Sphinx (30 page)

‘So how’s Gareth really?’ he said.

‘Surviving.’

‘Well, that’s a comfort. How’s that musical group of his?’

‘I saw them play. They were good, Da. You wouldn’t have recognised him. I asked him to stay with me - he refused, but he promised to ring in every day. I think he’ll pull through; it’s a stage he’s going through.’

There was a silence in which I supposed my father was trying to imagine the scene. Then, abruptly, he said, ‘I’ve never said this, but I appreciate you looking out for him. He were always his mother’s son, coming so late in the marriage, like. I know that now. Words don’t come easily between us, not like me and you . . .’

I smiled, inwardly saddened that my father’s perception of our communication could be so different from my own.

‘But he’s close to you,’ he went on. ‘You’ll take care of him, you know, when . . .’

‘Aye, you’ll have no worries there, Da.’

We both sucked noisily on our sherbet lemons. The fire spat a sudden ember.

‘In case you’re wondering, the cardigan was your mother’s,’ he said. ‘Silly, really, but wearing it comforts me. I suppose it still smells of her.’

‘You don’t have to explain.’

‘But I do.’

He leaned across and poked at the few burning coals in the fireplace, as if he were too embarrassed to look at me.

‘What’s happened is unnatural, son. Isabella were a young girl, she weren’t meant to die like that. Promise me you’ll not end up rattling about like your old da, not knowing whether it’s Sunday or Thursday. Worse still, not caring. It’s no way for a man to live.’

My father sat back in his armchair, as if exhausted by the effort of uttering so many words at once. I was shocked into silence. I couldn’t remember him ever speaking so intimately to me and it was hard to equate this new vulnerability to the great mythical cliff of a man I’d worshipped as a child.

‘She was very fond of you, you know that, don’t you, Da?’

‘Aye.’ He sighed, a long and hollow sound that seemed to contain all the injustices of the world and, worse, his beaten-down resignation to them. He coughed, as if to change the subject, and sat forward. ‘You know, I decided to finish that little project your mother started just before she died. You remember how she’d begun to research her family tree - the Irish side?’

‘Oh aye.’ Hypnotised by the flickering flames of the fire, my lids felt heavy, my many sleepless nights catching up with me. I wrenched open my eyes with some effort.

Sitting there listening to my father ramble on I suddenly remembered a conversation I’d had with Isabella a few years before, after she’d seen me at work on an oilfield in Italy, in the southern Apennines. Her face alight with passion, she’d called me a diviner, told me I had a gift and that I was wasting it. Her conviction had disturbed me. Was it a reaction to my mother’s blind, passive faith that had frustrated me so much as a child, or had I been unconsciously frightened of something else? In any case, Isabella must have seen it as yet another occasion when I’d trivialised her beliefs. Little surprise that she’d chosen to confide in Gareth and not myself. Why had I always avoided the issue of her mysticism - was it because I sensed something about my own inherent abilities?

My father had lapsed into another long silence and I could feel the old sense of suffocation and ennui rising up in me; the same restlessness that had propelled me out of the village as a teenager. I didn’t belong then, and I knew I didn’t belong now. Secretly thankful that I was leaving in the morning, I wished the old man goodnight.

I was sleeping in the second bedroom, Gareth’s room once I’d left home. It seemed to be still waiting for a thirteen-year-old boy, with its ancient
Beano
comics, the dusty model aeroplanes hanging from the lamp, a Boy Scouts’ flag pinned over the mantelpiece. Mixed in with these were remnants of adolescence - a poster of the band Queen, on the side table an old copy of
Rolling Stone
magazine with Marc Bolan glaring out from the cover. Sitting on the desk, still in the rucksack, was the astrarium - my talisman of Egypt.

Pulling back the sheets, I squeezed into the single bed.

The next morning I tried to ring my brother at the squat. I woke Dennis who informed me that he’d only seen Gareth for a couple of hours in the past two days. This wasn’t comforting.

The train back to London was strangely empty. I’d sat in the second-class carriage near the sliding train doors. I was prepared to leap out at the nearest station, but I found myself nodding off, lulled by the rhythm of the train as it rushed through the luxuriantly green English countryside. I would fall asleep then wake with a jolt when the train pulled into a station. I forced myself to sit upright, back stiff against the seat, determined to stay viligant - only to fall asleep again as the wheels rushed over the rails, creating a sound like the roar of a distant sea.

The third time I woke there was a man sitting opposite. Dressed in tracksuit bottoms and an ill-matched zip-up jacket there was something decidedly odd about him. Tall, in his early forties, he had prematurely silver hair and a strangely expressionless face. He appeared to be staring at the rucksack I held on my lap, the rucksack that contained the astrarium. As I tried to work out how long it would take me to bolt to the exit, his gaze shifted to my face, a blank aggressive stare that did not waver. I was just about to get up when he reached down to the floor and picked up a white stick - the kind that the visually impaired use. Ashamed of my paranoia I turned back to the window and the landscape rushing past, trying to still my pounding heart.

An hour later we drew into King’s Cross Station. I was amazed to see that the platform was hung with Union Jacks and signs announcing the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Now I understood why the train had been empty. I’d forgotten that it was the seventh of June. By the time I got back to my flat, London was in full celebration. The road was blocked off and the cul-de-sac itself had been transformed. My neighbours must have organised the street party when I was in Egypt.

In the centre of the street, under a canopy, stood a long table covered with cakes, sandwiches, jellies and other manifestations of English home cooking. Small stalls selling a range of souvenirs flanked the display. There were china mugs printed with pictures of the royal family, teacups and saucers with the Queen’s face smiling up from the bottom, Silver Jubilee spoons, butter knives, postage stamps and souvenir programmes.

