The Knives (38 page)

The usher from whom they collected orders of service studied Blaylock with a rather unseasonal asperity.

‘May I remind you, sir, of the custom concerning hats?’

Blaylock had genuinely forgotten the hound’s-tooth cap, a recent purchase, atop his head. He removed it and thrust it into his coat pocket.

‘Heathen,’ whispered Gavin Blount amusedly.

Thus corrected, they filed in among the shuffling hundreds whose frozen breath and holiday chit-chat faded into some form of reverent abashment upon crossing the threshold into Westminster Abbey. Within was the pipe-organ eloquence of Bach and the abbey’s gloomy majesty of stone and shadow, dressed up with seasonal effulgence. This was Whitehall’s Christmas Carol Service; Westminster was demob happy and cheerily observant.

In past years Blaylock had come up with excuses, but tonight attendance seemed, for a change, to be the right and improving thing to do. Dr Scott-Stokes had been advising him to address his solitary tendencies, to seek out simple shared experiences. Asking Blount to accompany him as Permanent Secretary-elect was a further act of will.

What Blaylock couldn’t muster was good cheer: never in his born days had he managed to maintain for any stretch the jocular face that Christmas called for. Even pre-divorce it became the settled view of his family that ‘the season’ posed a challenge, for reasons all to do with him.

He watched the choir proceed, singing ‘Once in Royal David’s City’. The mild-eyed, lisping Dean of Westminster stood and welcomed all ‘to celebrate the great festival of Christmas’. The idea of a winter festival, at least, Blaylock endorsed – wine uncorked wherever one went, tables groaning with baked meats. The victuals he expected for his Christmas lunch up in Thornfield did not look nearly so promising.

The Bible passages were allotted to ministers. He watched Caroline Tennant read with tuneless emphasis about tax revenues under Caesar Augustus; then Jason Malahide declaimed of ‘The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace’ as if referring to himself.

The Dean, sermonising, addressed himself seriously to all sinners. ‘The message of Christmas should inspire us to work together for love, justice and the betterment of all – the sick and the lame, the fearful and lonely, the wounded, the bereaved. May the hope of the Christ-child bring solace to all in darkness, and remind us we are one family.’

Blaylock grunted to himself. It was a decent idea – the child born to redeem the wicked world. Who had not looked down at their own newborn in wonder, believing that perfection, at last, had been achieved on earth? He liked less the Dean’s social-working extrapolations. Christmas seemed to him irreducibly a time for lurching to the end of another year and weighing the balance of forces in one’s own life: how much or little money was in the bank, how much goodwill remained stored in one’s family – or how little enmity, at least.

He suddenly recalled that in his first school nativity he had played the Bethlehem innkeeper, in a towelling robe with a tea towel on his head, regretfully advising the visitors from Nazareth that there were many with business and need of lodging in the City of David that night. The memory succeeded in amusing him.

‘May the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit, come down upon you, and remain with you always, amen.’

He watched the choir move off, then, retrieving his cap from his coat, joined the crowd to shuffle back out of doors. Mark Tallis was moving purposefully toward him between bodies, and Blaylock said his goodnight to Gavin Blount.

‘I had a word with Nigel Rhodes,’ Tallis whispered. ‘The committee’s definitely minded to approve the Identity Documents Bill. He told me there’s a “consensus” that the cards “can make a significant contribution in a number of areas”. It’s on, I think,
patrón
. First reading in the New Year.’

‘Ben’s gift to us,’ Blaylock smiled. ‘Another plan of his that came unstuck.’ But his true feelings were merely that the boat remained afloat, and soon the battle would be rejoined.

He felt the throb of his phone, then saw Jennie’s number, but out on the Sanctuary it was much too thick with bodies to respond. He had been quietly aggrieved by her in recent weeks, she having travelled with Gilchrist and the children for a long weekend in California that Blaylock had thought utterly gratuitous, negligent on a number of counts, and intolerably swaggering on Gilchrist’s part. But he remained ready to receive an apology. He hastened to find a spot on the green of Storey’s Gate and called back while Andy loitered.

‘Jennie?’

‘David. Is this okay? Can you speak?’

‘Of course.’

‘David, I’m on a train heading up north, with the kids. My mum’s carer called from the hospice this afternoon – she’s deteriorating, quite rapidly, they think – it’s days, at best, they don’t reckon she’ll see it through this weekend.’

