But sometimes a touch can be fatal. I should know; it’s happened before. Less than a year later, Nigel was dead, poisoned by proximity. Nigel’s girl has proved herself just as toxic as Emily White, sending out death with a single word.
Or, in this case, a letter.
15
You are viewing the webjournal of Albertine.
Posted at: 15.44 on Tuesday, February 5
Status: restricted
Mood: apprehensive
The letter arrived on a Saturday, as we were having breakfast. By then Nigel was more or less living here, though he still kept his flat in Malbry, and we had established a kind of routine that almost suited both of us. He and I were nocturnal creatures, happiest at night. Thus Nigel came over at ten o’clock; shared a bottle, talked, made love, slept over and left by nine in the morning. At weekends he stayed longer, sometimes till ten or eleven o’clock, which was why he was there in the first place, and why the letter came to him. On a weekday he wouldn’t have opened it, and I could have dealt with it privately. I suppose that, too, was part of the plan. But right then I had no idea of the letter bomb about to explode in our unsuspecting faces –
That morning I was eating cereal, which ticked and popped as the milk sank in. Nigel wasn’t eating, or even speaking to me much. Nigel hardly ever ate breakfast, and his silences were ominous, especially in the mornings. Sounds orbiting a central silence like satellites around a baleful planet; the creak of the pantry door; the clatter of spoon against coffee jar; the chink of mugs. A second later, the fridge door opened; rattled; slammed. The kettle boiled; a brief eruption followed by a click of military finality. Then, the clack of the letter box and the stolid double-thump of the post.
Most of my mail is junk mail, though I rarely get mail of any kind. My bills are paid by direct debit. Letters? Why bother. Greetings cards? Forget it.
‘Anything interesting?’ I said.
For a moment Nigel said nothing at all. I heard the unfolding of paper. A single sheet, unfurled with a dry rasp, like the unsheathing of a sharpened knife.
‘Nigel?’
‘What?’
He jiggled his foot when he was annoyed; I could hear it against the table leg. And now there was something in his voice; something flat and hard, like an obstacle. He tore the used envelope into halves, then he fingered the single sheet. Stropped it on his thumb, like a blade –
‘It isn’t bad news, or anything?’ I did not speak of what I dreaded most, though I could feel it hanging over me.
‘For fuck’s sake. Let me read,’ he said. Now the obstacle was within my reach; like a sharp-edged table-top in an unexpected place. Those sharp edges never miss; they have a gravity all of their own, pulling me every time into their orbit. And there were so many sharp edges in Nigel; so many zones of restricted access.
It wasn’t his fault, I told myself; I would not have had him otherwise. We completed each other in some strange way: his dark moods and my lack of temperament. I am wide open, as he used to say; there are no hidden places in me, no unpleasant secrets. All the better; because deceit, that essentially female trait, is the thing that Nigel despised most of all. Deceit and lies, so alien to him – so alien, he thought, to me.
‘I have to go out for an hour or so.’ His voice sounded oddly defensive. ‘Will you be OK for a while? I have to go to Ma’s house.’
Gloria Winter, née Gloria Green, sixty-nine years old and still clutching at the remains of her family with the tenacity of a hungry remora. I knew her as a voice on the line; a rimshot Northern accent; an impatient drumming on the receiver; an imperious way of cutting you off like a gardener pruning roses.
Not that we’ve ever been introduced. Not officially, anyway. But I know her from Nigel; I know her ways; I know her voice on the telephone and her ominous range of silences. There are other things, too, that he never told me, but that I know only too well. The jealousy; the rancour; the rage; the hatred mixed with helplessness.
He rarely spoke of her to me. He rarely even mentioned her name. Living with Nigel, I soon understood that some subjects were best left alone, and this included his childhood, his father, his brothers, his past and most especially Gloria, who shared, along with her other son, a talent for bringing out the worst in Nigel.
‘Can’t your brother deal with this?’
