Boy on the Wire (8 page)

The day you left was not my proudest moment. I should have come in to the terminal with you instead of leaving you outside. I did, in fact. I turned the car around and parked and went inside, but you had gone through security and I asked them to let me through. I caused a bit of a scene actually, but they refused and it was all I could do to persuade them to allow me to stay and watch your plane take off.

I am not sure what I would have achieved, but it would have been better to say a proper goodbye.

I wish you well. I hope you continue to be a success and I hope one day you, too, will marry and have children. Maybe you will even mention their grandfather to them, in a kindly way. I would have loved grandchildren. But it was not to be. I have had much joy in my life and many happy years. The years before Paul died with the five of us in this big house were more than most people get, more than most deserve. I loved what we had, all of us, out here in this windswept corner of nothing, our own familial Eden.

I hope one day you, too, will know such a time.

Love Dad

The fifth of October 1999. Twelve years ago. I was twenty-four, recently graduated, and had just been taken on at Lloyds. I had not had any contact with my father or brother for at least four years. I go through the numbers. My father died twelve years ago. I last saw him and Peter eighteen years ago. It sounds too long. Eighteen years – a lifetime. I think back over what I have done in that time. What I haven’t done. I made a lot of money. I met Rachel. It is not much.

And during that time, during those eighteen years, my father and my brother, here, sitting where I am, watching over me from afar. My father with that doubt he should never have had. He should have had the truth, no matter how hard.

I sit in the chair with the letter in my hand. After a while it slips and falls to the floor.

For a long time I stare out of the window at a spot at the edge of the garden. I stare, while around me the heat haze breaks up the garden, the house, the sky. They swirl above me, forming, reforming. Everything I can see floats, drifts away.

I can see this, I can describe it because I see it as if from afar, as if I am perched halfway up the wall, looking down on a man sitting crumpled in a chair, a man who does not look like me at all, a man half my size, crushed by the walls that surround him.

8

I sit sweating in the chair in the bungalow. For a second I am adrift. I do not know where I am, and how I got here. I focus on the screen. A man reads a letter. The screen begins to jump, as if the man is trembling.

I feel in my pockets but there is nothing in them. I run next door and into the lounge. The letter lies on the floor next to the chair. I pick it up again and read it. The same words appear. I fold it carefully and place it back in the envelope.

I get into the shower and am standing under the water, my eyes closed, when I hear a crash from the ground floor. I jump out and run down the stairs and into the kitchen. I am naked and still dripping from the shower. There on the floor, below the sink and an open window, a broken glass lies shattered. The curtain flaps in the breeze. My breathing slows.

I move my foot and step on a piece of glass. Wincing, I hold the foot up and watch as a drop of blood falls to the floor. As it lands, I notice, out of the corner of my eye, a footprint, wet, the size of a child’s.

I raise my eyes and there is another. The first is fading already. I look further and there is a third and a fourth, and I cannot tell whether I am watching them being formed or whether in fact I am seeing them, one after the other, so that it only seems as if there is an invisible child making them.

I follow the footprints out the door. They are fading. At the door to the outside, I look behind me. Perhaps the child has sneaked behind and is standing right here, over my shoulder. I feel around with my arms like a blind man. But nothing.

When I turn back, I see the footprints cross the concrete floor of the yard and enter the shed.

I listen but there is no sound.

It takes a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the dark. There are tools, a bench, tins. On the table is an old fish tank, its sides split. I step into the shed and peer into the tank. At the bottom, half buried in sand, there is something, I don’t know what – a leaf, a dead insect. I put my finger to it, shift it out of the sand. A frog – dead, dried out.

There is nothing here. Four walls. No cupboards. No space to hide.

I am standing in the shed with Peter. It is his fish tank. I am ten. Peter, fourteen, is too old to be collecting frogs. He is looking into the tank and he removes the corpse of one of them. He holds it up. It is as dry as a leaf and has been dead for days, if not weeks. I can tell that even at ten. Yet he is crying. I can see his face now. There are tears in his eyes. I am surprised. Over this?

I want to talk to him, want to say something to him. Something more than about a frog. Something that matters. I start. I open my mouth but nothing comes out. As I open it, he turns away. He turns away from me and faces the wall, fists at his sides. He whispers. I lean in to hear. He says one word over and over. I cannot make it out. ‘Murderer.’ It might be that. Again and again. Said so many times it loses its meaning, if it was even that word in the first place.

I try to remember if I had promised to look after his frogs, perhaps to catch flies for them. I do not think so.

But I knew he was talking about himself – if it was that word he used. I might as well not have been there at all.

I walk out of the shed, backwards, so I can keep an eye on him. He does not move. Just the sound. It grows louder as I move closer to the door.

