‘I’ll go for full-time DJ. They want more women.’
‘You’ll never get it. The competition’s fantastic, it’s bound to be.’
‘If we’re prepared to move, if we’re prepared to go somewhere most people don’t want to live … then I think there’s a chance. Alistair Ringwood’s sounded me out a couple of times.’
‘Has he? Why didn’t you say?’
‘Because I didn’t want to do it.’
‘Then why are we wasting time talking about it?’
‘Because I’ve changed my mind.’
I saw a little life creep back into his eyes, like blood into a hand as it unclenches, colouring the white knuckles. I saw how far he’d gone without me, and how easily I might have woken up one morning to find the bed blank beside me.
‘I can get it. I know I can. You won’t go bankrupt. I’ll get the job and then we’ll go and see the bank and we’ll show them we can service the debt.’
‘What if you don’t get it?’
‘I will.’
‘Are you –’
‘Donald, I will.’
FOUR
It is much too hot in the courthouse. Inland, the weather is always different, and this is a true Indian summer. By early afternoon the sun’s beating through the double glazing straight onto my head. I’ve got a heavy list and I’m in chambers right through the day. In the middle of a pre-trial review a sharp, tight pain begins above my eyes. I blink and the couple in front of me wavers behind tears. Disputed contact. Our language changes all the time, and it’s hard for people outside the legal profession to keep up with it. Sometimes I’m afraid that’s the point of the changes. When I was still in my own practice I used to have clients say to me, ‘What do you mean, contact order? I’m talking about access, aren’t I?’ Or ‘I don’t want residency, I want custody!’
They’d give me that baffled, aggressive look you get so used to in the law, as if they suspected that people on the other side of the desk were trying to put one over on them. So then I’d go through it all again gently, I hope, not too patronizingly, I hope, trying to make it clear. They had to know the language, if they were going to do more than listen dumbly while their future was decided before they knew what was happening.
Disputed contact, in this case, means that Graham Rossiter claims that his former wife and her new partner are trying to alienate the children from him, so that they will stop wanting to visit him the two weekends out of four, the week at Christmas and Easter, the three weeks in the summer to which the couple agreed at the time of the divorce.
His former wife’s name is Christine, now Christine Delauney once again. She has pale hair scooped into a French pleat, and she’s wearing a sober suit. I see so many sober suits. So many tiny marks at the side of a nose where someone has taken out a nose-ring on their solicitor’s advice. So it goes. Sometimes it works the other way, too. There was an argument on the steps of the county court a few months ago, because when the client met his male solicitor just before they went in for trial, the solicitor was wearing an ear-ring.
‘What’s the judge going to think, me here with a brief with a bleeding ear-ring?’ shouted the client, and wouldn’t go into court until his solicitor had taken the ear-ring out. He lost the case anyway.
Graham Rossiter hasn’t looked at his former wife since he came into this room. Christine says he is quite mistaken in thinking that she and Martin have any interest in reducing contact time with him. She and Martin encourage the children to maintain a strong relationship with their natural father, but, not surprisingly, the children are wary. As it happens Christine and Martin have kept a diary of the times Graham Rossiter has had to go away on business, just like that, with no notice, when he was supposed to have the children for a weekend.
Natural father. The phrase worries me. As I go through the evidence I think, ‘Why doesn’t she just say “father”?’ The welfare report confirms that the children have a good relationship with Martin, and have accepted him as their mother’s partner. The relationship between Christine and Martin appears to be quite stable.
All the tired phrases click to and fro, like counters in a board-game which each still believes can be won. The court welfare officer sits there too, her face tidy with professional neutrality. There are solicitors for both sides. All of us in the room, taking apart the lives of Christine and Graham, and of the absent Martin, and the absent children. On some points we approve, on others we disapprove. I have a sheaf of reports in front of me, from the welfare officer, from the children’s schools, from the GP who has been treating the eldest child’s ‘persistent enuresis’. It is barbaric, this terminology, but it’s what we have to use.
