Can you keep a secret, p.17
Can You Keep A Secret?, page 17
‘Where is Rachel?’ I ask, breathless, and his jaw moves, smoke emerging fatly from his mouth.
‘Inside with her mother. Thompson has invited them to take tea with him in his little parlour.’ He says this with a slight push of sarcasm. His eyes meet mine and there’s a hint of wickedness in them, and I feel a rush of relief.
‘It went well, then?’
‘Depends on your perspective. We didn’t come to blows, so that’s a plus.’
‘And Rachel?’
‘Oh, Rachel’s fine. My daughter is quite the little actress. Managed to squeeze out a few tears, declared her intentions to mend her ways. It was quite affecting, really.’ His tone is ironic, but he doesn’t seem angry.
‘What an ugly building this is,’ he declares, casting his gaze over it with distaste. ‘It looks more like an orphanage than a school. I can’t stand these Victorian institutional designs. So unforgiving, don’t you think?’
‘I suppose.’
I sound unconvinced, but he doesn’t appear to notice, saying, ‘Shall we take a little stroll around the grounds? My ladies will be conducting their charm offensive on Thompson for a while yet.’
‘All right,’ I say, and wait while he fetches his camera from the car – it is the Leica that I remember – and then we walk around the side of the building towards the hockey pitches.
‘My wife went to this school, you know,’ he tells me. ‘It was her idea to send Patrick and Rachel here. I wanted them to go to the local parish school, the way I did, but Heather had different notions.’
‘It’s a good school,’ I say, and he sniffs at that.
‘It’s not the worst. That Thompson is a bit of a pompous prick, though.’
I’m not sure how to react to that, so I say nothing, just walk with my hands in the pockets of my coat, my eyes on the ground in front of me.
We round a grotto where a statue of Our Lady stands on a plinth surrounded by bursts of heather. He pauses to look at it and I think he might take a photograph, but the Leica remains slung over his shoulder and, after a moment, we move on.
‘Tell me,’ he says. ‘Do you know what’s gotten into her this term?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You don’t have to call me sir – I’m not one of your teachers,’ he says, not unkindly, before continuing: ‘Has she become distracted over some boy?’
‘Not that I know of,’ I answer, thinking it isn’t exactly a lie.
‘I don’t suppose you’d tell me if she was,’ he declares, but he says it breezily, then adds: ‘You’re a loyal friend, Lindsey. Rachel is lucky to have met you.’
His words make me shy, and I mutter something about how I am lucky to have met her, too.
‘Of course, the big question is how should I discipline her,’ he remarks. ‘Thompson has his own system of torture devised for her, but I feel I need to do something to shake her up a bit. Shout at her, perhaps. Rant and rave a bit. Lay down the law. What do you think, hmm? Is that what your father would do?’
I come from a family where raised voices are reserved for sporting fixtures or clearing the bar. Both my parents employ passive aggression as the chief weapons in their arsenal, resolving disagreement through stubborn refusals to engage.
‘My parents prefer to steer clear of confrontation,’ I tell him. ‘ “Ignore it, it will go away,” is their motto.’
‘Ha!’ He looks across at me, and it feels like the first time in our conversation that he has really seen me. ‘What about you? How are you getting on at school?’
I shrug, and say, ‘All right.’
‘More than all right, I’d guess,’ he says. ‘Your father must be pleased with you.’
‘I suppose.’
‘You suppose?’ he queries.
‘He doesn’t really say much.’
‘No?’
I must have allowed some petulance to leak into my voice, for he eyes me with curiosity.
‘Close to him, are you?’
‘Not really.’
‘That’s unfortunate.’
He allows a silence to slip into our conversation, and this silence feels like an invitation of some sort. I recall, months ago, Rachel encouraging me to confide in Heather about what had happened to me. Her words return to me now: ‘You could tell her if you wanted, you know. She’s very understanding.’ How surprising it is that, instead of turning to Heather, it’s Peter I confide in.