And as I copy those movements twenty-six years later, I am blinded by the sunshine outside the shed. I panic – that’s the only word for it. Just for a second. I am gripped by a sudden fear of losing my sight. Of having my eyes plucked out like Gloucester. Stuck here, unable to see, unable to reach a phone. And behind me a person, a person who doesn’t want me here, watching me, watching me gasp for water, then shrivel up. Waiting for me to die. The first thing to go is my lips, the water sucked out of them so they draw back from my gums, my yellow teeth exposed to the sun and the dust.

I go through every room on the upstairs floor and close the windows. I do the same downstairs and make sure all the doors are locked. I go out through the garage door and lock that behind me, too. I have not been concerned about security, but now I find myself closing a window, locking it, then coming back two minutes later to make sure it is shut. At the back of my mind I know I will need more than locks. It pains me when a thought, unbidden, flashes through my mind: it is Peter I need to keep out.

I wait in the car outside the address I have for the funeral parlour. Not the one I used, but the one who issued the receipt I found in the drawer. Number 144. It is boarded up. Above the windows a sign has been painted over in grey. Beneath the paint I can make out the words, ‘Kemp and Sons Funeral Directors’. There is a phone box nearby. I dial the number I have, but get only an out of order signal. I listen to it for a long time.

I drive into the city and park on Kirkwood Street. The buzzer on the door to number 33 doesn’t work. I push the door and it opens. A security guard is behind a desk at the end of a corridor.

‘24/7 Detective agency?’

The man points to the board behind him. The agency is on the 5th floor.

‘Sign please.’

I sign and head towards the lifts.

‘Out of order.’ The guard points towards the stairs.

By the time I reach the top, I am out of breath. I am letting myself go.

The inside of the office is in better condition than the building. There is a carpet, a couch, a television, magazines. It reminds me of a doctor’s waiting room. The receptionist is young. She smiles at me.

‘Good afternoon. Welcome. Do you have an appointment?’

‘I don’t. I want to talk to someone about a case.’

‘There is no one here at the moment. The detective will be back in about half an hour.’

‘I will wait.’

She nods. ‘Please.’ She points to the couch.

I watch the TV. It is the first time I have seen a television programme in weeks. It is a soap opera, a local one. The volume is turned down.

About forty minutes later, the door opens and a man walks in. He looks down at me and gives half a nod. I think I see him hesitate. Perhaps he recognises me, or at least recognises my brother in me.

He is about fifty, has close-cropped hair and a large chest. He looks like an ex-policeman. I try to think back to the day of the wedding, the tourist taking a photograph and I can see the flash of light on the camera but no further than that. I can’t see the figure holding the camera. I don’t suppose it was this man, though it is not impossible he would have flown over to London to keep watch on me.

The man talks to the receptionist, then goes into his office. The woman looks back at her computer screen.

I get up from the couch and stand in front of her. She looks up, smiles.

‘Can I see him now?’

‘I will check.’

She picks up the phone, holds it to her ear, says nothing. Then she returns the receiver. ‘Mr De Villiers will see you.’

I go into the office. The man behind the desk rises and holds out his hand without saying a word. We shake and the detective gestures towards a seat.

‘How may I help?’

I say nothing for a few seconds. I have not planned this moment.

‘I want to find out about a case you are working on.’

‘Which case is that?’

‘You were engaged by Peter Hyde.’

‘Ah.’

‘And my father before him.’

He nods, holds the palms of his hands up. ‘I was working for Mr Hyde. I am not any more.’

‘When did you stop working for him?’

‘Several months ago. He said he was going to England. But you understand I am not able to discuss cases with you. We are not doctors, but we have standards too.’

‘The case was about me. To follow me.’

‘I know.’

I pause for a minute, shake my head. ‘I don’t want to know about the case as such. I don’t care about it. I want to know about him.’

‘Your brother?’

‘Yes, I want to know. I want to know what he was like.’

‘Was?’ He raises an eyebrow.

‘He is dead.’

The detective pauses. He does not seem shocked. ‘I am sorry to hear that.’

‘You can help?’

The man looks blankly at me.

I begin to feel I have wasted my time coming here. What will this man be able to tell me after all?

‘Did he tell you why he wanted to find me?’

‘I didn’t enquire about his reasons. I just followed instructions.’

‘What was he like?’

‘What do you mean, what was he like? He was your brother.’

I want to say, ‘Was he happy? Did he smile? Did he have friends, was he involved with someone?’ Instead I say, ‘Did he mention our other brother, Paul?’

‘No. But I know about him.’

‘You do?’

‘I am a detective. It is my job.’ He smiles.

