The art of drowning, p.21
The Art of Drowning, page 21
There was the sound of a door slamming, a noisy entrance into the place, whistling, the banging down of something. Someone wanted to be noticed. The door to the main room of the flat burst open in response to a kick and he shambled in. He was, she thought later, a rather beautiful sight. Better than any view of the river. He was long and rangy with an elegant slouch, brilliant blue eyes, black jeans and vest.
His own view took in the scenery, from the rainswept balcony to the half-eaten olives and empty bottle of wine, to Rachel’s face, figure and clothes, right down to her feet. The boy and the man gave each other a look of quizzical affection. Sam winked at him.
‘Cool, Dad,’ Sam said. ‘Is this your new squeeze? About bloody time.’
He went over to his father and hugged him briefly. Then turned to Rachel, smiling.
‘I wish,’ Carl said. ‘Sam, this is Rachel, Rachel, Sam. She’s only my accountant, unfortunately. Recently demoted to being my confessor, poor woman.’
Sam shrugged his shoulder in mock despair.
‘Shame,’ he said to Rachel. ‘It’s been years. I have my hopes, but he never delivers. You’re very welcome. Are you sure you don’t like him? Even a little bit?’
Rachel found herself laughing. He was entirely infectious. He had his mother’s ranginess, and Grace’s outrageous smile.
‘Mustn’t keep you,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll get out of the way, just in case anything develops. Can I borrow the car?’
‘Not if you’ve been drinking.’
‘You joke. On the Sabbath? I mean, not yet.’
‘Depends on where you’re going.’
‘Up west.’
‘Fine. Provided you take Rachel home.’
Sam looked at her steadily and grinned. She could not help but grin back.
‘Cool,’ he said.
She turned to Carl, still grinning.
‘I promise I won’t reveal all your financial affairs en route.’
‘Feel free,’ Sam said. ‘I love gossip.’
‘Hope not. We’ll talk in the week about the meeting, when you’ve thought about it, if you like.’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Fine.’
He trusts me.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sam drove the dented Ford as if it was a taxi, complaining about the fact that it did nothing for his street cred. He knew every back double between the Isle of Dogs and the West End, and every road-checking camera. It was not simply the speed of it, before they reached the City outskirts, which made Rachel feel old; it was the confidence. He chattered like the dawn sparrows at Midwinter Farm; he seemed to have a talent for confiding which reminded her of both Grace and Ivy, as if it had never occurred to him that anyone would disapprove, and everyone he met was a potential friend who would like him as much as he liked them. Self-absorbed, yes – who was not, at nineteen? – but likeable and beguiling and artlessly funny. He had a beautiful profile. A strange thought arrived unbidden, namely that she was at risk of being at least half in love with the whole damn family.
‘Pity you’re Dad’s accountant. On a Sunday! Just get him to up my allowance, will you? He’s really tight. Wants me to discover financial necessity before it’s too late and I’m totally corrupted. Wants me to move out, for the sake of worldly knowledge. Preaches a lot. I want to stay ’cos I don’t want him to be alone. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to move in? Pity. So how much is he worth, then? No, don’t answer that. Don’t Sundays go on and on? A day for the movies. At least you can park. Not near Leicester Square, though. Did you read about that bloke killed in the ambulance? And the one behind the theatre. Awful. We don’t need terrorists, do we, got them already. I suppose there’s a difference between one at a time and fifty all at once. Where do you live again? Cool, that’s a really cool place to live.’
Rachel remembered that she had not read a newspaper for weeks, and felt vaguely ashamed of the loss of an old habit, but she was concentrating on the opportunity she was being given. She adored the chatter, but wasn’t going to give up a chance. Surely Carl knew he was either misguided or overtrusting to leave her with his gloriously garrulous son. Perhaps he intended it; perhaps it was planned: either way, it was fun and she did not care.
As they bowled across London Bridge, she said, ‘I know your father’s divorced. Do you ever see your mother?’
Sam slowed down for the red light on the far side of the bridge. Beyond that, she could see the inevitable queue of traffic, scaffolding and building works narrowing the road into a funnel. Good. People of all ages talked in cars. It was turning into a lovely evening, with the vehicles ahead still shining wet after the rain. She wished she had not left that balcony with its view of the river.
