The Light of Day: A Novel (8 page)

17

A corner table in Gladstone’s. It’s a thrown-together place with a pseudo-Victorian feel. Music-hall posters on the wall. In Wimbledon you can go to Rio or imagine Jack the Ripper is prowling outside.

She asked for a white wine. I ordered a beer. Sipped it very slowly, watching the level in her glass like you might watch an hour glass.

In life there’s a sound principle: make a little do for a lot. Don’t expect much. This may be all you’ll get.

She said, “He’ll be there now, he’ll be with her now.”

She didn’t have to say it. I might have guessed: six o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon, and she had time to spare for me. So they were there and we were here. But she didn’t have to say it. Maybe I had the thought that for them too—him and the girl—time was running out. They were watching the glass, even now. Only twenty more days—if it was all true.

“He has consultations at the Charing Cross on Tuesday afternoons. Up until five. Handy.”

A sour kind of smile. As if to say: See what I’ve come to. Or as if we were like prim parents thinking of the children at play.

Except we were the children, maybe—whispering in our corner while the grown-ups did their thing.

And this look she had—as if the girl inside her was just beneath her skin.

How does it work? Your life comes off its hinges, so you go back to where you were. Not grown-up and forty-something after all. Like Kristina, forced to be a child again. But now Kristina had become the woman—Bob’s woman. All the other way round. So Sarah had become the girl—the girl of long ago who didn’t yet have Bob. A student, being driven through France. Flashing trees, the road south. Don’t bank on it. A little for a lot, this may be all you’ll get.

Is that how it is (I ought to know): a mid-life disaster takes away the years?

Or (another on-the-spot and fumbling theory): she was getting him back again—so she believed. Counting the days. Back to the start again with him, back to how she once was.

Flashing trees, the windows down.

So, I thought: she loves him still. And I was seeing what Bob had once seen.

Or it was just her anyway. How she was now. Young— and forty-three. A teaching thing, maybe. The gap getting wider between you and your class, but something rubs off. A connection—like the one she’d made with Kristina.

And yes, I could see it. “Lecturer”: it sounds old and strict and severe. But in the middle of a class something might happen—a spark, an excitement, something in her face. The student still inside the teacher. And some surly eighteen-year-old, in the middle row, would surprise himself, catch himself. He’d look at her hips, her knees. She stands by the window. The curve of an armpit, through the sleeve of a blouse, like the twist in a rope. The hidden layers in people. And girls his age could only be—girls his age.

What a fool this Bob Nash was, not to see what was under his nose. Going for the young girl. And him a gynaecologist too.

But now he was coming back—so she believed. It showed, it shone. She loved him still.

It hadn’t turned into something else.

I watched the wine in her glass.

“He’ll be home around nine. For supper—yes.” Another bruised little smile. “That is, if he doesn’t decide to stay the night.” A glance. “I can’t stop him, can I?”

As if she expected some sharp answer. Other women wouldn’t do it like this, would they? Other women would have put up a fight long ago. I ought to know—in my line of work.

I kept quiet.

“It’s a concession, you see. A concession. He only has so many days now—nights now. Only so much time.” She looked bleakly into her glass. “Actually—it’s all been a concession.” She looked up. “When does a concession become a surrender?” She took a swallow of wine. “You concede because you really want to keep, don’t you? The risk is you’re only letting it all slip away.”

The girl had vanished from her face. She held her glass just under her chin, as if it was there to catch her words.

“Are you married?”

“Was.”

A faint smile. “It’s what I thought.” A detective too. “In any case—I know what you’re thinking. What would be the usual thing, the usual option? You’d send her packing, wouldn’t you? You’d tell her to get lost and never show up again. Then keep a close eye on him.”

I must have kept a straight face. Yes, that’s what many would do—and the close eye might include mine. Not counting those who’d go the whole hog and send him packing as well.

“An asylum seeker,” she said. “You see.”

I nodded. Yes, I’d got there already, followed that line. All the same, there’s a point where all the rules might go hang.

“I know what you’re thinking, George. If I’d never let her in. If I’d never let the poor—thing—into my house . . .”