I pause. ‘Is there anything you can tell me about him, about Peter, I mean?’

The detective says nothing for a while. Then he shrugs and says, ‘I am sorry. He was a client, a good one. But I did not know him well. We did not talk about anything other than the case. In fact, we did not speak very often at all. My instructions did not vary much. He always paid his bills on time. There was no need to speak.’

‘And you won’t tell me why he kept me under surveillance for years.’

He smiles and shrugs. ‘He never said.’

‘And my father?’

‘I remember him.’

‘Good.’

‘Not well. It was a long time ago – 1995, I think. He was embarrassed to be employing me. I remember when he first came to see me. It took some time to get out of him what he wanted.’

I say nothing.

‘I have no children. Sometimes it is better that way.’ The detective leans back in his chair.

I stand up.

‘You were not at the funeral. Your father’s, I mean.’

‘I was in England.’

The detective smiles. I want to be away from this place. I turn to go.

‘Perhaps your brother wants you to figure it out. Isn’t that what you have to do now? To work out his game?’

‘Why do you use the present tense?’

The detective laughs. ‘It is a manner of speaking. You say your brother is dead, but to you he seems more alive than ever.’

I do not like this man. I stand up and begin to walk out.

When I am at the door, he calls out. ‘You look so much like him. You could be his twin. It is quite remarkable.’

I don’t know what to say to that. I nod, and leave.

At the bottom of the stairs, there is a door which has a pane of glass at eye level. I can see my reflection in it. The mole on my cheek, the hairline, the scar on my chin. A thought goes through my head as I look at myself. You are not him. You are as innocent as a child.

I am about halfway down the drive when I sense something wrong. I coast to a stop. I cannot put my finger on it at first. I get out of the car and look at the house. And then I see it. The front door is open. Not much, just an inch or two, but open nonetheless. I remember locking it. I feel in my pocket for the key. It is not there, but I am sure I took it from the lock.

I stand looking at the house, watching the door, the windows, waiting for movement.

There is a breeze. It is warm. It comes from the mountains, this wind, from a place far away from here. I could turn the car around. I could drive towards those mountains, drive and drive, the air growing hotter around me. Eventually, on a white plain, shimmering with heat, I see a tree. I point the car at it and under the tree – very large for the desert – the car runs out of petrol and comes to a stop. I stay there, stay in the car and wait for the heat to rise. Smoke first, then the car bursts into flames. Me, too. Blue flames rising from my skin, my hair. There is no pain. I close my eyes as the flames grow higher.

He is in the house – Peter. I am not sure how I know. Who else would it be? It has been building for some time. Do I believe he is not dead? It is a question that is beginning to make less sense to me. He is in there, waiting. This is the thought that comes upon me. I let it take over.

I do not turn the car around, do not drive off. I cannot. I close the car door and walk the rest of the way to the front door.

I stand outside, listening. I can hear only the wind. I push the door further open, step inside and close it quietly behind me. The key is in the lock on the inside of the door. I take it out and put it in my pocket. Again I listen. Minutes pass. The house is quiet, so quiet it is as if I have stepped into a void.

Then I do hear something. A footstep, just one. I move towards the stairs, stop. The sound again. The noise could be the house shifting, settling in the wind. Houses make noises. I take the stairs, one at a time. On the landing I look up to the corridor above and wait again. I see nothing. And then a different noise – singing. A child’s voice, faint. I hear it, but as soon as I do it is gone again. Now I take the stairs two at a time. I run into each room, starting with the main bedroom. Each room is bright, filled with sunlight but nothing more.

I come to the last bedroom, the one with the room under the eaves. There is nothing in the bedroom. But I stand in front of the door to the attic room. It is still closed. I have not been in here yet. Not this time.

I draw the bolt back. I can hear only my own breathing now. The voice has not come back. My breathing is quick. I push the door open. The room is dark, blacker than I remember.

‘Hello?’ My voice sounds strange, unreal. I think for a moment it has come not from me but from the blackness in the corners of the space that I cannot see. I wait for my eyes to adjust. There is no answer. A slight echo perhaps. I step towards the door and freeze. The song again, but from outside this time. I run to the window which looks out to the side of the property. I cannot see anything at first, but I open the window and stick my head out. Peering round towards the back of the house, I see something then. There, standing in the middle of the lawn, a boy. He is looking away from the house, towards the bush. He is too far away to see clearly and the window is at the wrong angle. I have to lean far out of the window and strain my neck to see him. The boy stands there. He is too far away to have made that noise, but I know it comes from him. Though it seems to start in my head, I know it is from that boy. I know the tune, though I cannot place it. The boy is still, his back to me.