She heard her mother’s voice. She spoke so softly that Philippa hardly caught the words: “Is what I did to you so much more difficult to forgive than what I did to that child?”
She didn’t reply. She snatched up her shoulder bag and made for the door. Then she turned and spoke to her mother for the last time: “I don’t want to see you ever again. I wish they’d hanged you ten years ago. I wish you were dead.”
11
She controlled her crying until she was out of Delaney Street. Then it burst out in a scream of agony. Hair flying loose, she ran wildly through the rain, her shoulder bag bumping against her side. Instinctively, she turned up Lisson Grove seeking the dark solitude of the canal towpath. But the gate had long since been closed for the night. She pounded against it, but she knew that it wouldn’t yield. On she ran, her face streaming with mingled tears and rain. Seeing no one, careless now which way she ran, almost howling with pain. Suddenly a spasm of cramp twisted like a knife in her side. Doubled up, she gasped, gulping in the streaming air like a drowning woman. She clutched at some nearby railings, waiting for the pain to pass. Beyond the railings were tall trees and, even through the rain, she could smell the canal. She checked her crying and listened. The night was full of small secretive noises. And then there came a howl, alien and eerie, louder and wilder even than her own misery, answering pain with pain. It was the cry of an animal; she must be close to the Regent’s Park zoo.
She was calmer now. Her tears were still flowing but in a gentle, unbroken stream. She walked on through the night. The city was streaked with light, bleeding with light. The headlamps of the cars dazzled on the road and the crimson pools of the traffic lights lay on the surface like blood. The rain was falling in a solid wall of water, drenching her clothes, plastering her hair against her face and eyes; she could taste it on her lips as salty as the sea.
It seemed to her that her mind was a black and seething dungeon, too many thoughts fighting for air, pressing each other down, tortuous elongated thoughts writhing in rank darkness. And from that dense confusion rose the thin misery of a child’s cry. It wasn’t the peevish complaint one heard in supermarkets; this was a desolation of terror and anguish not to be comforted with a packet of sweets at the check-out. She told herself that she mustn’t panic; to panic would be to go mad. She must sort out her thoughts, arrange them, impose order on chaos. But first she had to stop that dreadful crying. She put her hands up to her throat and squeezed, strangling the child into silence, and when she released her hands the crying had stopped.
They hadn’t, in all their weeks together, once spoken of the dead child. They hadn’t talked about the child’s parents. How much had they cared? How long had they grieved? Perhaps they now had other children and this long-dead, violated child was only a painful, half-rejected memory. Grief fills the room up of my absent child. The child was dead. That fact had been less important to her than whether her mother had kept the kitchen clean. Her mother had killed a child, had clamped her small hand to a pram and dragged her faster and faster, until she fell under the spinning wheels. But that was a different child, another place. She had killed the child’s father, too. He had come across the lawn in the summer sunshine, beautiful as a god, to where they used to meet in the rose garden at Pennington. And now he, too, was dead. She had buried him in the moist drifts of the forest. But that was someone else’s father. Hers was under quicklime in an anonymous grave in a prison yard. Or was that only how they buried executed murderers? What did they do with the bodies of felons who died in prison? Did they carry them out secretly at night, cheaply coffined, to be disposed of at the nearest crematorium, without any comfortable words, the furnace flaring like the flames of hell? And what did they do with the ashes? That neatly packaged residue of ground bone must have been buried somewhere. She had never thought to ask, and her mother had never told her. Parthenophil is lost, and I would see him for he is like to something I remember a great while since, a long long time ago.
