Can you keep a secret, p.26
Can You Keep A Secret?, page 26
‘What do you mean, he couldn’t take it?’
‘He blamed himself, even though he knew I was the one who pulled the trigger. He was always like that. Blaming himself for everything. Perhaps my father put too much pressure on him to accept the mantle of patriarch. He wasn’t able for it, but he tried. And he failed, and that failure fed his desire to compensate. Assuming the blame was like a safety blanket for him. Like he never really grew up; he used it again and again. My mother’s car crash, her subsequent death, my father’s suicide ‒ Patrick felt like he was in some way responsible for it all. He suffers from that malady. It’s a twisted logic, but I understand it.’
As she talks, I fear the worst.
‘He takes the blame when it’s not his to take, when it’s none of his business to. He’s lost his mother, his father, he thinks he’s going to lose me, his sister, because I shot Marcus. He doesn’t want to lose me. We may have been a strange family in our own way, but we were a close family, and blood runs thick. Patrick was the fall guy to the last, when he should never have been, when he had no right to be, but he loved me the way a brother can, and Lindsey, believe it or not, that’s real, that’s true. It’s more than he could ever have felt or done for you.’
‘Rachel, where is Patrick?’
‘He was an honourable man, I’ll say that of my brother. Things weighed heavily on his conscience – too heavily – but in the end he couldn’t live with it.’
I struggle to sit up – panic, fear, dread all battling inside me. I scramble against the pain and lean over. She watches me carefully as she tells me how her brother had silently left the room, and then, a few minutes later, they had heard the sharp crack of the gun, and all three had raced into the library to find Patrick sprawled across the desk.
‘No,’ I say, my voice tiny. My heart is beating quietly in my chest, but I feel the pain seeping into the muscle, like it is too tired for any of this. Too tired to go on.
‘He always wanted to emulate our father,’ she tells me. ‘And now, in the end, he has.’
I turn my face away from her, tears leaking from the corner of my eye, only half listening to what she is telling me now. How Niall ran down the avenue to call for help. How Hilary remained bent over Patrick, trying to staunch the bleeding. How it seemed so simple – clean and honest, as she put it. To wipe the slate. To finish things, once and for all. An act of purification. It was time for all that grubby talk to die. Put a match to the scandal, watch it wither and fade.
‘Just like these photographs.’
I know that Hilary is dead. Killed for her confession – her pointed finger. Killed for what she knew. Made a victim all over again. It seems so pointless and futile. Distantly, I hear the sound of feet pounding across gravel. My eyes flicker to the window, and I see the panes of glass briefly glow blue. For a moment, Rachel does not notice it, too intent on the photograph in her hand. It is the last one, and she pauses to gaze on it.
‘Look at you,’ she says softly. ‘So young. But not innocent. You look, in fact, like you’re enjoying it.’
She holds it in her hand while the flame licks at the corners, waits for it to burn down before dropping it into the grate, where it mingles with the ashes of the others.
The blue light at the window intensifies, and I can hear the car engine approaching through the trees. She hears it, too, and picks something up off the floor before standing.
‘It is time,’ she tells me. The floorboards creak as she approaches. My good eye travels down her arm and, even though my vision is blurred, I see the shine of the gun.
‘No,’ I say, scrambling to retreat, desperate to get away from her, as she draws close.
‘Hush,’ she whispers, and I feel her cloying breath, the weight of her body as she leans in. Outside, a car door slams. ‘It’s all over now,’ she tells me, my temple pressed by the nose of the gun. ‘You’ll hardly feel a thing.’
29
1992
I run. Through the crowd of people, past the tables of booze, the sycamore tree strung with lights – I run to the shadows, to where the garden grows tangled along the periphery, nettles and dandelions springing up around me. I run until I reach the wall, shining blue in the moonlight, reaching out a hand to the old stone to steady myself. Breathless and panicky, I stumble along, desperate to get away from the clamour of the crowd and Rachel’s needling presence. More than anything, desperate to get away from my guilt. It looms over me, like an angry god, as I flounder along the asphalt path that leads to the stables.