‘I used to worship him,’ I say of my father. ‘Really revered him. But then I started being bullied by this girl in school, and it kept going on and on, getting worse and worse, and my father did nothing about it. Even though he knew. He’d seen the scars. It took a cigarette burn on my neck before he actually did something about it, but rather than confronting the issue, he just moved me here, to get me out of the way.’ I hear my voice, the emotion that has crept into it, despite my efforts to sound calm. Peter has stopped walking and stands now with his hands behind his back, a slightly military stance, concentrating on what I’m telling him.
‘He must have had his reasons,’ he says tentatively, watchful for my reaction. ‘I’m sure he did what he thought was best for you.’
‘Or what was easiest for him,’ I say, and he catches the trace of bitterness in my voice, and his expression softens.
‘Being a parent is difficult, Lindsey. Try not to be too hard on your old man.’
I feel the creep of emotions crawling up my throat and recognize with some alarm that I am on the verge of tears.
‘We should go back,’ he says, and we walk in silence back around the building, and by the time we near the courtyard, Rachel and Heather have emerged. We see them standing by the car, surrounded by a group of girls from our class. Rachel sees us coming and waves, a bright smile on her face. Whatever dressing-down she endured in Thompson’s office, she looks untouched and unmoved now.
‘You never took any photographs,’ I say, as we reach the others.
He looks down at his camera. ‘No. Too busy talking.’ Then he thinks for a minute, before taking the leather strap from over his shoulder and holding out the camera to me.
‘Here,’ he says gently. ‘Why don’t you keep it this time?’
‘Oh no, I couldn’t,’ I say quickly, conscious of the others watching and listening.
‘Go on,’ he urges. ‘I hardly use it myself any more. I don’t know why I thought to bring it today.’
‘It’s too much, really.’
‘Please. I should like you to have it. And the next time you’re at Thornbury, I will show you how to use the darkroom.’
I take the camera in my hands, feel the enormity of the gesture. ‘Thank you, Peter,’ I say softly, and when I look up he is smiling, and I know it’s because, finally, I have called him by his Christian name.
‘Sometimes I feel as if you are the daughter I should have had,’ he says fondly, and I am too startled by the admission to answer.
He turns to go, and within minutes the car is kicking up dust as it travels back down towards the gates.
‘How did it go?’ I ask Rachel, hugging the camera to my chest.
‘Just as I thought,’ she tells me. ‘No sweat.’
But the look she gives me is cold. It lasts just a second or two, before she pulls her coat tight about her and hurries back indoors.
20
2017
By now it was evening. The house felt different. The grey damp outside seemed to permeate through to the interior, a dank smell undercutting the sweet scent of lilies amassed in a display on the hall table. The doors giving on to the main reception rooms were open, and I saw that the rooms were empty and chilly, no fires lit in the grates, the lamps not yet switched on. Silence filled the spaces, and I wondered where the others had got to – Hilary and Niall and Rachel.
In the corridor behind the staircase, I heard a sudden clatter coming from the kitchen. Following it, I found Jinny lying on the rug in front of the Aga. She lifted her long russet head briefly as I came in, then seeing it was me and not her master, she dropped her muzzle back on to her front paws with a mournful air, exhaling through her wet black nose in a little disappointed puff. I bent down to rub at the back of her ears and, as I did, a woman I didn’t know came in from the scullery with a basin full of muddy-looking vegetables and a peeling knife.
‘What a mess,’ the woman declared, before introducing herself as I straightened up. Her name was Felicia. Patrick had mentioned her to me, a local woman who came in to help him out from time to time. She had the settled appearance of a country wife, but I imagined she was no older than I was, blonde hair drawn back into a short ponytail. ‘No one seems able to tell me what I should do,’ she declared with an air of mild harassment. ‘I’ve laid out the dining room for seven, but now it looks like there’ll just be four of you. Will you even go ahead if Patrick’s not here? And I’ve my niece coming out from Borris in an hour to wait on the table. Should I call her and tell her not to bother? It hardly seems worth it, does it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said miserably. ‘Do you know where the others are?’
‘Haven’t the faintest,’ she replied, unimpressed. ‘Rachel was moping around here for a while. I don’t know where she went after that.’
