The Detective's Daughter (6 page)

The spider moved inexorably towards its prey along the threads, landings and staircases, up-down-along-up-down-across. Jonathan’s new trousers were tight over his legs and made his skin prickle. His hand hurt only when he pressed the marks. The spider began work on the insect and soon its beetle-shape was lost in a silken bag like a well-disguised present. The spider crouched on top of the lump.

‘It’s sucking out the blood.’ Jonathan remarked airily.

‘He’s a nutcase, now he’s talking to himself.’

Jonathan pitched face forward on to the soil. His glasses ground into his eye sockets and he was pulled over on to his back. Simon bounced on his stomach, thrashing the air with the thistle stalk as if he was a riding a horse. Strands of cobweb floated around them. The beetle lay amongst the mulch of rotting leaves. The spider was dead.

Jonathan heard the whistle but did not obey the rule about being a statue; instead he limped away over the grass. The second whistle shrieked and he dreamed of flying over the hills and far away.

‘You are my prisoner.’

Simon tied his arms behind the goalpost. Jonathan interlocked his fingers and thought of his mummy.

‘Hold tight. Look right and left and right again.’

‘You are going to burn to death on the stake. Stay there while I get matches.’ Simon banged Jonathan’s head against the post.

‘We have to go in,’ Jonathan gasped.

‘You will die.’

A fact.

A cold weather front was heading in from the English Channel and the sky darkened, colours muted to greys and greens. In the silence of the empty playground the little boy listened for his father’s car, positive he would know it because of what his father called the dodgy exhaust.

Miss Thoroughgood was on the cusp of retirement. She had little appetite for exercising authority and had not counted in her charges, so she failed to see that the new boy was missing.

The wind ballooned the goal netting and rattled the beech hedge; it stripped the last leaves off the horse-chestnut tree and sent them swirling across the pitch. A thickening blanket of cloud descended. A master glanced out of the staffroom window and spotted a kid cutting lessons.

‘Hey you, young man! Get inside or I’ll serve you detention.’

‘
What’s that, young sirs? Stole a pig? Where are your licences?
’

Jonathan made a final wish and, wriggling, found that he was not tied up; he raised his leg and took a step. He could walk. He was free. He looked at the stake to which he had been tied and saw that there was no rope. A warmth was travelling down the inside of his thighs, like a flame licking, the material darker where the heat had spread. He ran along the path, his arms stiff like a tin soldier, his wool trousers chafing his inner thigh and the warmth turned to ice.

He flung open a door marked ‘Toilets’, smashing it against the wall, and skidded to a stop by the urinals. He fumbled with his fly although there was no point. When he twisted on the tap over the sink a deluge of water spattered up over his face, down his jacket and the front of his trousers. He was wet everywhere. Jonathan had enough presence of mind to see that this was useful. He raced through the smelly dungeon, pushed on the green door in the hall, ducked his head as he passed the high desk and burst out into the freezing entrance, all the time alert for an ambush.

He thought he had been away for a very long time but the crocodile was only outside the classroom door.

‘Justin! What did I say about two whistles? You’re soaking!’

‘I washed my hands after the playground.’ He was hoarse.

He threaded his way between the desks to the chair that was not his chair. The boy called Simon gestured with his stumpy finger and Jonathan looked down at the sodden fabric; he had forgotten to do up his flies.

‘Mummy’s boy wet himself!’

Jonathan sat up straight, waiting for Justin to come to claim his seat. He told himself that he could easily survive for a year without eating.

Monday, 10 January 2011

Isabel Ramsay was preparing for bed.

She could feel a draught, standing by the sink in the kitchen. She decided that the cleaner had left a window open. The girls got hot vacuuming or polishing and ignoring her advice about wearing layers, opened windows and wasted precious heat. Except her present cleaner was careful, not like her daughters, who left clutter without a thought for others.

She shuffled through to the dining room where there was enough light from the kitchen to see that the curtain on one of the long windows was not properly drawn. That explained it.

The heavy gold brocade was topped with a plain pelmet. The catches on the window sashes had been screwed down years ago, because the balcony, adorned with railings matching the one above, was an ideal place for a burglar to hide. Eleanor had told her this was one of her hideouts; she had spied on dinner parties through the glass because in those days they never pulled the curtains and everything was open for all to see.