I looked at my beer. She’d called me George. It’s what I say, in the early stages: “You can call me George.” They don’t always take it up.

I looked at her knees.

“ ‘What a fool,’ that’s what you’re thinking.”

I’d been thinking Bob was the fool.

“I wasn’t thinking that,” I said. I sipped some beer.

“And I don’t even hate her now. Even now.” She looked straight at me. “And I still love him. I still love him and I don’t want to lose him. There,”—a little shiver of her shoulders—“that’s my statement.”

As if she’d been called in for questioning.

“What does she do?” I said, as if I hadn’t heard. “I mean—if she’s there in this flat all the time.”

“How does she
live
you mean? He pays for that too. The rent and everything she needs to live on—plus a bit more. And last March she enrolled in a professional interpreters’ course. She’s not stupid. That’s what I did once—she’s actually copying
me.
He paid the fees for that too.

“I know what you’re thinking, That’s a lot of money going in her direction that should be going in ours. But Bob makes a lot of money these days. ‘We’ can afford it. Ha. There’s a word for it, isn’t there? Do you still think I’m not a fool? She’s being ‘kept.’ So much for charity.”

A sip of wine as if it was some bitter medicine.

“I didn’t want to go to war, George. I didn’t want to make a war of it. I know . . . we’re supposed to fight, aren’t we? Tooth and nail.”

She looked into the air. George.

“What I’d say is—if you’re going to be unhappy, better an unhappy peace than an unhappy war.” She looked straight at me again. “Ha! I mean—compared to
her.
We’re not exactly victims, are we? We’re sitting here, having a drink. We’ve got homes to go to. We’re not exactly refugees.”

I thought: She’s forgotten who I am. Just her hired snoop.

“Anyway,” she said, “—
anyway.
In three weeks it’ll be all over. One way or the other. It’s my little gesture. Not war but—intelligence. If they’ve got some other plan, then I want to know, straight away. I don’t want to wait like a fool to find out. My concession—to myself.”

Another swallow of wine, the biggest so far. I thought: she’s going to drain the glass then dash. But she looked at me hard.

One day, later (in a place where they don’t let you do too much kissing), I’d tell her: I wanted to kiss your knees.

“Am I making sense, George? To love is to be ready to lose—isn’t it? It’s not to have, it’s not to keep. It’s to put someone else’s happiness before yours. Isn’t that how it should be? So if that other person goes a different way, what can you do?”

She blinked. She saw me looking—how couldn’t she?— not into her eyes but at them. The eyes that went with the knees.

They say it can happen all at once, in an instant, in a flash, and you think that’s just talk, a story, that’s for kids not for grown-ups. But I think that was the moment.

Maybe it was me all along, something happening in me, that could make me see, detect, the girl in her. Maybe I was the one feeling young.

And it’s still, amazingly, how I feel.

Something’s come over you, George.

18

Rachel said, “Goodbye. Goodbye.” As if once wasn’t enough.

As if I might have mistaken this for some ordinary morning, one of those ordinary but not so common mornings when I was off duty and could have the luxury of a late lazy breakfast while she had to scramble to work. “No, don’t get up.” A blown kiss. She’d stand there for a moment, all set, in the kitchen doorway, and I’d think of how in half an hour or so she’d walk into her class—“Good moorn-ning, Missis Webb”—and none of them would imagine how just a little earlier she’d stood in another doorway while a man in a dressing-gown, buttering toast, had sent
her
off to school.

“Goodbye, George.”

As if twenty years were just another day and it had all been anyway like some long, non-stop test which I’d finally failed. Teachers! Don’t you just love them?

I didn’t move. She didn’t say, “Don’t get up.” And I was damned anyway if I was going to give her that last bit of satisfaction. Of seeing me get up and beg. So she could turn even harder on her heel.

Damned anyway. That was the word: damned. Judged— doubly judged now. Worse than being simply left. Or replaced. If there’d been someone else (was there? I’ll never know) . . . But just to be judged—damned.

She buttoned her coat, gave that little lift and shake of her head that settled her hair. Yes, she was really leaving. It was all settled. But where had she
come
from—this woman in the doorway? How come I’d never seen her before, never known she was there? She’d missed her vocation, surely. She shouldn’t be teaching sweet little infants. She was made of tougher stuff than that.

