Forgotten Life (32 page)

At last she had been able to speak of the times when, as a child, alone and frightened in the dark, she had heard her step-father stagger home, the quarrels, the cries of her mother, sometimes the sound of china being broken. She lay upstairs in her bed, ten years old, clutching the friendly little felt lizard her real father had given her before he went off to the war, the lizard she called Green Mouth. Sometimes her step-father would come to her bed. And in her fear, all she could do was to lie there and let him behave as he wished.

Gradually, she talked the terror and shame away. Life again became possible for her.

After she ceased to attend the clinic, Clement sought her out and proposed to her. And was accepted.

He felt, he hoped, that Sheila and he had forged such a bond between them that they could not be happy with other partners. But of course financial independence had come her way. She might want to exercise it. She had exercised it.

Feeling a headache coming on, he took an aspirin. He was going slowly downstairs when the front door bell rang.

‘She's back,' he thought, and a shaft of daylight seemed to play through his being.

Outside, however, stood three figures, none of them remotely resembling his wife. All belonged to the armies of the jean-clad. A heavily built man with his shirt open to his navel and his sleeves rolled up to reveal tattoos on his arms was trying to anchor a
struggling child whom he held by one hand. Smiling at Clement, he gave a mock salute with his free hand. The child, running fast backwards without moving, trying to drag its anchor, was red in the face and resembled a small version of the man as to rig-out, except for the tattoos. In front of these heroic figures was a woman of decided features, sharp looks, and blue eyes. Her hair was in interesting disarray, while something in her alert stance suggested that she was equally prepared for flight or attack, as the occasion might require.

‘Here I am, bang on time. You'll have to excuse me bringing along Ron and the bairn, but we fancied a look round the colleges while we were this way, didn't we, Ron? Okay if we come in? Stop that, Pat.'

A few seconds late, Clement recognized Lucy Traill. It had been some while since he last saw her when, as far as he could recollect, she had been wearing the same clothes as now, and sporting the same CND badge on her faded jacket.

‘Come in, all of you,' he said. He could not for a moment think of anything else to say. He had phoned Lucy only yesterday, before Sheila had taken it into her head to disappear, since when the appointment had gone completely out of his mind. ‘Sheila's not here at present,' he added.

He thought that Lucy gave a slight sniff. She and Sheila had not become friends.

The man addressed as Ron made a great show of dragging the child into the hall, while the child made a great show of going insane as it entered. Getting a closer look at the creature as it swung in an orbit about Ron's body, Clement saw that it was female, though its hair was cut as short as a boy's. It was protesting its lot in a high, unmusical monotone.

Apparently unaware that his arm was being torn off, Ron said, grinning, ‘You sorted your brother's gear out yet?'

‘Not quite.' Belatedly, Clement realized that this was the man claiming to be Joseph's friend, whom he had found inside the Acton flat, on his visit at the weekend. Ron Mallock.

‘I expect you'd like some coffee.'

‘Yes, coffee'd be okay, great, cheers,' Ron said. ‘Give over, Pat, will you, for crying out loud?'

‘I don't want to be here I told you I keep telling you I'm not meant to be here why did you drag me here why did you make me come why can't you let me go why can't you lay off I'm not meant to be here I'm meant to be somewhere else I don't want to be here I'm going to spew up if you don't look out I'm supposed to play with Daphne why don't you leave me alone why did you make me come,' said the child, in a kind of unpunctuated shriek, evidently feeling that at least she could kill off grammar while biding her time on Ron.

‘She wanted to stay home,' Lucy said, by way of elucidation. She was not tall, and stood looking up into Clement's face as if watching for his next move.

He was in the presence of the woman who had found Joseph dead. The vitality in her, in the way of walking and in her stance, seemed to negate death. The movement of her clearly defined lips and the positioning of her head when she spoke, as if a question lurked behind her every statement, was immediately familiar to him, as if it had not been a couple of years since they had last met – apart from Joe's cremation, when she had come and gone without speaking to anyone, standing alone at the rear of the crematorium, wrapped in a black plastic raincoat.

