The History Room (13 page)

‘Well—’ Emily checked herself as I approached. ‘We were just going over some of Olivia’s scenes.’ She smiled, looking almost as though she wanted to put me at
ease. There was something about the girl that always made me feel I was the one who was awkward and unsure, not her.

Olivia gave her habitual tug on the sleeves of her school jumper and stared at a spot on the gymnasium floor. The gym door swung open and a bunch of fifth-years burst in, and there wasn’t
time to repeat the question.

‘Let’s get cracking.’ Jenny clapped her hands.

Olivia’s part was not a large one, but as she stood up on the stage her face seemed to belong to a girl living outside the twenty-first century, someone from a time before electricity and
reason. When she said that the devil was at work in Salem I almost wanted to look over my shoulder in case a dark shadow hovered in the corner of the hall.

Where had she acquired such fervour? I studied her hard but all I saw was a thin girl whose pale face glowed with an emotion too large for it. Emily was studying her, too, her expression
unfathomable.

‘Meredith.’ My father’s hand on my shoulder made me jump. I was standing at my usual station by the window seat in the staffroom looking out at the Downs.
‘Come for dinner tonight. Eight. If that suits.’

‘Er, OK.’ I blinked. He’d moved away before I could ask him whether he’d bring in Cathy Jordan to talk soothingly to me again about my state of mind and why I’d
hidden the reborn in the cupboard. I wanted to call after Dad, say that I was busy this evening. But it wasn’t true. I’d already done most of my marking. No way of getting out of it
now. If only I could be eating my dinner with my husband. Eating a meal he’d cook because my own culinary skills were so lacking. But perhaps his maimed left hand precluded cooking now.

This meal together was possibly Dad’s way of offering an olive branch. Mum would have wanted me to go, to make things up with him. I’d have supper with him. For her sake.

I half expected Cathy to be sitting on the sofa in Dad’s drawing room, but he was alone. We made half-hearted conversation about school business while we finished our sea bass. He fussed
about having overcooked the fillets, but he’d gone to some trouble with herbs and lemon juice and they were good. He asked questions about my classes and proffered a few observations about
some of my pupils, noting that several had been in to receive commendations in the last week for good pieces of English work.

All the time I waited, trying not to show impatience. It felt strange, being alone in this dining room with my father, both of us single, reliant on one another for company, a latter-day Emma
Woodhouse and her father. Through my mind flashed the image of us both still sitting here together in ten or twenty years’ time, encouraging one another to have just a little more soup or
another piece of shepherd’s pie while worrying that the heating was turned up too high. My shoulders drooped.
My life wasn’t meant to be like this
. Memories of family suppers
were all around me. At the far side of the table stood the chair where my mother used to sit. She’d be urging us to eat up, offering seconds, laughing, talking. A happy marriage, most people
would have said. I’d have said just that, too. But how could I really know?

He nodded at the fish. ‘Every time I think I’m making some progress with my cooking I realize how much I have to learn.’

‘It’s fine.’ I carved a piece off and ate it. It was actually tasty, despite the black bits on the outside.

‘Somehow I missed the domestic revolution that meant men started doing these things. Like Hugh.’ He grimaced. ‘Sorry.’

‘I don’t mind you talking about him.’

‘Have you heard anything recently?’

‘No.’

He made no comment and I was grateful. ‘Your mother was too kind to me,’ he went on. ‘She did everything.’

Too kind, indeed. She’d left him almost incapable of doing things for himself. But he was a practically minded man, I reminded myself. Good with his hands. He’d learn how to cook.
‘I don’t suppose you ever saw your father doing much in the kitchen when you were growing up?’

He smiled. ‘I don’t think Papa ever went into the kitchen. But then my mother wasn’t much of a cook either. She’d had servants as a girl. Even during the war there was
usually someone who’d cook whatever they could find to eat. Communism brought big changes. I remember her cooking us some good hearty middle-European soups and stews when she could find the
ingredients.’

Stories from his childhood were rare. The family printing works had been taken by the state, I knew. The big house in the centre of Prague had gone. Only the house out in the country towards the
German border had remained. The authorities had filled it with incomers from further east, people considered ideologically sound, who’d keep an eye on a bourgeois family with German
connections.