And when had she last blown me that breakfast kiss?

She stood there like some departing official visitor—like someone who’d only ever visited my life.

I even had to admire her. The firmness, the steadiness. The way you couldn’t help admire them sometimes, whatever they’d done, when they kept their composure, didn’t move a muscle, when you told them they were under arrest.

But hold on, I was the one on the charge.

So I didn’t budge an inch, didn’t even scrape my chair. I might even have taken a bite of toast. The small crumb of pride you grab when the cliff is giving way.

And everything, anyway, was suddenly up to her. I didn’t have a case, a leg to stand on. She might have made
me
do the walking, with no leg to stand on. But she wanted to be the one to make the exit, to slam the door (I’d hear it in a little while), put me behind her. Didn’t even want to stay where there’d be my taint.

No taint. That was all mine now. And I could keep it. No taint to her dealings with those rows of little faces, or to her clean smooth path from Deputy to Head.

Though for twenty years we’d lived with it, the taint I’d come home with, the slow creeping taint. Married to the Force, as they say, and all that goes with it. But hold on, the taint was the taint—the taint wasn’t me.

A clean slate. A clean blackboard on that bright Monday morning. A fresh white stick of chalk and a fresh brave smile, even as I kept on sitting there in that kitchen. Still as stone and off duty.

Off duty now for good . . .

And now it’s such a strange, sad, far-off word—“duty.” Now Sarah’s made me think about words. When once it used to be just something floating in the air. “Duty officer,” “duty roster,” “in the course of duty . . .”

I suppose Rachel was doing her duty that morning. “Good moorn-ning, Missis Webb.” Well, she’d have to ditch that name.

Maybe I took a defiant bite of toast. Crunch. But I must have looked straight at her, as straight as I dared, consciously taking that last picture of her, framed in the doorway. Yes, I
had
seen this woman before. Yes, of course I recognized her, this bold, decisive woman. She’d done this before once, rejected someone else. Someone I could hardly ever have competed with.

“Goodbye, Rachel.”

What else could I have said? What else was she expecting?

She turned and disappeared. Her bright swirl of hair. Became the sound of her steps in the hall, the sound of a slamming door (maybe she just closed it, maybe the slamming was me). I heard the noise of the car. Then I felt myself falling. Doubly judged—and for the double drop. Falling though I sat there at the kitchen table, toast stuck in my throat, sat there not moving, but falling all the while.

19

She didn’t drain her glass. An inch or so left.

“You think he loves her?” I said.

The questions you come to ask. That even a best friend wouldn’t ask. The part of the job I’d never imagined.

She sipped—barely a touch of the lips.

“I think so.”

She might as well have said, “I know so.”

“And—she loves him?”

“Harder. Oh—I can see that she
could.
Ha!” Her face brightened, went dark again. “She’s the one who’s leaving. She can’t not go back. That’s what she says—what Bob says she says. It’s her country—homeland. Maybe she’s torn: it and him. I’ll tell you something, I’ve never followed the news so closely. I blessed the day when the Croats started fighting back, pushing back the Serbs, and the whole thing looked like it could soon be over. I thought this could be my—our solution. I wanted to cheer them on. Never mind they were killing each other, never mind they were doing as bad things to the Serbs as the Serbs had done to them. I was on their side! Our solution. Never mind the international solution. Crazy, isn’t it? Wanting a war to be won just so it might save your day. And Bob . . . I think Bob was praying for the opposite, that the Croats would lose, that the whole bloody thing would go on, just so Kristina would never have that—way out. She’d always be—
his
refugee.

“Appalling, isn’t it? And it all happened. I mean, it happened
my
way. The dust had to settle, she had to be sure. It all happened in August—it’s almost November now. But you can put yourself in her shoes, can’t you? A refugee here— a free citizen there. In her own country. Back where she belongs. Terrible, isn’t it?”

Gladstone’s. The corner table. I go there still of course. It’s a blow when the table’s taken. It was a blow when they changed the upholstery from red plush to smoky blue.