Suddenly there shone before her the glowing sign of Warwick Avenue Underground Station. The wide road, lined with its Italianate houses and stuccoed villas, ran with liquid light. As she half ran, half walked down the deserted pavement, the overhanging bushes in the front gardens rained a shower of white sodden petals and torn leaves over her hair. And here, at last, was the canal and she was standing on the elegant wrought-iron bridge which spanned the dividing waterway. At each corner of the bridge the high nineteenth-century lamps, each on its pedestal, cast a trembling light over the canal basin, the leafy island, the painted longboats moored at the canal wall, the long dark length of tree-shadowed water. Where the lamps shone brightest the plane trees seemed to burn with flickering green flames and below her, where the rain spurted from the roof of a longboat, there gleamed a brightly painted enamel jug filled with storm-tossed Michaelmas daisies.
Behind her the unceasing wheels of the cars swished past, slicing through the running gutters and hurling fountains of spray against the bridge. There were no pedestrians in sight and the avenues on each side of the canal were deserted. From the houses the lights shone out from balconied windows, illuminating the plane trees and laying a shivering path of light over the sluggish water.
She was still wearing the jumper her mother had knitted for her. It was sodden and weighted with rain, the high collar cold against her neck. She pulled it over her head then, reaching up, she held it out and let it gently drop over the parapet and into the canal. For a minute it lay on the surface of the water illumined by the lamplight, looking as frail and transparent as gossamer. The two sleeves were stretched out; it could have been a drowning child. Then, almost imperceptibly, it floated out of the path of light, sinking slowly as it moved, until her swollen watching eyes could only imagine its pattern on the dark water.
With the jumper gone she felt a physical sense of release. She was wearing nothing now but her trousers and a thin cotton shirt. The rain drenched it so that it clung to her like a second skin. And so, unencumbered, she walked on, under the great concrete arches of the Westway and south towards Kensington. She had no awareness of time, no sense of direction; all that mattered was that she should keep walking. She hardly noticed when the rain changed to slow, ponderous drops, then finally stopped, when the noisy bus routes gave way to quiet squares.
But at last she walked herself into exhaustion. It hit her suddenly, as unexpected and violent as a body blow. Her legs sagged and she tottered to the side of the pavement and grasped at a row of iron railings which surrounded the garden of a wide square. But the weariness which cramped her body had released her mind; thought was once again coherent, disciplined, rational. She leaned her head against the railings and felt the iron, parallel red-hot rods, branding her forehead. There was a privet hedge behind the railings; its pungent greenness filled her nostrils and spiked her cheeks. The wave of exhaustion flowed through her, leaving in its wake a gentle tiredness which was almost pleasurable.
Consciousness slipped away. She was jerked back to awareness by a high-pitched yell. The night was suddenly loud with running feet and raucous voices. From the far corner a gang of youths erupted into the square and reeled in a disorderly stream across the road to the garden. They were obviously drunk. Two of them, clutched together, were bawling a plaintive, discordant song. The others shouted meaningless staccato chants, slogans and tribal battle cries in a hoarse, broken cacophony of menace. Terrified that they would see her, that her shoulder bag, she herself, would present too easy a spoil, Philippa strained back against the railings. The gang had no clear purpose or direction. It was possible that they would stagger again into the road and miss seeing her.
But the voices grew louder. They were coming her way. One of them flung a toilet roll. It spun over the railings and into the garden, just missing her head. Its pale, undulating tail, transparent as a stream of light, floated and turned on the night breeze then came to rest on the surface of the hedge, light as a cobweb. And still they came, heads bobbing above
the privet. She began to walk quickly away from them, still keeping close to the railings, but as soon as she moved they saw her. They gave a great shout, the jarring, unrelated voices raised in the united bellow of triumph.