She crossed to the sink and dumped the vegetables into the basin of water that sat within it, then began to peel them briskly. We passed a strained few minutes in silence. I had the impression she wished me to leave so she could get on with her preparations – fruitless or not. It was only as I began to retreat that she glanced up at me and took in my bedraggled state of dress. ‘You’ve been up at the hospital, then,’ she said, then gave a tutting noise, adding: ‘That poor young man. Fighting for his life. Shot, imagine? For something like that to happen here, in this house … Well. It brings back bad memories.’
‘Yes. It’s terrible.’
‘This house,’ she said, going at a carrot with renewed aggression. ‘It gives me the creeps now same as it did then. Best thing they could do, if you ask me, is put a match to the place.’
She surprised me with her fierceness, but I said nothing. Too tired, too wrung out by the day’s events. My hunger had abated, but the cold had settled into the marrow of my bones. My skin reeked of the hospital hand-sanitizer. An agitation had started inside me at her mention of Peter. Even though she hadn’t said his name out loud. Still he was there, and I felt the memory of what happened to him drumming away inside me all the way back up the stairs through the silent house.
The shower was one of those old-fashioned jobs with a hose hooked up to the taps, the water falling into the bathtub – an ancient roll-topped affair with claw feet and greenish streaks where the water hit the enamel. I stepped in and drew across the mildewed curtain, the rings singing along the rail above. Even after turning the hot tap to full, and waiting for a few moments, the temperature remained warm but not hot. The pressure was weak, a pitiful sprinkling coming from the shower-head, barely enough to lather up some shampoo, and I turned my shoulders this way and that, letting the water run over my limbs. My arms continued to ache, even though it was hours now since I had leaned over Marcus, pressing against the flow of his blood. My thoughts went to the hospital, imagined him now in Intensive Care, tubes and pumps and blinking machines tethering him to life. And like the pendulum swing of my earlier thoughts, so now my mind swung from Marcus to Patrick. How long would they detain him? What would the charges be? I imagined Savage, his snarky disregard for Patrick’s essential decency, looking to dredge up some kind of dirt to bring a little colour to his dreary day.
I scrubbed myself clean and ran a razor over my underarms and legs. It was only as I dipped my head under the water to rinse out the shampoo that I heard a strange gurgling noise in the plumbing overhead, and the water thinned to a trickle.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ I declared to the empty room.
With the water slowing now to an unsteady run of drips, the air felt suddenly cool and I twisted at the taps, trying to get some kind of flow going, even if that meant a cold stream of water. I just wanted to rinse the shampoo from my hair and get out. But nothing emerged, no matter which way I turned the taps. I thought perhaps Felicia was running water into the sink in the kitchen and that the ancient plumbing of the house couldn’t cope with both, so if I just waited a moment the warm water would return. I closed both taps off, wiped the soap from my face and ran my fingers through my hair, counting down a moment or two before I would try the taps again.
It was as I waited that I heard a noise from above, a low rumble followed by a clanking sound. It seemed to come from the attics beyond. My gaze went to the ceiling, following the direction of the noise. I saw the spiderweb of cracks in the paintwork, the spots of mould at the corners, and a brownish stain spreading above the shower-head. The rumble had gone, and the clanking diminished, petering away to a tinny, tapping noise. For no reason at all, the maids in the attic sprang to mind. Rachel’s ghost story. Just the one bed between them. She would have woken up in the morning to find her friend stone cold dead next to her. I blinked upwards, waiting, listening.
Nothing. And then a loud wrenching noise, and water burst from above. It came from the shower-head but in a blistering torrent that hit me full in the face. I screamed, a gurgling cry as the boil of water filled my mouth and I jumped out of its scalding stream, slipping in the process, my hip impacting with the side of the bath, my hand catching at the razor lying face up on the enamel floor. Crouching to one side, shaking and scalded, I fumbled for the taps, twisting them one way and then another as the steam rose around me, and the jets kept catching at my arms in little biting sprays. Blood from my cut hand clouded the water swishing around my feet, and the water lacerated my back until eventually I turned it off and clambered, shaken, out of the tub.
