a client. You’ve work to do. As well as the art collection.’

  ‘Ah, that. Don’t worry about that.’ Beaming at him, as if a hundred-thousand-pound budget was nothing. The insouciance turned charm into anger.

  ‘But I do worry about that. I want a report. You’re a consultant in this regard, don’t forget. Trusted for expertise. You have to take it seriously. As long as you aren’t subverting any of the damned art budget on the deposit for your own bloody house.’

  The silence was palpable, thick and sticky; a boundary crossed. He had gone too far. There were innumerable times when he had accused her of white lies, evasions, abrogations of responsibility, general moral perfidy, but he had never suggested she could be tempted by theft. It was the lawyer’s cardinal sin: they could lie to a client in this culture, lie to each other, but never steal. She may have once left priceless title deeds in a taxi, billed for a fraction of the proper price, given glib and erroneous versions of the law, seduced the male clients as well as their opponents, commandeered the irrational devotion of others, but stealing was another kind of sin. He was ashamed of his own tongue; kept his head bowed and wondered what to say next in the face of her righteous fury, but when the silence continued and he was brave enough to look up she was blushing. An alarming sight against the red hair; he doubted he had seen such a phenomenon before; it was almost as frightening as seeing her cry.