Voices in the Dark (28 page)

Juliette put one finger on the globe to stop it spinning. Beside it was a stack of old volumes of Shakespeare. Her father thought there was no English writer higher and read and reread those old plays. Juliette turned over the pages, looking for the quote about the charmed life, then gave up and put the volumes back on the pile. Standing on the desk in front of them was what looked like an antique typewriter, with a blank page in it so old that dust dulled the edges of the paper. It must be something her father had picked up in an antiques shop. Juliette bent close to the machine and made out each ornate letter, standing out in shiny metal. She brushed the dust from the keys, then frowned and tried to make them move by themselves. She had no reason for doing it, except to make something speak to her out of the lonely silence. She knelt in front of it and fixed her eyes on each key. She tried to make her mind become the old metal and the ink and the page between its rollers. Outside, a car door slammed and broke her concentration. She went on
staring at it. She felt herself go outwards, through the empty air and into the dead metal of the machine, and give it life. The letter R sprang up and printed itself on the paper.

Juliette started. The other letters were clattering now. ‘R-I-G-E-L’, typed the machine, and fell silent again.

Juliette fought the wish to run out of the room and slam the door behind her. Instead, she bent down and examined the printed page. Then she went to the table beside the sofa and poured out a glass of water from a plastic bottle. She watched her hand shake as she drank. Her head ached, and she wished she had never tried to make the typewriter move. It was a long walk back to the desk. The room was too big and too white and cold. It must be something about the rich, thought Juliette, that made them colour their houses every shade of white. Perhaps it was to prove that dirt and dust were no object. She could never see herself as wealthy, though she knew it for a fact. She always felt like an impostor in this house.

Juliette went back to the desk, took down the English dictionary, and turned over the pages, looking for the word Rigel. Something about it was already imprinted in her memory. But the word was not there. And yet there was something about the dictionary that made sense to Juliette. Every word, even andand but, was defined for her within its pages, as though it was made for someone who could never see the world as familiar. And this was how she understood her life. As something she could never get used to.

It was while she was still studying the dictionary that the machine came to life again. It rattled so loudly that she dropped the book. ‘Rigel,’ it was typing. ‘Rigel. Rigel. Rigel.’ The rattling was enough to wake the servants. Juliette tried to hold the keys down, but they were dancing
now, forming new words on the yellow paper. ‘Rigel, are you there?’ wrote the machine. ‘Help me.’

Juliette watched the machine type, and she knew she was not the one who was making those letters move. ‘Help me,’ the machine wrote again. ‘They want to kill me. Rigel, you promised not to let me down.’

Juliette backed away and slammed the door behind her. As she did it, she heard her father in the hallway.

‘Juliette?’ he said quietly, bending his head to peer up the stairs. ‘Are you awake?’ He threw off his coat, unwound his scarf, and came bounding up the steps two at a time. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said. ‘You look like you have seen a spirit. What’s that noise?’

‘Nothing.’

He opened the study door and stopped. The machine was spilling a ream of paper, still writing frantically. ‘Juliette, have you been playing about with that?’ he said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to do anything.’

He crossed to the desk and knelt down, trying to unjam the paper. And then he stopped. He was studying the words that still unreeled themselves line by line. ‘Go back to bed,’ he said then, very quietly. ‘Go back to bed at once. I want you to stay in your room.’

Juliette went out, but only as far as the corridor. She stood in the alcove at the top of the stairs and listened. The typing went on, unevenly, then stopped. Then she heard a violent smashing sound, somewhere down in the garden. She ran to the bathroom and pushed up the window. The typewriter was lying in the low yard outside the cellar, smashed into several pieces with its keys around it on the ground. Richard had thrown it from his study window.

Juliette went to her room and sat on the edge of the bed,
shivering. James Salmon went and stood outside the door, and she could tell from the shape of his coat that he had a gun. She did not usually like her father to let his bodyguard patrol outside the house with a gun; she was sure it was not legal here in England. But tonight she was almost glad of it, because the whole world seemed suddenly hostile. She sat awake until dawn rose over London and extinguished the orange light of the streetlamps. At six o’clock, Richard tapped on her door.