She broke into a run, but they pounded after her, more purposeful and less drunk than she had expected. She forgot her tiredness in her fear, but she knew that she couldn’t sustain the pace for long. She sped across the wide street and down a road of tall, decaying houses. She could hear her feet slapping the pavement, could see from the corner of her eyes the flashing railings, could feel the wild rhythmic drumming of her heart. They were still behind her, shouting less now, reserving energy for the chase. Suddenly she came to another road turning off to the left. She swerved down it and saw with a gasp of relief that a gate in the railings was open. She almost threw herself down the steps and into the dark, evil-smelling area, almost colliding with three battered dustbins. She squeezed herself behind them and crouched in the narrow space under the flight of steps leading to the front door. Bent almost double she folded her arms over her chest, trying to stifle the pounding of her heart. How could they fail to be drawn to that insistent drumming? But the running feet hesitated, then clattered past, then died. From down the street she heard their bay of frustrated anger. Then they broke again into the disorganized shouts and singing. There was to be no search. They probably thought that she lived in the street and had gained the safety of her own home. More probably they were too drunk to think clearly. Once the quarry had gone to earth their interest died.
She stayed there long after their voices had faded away, crouched under the curve of the brick roof. She felt herself confined in a dark stinking cell, breathing dust and the spent breath of long-dead captives, bereft of the sky. The three malodorous dustbins, their shape imagined rather than seen, blocking her escape as effectively as a bolted door. There came to her in the darkness no blinding revelation, no healing of the spirit, only a measure of painful self-knowledge. From the moment of her counselling she had thought of no one but herself. Not of Hilda, who had so little to give but asked so little in return and needed that little so much. Hilda, who might reasonably have expected a greater return for those difficult years of caring than occasional help with the dining-room flowers. Not of Maurice, as arrogant and self-deceiving as herself, but who had done his best for her, had given with generosity even if he couldn’t give with love, and somehow found the kindness to shield her from the worst knowledge. Not of her mother. What had she been but a purveyor of information, the living pattern of her own physical life, the victim of her patronage and self-love? She told herself that she had to learn humility. She was not sure that the lesson lay within her competence, but this stinking corner of the sleeping city into which she had crept like a derelict was as good a place as any in which to begin. She knew, too, that what bound her to her mother was stronger than hate, or disappointment or the pain of rejection. Surely this need to see her again, to be comforted by her, was the beginning of love; and how could she have expected that there could be love without pain?
After a time she eased herself out of the area and again breathed the cool night air and saw the stars. She walked on, almost light-headed with tiredness, searching for the names of streets. They told her nothing except that she was in the west ten district. She found herself in another square lying quiet and secret under the surging sky. In her mind the city seemed to stretch forever, a silent half-derelict immensity, plague-ridden and abandoned, from which all life had fled except for that band of scavenging louts. Now they too would have staggered into some filthy area, huddled together in death. She was completely alone. Behind the peeling stucco, the tall balustrades, lay the rotting dead. The stench of the city’s decay rose like a miasma from the basement areas.
And then she saw the woman walking quickly but lightly across the square towards her on high-arched elegant feet. She wore a long pale dress and a stole. Her yellow hair was piled high. Everything about her was pale, the floating dress, her hair, her night-bleached skin. As they came abreast, Philippa asked: “Could you please tell me where I am? I’m trying to get to Marylebone Station.”
The voice that answered her was pleasant, cheerful, cultured.
“You’re in Moxford Square. Walk down this street for about a hundred yards. Take the first turning on the left and you’ll find yourself at Ladbroke Grove Underground. I think you’ll have missed the last train but you might pick up a late-night bus or a taxi.”
Philippa said: “Thank you. If I can get to Ladbroke Grove I know my way.”
The woman smiled and walked on across the square. The encounter had been so unexpected and yet so ordinary that Philippa found herself wondering whether her tired brain had conjured up an apparition. Who was she and where was she going, this confident walker of the night? What friend or lover had deposited her here, unescorted, in the early hours? From what party had she come or was she escaping? But the woman’s directions proved correct. Five minutes later Philippa found herself at Ladbroke Grove and began walking southwards towards home.