Sheila and Clement had just returned from a dinner in Thame when the phone had rung. Lucy was on the line. He knew immediately that something was wrong.

‘I'm ringing from a call box,' Lucy said. ‘It's going to be rotten news. Are you ready? Joe's dead. I've just found him up in his kitchen. I mean, he's still up there, just lying by the sink. I can't go back, sorry. I blame myself for not being with him. I can't say how long he's been there. He's quite cold.'

He interrupted her flow. ‘Stay there. I'll be right over.'

‘The point is – well, I've got to get back to my kid. You know how it is. It's a bit of a journey by tube … Should I ring for a doctor?'

‘Leave it to me. How did you get in the flat?'

‘Oh, Joe often didn't lock the door. If only someone had been with him, someone to comfort him. Me.'

‘Don't fret. It's a shock, of course. Go home, have a drink of tea – maybe something stronger. I'll take care of everything. Thanks – thanks for phoning.'

‘I didn't realize he was that bad. He was okay last week when I was with him … Poor Joe.' And then she had allowed herself a few sobs.

Now she looked fine. He took it she had been sunbathing, making the best of the good weather. He did not believe that weeping formed part of her ordinary repertoire. Although the child was still howling, Lucy appeared calm and alert, her clear gaze fixed on Clement as if she was coming to some decision about him, a decision which might or might not be favourable. The thought made him nervous.

He led the way through the rear hall into the kitchen. Although the child fought Ron every inch of the way, he still found the chance to observe his surroundings, saying, in the genial voice which seemed to be habitual to him, ‘You done better in life than your brother by the looks of things.'

Such remarks embarrassed Clement but, before he could express that embarrassment, the child began to kick Ron and anything else within reach, including the table.

‘You'll break a leg, Pat,' Lucy said, without making it clear whose leg she was referring to. At which point, Cheri emerged from the walk-in larder and was introduced in a sort of way, the proceedings drowned out by the child's rapid stream of protests.

‘Do you think Pat would like a swim?' Cheri asked Clement. This was such a sensible suggestion that even the child could not resist it, and took up a great cry of, ‘Wannerswim, wannerswim.'

‘It's in the back garden. Cheri will show you,' Clement said curtly, dividing the remark equally between Lucy and Ron, since he was not yet certain to whom the child belonged. ‘There are towels in the changing hut.'

‘I'll take care of her,' Ron said, with a nod at Lucy. The child was now dragging him after Cheri, who smiled and made playful scurries at her, perhaps getting into practice for when her own child was born. ‘I'll have that coffee in a bit, cheers.'

As he switched the kettle on, Clement asked Lucy, ‘Is Pat your child? I mean, not Ron's?'

‘Yes, I'm living with Ron now, since your brother died.'

He recalled that a silent and sulky Pat had been with Lucy on her first visit to the house with Joseph. It was difficult to concentrate on anything but Sheila's absence.

He was silent. Perhaps sensing unspoken criticism, she said, ‘Ron's a caring guy.' After another silence, she added, ‘He's good with Patricia. She's been quite upset since her dad left us. She didn't get on with Joe.'

Clement did not intend to show approval or disapproval of this revelation. Instead, he passed her over a mug of instant coffee. He pushed the demerara sugar towards her but she shook her head. He put more coffee and boiling water in the mug he had used earlier and sipped at it appreciatively.

‘I thought a lot of your brother,' Lucy said. ‘But Ron's been good to me, there's no denying. Things aren't easy for those who don't fit in with Mrs T's notions of progress.'

He construed these remarks as mainly defensive, and grunted sympathetically. He assumed she was still doing physiotherapy, but did not enquire.

‘Anyhow, it was good of you to come over.'

‘I told you on the phone I would. I've brought along the notebook you might like to see. You've been talking to that Captain Parr.' Lucy perched close to him on the edge of the kitchen table.

‘Yes.'

‘He's a bit of a lad. How ever old is he?' She laughed with amused pleasure, and for a moment he saw something open and delightful in her rather anxious face.