‘Aw god – I’m so sorry, Jennie, truly.’

‘I know. Listen, she can’t say too much, she’s in and out of consciousness, but … she’s saying her goodbyes, now. That’s why
I’m taking the kids, she asked for them, she should see them, it’s what I want and what they want. Nick’s in the States for work, so … but why I’m calling, the thing of it is … Mam mentioned you, too?’

‘She …?’

‘She said something to the carer about you. My feeling was, I think she’d probably, if you were able, it would mean something to her to see you, too.’

Blaylock swallowed, caught off-guard.

‘I mean, I know it won’t be the easiest thing but, I obviously had to ask.’

‘Of course I’ll come. Of course.’

They spoke in concerned, responsible tones about the shifting of commitments, train times, directions. Under the motions of the conversation he felt a little light-headed – struck by the proximity of death, by all the memories that attended his relationship with Jennie’s family, and by the prospective force of this unexpected errand.

Not for a single second had he imagined Bea might act to bring them together again – least of all in circumstances of this kind. And yet, for all its sobering aspects, he now found himself anticipating the journey, the experience. It was to be a family Christmas, of sorts, after all.

Martin collected Blaylock and Andy at Newcastle Central Station and they headed out on the Hexham Road, twenty or so miles to the old Roman garrison town of Corbridge, past the august grey stone dwellings and shopfronts of the well-tended village, before arriving at the western outskirts that offered stirring views across open fields. Such was the vantage point of the Hygieia Hospice, a handsome new-build construction. Climbing out, Blaylock admired its stone gable end, its facings of render and timber and big tinted windows. Within he noted the carers in blue uniforms busying about, the natural light streaming down corridors, the side-tables laden with floral arrangements and handcrafted items. A café was fairly full of older women chatting over lattes. It was only as Blaylock made way for a stooped old gentleman making crab-like progress on two sticks that he caught the truly terminal aura of the place.

Given a kindly steer down one sun-dappled corridor, he instantly saw his ex-wife standing by a closed door, tapping at her phone, casual in jeans and tee-shirt and a long cable-knit cardigan he had always loved her in. She gave him a smile and a snatched hug.

‘She’s asleep, but … oh, she’s not sounding good at all.’

A piano sonata played softly from a small black docking station. Bea lay propped up, eyes shut, her breathing as laboured as Jennie had intimated. The absence of machines and tubes took Blaylock aback for the moments he needed to remember that this was a place where painkilling was continual, treatment otherwise withdrawn.

The room was dressed with cards, framed photos, pinned-up pictures, several vases of flowers, and Blaylock’s three children who greeted him with rueful eyes. The stoicism of Alex and Cora did not surprise him, but Molly’s quiet calm surely did.

Unsure of what tone was best, he enquired softly after their bed-and-breakfast lodging twenty minutes’ drive away, then asked Molly what she would like as a gift for her birthday in nine days’ time. Unusually she shrugged, and made no special requests.

‘What plans for the big day?’ he asked of Jennie.

‘Oh, we’re thinking small, maybe a sleepover with a couple of schoolmates? We’d half a mind to take her away for the night.’

‘Just let me know when I can drop by with a gift.’

Jennie was not looking at him. She was looking at her mother, whose eyes had opened and now surveyed the room exhaustedly.

‘Eee, well, look at this …’ she murmured.

Blaylock went forward and took a chair by the head of the bed.

‘How are you, Bea?’

Her eyes narrowed in the way they always had when she addressed herself to the slow-witted. ‘I’ve been better.’

Jennie came, moistened a cloth in a metal dish, and gently wiped her mother’s lips.

‘I manage. If I wake in the night, I’m not so good. But I’m ready, David.’

Bea gestured limply toward the long window looking out to the hospice’s back garden.

‘This is good, but. I see the sky, birds, a bit green … Alex, bonny lad, would you open that …?’

Bea meant the window. Alex obliged. They sat and stared awhile through the glass, at birds bickering at a table. In the hush Bea’s breath came rasping from her open mouth. And yet Blaylock could hear the birdsong from out of doors, a cheery, repeated two-note peep.

‘What is that, Bea? What bird?’

She looked at him with slow, wan mirth. ‘A great tit.’

Blaylock smiled, sensing without looking that others in the room were doing likewise. Bea gestured again, murmured something he could not catch and he had to lean close to her parched lips.