‘Come in,’ she said. He came in slowly and sat down on the bed beside her and rubbed his eyes. His glasses slid precariously down his nose. Richard looked older and tireder this morning. ‘Listen, Juliette,’ he said. ‘I think we might have to go away.’

‘What do you mean, go away?’ she said.

‘Move to another house. Maybe another country.’

‘Back to our old country?’

‘No.’

‘Then I don’t understand—’

‘I can’t explain. I can’t explain, but I have decided. We are going.’

‘What are we running away from?’ said Juliette.

Richard started and looked up at her. She did not know why she had asked it; it was the first thing that came into her mind. ‘What are we running away from?’ she said again. ‘What did those words mean? Why did you break the typewriter?’

Richard shook his head. He went on shaking it.

‘I’ll find out,’ said Juliette. ‘If you don’t tell me, I’ll still find out.’

‘Juliette, I’m trying to protect you.’

‘I’ll still find out.’

‘I don’t want to tell you.’

‘You told me about my mother, that other time.’

‘I know.’

Juliette watched his face. He got up and went to the window. The London dawn had almost reached its height. The fenced garden in the middle of the square was illuminated, like a window into some promised land. ‘Those words,’ said Richard, ‘were from my old employer. The man who sent me on this mission, the man I broke with ten years ago. He has now been assassinated. And now that they know I’m alive, I’m afraid they are coming for me.’

Juliette listened for a long time in silence, but no more words came. Then she went with her father silently through the house, helping to pack up their most valuable possessions and burn every paper that bore their names. They went two miles across the city to a drab hotel beside the railway. James Salmon came with them, carrying his gun. Juliette did not dare to ask any questions. But after that, she could not sleep without the nightmares returning to her.

‘That was the night Aldebaran died,’ said Mr Hardy as soon as we were alone that evening. ‘The night when Rigel and his daughter left their house; it was the same night.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think so.’

He handed the papers back to me. The sea crashed outside. This inn stood right on the cliff edge, facing out across the black water. Snow spiralled down and was lost among the waves. ‘How did Leo know these things?’ said Mr Hardy. ‘That’s what I want to know.’

‘I never asked him,’ I said.

He looked up at me. ‘What happened after he left?’

‘Shall I finish telling you?’

‘Yes.’

In truth, I had almost given up on my story. It was still less than half written, and the pages lay abandoned in the inside pocket of my coat. I did not know how to tell what came after. But Mr Hardy still wanted to hear, and I felt a strange kind of duty to him now, as though I had to go on telling it until the bitter end.

‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Just as before. I want to know what happened.’

I never understood, until that night when Leo left, how the truth gets swallowed. But after that night, when the early snow melted and the winter mists invaded the city and the cold grew less bitter and yet ran deeper into my bones, I never once thought about the man with the gun. He had been about to shoot Leo, and we had both known it, but I tried not to even consider it. And I never let myself think about Leo killing someone, though he had told me quite clearly that he had done it. But what could I do? And who was there to tell? I was the only person who knew, and so those things stopped being true, because I wanted them to. They had happened once, like a story, but not to me.

After Leo left, my grandmother moved in, with her carpetbags and strict rules of conduct, and took up residence in Jasmine’s room. And my mother, as if to prove her justified, fell ill. She went to work the first day, looking sick and pale. On the second day, the merchant banker and his wife sent her home. We sat up by the fire, the two of us, after Jasmine and my grandmother had gone to bed. My mother kept stirring to put on more coals, and I tried to get up before her each time and stop her from tiring herself out. She looked very young in the firelight, like a girl expecting a baby, not a woman of thirty-one. I wondered if that was how she had looked in the months before I was
born. I had never much thought about it before, but my real father and those years I could not remember were haunting my thoughts now more and more.