Sometimes you can’t help seeing behind the words, seeing a boy of nine setting his alarm clock for six a.m. so he can get up and put his sheets into the washing-machine before the little ones wake up. The GP calls this ‘a successful element of self-management of the condition’. And then the boy showers, for half an hour or more at a time. The child is anxious. He is developing a phobia about smelling of urine.
But for some reason the health visitor’s report is not here, even though it has been requested. There’s no explanation: muddle, probably. Even though we have the GP’s report, the health visitor may be important. The youngest child is only three years old, and the health visitor has been involved since an episode of post-natal depression after the birth. Christine attributes her depression to the unhappiness of her marriage. Once she met Martin, once she made the decision to leave, the depression began to lift. I look at Christine’s taut, fair face, carefully made up, and at the femininity of the ruffled white blouse under the suit. She will have thought carefully about what to wear. Maybe they went through her wardrobe together, or bought something specially.
There is a vicious tension in the room. Graham Rossiter doesn’t trust me. After all, I am a woman, about the age of his wife. I may have children myself. His eyes flit sharply around the room and he keeps making notes in a tiny black-bound notebook, like a policeman’s notebook. Each time he finishes writing he looks at me, as if to make sure I have registered what he is doing. He is keeping a check on it all. I have no desire to read his notes.
Pain squeezes in my head. My eyes hurt, too. It’s the light. The light, and sleeping badly, and not having time to eat this morning. It’s hot, much too hot. Sweat prickles inside my clothes. The courthouse may be new, full of pale wood and glass and rounded edges, but the design isn’t good. It is meant to impress people, not to house them comfortably. I ring for the usher.
‘Could we have a window open, please?’
‘Certainly, Madam.’ He’s bulky, packed with physical power even though he’s getting on. He must have been formidable, frightening even, when he was younger. A good person to have around, if he is on your side, and of course he’s on my side. We all watch him. It is a relief to watch him. The double-glazed window swings back, and I wait for the air to reach my face. But before the air there comes the noise. The insistent throb and whine of an amplified guitar, a voice, off-key and howling out the blues.
Well I woke up this morning with blood on my hy-ands …
The usher turns, looks at me. One thick eyebrow goes up.
‘Shall I close it again, Madam?’
‘Is it coming from a car?’
He looks down, ponderously. ‘No, Madam, it’s one of those –’ he pauses, fastidiously, as if the word is an obscenity ‘– buskers. We’ve been troubled a lot this year.’
As he speaks, the air reaches me. It surrounds my face, warm but fresh, easing the tightness. There’s a breeze you would never suspect from the solid heat that cooks us through the windows.
‘Let’s leave the window open for a while, and see how we get on.’
The usher fastens the window in place.
It’s not going to work. The noise has the crazy confidence of bad music. You can’t think through it. After a few minutes of listening to the welfare officer through the screech
of the amplifier, I say, ‘This is no good. We’d better have the window closed.’
But there is sweat on Graham Rossiter’s forehead. These are his children, his and hers. Things are bad enough for them. Their lives are already under a magnifying glass. Why should they have to put up with this? The usher leans towards me.
‘If I might make a suggestion, Madam. We could have him moved.’
Our eyes meet. His overbearing face is pasted across with respectful attentiveness towards my needs. Nothing, no matter how minute, is outside his attention, if it affects the process of the law.
‘Get him moved?’
‘I could give them a ring down at the station. One of them’ll come down and move him along for you. It won’t take five minutes. I know them down there.’
He is bland but conspiratorial, waiting.
‘Yes, please, that’s a very good idea,’ I said, with the same blandness. Because I have said yes, a policeman will tap the shoulder of the blues singer. He’ll make him pick up guitar and amplifier, and go elsewhere. I feel a flush rise to my skin, but the usher is pleased with me. He steps off heavily but silently, to make his phone call.