‘No,’ he said. Then laughed. ‘You want to know about my mother? Cool. Could this mean you’re interested in my old man after all? Isn’t that the way? Scout the scene? See if there’s any opposition lying around? Old or new?’
‘You’re a very impertinent young man,’ she said, mimicking a pompous voice, and laughing at the same time, because Sam made her laugh. Like his grandmother, like his mother.
He punched the steering wheel, veered to the left and up through the City. Confident and sure and just in control. He would worry me to death if he was mine, she thought. I would worry about him getting cold. The traffic remained stalled.
‘Well, you’re in with a chance,’ Sam said with his infectious grin. His hair glinted chestnut. His skin was sallow. He would tan easily, like his granny. ‘’Cos there’s no one on Dad’s scene. The ex least of all. We haven’t seen her for years. He likes clever women, see, preferably blonde. Short supply. Can’t bear junkies. And all I remember about my mother is her trying to kill me. And telling me how she was going to kill Dad one day. She grew up on a farm. She knows how to kill things. She’s really, really good at it. Made me learn to swim. She was barking bloody mad. She stuck pins in me. She hit me. I hit her back. I had asthma. I could pack a punch when I was nine. Do you know we’re three-quarters grown at nine? Couldn’t do it now, though. Don’t like to think about it.’
He hit his fist against his forehead in a dramatic gesture which neutralised any hint of self-pity and made it all seem contrived for amusement.
‘I was a tortured child. Does it show?’
‘Not that you’d notice, no.’
‘Shame. You might feel sorry for me. That’s a great linen jacket, where did you get it?’
‘Camden Market,’ she said, nearly adding, with your mother. Your mother knows where to find things. Didn’t say it. Not all of Sam’s remarks were in the best of taste. He exaggerated, fancied himself as a comic clown. She bit her tongue. Sam looked at his watch.
‘Film showing at six. I’m going on holiday next week, courtesy of Dad. Have you been to Crete? I’ve got the endof-term high. I’ll miss that when I have to go to work. Don’t you love Sundays?’
‘I certainly liked this one.’
‘Good,’ he said, pulling out of the traffic and down a side street. ‘Goody good. So he’s really in with a chance, is he? Don’t worry about my mother, she’s long gone. Hope it stays that way. He’s got the police on the case anyway.’
You rotten little lying hound, she said to herself, without quite the fervour she meant, and without, quite, being able to lose the instinct to like him. That profile, so unlike his father. Life drawing class, creating new tiers of judgement and appreciation. Too much information today. The traffic unsnarled and they raced through the city like a bullet. As they drew closer to Clerkenwell, with Sam chattering about which film to see, what did she think, Rachel thought, why don’t I ask him in to the flat, maybe Ivy will be back, and I’ll say, Ivy, this is Sam, Sam, this is Ivy, and maybe they’ll fall into each other’s arms and he’ll see she’s not what he thinks. Or what he might have persuaded himself to think, in order to dramatise himself. It’ll be love at second sight. Instead, Sam found her street without further directions, as if he had a map of everything in his head. He knew it, he said, because there were some really cool bars nearby, did she ever go? She didn’t, but she would now, she said. He bowed her out of the decrepit car with a flourish and roared away, tooting the horn, leaving her on the pavement, smiling.
The rain was in abeyance, replaced by the muggy, damp warmth which signalled more, and the flat was as empty as a plundered grave. Rachel checked the messages on the landline. Ivy knew she preferred it. None from her father. One from Ivy, warm and concerned. How’s your father? Don’t forget we can bring him here next weekend, or the week after. I’ve got to help Dad this afternoon, coming home on early train tomorrow, straight to work, see you. Phone if you need. Love you.’
Rachel was dizzy with impressions. She did not quite know what to do with herself. The curse of Sundays descended. Confusion, dread, the ordinary desire to push the next week back, clear up, prepare, a reluctance, a horror of facing the dead space for thinking which yawned now. The flat seemed subtly different, as if a breeze had blown through it. She could not find anything, looked for something to occupy her hands, and where had she put the mobile phone? Safely in her room, instead of leaving it lying around, why?