Kneeling naked on the bathroom floor, I felt the frightened beat of my heart, my shaking limbs. Using toilet paper to staunch the cut on my hand, I wound it round and round, the blood seeping slowly through. It took me some moments to calm myself. I strained to hear any further noises from the attics, but there was only the slow drip of water from the shower-head.
By the time I’d rubbed myself dry with a towel, I had managed to convince myself it was nothing. Putting it down to a fault in the Victorian plumbing, I dressed quickly in jeans and a woollen pullover, and returned to my room, towel-drying my hair as I went. On the dressing table, I found my camera. Someone – Hilary, perhaps – must have retrieved it from where it had lain in the field. I picked it up and turned it over in my hands, amazed at how little thought I had given to it all day, surprising myself at the lack of regard I showed as to whether I ever found it again. Now, something else strange happened.
Standing there in front of the mirror, I opened up the viewer and went to the last image I had taken – it was of Niall in the field, his gun resting against his shoulder, peering out into the distance. It was the last in a series, and as I flicked back through the images I had taken that morning, a low pulse of remorse started within me every time Marcus appeared. His countenance seemed pale and his expression tight and guarded in every photo. It was almost as if he had some instinct of impending danger, but perhaps that was a fanciful thought. He was not the only one who appeared tired or apprehensive. Rachel, too, I noticed, seemed thin-lipped and unsmiling, her usual grace and carriage replaced by tension in her shoulders, a stiffness to her poise. Patrick appeared preoccupied, and Hilary barely featured. Every time I had tried to capture her likeness she had turned aside or stepped away. ‘I hate having my picture taken,’ I remembered her saying. Of all of them, only Niall and Liv appeared sunny and relaxed.
All the time I was going through the photographs, I was half aware of a dark form hanging from the wardrobe and reflected in the mirror. I looked up at that point, saw my reflection in the mirror, and behind me I saw my evening gown on a hanger that was hooked over the rim of the wardrobe door. It caught my attention because I had no recollection of putting it there. Hilary must have taken it from the wardrobe and hung it out for me, although I couldn’t think why, and this incursion into my privacy irritated me.
I put down my camera and turned. I had only taken a couple of steps towards it when the dress slithered off the hanger and fell heavily to the floor. Despite myself, I felt a little kick of fright. Coming so soon after the incident in the shower, the oddness of it struck me. But again, I tried to rationalize it. The dress was of a heavy material and I had foolishly hung it off a wire hanger with downward-sloping shoulders. My movement across the floorboards must have somehow reverberated through to the wardrobe, causing the dress to fall.
I crossed the room with purposeful strides, bending to pick up the dress, and as I crouched on the floor there was a loud bang behind me and, this time, I really did jump. A loud thud followed by a cracking sound, and it was only as I stood, clutching my dress to my chest, that I saw what had happened. On the floor near the wide skirting board lay the framed picture of my teenage self – the one Peter Bagenal had taken of me underneath the shot rabbits. The picture, which I had left leaning face in to the wall, must have slipped down as I passed. Turning it over, I saw that the glazing had cracked, a seam shooting up through the glass, cutting my image in two. It seemed strangely malevolent, and I was surprised to find tears coming to my eyes. I had the thought that there was something in the room with me – some shadowy threat. I knew it was probably something to do with the tumour, and the side effects of the medication I was taking, but that knowledge did not dispel the sense of menace I experienced in that room.
‘Just leave me the fuck alone!’ I said aloud to the empty space, then shook my head and angrily swiped at my eyes with the back of my hands, furious at myself for feeling this way.
A figure crossing the garden outside caught my eye through the window. Hilary, in wellingtons and a raincoat, walking purposefully across the grass away from the house. In that moment, spooked as I was by what had happened, I didn’t want to be alone. I pulled on my boots and grabbed my coat, leaving my dress on the bed. I listened to the creak of the steps underfoot, the steadiness of it fighting against the whoosh of blood in my veins as my frightened heart pumped quickly and urgently all the way downstairs and out into the rain.