I heard him stop on the way to the door. I wondered if he were turning round, fixing me with his dark eyes. Nigel rarely mentioned his brother, and when he did it was all bad. Twisted little bastard was about the best I’d heard so far – Nigel never had much objectivity when it came to discussing his family.
‘My brother? Why? Has he spoken to you?’
‘Of course not. Why would he?’
Another pause. I felt his eyes on the top of my head.
‘Graham Peacock’s dead,’ he said. His voice was curiously flat. ‘An accident, by the sound of it. Fell out of his wheelchair during the night. They found him dead in the morning.’
I didn’t look up. I didn’t dare. Suddenly everything seemed enhanced; the taste of coffee in my mouth; the sound of the birds; the beat of my heart; the table at my fingertips with all its scars and scratches.
‘This letter’s from your brother?’ I said.
Nigel ignored the question: ‘It says that the bulk of Peacock’s estate – valued at something like three million pounds—’
Another silence. ‘What?’ I said.
That strangely uninflected voice was somehow more disturbing than rage. ‘He’s left it all to you,’ he said. ‘The house, the art, the collections—’
‘Me? But I don’t even know him,’ I said.
‘The twisted little bastard.’
No need for me to ask who he meant; that phrase was reserved for his brother. So very like him in so many ways, and yet, whenever his name arose, I could almost believe that Nigel could kill a man; could beat him to death with fists and feet . . .
‘This must be a mistake,’ I said. ‘I’ve never met Dr Peacock. I don’t even know what he looks like. Why would he leave his money to me?’
‘Well – maybe because of Emily White.’ Nigel’s voice was colourless.
And now the coffee tasted like dust; the birds fell silent; my heart was a stone. That name had silenced everything – except for the buzz of feedback that began right at the base of my spine, erasing all of the past twenty years in a surge of deadly static . . .
I know I should have told him then. But I’d hidden the truth for so long; believing that Nigel would always be there; hoping for the perfect time; not knowing that this time was all we had –
‘Emily White,’ said Nigel.
‘Never heard of her,’ I said.
16
You are viewing the webjournal of Albertine.
Posted at: 03.15 on Wednesday, February 6
Status: restricted
Mood: sleepless
When dealt one of life’s terrible blows – the death of a parent, the end of a relationship, the positive test result, the guilty verdict, the final step off the tall building – there comes a moment of light-headedness, almost of euphoria, as the string which tethers us to our hopes is cut and we bounce off in another direction, briefly powered by the momentum of release.
The penultimate movement of the Symphonie fantastique – ‘The March to the Scaffold’ – has a similar moment, when the condemned arrives within view of the gallows, and the minor key shifts into a triumphant major, as if at the sight of a friendly face. I know how it feels: that lurch of deliverance, the feeling that the worst has already happened and that the rest is merely gravity.
Not that the worst had happened – not yet. But the clouds were gathering. By the time that letter arrived, Nigel had less than an hour to live; and the last thing he ever said to me were the four little syllables of her name, Emily White, like a musical sting performed by the ghost of Beethoven . . .
And Dr Peacock was dead at last. Ex-Master of St Oswald’s School, eccentric, genius,
charlatan, dreamer, collector, saint, buffoon. Unrelenting in death as in life; somehow it did not surprise me to learn that once more, with the kindest intent, he had torn my life apart.
Not that he could have harmed me. Not intentionally, anyway. Emily always loved him: a large, heavy man with a soft beard and a strangely childlike manner, who read from Alice in Wonderland and played old, scratchy records on a wind-up gramophone while she sat on the swing in the Fireplace House and talked about music and painting and poetry and sound. And now the old man was dead at last, and there was no escaping him, or the thing we had helped set in motion.
I don’t really know how old Emily was when she first went to the Fireplace House. All I know is that it must have been some time after the Christmas concert, because that is where my memory shorts out for good; one moment I’m there, with the music all around me like some fabulous velvet, the next . . .
Feedback and white noise. A long rush of static, broken occasionally by a sudden burst of perfect sound, a phrase, a chord, a note. I try to make sense of it, but I cannot; too much of it is hidden. Of course there were witnesses; from them I can, if I wish, piece together the variations, if not the fugue. But I trust them less than I trust myself – and besides, I’ve worked hard to forget all that. Why should I try to remember it now?