A silhouette with wild hair glared at her through the pane. Isabel’s hand fluttered out and she managed to steady herself on a glazing bar. After a while, with slow deliberation she smeared her palm down the glass. She made a mental note of its position and then wiped the damp of the condensation on her skirt. Eleanor should have been in bed hours ago. She flapped the curtain across and blotted out her youngest daughter.

Good, the radiator was off. The cleaners turned it on, flagrantly flouting her assurance that they would soon warm up if they put their backs into it. Her new cleaner was not like that, she reminded herself.

Isabel preferred the dining room in the evening, lit by silver candelabras and flames leaping in the grate: her Queendom. In the chill dawn it was hard-edged and mundane. When she cleaned, Lizzie crashed and banged; sweeping ash on to newspaper and grumbling about her knees, her sciatica or her sister in New Zealand.

Someone had placed a vase of lilies in the fireplace. Not Lizzie, she was dead. Isabel was certain that she had been to her funeral, or was that the Howland woman? Howland, that was her name; it had been eluding her for the last week. Anyway, someone’s suffering was over and they were at peace, just whose suffering Isabel could not at this moment put her finger on. She pictured the lane from the church in Sussex. However, the past got intertwined and she might have been thinking of the bloody village hall thingy. There were no mobile telephones to explain to Mark or the damned police that she was delayed by nonsense. She had assumed that, like the song, she had all the time in the world to put it right. Perhaps after all she had – the days crawled on and on.

Disjointed recollections floated through the old woman’s consciousness like frayed threads while she stooped and pulled the lilies out of the vase by their heads, catching the unwieldy stems on the rim. The vase hit the fender and exploded into tiny pieces over the hearth. She flapped her hands helplessly: it was one of a pair belonging to her husband’s mother. Isabel pushed some of the china with the pointy toe of her Chinese slipper, only Gina would consider it precious.

An identical vase on the mantelpiece still held flowers. The old woman pushed it along the ledge, the lilies smearing the wall in its wake. Toppling off the edge, the vase took the carriage clock with it; the glass on the face made a pretty sprinkling sound above the metallic crash when the brass casing hit the tiled hearth. The clock was a prized possession of the Hanging Judge. Mark, ever his dutiful son, had made it her job to keep it wound. It was face up; the time was right except the second hand was not moving.

Isabel flopped the dying lilies on to the tablecloth, scattering fine powder from their stamens over the fabric. Once upon a time this would have been a disaster.

Someone protected the oval table with a template of felt overlaid with a midnight-blue damask cloth. Isabel could hear Eleanor under there, scribbling away in her notebook; their every word, every action recorded. She steadied herself and the table groaned under her weight. There were too many spectres in the house for her liking; she would talk to the cleaner about it. Wednesdays and Fridays were her days. Friday was Isabel’s favourite day: it was the day Mark sent her flowers when they were courting.

She scrabbled at the tablecloth and hauled it off. It was heavier than she expected and she tottered backwards. Beneath was a walnut surface mapped with blobs of wax, scratches and ringed with wine-glass stains. The table sat fifteen but there were only ten high-backed chairs. Isabel lowered herself into a carver at one end. The wine was rich red in the candle flame. Around the room her guests’ complexions were suffused with bonhomie, summer skin tanned and glowing. They watched her raise a glass to her lips in silent toast before they drank. Mark was on his fifth Scotch. That tousled hair keeping him boyish, he reached too close to fill a girl’s glass. Deep bass exclamations and guffaws of laughter spliced with women’s flittering interjections fell silent when Isabel signalled for a hush to find out if anyone wanted more to eat or drink.

The night is young.

She floated on a desultory tide of sexual appreciation, tossing her head to deliver perfect smoke rings to the ceiling, her skin alive to the knowledge that more than one pair of eyes glittered with desire for her.

The draught stiffened her bones and the clink of cutlery and glass faded to stillness. Isabel Ramsay stared uncomprehending at empty chairs, the denuded table and broken china strewn over the floorboards.