Someone coughed down in the street and made us both glance up. I went to the window. The gas lamps gave no light at all, but when I frowned, I could see a man pacing up and down in front of the house opposite.

‘What is it?’ said my mother.

‘Nothing,’ I said. He was a police officer; I could make out his red uniform. I rested my forehead against the glass. The man paced and turned smartly, a thin man with a cigarette jammed in his mouth. ‘Nothing,’ I said again, and drew the curtains across. The fact that they had taken Leo’s wish seriously made me almost more anxious than if they had ignored it. I wondered what it was they were defending us from.

‘Mother,’ I said, ‘are we staying here for good?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Are we going to stay in the shop? We haven’t even opened since Leo left; we are not making money. And next month’s rent—’

She ran her hands through her hair and kept them there, and I wished I had not asked.

‘Leo wanted us to go and stay with Grandmama,’ I said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, we are not doing that. There is no space in that house. We will kill each other before a month is out. We will manage here. All right?’

‘Yes,’ I said, like a scolded child. ‘All right.’

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘we might be forced to leave, and we can think about it then.’

‘Forced to?’ I said, thinking of the Imperial Order.

‘Leo left us in a bad way,’ she said. ‘Did you have any
idea? I’ve been looking through the accounts book. We are so far in debt that I don’t think we can recover.’

I did not know what to say, so I listened in silence. I’d had some idea.

‘So when Doctor Keller loses his patience, we’ll have no choice,’ she said. ‘Unless we think of something to do, and I can’t, Anselm. I really can’t. I’ve tried.’

‘So we’ll end up at Grandmama’s anyway,’ I said. ‘Is that what you mean?’

‘I want the baby to be born here,’ she said. ‘I want to stay here. This is our home. Leaving seems like a bad omen.’

Her words made the back of my neck turn cold, and though I moved closer to the fire, it gave no heat.

‘I know it’s just superstition,’ she said. ‘But this is the place where everything was good.’

‘We won’t have to leave,’ I said, suddenly determined. ‘I’ll think of something. Mother, maybe if you let me give up school—’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, you are not giving up school. That is absolutely final.’

We sat in silence, listening to the fire murmuring. ‘Wake me at seven tomorrow,’ she said eventually, and got to her feet. ‘I think I will be well enough to go back to work by then.’

She went to bed soon after, and after a while she fell asleep, but I could not. Father Dunstan had said her illness was no more than a winter chill, but it seemed like a bad sign. The baby was due in six weeks’ time, and all of us were worried. In six weeks’ time, it might be born into occupied territory. It might be born into a country at war. And how could we stay in the shop for long if things were really as bad as she said? Dr Keller was not a lenient man.

I paced through the empty house. Jasmine was in my mother’s room now; she slept with her head against my mother’s shoulder and her thumb in her mouth. I went down to the back room and polished up some old jewellery and laid it out in the window. By the time I had finished, it was past four o’clock. I sat down at the counter and rested my head on my arms. I thought I would just rest for a while. I thought perhaps if I rested, I might think what to do.

I woke up shouting, as I had only when I was a small boy. ‘Papa!’ I was calling. I half expected Leo to come running into the room.

‘Shh, be quiet!’ said someone, putting a small hand over my mouth. It was Jasmine, in her nightgown and my mother’s boots.

I came back. I had fallen asleep with my head on the shop counter. The lamp was still burning. ‘What time is it?’ I said.

‘Six o’clock,’ said Jasmine. ‘What were you shouting about?’

‘Nothing. It was a dream.’ I sat up. ‘Why are you awake?’ I said. ‘It’s early; you should still be in bed, Jas.’

‘I couldn’t sleep, so I came down here.’

She went to the window of the back room. ‘Anselm, the snow has settled at last,’ she told me solemnly. ‘Come out in the yard and make a snow statue with me.’

‘It’s below freezing out there.’