The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (11 page)

She was thinking about this, about her walks round the garden with her father, when she saw the boy. Iris recognised him instantly. She had seen him before. She had seen lots of him before. On the walls of the Italian churches her
mother had taken her to last summer, which were painted with pictures of angels. Angels, everywhere you looked. With wings and harps and flowing pieces of cloth. Alexander had the same wide blue gaze, the curling yellow hair, the delicate fingers. It had been in one of those churches that her mother had told her about her father. She said, Iris, your father died. She said, he loved you. She said, it was no one's fault. They had been sitting in the back pew of a church that had strange windows. They weren't glass but made of some gold-coloured stone that had, her mother told her, been cut very fine, so fine as to let the light through. 'Alabaster' was the word. They read it in the book her mother had in her bag. And after her mother had told her, she held Iris's hand, very tight, and Iris looked at these windows, the way the sunlight behind them made them glow like embers, and she looked at the angels on the walls, the wings stretched out, their faces turned upwards. Towards heaven, her mother said.

So Iris lay on her stomach, swallowing hard at the molten ginger in her throat, staring at the angel boy who had sat himself down on her sofa, as if he were just an ordinary mortal like the rest of them. Her mother and George disappeared into the corridor and then Iris heard them coming in and out of the front door, carrying bags and boxes and laughing to each other.

Iris pulled the tablecloth a fraction higher. She needed to get a proper look at this boy. He sat motionless, one sandal resting on the other. In his lap was a small knapsack and his hands were clenched round it. Iris tried to remember
what her mother had said about him. That he was shy. That his mother had gone off and he hadn't seen her since. That he might be sad because of this. That he'd had chickenpox recently.

She watched as he looked at a drawing Iris had done of a sunset that her mother had taped to the wall. He looked away again quickly. He turned his head towards the window, then he turned it back.

On the crest of an impulse, Iris scrambled to her feet and burst out from under the tablecloth. The angel on the sofa started, terror flashing across his features, and Iris was shocked to see his angel-blue eyes swimming with tears. She frowned. She stood on one leg, then the other. She advanced towards him across the carpet. He was blinking to get rid of the tears and Iris wondered what to say to him. What do you say to an angel?

She ate the last ginger snap contemplatively, standing before him. When she'd finished, she put her thumb into her mouth, twirling a plait round one of her fingers. She examined his knapsack, his sandals, his shorts, his golden hair. Then she popped her thumb free of her mouth. 'Do you want to see some tadpoles?' she said.

When Iris is eleven and Alex twelve, George and her mother part ways. He has met someone else. He goes, and takes Alex with him. Iris's mother, Sadie, sometimes cries in her room when she thinks Iris isn't listening. Iris takes her cups of tea – she isn't sure what else to do – and Sadie jumps up from the bed, wiping her face hurriedly and saying
how her hayfever is bad this year. Iris doesn't point out that hayfever doesn't usually affect people in January.

Iris doesn't cry but she sometimes stands in the room that had been Alex's with her fists balled and her eyes closed. It still smells of him. If she keeps them closed for a long time she can almost pretend that it hasn't happened, that he hasn't gone.

Within a fortnight, Alex is back. George's new woman is a bitch from hell, he says, and Iris notices that Sadie does not tell him off for swearing. Can he live with them? Iris claps her hands, shrieks yes. But Sadie isn't sure. She'll have to check with George. But she isn't talking to George. Which is, she says, a problem.

Alex calls his father and they have a long argument. Iris listens, sitting squashed into the same armchair with Alex as he shouts at his father. Alex stays. A week later George comes and takes him home. Alex comes back. George arrives again, in the car this time, and takes him away. Alex returns. George sends Alex to a boarding-school in the middle of the Highlands. Alex runs away, hitchhiking back to the city, turning up on Sadie's doorstep early in the morning. He is dragged back to the boarding-school. He escapes again. Sadie takes him in but warns him he must call his father. He doesn't. In the middle of the night, Iris wakes to find him beside her bed. He is dressed, his coat on, a bag beside him. He says he is going to run away to France and find his mother, who will let him live with her, he is sure. Will Iris come with him?