‘You must look at some of these children and think that they’re very spoiled,’ I said.

‘I didn’t know any other way of life,’ he went on. ‘So it wasn’t so bad for me as a young child. It was only as I got older that I realized that my life would
always be constrained.’

It had been made clear to him that he was unlikely to go to university. The state regarded his parents as too unreliable politically.

‘Then in 1968 we thought we were leaving the restraints behind.’ His eyes took on a faraway look. ‘We thought it would all be so different, that we’d be able to do what
we wanted, be what we wanted.’ It was so rare to get him to talk like this about his past. I leant forward.

‘I’ll just fetch the pudding.’ He stood up. Probably said more than he’d attended.

‘I’d like to hear more about your childhood,’ I said to his retreating back. ‘It’s so interesting.’ No answer came.

A door opened and closed in the hallway outside the apartment. Someone was walking across the landing. I thought I heard someone say something. I wondered who it was at this time of the night.
Dad was coming back into the dining room, carrying bowls of stewed apple he must have defrosted from the freezer, topped with scoops of vanilla ice cream. The apples would have been last
year’s. We hadn’t bothered picking any of the Bramleys this year. It had been one of my mother’s favourite tasks. This year the wasps would have them. The ice cream accompanying
the apples had ice crystals on it: Dad must have had the tub in the freezer for a long time, probably since the week of Mum’s death. The weather had been good those last few days. She’d
served dinner for the two of them out on the terrace. Even then she’d had a slight headache, but a few paracetamol had kept it at bay. Once or twice she’d felt dizzy but we’d put
that down to the warm weather. She’d probably bought the ice cream to go with the raspberries she’d picked from her garden.

‘Let me.’ I took the bowls from my father and placed them on the mats in front of each of us. ‘Tell me about 1968. Your life must finally have seemed to be on a different
course that year.’

‘We thought we were going to be like other young people elsewhere in the world.’ A hood had fallen over his eyes. I knew he wasn’t going to talk any more about it. But there
was still another subject we needed to discuss. I needed to wait for him to bring it up.

‘This doll,’ my father said at last. ‘I think I took it all to heart too much, obsessed about it.’

I waited. Watched him struggling with himself.

‘The letter sounded convincing.’

‘Do you still have it?’

He shook his head.

‘Shame. I might have recognized the writing.’

‘I should have thought of that.’ He made a gesture with his hands that suggested contrition. ‘It was the way it followed on from the email . . .’

‘Well, if you’re going to stitch someone up you need to make it convincing, don’t you?’

‘I suppose so.’

Still I waited, breaking up the crystals in my ice cream with my spoon. ‘I’m sorry, Merry,’ he said at last. ‘I should have trusted you.’

I nodded.

‘I don’t think I’m functioning properly. Still. Even though it’s been months now.’

Since my mother had died. ‘It’s not long, Dad.’

‘Perhaps not.’ He laid down his spoon, his ice cream untouched. ‘What do you think we should do about it?’

‘Sell the doll on eBay and give the money to charity. Or spend it on booze for the staff Christmas party.’

‘You can sell such things on the Internet?’ He looked amused. At times the sceptical, amused, middle-European persona rose to the surface.

‘Where is the damn thing now?’ I hoped he’d put it away. I wished we could return to the subject of Czechoslovakia in 1968. To the artistic career he’d started on with
such expectations.

‘Still on my desk.’

I made a note to myself to put it back in its cardboard box and hide it in a cupboard until I had time to sell it. Which I would do in half-term week.

‘Meredith . . .’ He pushed his bowl away. ‘I want to tell you again how sorry I am that I didn’t believe you. It’s as though the object possessed me
somehow.’

I thought of a voodoo doll. Perhaps someone had pricked the reborn’s vinyl skin with pins to set us all on edge. Either that, or the paperknife plunged into its innards had worked some
weirdness on us.

‘I know what you mean. It’s spooky.’

‘You forgive me?’

I reached out and squeezed his hand. ‘You know I do.’

We continued our meal, though neither of us seemed to have much of an appetite this evening.

‘Strange,’ he said, ‘how at a time of . . . change one’s thoughts go back right to the beginning of one’s life.’