A reggae band playing Bob Marley’s ‘No Woman No Cry’ stood at one end of the street, while at the other end an amateur string quartet played Elgar. Banners strung overhead proclaimed the twenty-five years of the Queen’s reign, and Union Jack flags hung out of various windows, fluttering like garish laundry. Neighbours, friends and families milled excitedly around the tables.

Several food stalls were set up along the kerb, one of them selling West Indian cuisine - fried plantains, curried goat and rice - while another offered Indian curries and samosas. A third stall advertised English pork sausages, pickled eggs and jellied eels. The air was filled with a dissonance of smells - curry, hot chips, incense and the occasional whiff of burning toffee.

Two Rastafarians with waist-length dreadlocks chatted to a middle-aged couple dressed as a cockney pearly king and queen, their button-covered jackets shimmering in the sunshine. There was a buxom brunette dressed as Britannia sitting on a throne, sceptre in hand, as several drunken husbands posed to have their photograph taken with her. One old man had dressed his rather plump white British bulldog in a tailored Union Jack jacket.

Families danced together on the tarmac, waltzing to the violins or bopping to the reggae band. Children darted among the intoxicated adults, chasing each other and screeching with excitement. There was something gloriously pagan and uplifting about the whole event and, for a moment, I allowed myself to forget the ordeals of the past two months. Grabbing a sandwich, I half-danced and half-pushed my way towards my front door, almost unrecognisable under the streamers and balloons adorning it. Just then Raj grabbed my shoulder.

‘Oliver, there is a man who is looking for you. He has come twice to the house already. Tell me, my friend, are you in some kind of trouble?’

I spun around, scanning the crowd wildly. There was no sign of Hugh Wollington, but it was hard to see anyone over the dancers’ heads.

‘Is he here?’ I ventured, trying not to panic.

‘I cannot see him now, but I think so.’ Raj looked up at me, clearly worried. Without bothering to explain, I began to make my way towards a clearing in the crowd and an empty side street beyond, pushing past revellers.

Just then I felt a tug on my jacket. Stanley stared up at me solemnly. Then, putting two fingers into his mouth, he gave an ear-splitting whistle. I tried to break free but the child would not let go. Meanwhile Alfred ran towards us from the other side of the road, followed by a thin older man, Mediterranean in appearance.

Holding my arm firmly, Stanley’s eyes narrowed accusingly. ‘It’s an Italian gentleman. He’s looking for yer. Probably ’cause he knows you murdered Issy.’ His fist tightened around the sleeve of my jacket.

I crouched down so that I was at eye level with the eight-year-old. ‘Stanley, Isabella died in a very sad accident—’ I started, but was interrupted by a hand on my shoulder.

‘Mr Warnock?’

The stranger stood in front of me, awkwardly holding out his hand for me to shake - to the amazement of the watching twins who were obviously expecting some kind of citizen’s arrest. The man’s face was heavy in the jowls and his mouth had a sensual fullness. He looked like an ageing voluptuary. I guessed he was in his late fifties, but his skin tone was an unhealthy grey and, on closer inspection, his face was etched with a web of fine lines, as if he’d recently suffered some great tragedy.

‘My name is Professor Enrico Silvio,’ he said in an Italian accent. ‘I was your wife’s tutor at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.’

 

I closed the window and the sound of the steel drums and bass guitar outside diminished. Professor Silvio stood scanning the living room as if trying to glean the history of my marriage from the surrounding furniture and photographs. Sensing my gaze, he swung back to me.

‘It was kind of you to invite me into your apartment, Mr Warnock. I’m sorry if I startled you.’

‘It was I who called you initially,’ I replied carefully. I wouldn’t make the mistake I’d made with Hugh Wollington twice, but the professor’s face was so honest and he seemed so frail that I didn’t think it would be dangerous to ask him upstairs for a conversation.

‘And here I am.’ His broad features gleamed with a resigned amusement.

‘Besides, if you were going to rob or attack me you would have done it by now,’ I added quickly.

‘Attack you? Why should I attack you? Are you a man with many enemies?’

‘I seem to have acquired a few lately,’ I said wryly. ‘Hence trying to escape just now. I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. I didn’t know your intentions. I work in the oil business. Isabella’s world is sometimes quite alien to me, alien and bewildering.’

‘I can imagine.’ Silvio sighed and fragility shone out again through the drained, pale skin. ‘I’ve always wondered what type of man Isabella might have married.’ He moved to a side table and picked up a framed photograph of her. ‘I thought maybe an artist, or some kind of left-wing revolutionary, but never a businessman. She was looking for a zealot, I was convinced of it.’ He put the photograph back on the table.

‘It sounds as if you knew her well,’ I said.

My statement seemed to agitate him. He began to move around the room restlessly.

‘I’m dying, Mr Warnock.’ There was a brief pause. Then, as if he were making a confession, he went on. ‘One of the benefits of confronting one’s mortality is a sudden appreciation of the brevity of life. I have no time left for subtlety or nuance. As a dying man I must speak directly.’

‘You and Isabella had an affair?’ It was just a speculation, but I was amazed at how angry I felt at the thought.

A twitch ran like quicksilver over one cheek. Silvio paused, remembrance clouding his eyes.

‘Yes, we were lovers, but to call it an affair would be to trivialise our relationship.’ He dropped his head in his hands, then swept his fingers through his hair: the habitual gesture of a once-handsome man. ‘You must understand that I am not proud of how I was at that time of my life. I was ambitious, but I had traded too long on the originality of the thesis that had made me famous. Isabella was remarkably lateral in her thinking, even at that age. Her cultural perspective gave her a unique angle on archaeology. For her it was a living subject; it was in her blood. She came to me with the story of this remarkable device she was going to base her doctorate on. She trusted me, but I betrayed her. Yet you have to believe that I loved her.’