It doesn’t take long. Soon we have fresh air blowing in, and quiet outside the window. The afternoon passes, the sunlight relaxes into yellow. We move forward by due process, towards a full hearing.
FIVE
At last my list is over. I’m tired, restlessly tired, as I go out of court to the car. There is no wind at all now, not even a breeze, and the air is warm. I take off my jacket and the sun strokes my bare arms. The car-park is almost empty and the inside of the car smells of hot plastic. Suddenly I can’t face driving home straight away. I sit with the keys in my hand, thinking. I’ll go for a walk, buy a newspaper, then have a cup of coffee somewhere. Rare, empty time, belonging neither to work nor to home.
I feel as guilty as a thief as I lock the car again. But it’s so good to walk slowly across the hot car-park, feeling myself unclench, feeling lighter than I have felt all day even though I’m still carrying the document case that I must never leave in the car. Or maybe I won’t go to a café. There’s a walk by the river where people go to sit at lunchtime. I’ve never been there, but it would be good to sit by water, not even reading.
The river is a city river, penned sullenly between two concrete banks. The banks are very steep and every few yards there are metal stanchions let into the concrete, so that if someone fell in they could cling there until their own weight dragged them back into the oily water. It makes me think of fishermen who never learn to swim. They’re right, I think. Better to go down fast, between billows of storm. Better not to struggle. There’s a stand for a life-belt, too, with a big notice that says, ‘Please do not vandalise this safety-station. YOU may need rescue one day.’ The life-belt has been removed and the rope which held it hangs down limply. There are benches all along the water. I walk past them, wanting to get beyond the concrete, but it goes on and on, and then you can’t walk any more because the path is cut off by a barbed wire entanglement. I go back.
When I was little and afraid in bed at night, my mother told me, ‘Name each sound you can hear, and count them. See how many there are. When you know what’s there you won’t be afraid.’ I counted the drip of the cistern, the rummage of feet up the carpeted stairs next door, the whistle of a man walking his dog outside, the far off sound of traffic, like rain. There was not so much traffic then.
‘Only four sounds? What about the radio and Mrs Roskowski’s baby?’
‘And your stockings,’ I said. I could hear the nylon rasp as she crossed her legs in the dark, sitting on the end of my bed.
‘If you listen, you’ll hear your own heart,’ said my mother. I listened, putting my hand to my chest. I can remember what it was like to touch my skin, stretched flat across my ribs. I didn’t believe I would ever have breasts. I was six and inviolate.
‘Listen.’
I heard the bumping of my heart through my fingers. It was slower now my mother was here. It would go on and on and on. My mouth slipped open and I fought to get the words out before sleep swallowed them.
‘– for ever and ever,’ I said, and my heart moved under my fingers like an amen meant for me only.
‘For a long long time,’ said my mother’s voice.
Now I shut my eyes and count the sounds, but there are too many, and besides I don’t want to lie for long with my eyes closed, alone by this city river with its concrete towpath and glaring late afternoon sun. You never know who might be coming.
Then I remember the letters I shoved into the bottom of my case this morning. The postman delivers the post with a rubber band around it, and usually I nick through it as I go out through the hall. I look for bills, and letters from the bank. It’s better not to leave them for Donald, who has the long day to brood over them. The letters drive him out to walk the sea-wall, head down, his fists punched into the bottom of his pockets. He can’t endure it that whatever charge the bank makes, we’ve got to pay. He walks on and on, sunk in himself. When the boys get back from school he flares out at them, but it’s himself he really wants to punish. Even in January he wouldn’t light a fire when he was alone in the house. He walks too much, and he’s too thin to keep warm. One week I bought him a tin of chocolate fingers.
‘Don’t let the boys get their hands on them. They’re for you.’
‘What do you think I am, Simone? A child?’