“Of course, it gives her the chance to look virtuous, to look as if she’s doing it for us. To look sorry. She’ll give up Bob, she’ll get out of our lives. She’ll let everything go back to what it was.” A dry little laugh. “Her sacrifice.
Her
concession. She can’t go on causing all this—mess. It’s a possibility. According to Bob, it’s what she says. I haven’t exactly talked it over with her. We haven’t exactly all sat down round a table. The other possibility is that she sees where her life is now, where her future is, and she’s ready to say, ‘Goodbye, Bob.’ Bob wouldn’t tell me that, would he? Maybe Bob
wants
her to go. For her sake, for ours. It’s
his
sacrifice. He’s the peacemaker. He tells me that too. It’s another possibility.”

She gave me a long steady look, the look of a woman who no longer trusts her husband, but hasn’t stopped loving him. I’d seen the look before, come to recognize it, like a symptom, in clients.

“Have you heard of the Empress Eugénie?”

I looked at her. Maybe I looked lost.

“I do translating, as well as teaching. I’ve been given this book to translate—from French. It’s a life of the Empress Eugénie. The wife of the Emperor Napoleon III.”

Maybe I looked completely foxed.

“One of the weird things about the Empress Eugénie is that she was Empress for twenty years but when the Emperor died she lived on for nearly fifty years. She died aged ninety-four. As if she had two lives really—an empress life, another life.”

“I know about the Empress Eugénie,” I said.

“
Do
you?”

Sometimes, maybe, fate steps in.

“She lived in Chislehurst. She and Napoleon III lived in Chislehurst. They were—”

“Rich refugees.”

Her eyes were suddenly alight. Sometimes fate steps in just for you. You’re there in the class, in the front row, and the only scrap of anything you know is just what the teacher has asked.

“Napoleon died there,” I said. “Eighteen . . . seventy-something. He was the Napoleon who died in Chislehurst.”

Not just a detective, not just a pretty nose.

“I lived in Chislehurst—grew up there. It’s how I know. It’s the only reason I know.”

“George,
I
lived in Chislehurst—well, Petts Wood— when I was a girl.”

Sometimes fate comes and gives you a pat on the back.

“They lived where the golf course is now,” I said. “Chislehurst Golf Course. Their house became the club house. My dad used to play there. They were the Emperor and Empress who lived on a golf course.”

She actually laughed. Her face all alight. A woman holding a glass of wine, laughing. For a moment it seemed there wasn’t any other agenda. We were sitting here in a wine bar in Wimbledon on a Tuesday evening to swap notes on an Emperor and Empress who’d lived over a century ago. This could be how it was with us.

For a moment, I had a picture of her and Bob, their regular life. The end of the day, the kitchen. He’s opened a bottle of wine, rolled back his shirt cuffs. The smell of something cooking. And she’s telling him about this book she’s signed up to translate. The Empress Eugénie. Did he know (he was a gynaecologist) about the Empress Eugénie?

It’s how their life should always have been.

I saw her eyes come back to the present.

“And the other possibility is . . . Is this just me? That it’s
their
way out.
Their
escape route, their plan. All the other stuff is a cover. That they’ll drive off together, or fly off somewhere, and he won’t ever come home again. I don’t know, I really don’t know—or I wouldn’t be sitting here with you.”

She smiled, as if she might have known me for a long time. She swallowed the last of her wine.

“So you were born in Chislehurst?”

“Brought up there. There was a plaque on the wall—at the golf club. I used to think it was
the
Napoleon. I never knew there was more than one.”

She put down her empty glass. I picked it up quickly, tilted it towards her. She nodded, no hesitation, but her eyes kept me in my seat. On her seat, beside her, on the red plush, the black leather shoulder-bag—the two of them inside.

“And the other possibility is that they don’t know themselves. They really don’t know what they’re doing. What they’ll do. They’ll only find out at the airport. So even if he does say goodbye to her, even if that’s where they say goodbye, I want to know how he does it, how they do it. I want to have been there—but invisible—for that. Do you understand?”

I must have nodded.

“Watch them, George. Watch over him for me.”