Delaney Street was silent and empty, sleeping as quietly as a village street beneath the unthreatening sky. The rain-washed air smelled of the sea. The windows of all the houses were dark except where number 12 showed a faint haze of light behind the drawn curtains. It wasn’t bright enough for the ceiling light. Her mother must be still awake, or if she had fallen asleep, must have done so before she remembered to switch off the bedside lamp. She hoped that she would still be awake. She wondered what they would say to each other. She knew that she wouldn’t be able to say that she was sorry, not yet; she had never said that in all her life. But perhaps it was a beginning that she could feel it. Perhaps, too, her mother would understand without the need of words. She would hold out the key of the front door to her and say: “I must have meant all the time to come back. I didn’t remember to leave you the key.”
She would stand there in her mother’s doorway, and the fact that she was there would be enough. It would say: “I love you. I need you. I have come home.”
12
The bedside lamp was on and in its pool of softened light her mother lay on her back asleep. But there was someone else in the room. Sitting slumped forward at the foot of the bed, hands between his knees, was a man, white-robed, shimmering with light. He didn’t move or look up as she walked over to the bed. Her mother’s face was perfectly calm. But something strange had happened to her neck. An animal had her by the throat, a small, white, slug-like beast with its pink snout buried in her flesh. Something was eating her alive, burrowing away, tearing out the sinews, voiding its leavings on her white skin. But still she didn’t stir. Philippa turned to the man, and this time she saw in his dangling hands the bloodstained knife. And then she both saw and understood.
He looked so grotesque that her first thought was he was the creature of delirium born of her exhaustion and the phantasmagoria of the night. But she knew that he was real. His being there by her mother’s side was as inevitable as was her death. He was wearing a long raincoat of white transparent plastic, so thin that it clung to him like a film. On his hands were plastic gloves, surgeons’ gloves, clinging to the pale flesh. They were too large for his tiny hands. At the end of each finger the plastic had gummed together and hung in pale flaps as if the skin itself were peeling away. Hiroshima hands. She said: “Take off your gloves, they disgust me. You disgust me.”
Obediently he peeled them off.
He looked up at her, simply as a child craving reassurance: “She won’t bleed. She won’t bleed.”
She moved closer to the bed. Her mother’s eyes were closed. It was considerate of her to die with her eyes closed, but was that something one could choose to do? She tried to recall the pictured dead. It wasn’t difficult; there were so many of them. The minds of her generation were patterned like nursery wallpaper with images of death; violence lay around their cradles. The corpses of Belsen piled like skinned rabbits in ungainly heaps, spike-bellie
d children of Ethiopia and India carrying their hunger like a monstrous foetus, the denuded bodies of soldiers sprawled in the clumsy dishevelment of death, all open-eyed. ‘Tis a fine deceit to pass away in a dream. Indeed I’ve slept with mine eyes open a great while. But her mother’s eyes were closed. Had she gone so gently into her good night? She turned to the man and said fiercely: “Have you touched her?”
He didn’t reply. He made a movement of his bent head. It could have meant yes or no. There was an envelope propped against a small tablet bottle on the bedside table. The flap hadn’t been stuck down. She read: “If God can forgive her death then he will forgive mine. These five weeks have been worth every day of the last ten years. Nothing is your fault. Nothing. This is the better way for me, not just for you. I can die happy because you are alive and I love you. Never be afraid.”
She put the note down on the table and looked again at the man. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, head bowed, the knife drooping from his hands. She took it from him and put it on the table. His hands were small, like a child’s hands, a hamster’s claws. He was beginning to shake and the bed shook with him. Her mother’s body might have been shaking with laughter. She was afraid that the barely closed eyes would jolt open and that she would have to look on death. What was so terrible about grief was not grief itself, but that one got over it. It was strange to learn this truth even before the grieving had begun. She said, more gently: “Come away from her. She won’t bleed. The dead don’t bleed. I got to her before you.”
She took hold of his shoulder and, half lifting him from the bed, led him over to the basket chair. The two-bar electric fire was off, as if her mother had remembered that they needed to save electricity. She switched on a single bar and turned it towards him. She said: “I know who you are. I saw you in Regent’s Park and somewhere else too, somewhere before that. Did you always plan to kill her?”