They get as far as Newcastle before the police catch up with them. They are driven all the way back to Edinburgh in a police car, which Iris finds incredibly exciting. Alex says they'll have to handcuff him if they are to get him into his father's house. The policeman driving the car says, you've caused enough trouble for one day, sonny. Alex leans his head on Iris's shoulder and falls asleep.

Sadie and George have a summit meeting in the City Art Gallery cafe. Head of the agenda: Alex. Everyone is terribly polite. The Stepmother from Hell sits at a table in the corner, eyeing Sadie. Sadie, Iris observes, has washed her hair and worn her blue dress with red contrast piping. George is having trouble keeping his eyes away from the low-cut, red-edged V at the front of the dress. In the opposite corner sit Iris and Alex. Half-way through Alex says, fuck this, and that he is going to look at the second-hand record shops on Cockburn Street. Iris says he has to stay. They'll just think you're running away again, she says.

It is agreed that Alex will be allowed to switch to a boarding-school in Edinburgh on the proviso that he studies well and doesn't run away again. In return, he can live during his holidays with Iris and Sadie. But he must sit down with his father and stepmother once a week to eat dinner, during which – and George turns a steely eye on his son – Alexander will be expected to conduct himself in a courteous and orderly fashion. As George is saying this Alex mutters, up your arse, and Iris has to swallow hard so as not to laugh. But she doesn't think anyone else heard.

So every Christmas, summer and Easter, Alex lives with them, in the windowless boxroom in their tenement flat in Newington. When he is sixteen and Iris is fifteen, Sadie says she thinks they are old enough and responsible enough to look after themselves for a while, and she goes off to Greece on a residential yoga course. They wave her off from the front door, and as her taxi disappears around the corner, turn to each other with glee.

It doesn't take long. The first night Sadie is away, they have locked all the doors, pulled down the blinds, turned up the stereo, defrosted all the food in the freezer, opened out the sofa-bed in the living room, piled their bedding on to it and they lie there under a duvet, watching an old film.

'Let's not go out again,' Alex says. 'Let's just stay here all week.'

'OK.' Iris settles herself deeper into the pillows. Their limbs knock together under the duvet. Alex is wearing pyjama bottoms. Iris is wearing the matching top.

The people onscreen are running up a mountainside that is a violent, radioactive shade of green when Alex reaches out. He takes Iris's hand. He lifts it. He places it slowly, very slowly, on his chest. Just above his heart. Iris can feel it jumping and jumping, as if it wants to be free. She keeps her eyes fixed on the screen. The people have reached the top of the hill and are pointing excitedly at a lake.

'That's my heart,' Alex says, without moving his eyes from the television. He has kept his hand over Iris's, pressing it down into his chest. His voice is even, conversational. 'But
it's yours, really' For a while longer they watch the people onscreen as they waltz through a meadow in strict formation. Then Alex moves towards her through the flickering dark and she turns to him and she finds that he is hesitating and she doesn't see any other option for them so she pulls him closer and then closer again.

Through the wall, Esme is stepping slowly and sedately from the door to the shelves and back again. She touches the doorhandle – a round brass knob, slightly dented and smaller than she remembers. Or perhaps the ones downstairs were bigger? It doesn't matter because it has the same frilled brass surround and this pleases her. She counts the frills – petals, perhaps, but a flower made of brass is an ugly anomaly, an oxymoron, maybe – and there are nine. Which is an altogether likeable number. Three threes exactly.

She is trying to remember the names of the maids who would have lived in this room, high up in the eaves of the house. She has not thought about this for years. If, indeed, she has ever thought about it. It seems ridiculous to be able to recall this but, to her astonishment, the names come. Maisie, Jean. Not, perhaps, in the right order. Martha. But come they do. It is like reception to a radio frequency. Janet. If you're in the right place at the right time, you can pick up the signal.

Esme changes course. She leaves the door and the brass
flower and goes to stand in the corner beside the lamp. She turns her head, first one way then the other. She wants to see what else she can tune in to.

When Iris wakes, she gazes for a while at the blind pulled down over her bedroom window. She plucks at the duvet. She twirls a strand of hair. She is wondering why there is a knot of unease in her stomach. She glances round the room: all as it should be. Her clothes are strewn on the floor and the chairs, her books are stacked on the shelves, her clock glows at her from the wall. Then she frowns. The kitchen knives are sitting on her chest of drawers, alongside her makeup and jewellery.

