The Unseen (40 page)

‘Here’s something,’ Mark said, climbing down the rickety ladder that ran along a rail around the room, giving access to the highest shelves.

‘What have you found?’

‘Nothing that exciting – it’s Thomas, my grandfather. When he was still a young man.’ Mark passed her the dusty photo in a crumbling leather frame, and Leah took it eagerly.

‘So this is Hester’s son. The one she talks about in the letters,’ she said, wiping the dust from the glass and studying the image closely. A solid, oblong face with mid-brown hair, combed back from his forehead; deep brown eyes and the trace of a smile. His skin was completely smooth and unlined. ‘Quite handsome,’ she remarked. ‘Do you think he took after Hester?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine, I’m afraid. I honestly can’t remember what the photos of my great-grandparents looked like,’ Mark said with a shrug.

‘Still, at least this is something. Can I make a scan of it at some point? It’d be great to include it in my article, especially since she mentions him in both letters.’

‘Of course you can.’

As the sky began to darken outside, they stopped searching and, by unspoken agreement, settled into opposite armchairs to read. Leah went through the vicar’s pamphlet for the second time. The prose was flowery, and the praise glowing, to say the least. The vicar’s excited rapture over these elementals, as he called them, shone from every page, as did his admiration for Robin Durrant, the ‘eminent and learned theosophist’ who had unveiled them to the world. He wrote as if a host of shining angels had descended upon him, rather than a handful of sketchy photographs of a girl in a white dress. She peered closely at the supposed elemental again, trying to pick features out of the grainy smear of her face. The more she studied them, the more she thought she could see, in the dancing picture, a thin, dark line along the edge of the figure’s forehead.

‘It’s a wig!’ she announced, glancing up at Mark to show him what she’d spotted. He was fast asleep, his head tipped sideways onto the wing of the armchair, mouth clamped shut, brows drawn down severely. Leah watched him for a while, noticing the grey in the stubble along his jaw and at his temples; the gaunt shadows under his cheekbones; a slight cleft in his chin. His bony knees were drawn up, and his arms wrapped around them like a child playing hide and seek. From behind the chair, you wouldn’t have known he was in it. There were holes in the toes of his socks. His breathing was slow and deep, as regular as Leah’s own heartbeat. There was something deeply calming, deeply pleasing, in watching him sleep. Leah smiled to herself, and scribbled a note for him, leaving it on the arm of his chair.
I’ll be back for dinner – not omelettes, thanks
. She got up quietly and let herself out.

The evening was crisp and clear, the sky turning the palest turquoise after sunset, with a tiny high moon like a silver fingernail. In
spite of the chill, the scent on the air was soft and damp. A green smell, slowly rising from the grey and brown smells of winter. Leah went to The Old Rectory on foot, having checked the route across fields from the towpath on a map. Her boots were soaked with dew, and her torch beam wobbled in front of her along the ground. From a distance, the lights inside the house made it clearly visible, standing alone on the lane at the edge of the village. She paused, slightly breathless after the brisk walk. Did Hester Canning ever see this view? Or Robin Durrant? Possibly not. It probably wasn’t normal to wander the fields after dark if you were an Edwardian vicar’s wife, or guest. But nevertheless Leah stood for a while and gazed, and with little effort could imagine herself back in time. Opening the door to find the house warm and alive; clean, bright. A piano playing, perhaps, and voices from behind the parlour door; ghosts of laughter echoing up the kitchen stairs. But she stopped herself. This was not how Hester Canning last knew the house, after all. She wrote of its shadows and secrets. She wrote as if it were her prison, as if she were afraid of it; of something within it. Leah shivered slightly and walked the last stretch quickly, watching her feet in the darkness.

Mark opened the door with the usual brute force, smiling as a wave of cooking smells rushed out around him.

‘I really must put a bulb in this light fitting,’ he said, by way of greeting.

‘Something smells good. Doesn’t smell like burnt omelette,’ said Leah.

‘I’ll let you in on a secret – I’m actually a bloody good cook. I was just … not really trying before.’

‘I had my suspicions.’ Leah smiled.

‘Well, I admit I was a bit surprised that you invited yourself for dinner, after the last debacle.’