‘Starling. Up in that tree. Lonesome one. He’s like you.’

Her eyelids fluttered, and Blaylock had the sharp sense of sand running fine through the glass. Her hand, the skin of it blotched perilously dark, lay palm open on the bedcovers. He took it in his, finding it dry and cold, feeling for the life in it. She studied him, her eyes grey and mild, and he felt the hard duty to say why he had come.

‘Bea … I wanted you to know my great regard for you. How glad I’ve been to know you.’

She nodded, perhaps approving. ‘It was a great shame … how it fell out between you and Jennie, but …’

Blaylock weighed his reply, conscious of the other presences in the room, yet feeling the heavy onus to be truthful with one so near her end.

‘It was. I’ll always feel bad about it.’

Bea managed almost to shrug. ‘Eh … it happened that way … At least, now, things are settled.’

Jennie leaned in and spoke with some urgency. ‘Mam? David and I had happy times together, and three beautiful children came of it, so I just think that’s the thing we should remember.’

‘These children …’ – Bea’s grey head shook slightly toward Blaylock – ‘… are a great credit to you both.’ She squeezed on his hand with a strength that surprised him. He felt a sudden tautness in his face, feared he would cry. Knowing it to be so much the wrong thing to do he rallied and suppressed the emotion.

Jennie took her mother’s other hand. Bea’s eyelids fluttered again.

‘I’m sorry, Jennie … Sorry, pet … I need to sleep.’

Again Jennie applied the cloth. ‘You sleep, Mam, you sleep.’

In the corridor Blaylock felt impelled to run a stroking hand on the arms and shoulders of the children, who seemed disconsolate but not unappreciative of his touch. They dawdled toward the café but Blaylock excused himself to step into the administrator’s office, where he enquired after the policy in respect of donations and wrote out a cheque for two hundred pounds.

When he entered the cafeteria Jennie asked the kids to take themselves and their cans of fizzy pop outside awhile.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Aw, you know, David. Just the things we all feel. It’s not enough, is it? Life? So much we take for granted.’

Blaylock was glad of the excuse to look at her and feel that his gaze was welcome. Today she seemed younger somehow – a daughter again, and yet notably like her mother round the eyes. He resisted an urge to reach and blend her foundation, applied somewhat slapdash round her jaw-line. Abruptly in his mind’s eye he had a picture of her in the early months of their marriage – damp from the shower, absently chewing her lip as she brushed her hair, fixed herself into her bra, sorted the inky blacks and crisp whites of her professional uniform.

A broad window gave them a good vantage on the children. Cora had sat on a bench with a paperback; Alex had produced his camera and was practising pans across the hilly vista looking south into the sun. Molly was visibly pleading that he look her way, whereupon she turned a cartwheel.

‘They’re proper people, aren’t they?’ Blaylock murmured. ‘What did we do?’

‘Oh, they’re their own inventions, I think. They make up their own minds. I could say Cora’s like me, with her books and her bit feminism. But I can’t tell her a thing, really. As for Molly the
gymnast, mind … that must be your side.’

‘Oh, I think they’ve all successfully escaped my influence.’

She shot him a searching look. ‘I think it would mean something to Alex if you’d give him a bit more credit, for the person he is.’

Somewhat stung, he wanted to tell her,
Look, sometimes kids remind us of bits of ourselves we don’t like. Or things we never liked about anyone
.

Instead he said, ‘I know, I missed a chance there … Listen, I’m feeling full well reminded of a person I used to be. I know you won’t want any reminding of it.’

‘Howay, David,’ Jennie replied with eyes narrow as her mother’s. ‘Don’t go to self-pity city. I meant what I said in the room. Times like these … I think you remember it’s better not to judge one another too harshly.’

‘You mean our happy times together …?’

‘Well, “together” we were fine. The trouble was when we got detached. Doing our own things.’ She cupped her coffee mug. ‘I think back now, how lonely motherhood was for me. I just got the hang of it when you, oh, found your mission and started haring around constituencies … And, you know, you sort of made me feel the kids were my department, and had to be kept in line and the house run to order while you were off. Then when you
were
home – I sort of stopped recognising you. It was like a mask starting to grow on your face. That bloody politician’s face …’

‘Bloody Tory politician, you mean.’