The lights are on in the studio. They draw me like a beacon. Through the sickening confusion of my thoughts, one thing stands out – the need for refuge. I can’t go back to the house, not now, not ever. But this place – this one room – holds something unnamable for me, the site of a deep, meaningful act. The light shines through the darkness, soupy with nocturnal insects and the sulphuric smell of spent fireworks. It calls out to me as a safe place. I need to see him. To hear his voice. To have him explain to me in his quiet tones that what we did together was not shameful or smutty but beautiful. A thing of art. How the camera had caressed me, not exploited me. That what I had done for him was an act of empowerment, not victimhood.
I pull open the door and lurch inside, but the emptiness echoes back at me, the only sound my own footsteps loud on the wooden boards. I lean against the wall for a moment, feeling the welcome coolness of it seep through my dress to my body. Drenched in sweat, I look down at the ruined fabric, darkly stained. Chalky marks from the wall cling to the bodice and skirt, my shoes are scuffed and torn. I catch sight of my own reflection in the windowpane, the dark night pressing up against it, and see my bewildered expression, the wildness of my hair.
The room is as I remembered it. The canvas backdrops hanging from the beam, cutting the space in two. The bulk of the old roll-topped desk set back against a wall, locked tight and neat. The side lamps are set up but switched off, the only light coming from a bare bulb swinging on a flex wrapped around the beam. And the camera – sitting on the tripod, the lens cap firmly in place. I fancy that it is sleeping, waiting to be called to life and put to its task once more. The only thing that’s different is the couch that has been placed in front of the backdrop. A green leather, buttoned thing, it squats in the middle of the floor, beckoning. I realize how exhausted I am the moment I sit down. Alcohol has dulled my senses and, as the adrenaline hangover kicks in, my limbs start to quiver and shake.
The room is different at night. Even though the door and the shutters had been closed against the light the last time I had been here, some quality of the morning had still managed to seep in. I close my eyes and remember it – the creak of the boards expanding in the sunlight, the plucking sounds of a bird walking on the roof, and among those gentler sounds the startlingly loud snap of my bra opening, the splat as my jeans dropped to the floor. I think of that moment, stepping out from behind the canvas cloth, unable to see his face in the shadows, but oh, the heavy weight of his gaze! The memory brings with it a rush of feeling. Remembering the liberation of being so completely exposed, unhidden – I had felt triumphant! Something of that triumph returns to me now, but it is almost immediately punctured by the word ‘Traitor’. It had hit me like a bullet, and it comes whizzing through my memory now, again and again. Any feelings of pride or triumph begin to wilt and curl over on to themselves. What have I done? I think, as the triumph fades to disquiet. And then shrinks further into itself to become dread.
A noise outside. Footfall on the asphalt. A man’s voice. Laughter. I jump up, panicked. There is no time to run outside, their voices growing louder, so instead I run behind the canvas backdrop, hold myself still with my hands to my mouth, as if that may stop the noise of breathing.
The bulb swings down on the other side of the canvas. Back here, it is darker, the light seeping in at gaps in the sides and punctuating small holes in the heavy material. I put my eye to one of these now and watch as the door opens and Peter enters the room, followed by two other men.
‘Close the door there, will you?’ Peter instructs, and the third man does so. I recognize this man as the friend I’d been introduced to earlier in the evening. Steven, his name is. He is tall and white-haired above a darkly tanned face. All three men are wearing tuxedos, but the third man has neglected to wear a bow tie. Smaller than the other two, he circles the room, hands in his pockets, occasionally sniffing as he inspects the place.
‘Quite the little set-up you have here, Peter,’ he remarks, and Peter swirls the drink in his glass and nods but says nothing. ‘It’s not what I expected.’
‘What did you expect, for God’s sake?’ Steven asks, mildly exasperated.
‘I dunno. Something flashier. Less …’ He searches about for the word before alighting on it. ‘Less rustic.’
‘Ha!’ Steven laughs, and Peter looks down at his shoes, and the third man walks right up to the canvas backdrop behind which I am standing, and stares at it.
‘Where’d you get this antique? Looks like it came from some Victorian music-hall,’ he remarks with disgust.
He is so close to me, I can smell him. Booze and cigars, undercut with a vaguely fungal odour. I wonder can he smell me, too?