‘Sorry. That probably was quite rude. But I did bring wine.’ She handed him the bottle as they went through to the kitchen. With the hotplates open and a fan heater whizzing in the corner,
the room was warm and almost cosy. Mark had lit some candles and set them around the room.

‘As much for heat as for atmosphere,’ he said, with a slightly awkward smile. ‘Just as well – you look frozen.’

‘I walked here,’ Leah explained, stripping off several layers of clothing.

‘Really? Why?’

‘I just fancied it. And it really is a lot shorter as the crow flies. And I wanted to be able to have some of the wine,’ she said. Mark took it, and peered at the label. ‘Oh, no – you don’t know about wine, do you? It’s only plonk.’ She winced.

‘I do know a bit about wine. And this is not a bad plonk at all. There’s a corkscrew in the top drawer, if you can get it open, that is.’ He went back to the stove as Leah opened the wine. His hair was still damp from washing, and his face looked a little less drawn, a little less hard.

‘So how was your nap?’ she asked.

‘Not bad. Too long. I woke up with a horrendous crick in my neck, and my legs completely numb. You should have woken me.’

‘No way. You looked much too cute, tucked up in that chair. Like a dormouse.’

‘Great. I feel so manly,’ Mark said ruefully, and Leah smiled. ‘How do you like your steak?’

They soon finished the bottle of wine Leah had brought, and Mark disappeared into the cupboard under the stairs to fetch more. They ate and talked until late about their lives before, and about Hester Canning and the fairy photographs, and Mark’s family history. Leah took her cue from him, not mentioning his brother or his father until he did; and not mentioning Ryan at all. And she might have been imagining it, but she thought she could feel Ryan in the room, feel them stepping carefully around the subject of him, and of what had happened between them. As if Mark’s curiosity was a thing she could see or touch, spreading out to probe the
room. His gaze was so keen that she felt it penetrate her thoughts if she held it too long, felt that she gave secrets away without saying a word.

‘That was delicious. All memory of the omelette has been wiped from my mind.’

‘I’m very glad,’ Mark said, refilling her glass. Leah took a sip and felt the alcohol warming her, making her languid.

‘So what
will
you do next? Once you’ve … finished here?’ Leah asked, to break a silence between them that was becoming loaded.

‘Once I’ve finished skulking, and licking my wounds, you mean?’ He lifted one eyebrow.

‘Skulking was your word, not mine.’

‘I really … don’t know. Job hunting, I guess. Once it’s all died down.’

‘It kind of has, you know. I know it hasn’t for you, but I honestly had no idea who you were, when you first told me your name. Other than being excited that I’d found a Canning, that is.’

‘Yes, but I get the impression you’ve been out of it yourself, lately. Out of the loop, I mean. No offence,’ Mark said, holding up one long hand in apology. Leah glanced at him, annoyed for a second that she should be so transparent again.

‘How could you possibly know that?’

‘Takes one to know one.’ He shrugged. ‘But perhaps you’re right. I’m sure my flash in the pan is over with. It just … doesn’t feel like it. But I’m going to sell the house. That I have decided.’

‘Oh,’ Leah said, with a pull of sadness inside, though she couldn’t think what possible right she had to feel anything about it.

‘Will you tell me about it? Your war wound – what it is that makes your face drop like a stone sometimes?’ he asked softly, intently.

‘Does it?’ she said airily, looking away across the room.

‘You know it does. Come on, Leah.’ He tilted his head to catch her eye.

Leah sighed, shrugged. ‘There’s really nothing to tell. Split up with boyfriend last year. Slight broken heart. Not quite ditched the emotional baggage, blah blah blah …’

‘Did he sleep with someone else?’

‘I really don’t want to talk about it,’ she said, more sharply than she’d meant to. For some reason, discussing Ryan with Mark was intolerable. It made her want to jump up from the table and run, to hide her head in her hands. But what did she have to be ashamed of? Why should she be the one who felt like curling up in shadows somewhere, where nobody could ever see her or touch her again?
Because I didn’t guess. Because I’m a bloody, bloody idiot
, she answered her own question.
Because I still love him
.

‘There, see? Not easy, is it. People are supposed to be able to talk their way through anything these days,’ Mark murmured, watching her closely.