‘Listen, we just had divergent views, don’t pretend you were so even-handed … Until we were married you’d never let on how much you thought that everything I believed was bullshit … Anyhow, as you know, that’s not the reason things became impossible for you and me …’

There was such a familiar pity in her look at him that he felt an idea move forward sharply from the back of his mind to the tip of
his tongue: he should tell her he was seeking professional help. It would surely be a significant admission. He took a breath.

‘I do. And I want you to know, just lately, I’ve … tried to have a hard look at myself. I took your advice. I appreciate I’ve used anger, resorted to it, out of … fear … Out of not being able to admit error.’

She was studying him with interest, eyebrows slightly raised.

‘I know I’d have been a better husband – better father, better man – if I’d faced up to some things sooner. I can’t apologise for everything. No more than I can undo it. The world’s not made for that. But I do want to apologise, properly, for what I did to spoil what we had – you and me and the children. I just … I will just always regret it, Jennie.’

He put a hand to his brow, having managed to affect himself. Though he felt improved by having made the confession, some faint shame seemed to lurk in his motive. Still, he was able to measure the success of his words by the moist glint in Jennie’s eye.

‘Oh David, you’re going to set me off …’

He reached and took her hand, and she enclosed their joined hands with hers in a way that seemed to him heartfelt. He realised he could not stop himself.

‘I love you, Jennie. I always will. It just, it can’t be helped.’

The line of her mouth creased, he saw real pain there. ‘David … I’ll always, always … have love for you. And I’m sorry, too, how things turned. If I could have seen … it wasn’t just you, okay? You know that. And what we shared … you never forget.’ Then she released his hand, looked down sharply. ‘The kids …’

He touched her arm. ‘Will you think about what I’ve said?’

‘David, I’ll not be able to stop thinking about it,’ she said, rubbing a corner of a reddened eye, her face brightening as Molly came near.

He struggled to feel that he was fully present at his final constituency surgery of the year. The matter was certainly sobering: people coming to see him on the last Saturday before Christmas clearly had no hope of a restful holiday. Eventually a woman in clear despair over the state of her family finances broke down in tears and Blaylock had to get his case worker in to take her outside for air. Feeling glum for her and at a loss, Blaylock got out his wallet, found three tenners and thrust them into the depths of the woman’s handbag.

With the team he reviewed his schedule for Christmas Day over a pot of tea and a packet of supermarket mince pies, then headed for the car. On the journey to Maryburn, belatedly realising he had forgotten to un-mute his phone, he saw that he had missed Jennie’s call.

‘Late last night she went right downhill. I dashed over at two in the morning, she was propped up but her breathing was, oh, awful, she couldn’t get words out. She knew she was going. I just stroked her and mopped her brow. She went away for a bit, then came back. Then the breaths got further apart … then there was just one that was, oh … it was like all the life leaving her.’

Jennie’s voice on the line seemed to him deeply saddened but impressively composed; he realised that in some way he wished he could hear notes of helplessness.

‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

‘We’re good, David, thanks. Nick just got here on the redeye. I did the groundwork, so we’ll have a cremation on Tuesday, then I’m sending the children home on the train that afternoon, Radka’s going to meet them at King’s Cross, Nick and I will finish a few things up here and come back on Wednesday.’

He had ceased to hear after the mention of Nick Gilchrist, but the funeral arrangements were important, on account of what he knew was his unavoidable self-exclusion. Tuesday would see him
in Hampshire to observe preparatory exercises for the policing of the G20 summit set to convene in London early in the New Year.

‘I wish I could join you for the funeral, I’ve just … I’ve got to be at Longmoor army base and I don’t think I can get out of it …’

‘I wouldn’t have thought you could … Honestly, David, I know you’d like to, but you came and that meant a lot.’

He completed the sentence in his head:
And Nick is here, and all’s well
.

‘Well, okay. Please just say, if there’s anything. I’d do it gladly.’

‘I know you would, David. We’ll manage.’

‘I’ll see you on the other side then? For Molly’s birthday? You’ll let me know?’

‘I’ll be in touch, yes.’

In the silence of the house he had to acknowledge that he let a little hopefulness kindle in him, against all good sense, and that this had now quite properly guttered out. The emotion of the occasion had swayed him, he could see that. Still he chastised himself inwardly for having fallen into wishful fancy when he knew full well he simply had not earned the thing his heart sought. He had not yet made a proper confession, not truly renounced the devil and all his works.