I tried not to show my intense interest. If I asked too many questions he’d find an excuse for leaving the room. I’d let the conversation drift and hope it took us where I
wanted.

‘I always told your mother I’d take her there one day.’

‘She always wanted to go to Bohemia.’ There’d always been some reason why it hadn’t been convenient for them to make the trip, even though they could have booked cheap
flights to Prague, hired a car and spent just a weekend touring around. It wasn’t a large country, the Czech Republic. But something had always come up. I’d been to Prague myself once,
with Hugh, in the early days of our courtship. We’d found the street where the family’s town house had once stood. It had been converted into apartments. I’d taken photographs and
brought them back. Dad had studied them in near silence.

‘That was my bedroom,’ he’d said at last, pointing at a shuttered window. ‘When I was very young. But I always preferred the house in the country. As my studies
progressed I had to spend more time in Prague so I slept on a camp bed in a distant cousin’s house. It wasn’t very comfortable so I took to staying at friends’ places when I
started at the Academy of Fine Arts.’

I thought of the girl underneath my mother’s image. Had she been one of these friends?

I was about to ask when someone knocked on the apartment door. My father raised an eyebrow. ‘Who’s on duty tonight?’

‘Simon,’ I said, rising to open the door. It was very rare for Simon to disturb us on a weekday evening, especially since my mother’s death.

Emily Fleming stood outside the door, face apparently even more drained of blood than it normally was. ‘You’d better get your father,’ she said, without a preamble. ‘And
call nine nine nine. We need an ambulance.’

‘What is it?’ My father was already behind me. ‘What’s happened, Emily?’ We followed her out of the door.

Emily pointed to the staircase. ‘She fell down there.’

As one we rushed towards the stairs. At the bottom, on the marble tiles in front of the mural, lay a motionless slight figure, arms out, head down. Emily ran down ahead. ‘I didn’t
have my mobile with me to ring for help. The office was locked.’ She bent over the body on the marble, fingers moving over the neck. ‘I’m not sure I can feel a pulse.’ Now I
was close enough to see who it was lying on the ground. ‘Oh God, suppose she’s dead?’ Emily wailed.

And now I could see that it was Olivia Fenton lying there.

I ran down the stairs two at a time and pulled Emily away from the girl’s body.

‘Let me get to her.’ ABC, I remembered from the first-aid course I’d taken a year back. Airways, breathing, circulation. Olivia’s head and neck seemed unharmed; it was
probably safe to move her head. I tilted it back gently so the jaw opened and ran my fingers round her mouth. Clear. I placed my open palm against her mouth and nose and felt her warm breath. My
fingers searched her right wrist. ‘There’s a pulse.’

‘The ambulance is on the way,’ my father called. ‘I told them you were a trained first-aider. They want to speak to you.’ I held out my left hand for the telephone.

‘You seem to have done everything just right, well done,’ the operator told me. I felt like a first-year who’d scored a winning goal. ‘Try and keep her still and
warm.’

I hung up and placed my hand on Olivia’s arm. ‘Bring a blanket or a coat,’ I told Emily. ‘She’s getting cold lying on the marble.’ Olivia seemed to blink.
‘Can you hear me, Olivia?’ I thought I saw her blink again. ‘Help’s on the way.’ She moved a hand slightly. ‘Take it gently.’ She moved her head from side
to side and vomited onto the marble. I was worried she’d choke and propped her sideways. ‘I’m going to keep talking to you.’

She coughed and gave a low moan.

It was my father, not Emily, who handed me a coat. I recognized it as his own thick black Crombie and placed it over the girl. Dad normally wore the coat on the touchline at rugby matches;
he’d had it for decades. Another of his typically English pieces of clothing. After the warmth of the panelled dining room upstairs the marble floor made my skin prickle with goose-pimples.
Once, as a child, I’d tripped over my shoelaces and fallen flat on my face on almost this exact spot. I remembered the cold stinging slap of the slabs against my face, the shock, and I
shuddered. How must it feel to have fallen from a height?

‘Did she fall all the way down the stairs?’ my father asked. ‘What happened, Emily?’ His voice trembled. He placed a hand on Olivia’s. ‘She’s so
cold.’ His accent had taken on the slightly guttural central-European edge.