She drew her shawl around her. Gina said she should wear thick cardigans; really meaning she was too old for bare shoulders. Gina had always been old. The door of the Viennese wall clock had swung open and struggling to her feet she slammed it shut, lacking the courage to rip it off the wall. The fastening was bent and it opened again when the mechanism struck the quarter with a whirr. Gina warned her that unless it was fixed it would lose value; the girl price-tagged everything.

The shaft of light from the hall eclipsed for a moment.

She caught her foot on the bundled tablecloth on her way to the kitchen for her water. The tobacco smoke was fainter. If she told her children, they would take action: sack the cleaner; call the police; bring up the question of shunting her to a home.

She mounted the stairs, the ache at the base of her skull now focused on one place like an accusing finger; she dipped her head in a fruitless effort to avoid the prodding sensation. In each hand she clasped a tumbler of water, the last two glasses from a wedding present of eight. Soon they too would be gone. Gina reprimanded her for not holding on to the banister, more bothered about the Waterford crystal than her mother’s safety. As an incomplete set, the glasses had no resale value, Isabel told her daughter; she didn’t tell Gina about her falls. Last week Isabel had stumbled on to the landing throwing wine in a spray over the carpet; the stain was still there. She would add it to the cleaning list.

Eleanor said all the kids avoided the fifth stair when they crept in from parties. Isabel had never noticed that it creaked. Eleanor had remarked in her particular way that ‘Dad knew’.

Isabel caught her foot in a tear in the carpet. It had been laid in the spring of 1968. Gina wanted to sort out a replacement; Jon could get Axminster at trade price. Mark or someone had refused. Mark probably, keen to accept nothing from his son-in-law.

Falling was nothing to do with age, Isabel told the children, it could happen to any of you.

When she reached the top landing, the lights went out. Power cut. Another one. She had to depend on light slanting in from the windows to find her bedside table and avoid spilling water on the plastic radio from Gina and Jon. She forgot and switched on the anglepoise, and then left it; at least she would know when the electricity came on.

Mark’s bedside cabinet needed sorting: she moved his spectacles case and in the poor light shifted his ever-growing pile of books for space to put his glass. The smell of beeswax reminded her to talk to the cleaner about something.

The bells struck ten or eleven or twelve, she had lost count, she told Hall or whatever he called himself. She shuffled to the window wrapping her shawl around her and peered down.

Unlike many London squares, the park opposite belonged to the council. The land had been purchased in 1915 to stop a proposed development of houses. When the Ramsays moved to St Peter’s Square in 1957, a team of keepers based in a hut at one end had tended the plants and bushes and swept up leaves and litter. They also kept an eye on unattended children. Now the upkeep of the lawns and paths was outsourced to a private company and residents added plants of their choosing to immaculate beds. The keepers’ hut, its windows and door sealed with metal panels, had lost definition beneath a chaos of graffiti.

The lone call of a song thrush in the horse-chestnut tree was amplified in the darkness.

Mark’s arm encircled her. Isabel shifted. He lifted her breast, as if testing its weight. Like a television programme she was not enjoying, Isabel snapped off the picture.

Footsteps came from the church, a chock-chock on the pavement accompanied by a lighter pattering; Isabel tapped her feet in their twinkling slippers in time to the sound and hurriedly smoothed down her hair, flattening a hand over her stomach. Her cotton shawl emphasized bony shoulder blades and a tall spare frame on which a linen skirt exposed still shapely calves and ankles.

The village hall shindig was crammed in to make way for the big day; so much that was petty and pointless had repercussions. What’s more, the bloody place went to rack and ruin; it was all a waste.

A woman with a pushchair and a boy clutching its handle scurried into the pool of lamplight and out again. The lights of other houses winked through the swaying branches. Isabel rubbed her mouth ruminatively: when there was a power cut, surely everything went out?

She batted Mark’s pillow to make an indentation for his head. She held his latest paperback up to the orange lamplight and squinted at the title:
Our Mutual Friend
by Charles Dickens. Mark abhorred fiction and stuck to the truth. She fanned the pages and a shape floated on to the duvet. Patting about on the fabric she found a half-smoked cigarette and sniffed it. The smell made her happy for a fraction of time. She tried to slip the stub back in the book but gave up and climbed into bed, letting it drop to the floor.