‘Lucy, Captain Parr was telling me that Joseph had a revelation of some sort. A spiritual revelation. I'm afraid I saw very little of
Joseph after our mother died, which I regret. I've been trying to finish a book, and goodness knows why we should set books above people—'

‘Sometimes books are more accessible to us,' she said.

He was surprised by the remark. ‘That's so. Can you tell me what exactly Joe's revelation was? Parr said that it changed his life. Is that so?'

Since she took some while to respond to this direct question, he had time to study her face and lips. He remembered his wife, angry when Lucy, uninvited, had laid hands on her, had described Lucy as ‘thin-lipped'. He saw that those narrow lips were perfectly shaped and turned very prettily at the corners, and were of an attractive light pink, without make-up.

‘I had a couple of holidays on the Costa Brava, before Pat arrived. I didn't like it much. It was too full of English nutcases. Once I went to Paris with my sister. That was all right. But I'm not a great one for going abroad. One thing I liked about Joe was that he knew abroad so well. Really foreign places, I mean, not like the Costa Brava. He could tell you about China and make it really interesting. I hope to go there one day, if I can ever get the cash together. But I'd have loved to have gone with him.'

She was silent again. Clement sipped his coffee and waited.

‘Tell you another thing I liked. It was part of his love of foreign things. I liked all his awful family history. He used to laugh about it. I mean, that school he went to by the seaside. Did you get sent there too?'

‘No.'

‘You were lucky, I should think. But Joe could be so funny about it. He'd so developed his personal history – all the hardships and everything, the way no one at home loved him, the way his whole life was blighted by a dead baby sister – it had become a sort of mythology, you know, which he let me share. It was really like a wonderful story, and his triumph over misery. I liked that.'

He reached out and touched her hand.

‘People feel guilt about such early miseries. Joseph did. He was able to share it with you because you were sympathetic.'

‘It's true he didn't open up much when we first knew each other. We got to trust each other, although we often had rows – over political issues and that. Anyhow, I suppose you know he found out that this little dead sister had been buried in an unconsecrated grave?'

‘In Nettlesham cemetery, yes. He found out on the day of mother's funeral.'

She nodded. ‘Yes, I remember. He said it was more than a coincidence. Your mum had been able to keep her secret until her funeral but no longer. Not a day longer. That discovery, the discovery that the baby had been buried and finished with, I mean, set him to examining his early life all over again. He took to studying up psychological literature and so on – I don't know what. I had no patience with those tomes.'

‘He should have come to me.'

She looked him in the eye, and the shapely lips curled into what was not quite a smile. ‘Ah, but there was that long-standing difference between you. Besides, brothers aren't like sisters, are they?'

‘Not quite.' He laughed.

‘Sometimes he was very down, reading the books. Other times, he'd be happy, and lark about, and say he was beginning to understand.'

‘Understand what exactly? Can you say?'

‘He used to have a recurrent dream.' As she spoke, screams broke out from the direction of the garden. Clement jumped up and ran to the kitchen window.

Outside, in the sunless garden, a small naked girl had just plunged into the swimming pool. A lumbering hairy man stood naked on its edge. As Clement reached the window, he jumped. A great splash. More screams.

‘They're enjoying themselves,' he said.

Lucy gave no sign of having heard. She looked down at the gingham tablecloth and traced one of the lines with a nail, as if finding a path through life for some absent person.

‘This recurrent dream of his. It was about walking through a wilderness towards a circular gate. It doesn't sound much but it used to give Joe encouragement in bad times.'

‘Yes, I know the details. It was a Chinese dream. Joe wrote an account of it.'

‘He wrote accounts of everything,' she said with slight sarcasm. ‘He was always writing, rather than watch the television.'

Screams and shouts came from the direction of the pool. The Farrers would not like that if they were at home. Lucy took no notice. Cheri came into the kitchen with a look of surprise on her face, hand over mouth, possibly because she had been confronted by Ron Mallock in the nude. Tactfully, she did no more than nod to Clement and pass through into the front of the house. Lucy continued her account uninterruptedly.