Once we ate chocolate fingers in bed. I sucked mine until they were clean of chocolate, and the pale centre dissolved into paste that spread out over my tongue. I wrote my name on his belly in chocolate. It was one of those things you do when love seems to be changing, becoming domestic. But I saw that Donald disliked it. He doesn’t like Valentine cards, and pet names between couples make him gag. He wants everything in life to have a hard, adult line around it. One of those men who’d rather fuck than kiss.
I open my case and take out the letters. Strange that I didn’t notice the airmail envelope. I turn it over but there’s no name or address on the back. It comes from the States, where my friend Louise lives, but this letter is typed. The postmark is wrong too. She lives in Seattle. This letter comes from New York. But as I open the letter, I still believe that it will be from Louise, the more so as the envelope is big and square and reinforced with card. She uses envelopes like that when she sends me pictures of the children.
I was right. There are photographs inside, glossy as if they’ve been developed yesterday. All the noises I’ve been listening to narrow to the hiss of blood in my head as I turn the pictures up to the light and look close.
There is a girl with long hair in a cheesecloth dress, with a bead necklace dangling between her breasts. Her breasts show beneath the cotton cheesecloth. They are round and full, and unsupported. She sits on a wooden step and behind her there is the dark of a doorway. But she is out in the light of a summer sun. Her hair shines the way my children’s hair shines. She smiles, not at the camera but at someone off to one side. Her feet are slipped into thong sandals and the hem of the long dress is wrapped around her ankles. I look at the sandals and immediately I remember the sensation of the thong between my big toe and the next. At first it rubbed my skin raw. When I put the sandles on and began to walk the thong of leather burned me. I stuck on BandAids, but we were in and out of the water all day and the skin beneath the plaster grew white and puffed. So I left off the BandAid and let the salt harden my skin. And after a while the thongs didn’t hurt any more.
There are two more pictures underneath. In one I am kneeling by a campfire, broiling fish. I duck round at the camera, and grin. The background is hazed by a spiral of heat coming up from the midday fire. In the last picture I am swimming, on my back, only the bobble of my face visible, with my head sleeked back. There is so much light reflected off the water that I seem to bounce on it.
It’s Michael’s friend. Calvin. It must be. Calvin’s the one who had the camera. He was always taking pictures. He
must have kept them. Maybe he didn’t even develop them till now. And now he’s sent them to me. Why?
There’s a thick panic in me. The letter has slipped onto my knee, a folded letter on thin paper, with typed words showing through. I pull it open. For a moment I can’t read it. I just can’t read it in a way that makes sense of the shapes I know are words. I look at my hands holding the letter. There are litue white scars on the back of my hands. Battery-acid scars.
I burned my hands two years ago, trying to help a woman out of a car after an accident. She was upside-down, hanging from her seatbelt, and she wasn’t injured. The smell of petrol was spreading everywhere, and I was afraid of fire. Battery acid had leaked out, but I didn’t notice. It was a country road and I came on the accident like coming on a dream. Everything around me stopped moving. I didn’t notice I’d put on my brakes. My door clunked. There was metal skewed across the road and then my mind separated it out into two cars. Everything about them seemed to be in the wrong place. After a second I began to understand where the doors were and that there was a caved-in roof and a body hanging upside-down in one car, suspended by its seat-belt. In the other car there didn’t seem to be anyone. The air was fresh and bright then there was a smell of burned rubber and an overwhelming smell of petrol. There was perfect silence.
The letter opens with my name.
Simone. Hey, how long is it since I said that name? I said it aloud as I wrote it down. It felt almost like talking to you. You’ll have seen the pictures. Aren’t they pretty? Aren’t you pretty, too? I can’t believe we ever looked like that, can you? Can you see those beads I gave you? I remember I got them in a thrift shop and told you I bought them in a craft market.
Simone, I’ve been searching for you so long. Now you’ve got to help me. I won’t tell you how I found you, because you don’t need to know. It’s been a long time and my life’s not been so good.