He takes another step closer, leaning in to examine the paintwork, perhaps, and I can see clearly the shaving rash along his cheek and the bristles of his moustache, reddish-brown turning to white. His eyes move quickly. My heart is hammering so hard I feel sure he must hear it.
‘Well, get on with it, Peter, and show us these pictures,’ Steven says, unwittingly rescuing me. The small man turns away.
Peter extracts a key from his trouser pocket, goes to the desk and unlocks it, rolling back the top. There is a desk lamp on the upper shelf and he switches this on, light pooling over the surface before him. The other two men join him. With their backs turned to me, I cannot see what they are looking at, nor can I hear them as distinctly. Peter stands in the middle, flanked by the other two, and from the movement of his shoulders I can tell that he is laying the photographs out flat along the desk, in the same way he had done for me all those months ago. But unlike me, these men’s reactions betray no shock. In lowered voices, they murmur their approval.
‘That one’s good,’ the small one remarks, and Steven responds:
‘Oh, yes. I agree, Mike. Very fine.’
Mike points out a few more ‘beauties’, as he calls them, then turns to Peter and asks: ‘You been into this long?’
‘Three or four years now, it would be. You?’
Mike sniffs. ‘’Bout the same.’
‘I particularly like this one,’ Steven says in his prim manner, and they talk for a while about the play of light and the distinctive style, the use of drapery and props, the varying compositions. I am only mildly shocked at their shared interest in Victorian nudes. More pressing than their fetish is the pain I feel in the backs of my knees and the base of my spine, aching from the effort of keeping still. I peer down at the stiletto heels on my feet and bitterly regret not kicking them off when I had opportunity to do so.
‘How many of these are your own?’ Mike asks, and Steven answers for his friend:
‘Oh, these are all Peter’s.’
‘Seriously?’ Mike sounds impressed.
‘That’s right,’ Peter admits modestly.
‘I thought I recognized the backdrop.’
‘The backdrop?’ Steven laughs. ‘Earlier this evening, we met the model! Didn’t we, Peter?’
Instantly, I forget the pain in my legs.
‘Back in the hall,’ he goes on. ‘Girl in a blue dress. I didn’t recognize her with her clothes on, did I, Peter?’ He laughs and takes a swig of his whiskey. Bile surges up my throat. I see Peter rubbing the side of his face, a slight tremble along his back and shoulders, and I realize with horror that he is laughing, too.
‘Seriously? This one?’ Mike says, stabbing a finger at the picture on the desk. ‘Where’d you find her? Where’d you find any of them, for that matter?’
‘Most of them are local girls,’ Peter explains, ‘but this one is a friend of my daughter’s.’
Mike whistles through his teeth. ‘Bit risky, don’t you think?’
Peter’s voice when he speaks sounds suave, unfazed. ‘She wanted it.’
My hands are crushed against my face. I am screaming inside – no, no, no!
The others laugh, and Mike murmurs: ‘Dirty girl,’ Steven reaching around to give the smaller man a dig.
‘Just your type, eh, Mike?’ he sniggers.
‘Sweet little buds,’ he jokes, and drops his heavy weight on to the captain’s chair that has been pushed to one side of the desk. He swings it around so I can see his face – red-cheeked, overfed, pompous. I hate this man. I have never felt such visceral hatred in all my life. It floods my limbs. I am heavy with it.
‘Here, what’s this?’ Mike asks, reaching for something in the back of the desk, something squirrelled away in a cubby-hole.
‘Don’t touch that,’ Peter says, but Mike ignores him, and I can see the gun in his hand. A small pistol, ornate and neat, like something a lady might have kept in her handbag generations ago.
After a surprised instant, Steven lets out a honk of laughter, and says: ‘Is that how you get the ladies to undress? Point a gun at them?’
‘Give that here,’ Peter says, taking the gun with irritation and returning it to its place. ‘It’s just a prop,’ he adds, and Mike eyes him carefully.
‘Looks real to me.’
‘So are you interested in making a purchase or not,’ Peter says testily. The incident with the gun has left him flustered.
I remember stories Rachel has told about how her father, driven to distraction by the raucous noise of crows outside in the trees, has been known to throw open the window and start firing indiscriminately at the branches with a pistol. I know that it is not a prop.
‘How much are you looking for?’ Mike asks, and the horse-trading begins.