Leah looked at him, frowning, and considered her answer carefully. ‘I talked about it to all and sundry right after it happened. And yes, he did sleep with somebody else, but it was far, far worse than that simple phrase makes it sound. A while back I couldn’t stop talking about it, as if I could … argue my way out of the situation I was in. But now … now I think there’s not much more to say about it. And when I do say something it … infuriates me,’ she said, struggling to explain. Mark said nothing. Their hands, on the table between them, rested two inches apart; fingers curled. ‘What about you? Have you … talked through what happened to your brother?’ As soon as she spoke, Leah regretted it. At the mention of his brother, Mark recoiled as if she’d slapped him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. It’s … a completely different thing, I know.’

‘How do you know?’ he said; sadly, not unkindly. ‘How can anybody know about something like that? I had no idea, until I lived through it.’

‘You’re right. I don’t know,’ Leah said in contrition. She gulped her wine uncomfortably.

‘I haven’t talked about it to anyone. Who could I talk to? Dad?’

‘A friend?’

‘They disappeared, a lot of them. It was … too huge,’ he said, pouring more wine. ‘It made them uncomfortable.’ In the pause after he spoke, the candles bobbed in the many draughts creeping into the kitchen, dancing merrily to a private tune.

‘You can … tell me. If you want,’ Leah said.

‘But you know already, don’t you?’ Mark said, abruptly.

‘I know what the papers wrote. I don’t know the truth. I don’t know what it was like.’

‘And do you want to know?’

‘If you want to tell me,’ she said. Mark looked away, at the black window glass and his own dim reflection in it. Leah saw the muscle begin to twitch beneath his eye, and his jaw clench spasmodically. A physical reaction to even the thought of speaking about it. She put out her hand instinctively, and squeezed his arm. Beneath the layers of his clothes, the flesh was hard and unyielding. Skin over sinew and bone, and tension in every fibre of it.

‘You don’t have to,’ she said.

‘I know. But I can’t feel any worse, and maybe I might feel better … I don’t know how much you’ve read in the papers, so I’ll just tell it from the start. My older brother James was my hero when we were kids. He was just the archetypal best big brother. He helped me build my model aeroplanes, taught me how to bowl a cricket ball, how to actually hit something with my air gun. How to chat up girls – very badly, I must say. I suppose the age gap between us was big enough that we didn’t compete for things. We didn’t fight much. He was five years older than me. Anyway. I loved him very much. We stayed close even once we’d grown up and left home. I loved his wife Karen, too, when they got married fifteen years ago. He’d always been a bit of a cad with women, I suppose. He didn’t mean to … he just seemed to attract them, and had a hard time resisting them. He had a long string of girlfriends and sometimes they overlapped more than they ought to have; but
Karen was different. She sussed him out straight away, and let him know she wasn’t going to put up with any of his nonsense. She’s Catholic, so they got married before anything else, and I can honestly say he’d never been happier. His job was going great – he was a lawyer, making good money. They were muttering about making him partner. The kids came along, everything was fine. Domestic bliss. I went there every Christmas – Mum and Dad too. He loved it – lording it up, showering us with hospitality.

‘Then he got ill. He started to lose his balance – worse some days than others. He was moody and distracted – which was a sure sign something was wrong. James was always cheerful. Why wouldn’t he be? He led a charmed life.’ Mark paused, turning his glass around in front of him. Slowly, slowly; anticlockwise. The foot of it vibrated against the table top, sending shivers down Leah’s spine. ‘He had unexplained pains, stiff joints. He couldn’t grip things any more. He got clumsy, kept tripping over. He choked a lot on his food, and … sometimes when he wasn’t even eating. Just watching TV … choked on his own saliva. Then his speech started to slur. So eventually he went to the doctor’s. Put it off as long as he could, like a typical man. A man who’d never taken a sick day from work in his life. They sent him for a raft of tests and I was expecting him to come out and say it was an inner ear infection, or something up with his circulation. A nasty, lingering virus at worst. It was motor neurone disease. The diagnosis floored him – floored us all. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, to be exact. Life expectancy three to five years. James was in a wheelchair within nine months of the diagnosis. This for a guy who won the tennis club tournament four years running, and had three kids under the age of twelve.’ Mark looked up at Leah. She had stopped fiddling with her own wine glass and was listening in mute agony. There was nothing she could say, nothing she could do. She felt like a prisoner at the table, trapped in the inevitability of his story.