Thinking time. Dangerous. Tough day, Monday, meetings wall to wall. He had said, Let’s discuss meeting after we’ve thought. She just wanted to see him. She was a stupid, credulous idiot, bearing the impression of the last person who had sat next to her, with a history of being duped by men. She liked him, that was all. And they were wrong, so wrong, about Ivy. That boy said shocking things. She was beginning to feel suspicious and wanted to put that somewhere else too. She wrote a list for the week in her clear, strong handwriting.
Monday, Tuesday, full to bursting. Wednesday evening, last life drawing class. Shit. Her sketchbook was full. Meant to buy another. Drawing was therapy. The pencils she had used were down to stumps, too small to sharpen. She did what she often did, hauled out the sketchbooks and examined what she had done these last evenings in class. She could see her own progress, her own increasing freedom. Looking at what she had done over the last term cheered her. There was the Plonker, there was Ivy, there was all the in-between. She wanted to draw; she did not want to listen. She had run out of paper. She wanted to draw him. Drawing soothed her. She had first wanted to do the drawing because of endless Sundays. It used up her brain and cleansed it.
The landline phone rang. She answered. Dad, Carl, Ivy, Grace, anyone please.
‘Hello. Is that Mrs Schneider?’
‘Mrs Who?’
She was late in recognising the name. There was no Mrs Schneider here. There was Ivy, Ms Wiseman, and herself. Get the names right. Mrs Schneider? Ivy was that person once, not any more, he meant Wiseman. She spoke without thinking, Ivy always on her mind.
‘Nope. Sorry, she’s out at the moment.’
Then she put her hand over her mouth. It was as good as announcing Ivy lived here.
‘Oh, sorry. Is that Miss Rachel Doe? It’s DS Donald Cousins here,’ he said. There were the sounds of a TV in the background, the sonorous voice of someone talking to camera about live things in jungles. ‘We met the other day.’
‘Did we?’
She remembered him, with fleeting dislike. There was an uncomfortable pause. The TV sound droned on. She looked round wildly, imagining it was hers. The blank screen looked back.
‘Well, if she’s not there, that’s that. If she should happen to come back, would you tell her that her friend Mr Blaker is asking after her?’
‘Her friend? Mr Who?’
She has no friends. Her hands felt slippery wet on the phone she held. She was suddenly angry.
‘I’m not a message service,’ she said. ‘Get lost.’
She put the phone down. She was furious. She had been set up again. Bastard.
The swine, the shit. That bloody judge, using her and her emotions, all that trust-me, shite. Treating her sweetly, leading her on, food, wine, fucking trust, and then he goes and gives out her number to a wet, sedulous policeman with a moustache, who wants to find Ivy for some miserable purpose of his own, how dare he? Somehow it followed that neither Carl nor his son was capable of saying anything which was true; every single bloody thing was all contrived and engineered, for WHAT? She found herself shredding the last piece of useful drawing paper out of the sketchbook, tearing it up into ever smaller pieces. Thinking of Carl warning her against Ivy’s hatred, the shit, Sam speaking casually of maternal violence for something attention-seeking to do at a traffic light, and she, silly child-free ignoramus, had listened and swallowed as if she was being paid for a blow-job. What they wanted was for Ivy to be abandoned and given up, like before, for something she had not done, like before. As if they could not stomach the sheer fact that Ivy had emerged from her chrysalis as good and strong as she was, and that she had a friend. They wanted her to buried all over again, and they could fuck off, because it was not going to happen. It was not going to work because she knew what she knew and she was not going to be deflected from what she knew. Which was what was right and just, what Ivy deserved, what Grace wanted.
When Cassie drowned, Carl had lost a child. Ivy had lost everything.