Behind the shelter of the canvas, I listen to them haggle, and something hardens within me. Humiliation is too small a word for what I feel. I am swamped in shame. I am torn apart by it.
‘Are these the only copies?’ Mike asks. He seems to be the only one buying. Steven is the middle-man in this shady triumvirate.
‘There are others.’
‘How many?’
‘I’ve made three copies of most. These ones here are for sale. My own I keep up at the house.’
‘Got them framed and hanging on the walls?’ Mike asks, and Steven sniggers.
‘Not exactly,’ Peter replies, smooth and polite.
‘I take my hat off to you, Peter. If I could bottle your charm and sell it, I’d be a rich man. Well, a richer man,’ Steven says.
They reach their agreement, and Steven hauls his weight out of the chair and comes to examine which of the pictures Mike has chosen – what lucky few get to occupy his lustful gaze. He murmurs his approval and, while Peter shuffles the photographs into neat groups, I hear Steven say to Mike:
‘You didn’t go for Peter’s little friend, then, eh?’ and he laughs, and so does Mike, but when Peter doesn’t join in, Steven elbows him. ‘What’s this? I think I’ve touched a nerve! Steal your heart, did she?’
My breath catches in my chest. My heart thuds madly.
The answer when it comes is crushing. ‘Not at all,’ he says, in a manner that suggests boredom. ‘If anything, she was a disappointment.’
‘Do tell!’
Airily, he says: ‘Girls of that age – you know what they’re like. Dying to shrug off the remnants of childhood, eager to be transformed into sexual beings. This one, God love her, was the inexperienced type. Interested in sex but terrified of it, too. A prudish streak. But they’re always the ones who are the most eager and willing once they’ve shed their qualms. She marched in here one day, had worked herself up into a state, practically shaking, that’s how desperate she was to declare herself a woman – an object of desire. Asks me to photograph her. Then out she struts, head held high – regal. Like the Queen of Sheba.’
‘And you?’
‘Well, my heart kind of sank. I mean there’s only so much you can do with light and shadows. I humoured her, of course. Gave her the full session. Told her a lot of guff about beauty and art and revering the naked human form.’
‘And she bought it?’ Mike sounds faintly disgusted. Behind the canvas, I am fighting waves of nausea and shame.
‘Young girls,’ Peter says, then adds with finality: ‘If it’s what they want to hear, they’ll buy anything.’
Grief, shame, anger – it all comes at me in bilious waves. What a stupid little fool I have been! To think he liked me – to think he cared about me! That we understood each other. That we shared something precious that has now been cheapened and coarsened beyond all hope of repair.
‘Peter!’ a voice calls from outside – a female voice.
They all jump at the sound, as if jolted by electricity. I, too, feel panicked, here in my hiding place.
‘Oh, God,’ Steven says.
Peter shuffles the pictures into a pile, saying: ‘Quick.’
The door opens, and I can see the white turban, the gold dress.
‘There you are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!’ Heather exclaims. She remains outside, leaning into the doorframe. ‘Come back to the house. The Hadleys are leaving.’
She waits in the doorway, and all three file out, taking their drinks with them. I hear the door close, the lock turn, the crunch of feet over the ground outside. Then, silence.
It takes a few minutes for my breathing to return to normal, for the stiffening in my limbs to ease off enough for me to move. I creep out from my hiding place, cast my gaze around the room, changed now for ever – cheapened by all I’ve heard. In their haste to leave without Heather interfering, they have left the desk lamp on, the roll-top pulled back, and I feel myself drawn towards it. I can’t not look. Not now. Not with all I know.
One by one, I spread them out on the desk in front of me. Teenage girls, young women, different shapes and sizes, different-coloured hair. I find my picture among them, just another collection of flesh and features jumbled together into a silly pose. I thought I was special. I thought I was making a bold statement. Now all I see is the enormity of my folly. I look at my image in the photograph. How ridiculous I look. How ridiculous I am. Too ridiculous to live, to carry on. My thoughts narrow to a tunnel. Already, the emotion is flattening out inside me, steadied by the knowledge of what I must do. It is the only thing I can do now. I reach into the cubby-hole, and feel my fingers wrap around the gun.