When I was a child, and the worst happened – toys broken, affection denied, the small but poignant sorrows of childhood recalled through the mist of adult grief – I always sought refuge in the garden. There was a tree where I loved to sit; I remember its texture, its elephant hide, the sappy, plush scent of dead leaves and moss. Nowadays, when I’m lost and confused, I head for the Pink Zebra. It’s the safest place in my world; an escape from myself, a sanctuary. Everything here seems expressly designed to fit my unique requirements.
To begin with, its comfortable size, with every table against a wall. Its menu lists all my favourites. Best of all, unlike the genteel Village, it has no affiliations or pretensions. I am not invisible here, and although that could have its dangers, it’s good to be able to walk in and to have people talk to you and not at you. Even the voices are different here: not reedy like Maureen Pike’s or breathy and sour like Eleanor Vine’s or affected like Adèle Roberts’s, but rich with the tones of jazz clarinet and sitar and steel drums, with lovely calypso rhythms and lilts, so that just sitting here is almost as good as music.
I headed there that Saturday after Nigel had gone. That name on his lips had unsettled me, and I needed a place to think things out. Somewhere noisy. Somewhere safe. The Zebra was always a refuge for me; always filled with people. Today there were more than usual, all waiting outside the café door; their voices surging around me like animals at feeding-time. Saxophone Man’s Jamaican accent. The Fat Girl, with her breathy tone. And orchestrating everything, Bethan, with her Irish lilt, cheery, speaking to everyone, pulling it all together:
‘Hey, what’s going on? You’re late. You should have been here ten minutes ago.’
‘Hello, darlin’! What’ll it be?’
‘You got any more of that chocolate cake?’
‘Hang on, I’ll have a look for you.’
Thank goodness for Bethan, I told myself. Bethan, my coat of camouflage. I don’t think Nigel really understood. He resented all the time I spent at the Pink Zebra; wondered how I could so often prefer the company of strangers to his own. But to understand about Bethan, you have to be able to penetrate the many disguises with which she surrounds herself: the voices, the jokes, the nicknames, the cheery Irish cynicism that hides something closer to the bone.
Underneath all that there’s someone else. Someone damaged and vulnerable. Someone trying desperately to make sense of something sad and senseless . . .
‘There you are, darlin’. Try that for size. Hot chocolate, with cardamom cream.’
The chocolate is one of my favourites. Served with milk in a tall glass, with coconut and marshmallows, or dark, with a clash of chilli.
‘Listen to this. Creepy Dude came in to the Zebra the other day. Sat down just where you’re sitting. Ordered the lemon meringue pie. I watched him eat it from over there, then he came back to the counter and ordered another. I watched him eat that, then when he’d finished, he called me over and ordered more pie. Honest to God, darlin’, your man must have et six pieces of pie in under half an hour. The Fat Girl was sitting right there opposite him, and I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head, so I did.’
I sipped my chocolate. It was tasteless. But the warmth was comforting. I carried on the conversation without really paying attention to it, against a wall of background noise as meaningless as waves on a shore.
‘Hey, babe, lookin’ good—’
‘Two espressos, Bethan, please.’
‘Six pieces of pie. Imagine that. I’ve been thinking that maybe he’s on the run, that he’s shot his lover and he’s planning to jump off Beachy Head before the police catch up with him, because six pieces of pie – Jesus God! – now there’s a man with nothing to lose—’
‘And I told her, I said, “I’m not ’avin’ that—” ’
‘Be with you in a minute, babe.’
Sometimes in a noisy room you can pick out the sound of a single voice – sometimes even a single word – that clatters against the wall of sound like an out-of-tune violin in an orchestra.
‘Earl Grey, please. No lemon, no milk.’