Rachel prowled. She wanted to talk to somebody, but there was nobody. She wanted to pick up the phone and shout at Carl. Instead, she dialled 1471 and wrote down Donald Cousins’ number. Then she sat with the full sketchbook on her lap, turned over the pages. She had drawn Ivy several times in the last term; she would do it again, this week. She had an overpowering desire to scribble, she felt the urge to etch graffiti on the walls, make herself concentrate on something in order to clear her mind. The very act of drawing anything had that effect of release, whether she did it well or badly. She wanted to draw what was in her mind. Sinuous shapes, slithery ferrets, rats, swans. There was nothing better to do, but she had torn up the last sheet of paper and the pencils were stumps.
Ivy always had pencils and paper. She never used a pen, only a pencil. Ivy was always willing to share what little she had. She would give you her last penny. Rachel went into Ivy’s nest, looking for the pencils and paper she knew Ivy kept in her pink folio.
The room was tidier than when she had seen it last. There were traces of Blu-Tack from where Ivy had detached the sketches she had used to decorate the walls, replaced with the poster of Leda and the Swan. The folio case stuck out from under the unmade bed. Rachel moved to straighten the duvet, an automatic reaction which was the same as the one which made her pick up anything which had fallen to the floor, an instinct for tidying up as she went along for which Ivy had teased her. Ivy would leave the dropped object where it was until she needed it. Rachel stopped herself. How Ivy left her room and her bed was entirely up to her. Rachel had given her this room for her own. She pulled out the folio case, opened it and searched inside for pencils and paper. That was all she wanted. She would always resist the urge to look at the rest. It would be like reading someone else’s post. In the middle of this slow activity, she had a mental image of Sam crumpling up the letters from Grace which might have been addressed to his father, posting them back. She could see him doing that.
There were no pencils in the untidy mess of the folio case. Rachel sat down on the bed, suddenly weary beyond belief. There was a lump under the duvet, a sound of crackling plastic. She got up and pulled the duvet back, concerned that she had sat on something breakable, found a polythene bag bearing the legend of a shop she did not know. She opened it to see what she might have broken. Inside she found an inhaler, and two small brown bottles of pills, folded into a handkerchief. She held one of the bottles up to the light. Prescribed pills, with a white label almost worn away from contact with the material of his coat, and her father’s name still legible.
The room began to spin around her. She put the bag back.
Donald Cousins was thinking to himself that maybe the phone call to Rachel Doe had not been so very clever, and he was still trying to work out why he had done it. Perhaps because there was no one at home on a Sunday evening, the whole lot of them round at his mother-in-law’s, and he was bored, and Blaker had been haunting him. Despite the hours now spent in Blaker’s company, he had never managed to pose a direct question which was relevant to his investigation, never quite summoned up the nerve. Since Blaker had told him that he was HIV positive, it seemed cruel to do anything other than chat, sit in the sun in Temple Gardens, as if it was really open to the public and they owned it. Very private, better than Embankment Gardens, Blaker said. Donald did not doubt that what Blaker said about being HIV positive was true: people did not announce their own death sentences unless they really wanted attention, and Donald did not think that Blaker wanted that kind. He could check anyway, and it did add another dimension. What did the poor bastard have to lose by issuing threats to a judge, either on his own behalf or someone else’s? He was looking at a short life where all the major risks had already been taken and the gamble lost, however long it took the Grim Reaper to call in the debts. He could murder and threaten with impunity; what could punish him now that the worst had happened? And no, he had not asked Blaker if he used internet caffs to send threatening images to a judge; Blaker might tell him, in time. Instead they chatted about Blaker’s old friends, and the changing history of Soho. Blaker looked sixty and he was scarcely forty. Donald counted his own luck.
She was a brave lady, Mrs Ivy Schneider, to embrace and befriend an HIV-positive man. Blaker had been diagnosed three years ago, before the last prison stint. Ivy made me check it out, he said. When I found out it was yes, she hugged me. That’s as far as we ever got. I reckon she would have shagged me to prove a point, but she knows my preference. Big, dark buggers, who know where to go. The disabled lavatory in Starbucks, more room in there. Donald knew he was not really a citizen of the real world. He belonged in the suburbs, thought he knew about London, but he didn’t. He only knew it as it had been, through the pages of history books, which told him it had always been a den of iniquity and delight, not always in equal shares, and not all of those drawn to it survived it.