Iris sits bolt upright in bed, clutching the duvet to her chest. How could she have forgotten? Sleep can do that to you – erase the most important thing from your mind. Iris listens, straining for sound. Nothing. The hiss of plumbing, the jumbled murmur of a television in the flat below, a car outside in the street. Then Iris hears a strange scraping noise, quite close to her head. It stops for a moment, then begins again.

She puts one foot to the floor, then the other. She pulls on her dressing-gown. She tiptoes out of her bedroom, across the hallway and stops at the door of the boxroom. The sound is louder. Iris raises her hand, hesitates, then makes herself knock. The scraping stops abruptly. Silence. Iris knocks again, more loudly, with her knuckles. Again,
silence. Then a couple of footfalls, then silence again. 'Esme?' Iris calls.

'Yes?' The answer is immediate and so clear that Iris realises that Esme is right behind the door.

Iris hesitates. 'Can I come in?'

There is a rapid shuffle of feet. 'Yes.'

Iris waits for Esme to open the door but nothing happens. She puts her hand on the doorknob and turns it slowly. 'Good morning,' she says, as she does so, hoping she sounds more upbeat than she feels. She has no idea what she will see behind the door.

Esme is standing in the middle of the room. She is fully dressed, her hair brushed and neatly clipped to one side. She is wearing her coat, for some reason, buttoned up to the neck. There is an armchair next to her and Iris realises that she must have been pushing it across the floor. The expression on her face, Iris is astonished to see, is one of absolute, abject terror. She is looking at her, Iris thinks, as if she is expecting Iris to strike her. Iris is so taken aback that she can't think what to say. She fiddles with her dressing-gown cord. 'Did you sleep all right?' she asks.

'Yes,' Esme replies, 'thank you.'

Her face is still full of fear, of uncertainty. One of her hands picks at a coat button. Does she know where she is? Iris wonders. Does she know who I am?

'You're...' Iris begins '...you left Cauldstone. You're in my flat. In Lauder Road.'

Esme frowns. 'I know. The attic. The maid's room.'

'Yes,' Iris says, relieved. 'Yes. We're going to find you somewhere else but ... but today's Saturday so we can't do that yet but on Monday...' She trails away. She has just noticed that, arranged on the small table beside Esme's bed, is the row of ivory elephants from the living room. Has Esme been wandering about in the night, moving things around?

'On Monday?' Esme is prompting.

'I'll make some calls,' Iris says distractedly. She glances round the room, trying to work out what else might have been changed, but sees only a hairbrush lined up with a handkerchief, three kirby-grips, a toothbrush and the tortoiseshell comb. There is something very dignified about the way these items are arranged. It occurs to Iris that they might be the only things Esme owns.

She turns away. 'I'll make breakfast.'

In the kitchen, Iris fills the kettle, gets the butter out of the fridge, pushes bread into the toaster. It strikes her as peculiar that she is doing the things she always does, as if nothing is different. She just happens to have a mad old woman staying with her for the weekend. Iris has to turn round at one point to make sure she's really there. And there she is. Esme, the forgotten great-aunt, at her table, stroking the dog's head.

'Do you live alone?' she is saying.

Iris has to muffle a sigh. How has she got herself into this? 'Yes,' she replies.

'Completely alone?'

Iris sits at the table and hands Esme some toast on a plate. 'Well, there's the dog. But apart from him, yes, I live alone.'

Esme lays her hand quickly on the toast, then the plate, the table edge, the napkin. She looks over the table, at the marmalade, the butter, the mugs of tea as if she's never seen these things before. She picks up a knife and turns it over in her hand.

'I remember these,' she says. 'They came from Jenners, in a box with a velvet lining.'

'Did they?' Iris looks at the old, discoloured bone-handled knife. She has no idea how it came into her possession.

'And you work?' Esme says, as she spreads butter on her toast.

She is doing everything, Iris notices, with an odd kind of reverence. How mad is she? Iris wonders. How do you measure these things? 'Of course. I have my own business, these days.'