His voice is unmistakable. Soft and slightly nasal, perhaps, with a peculiar emphasis on the aspirates, like a theatre actor, or maybe a man who once stuttered. And now I could hear the music again, the opening chords of the Berlioz, never very far from my thoughts. Why it had to be that piece, I don’t know; but it’s the sound of my deepest fear, and it sounds to me like the end of the world.
I kept my own voice steady and low. No need to disturb the customers. ‘You’ve really done it now,’ I said.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘I’m talking about your letter,’ I said.
‘What letter?’
‘Don’t bullshit me,’ I said. ‘Nigel got a letter today. Given the mood he was in when he left, and given the fact that I only know one person capable of winding him up to that level—’
‘I’m glad you think so.’ I heard his smile.
‘What did you tell him?’
‘Not much,’ he said. ‘But you know my brother. Impulsive. Always getting the wrong idea.’ He paused, and once more I heard his smile. ‘Perhaps he was shaken by the news of Dr Peacock’s legacy. Perhaps he just wanted Ma to be sure that he knew nothing about it—’ He took a sip of his Earl Grey. ‘You know, I thought you’d be pleased,’ he said. ‘It’s still a magnificent estate. Perhaps the property’s a little rundown. Still, nothing that can’t be fixed, eh? Then there’s the art. The collections. Three million pounds is conservative. I’d estimate it at closer to four—’
‘I don’t care,’ I hissed at him. ‘They can give it to someone else.’
‘There isn’t anyone else,’ he said.
Oh yes there is. There’s Nigel. Nigel, who trusted me –
How fragile are these things we build. How tragically ephemeral. In contrast, the house is solid as stone; as tiles and beams and mortar. How could we compete with stone? How could our little alliance survive?
‘I have to admit,’ he said mildly, ‘I thought you might show some gratitude. After all, Dr Peacock’s estate is likely to bring you a tidy sum – more than enough to get out of this place and buy yourself somewhere decent.’
‘I like my life as it is,’ I said.
‘Really? I’d kill to get out of here.’
I picked up my empty chocolate cup; turned it round and round in my hands. ‘So how did Dr Peacock die? And how much did he leave you?’
A pause. ‘That wasn’t very kind.’
I lowered my voice to a hiss. ‘I don’t care. It’s over. Everyone’s dead—’
‘Not quite.’
No, I thought. Wel
l – maybe not.
‘So you do remember.’ I heard his smile.
‘Not much. You know how old I was.’
Old enough to remember, he means. He thinks I should remember more; but for me now most of those memories exist only as fragments of Emily, some at best contradictory, others, frankly impossible. But I know what everyone else knows: that she was famous; she was unique; college professors wrote theses on what they had begun to call The Emily White Phenomenon.
Memory [says Dr Peacock in his thesis ‘The Illuminated Man’], is, at best, an imperfect and highly idiosyncratic process. We tend to think of the mind as a fully functioning recording machine, with gigabytes of information – aural, visual and tactile – within easy recall. This could not be further from the truth. Although it is true that in theory, at least, I should be able to remember what I had for breakfast on any particular morning of my life, or the precise wording of a Shakespeare sonnet I had to study as a child, it is more probable that without recourse to drugs or deep hypnosis – both methods being, in any case, highly questionable, given the level of suggestibility in the subject – those particular memories will remain inaccessible to me and will finally degrade, like electrical equipment left in the damp, causing short-outs and cross-wiring until finally the system may default into alternative or backup memory, complete with sense-impressions and internal logic, which may in fact be drawn from a completely different set of experiences and stimuli, but which provides the brain with a compensatory buffer against any discontinuity or obvious malfunction.
Dear Dr Peacock. He always took so long to make a point. If I try hard I can still hear his voice, which was plush and plummy and just a little comic, like the bassoon in Peter and the Wolf. He had a house near the centre of town, one of those big, deep old houses with high ceilings, and worn parquet floors, and wide bay windows, and spiky aspidistra, and the genteel smell of old leather and cigars. There was a fireplace in the parlour, a huge thing with a carved overmantel and a clock that ticked; and in the evenings he would burn logs and pine cones in the giant hearth and tell stories to anyone who cared to walk in.