‘Nothing only a woman knocked young Nallen off his bike,’ she reported to Alicia when she returned to the house. ‘Is he a Nallen, that boy of Lawless’s?’
‘Or a Keane, is he? Big head on him?’
‘I don’t think he’s a Keane. Someone told me a Nallen. Whoever he is, there’s no harm done.’ She didn’t say she’d seen Mrs Leary because she didn’t want to raise the subject of what had occurred again. She knew that Alicia was right: the bill would keep coming unless she did something about it. Once they’d set out on the course they’d chosen, why should the Learys give up? Alicia didn’t refer to the Learys either but that evening, when they had switched off the television and were preparing to go to bed, Catherine said:
‘I think I’ll pay them. Simplest, that would be.’
With her right hand on the newel of the banister, about to ascend the stairs, Alicia stared in disbelief at her sister. When Catherine nodded and continued on her way to the kitchen she followed her.
‘But you can’t.’ Alicia stood in the doorway while Catherine washed and rinsed the cups they’d drunk their bedtime tea from. ‘You can’t just pay them what isn’t owing.’
Catherine turned the tap off at the sink and set the cups to drain, slipping the accompanying saucers between the plastic bars of the drainer. Tomorrow she would withdraw the same sum from the building-society account and take it herself to the Learys in Brady’s Lane. She would stand there while a receipt was issued.
‘Catherine, you can’t hand out more than two hundred pounds.’
‘I’d rather.’
As she spoke, she changed her mind about the detail of the payment. Matthew had been obliging Leary by paying cash, but there was no need to oblige him any more. She would arrange for the Irish Nationwide to draw a cheque payable to T. P. Leary. She would bring it round to the Learys instead of a wad of notes.
‘They’ve taken you for a fool,’ Alicia said.
‘I know they have.’
‘Leary should go behind bars. You’re aiding and abetting him. Have sense, woman.’
A disappointment rose in Alicia, bewildering and muddled. The death of her own husband had brought an end, and her expectation had been that widowhood for her sister would be the same. Her expectation had been that in their shared state they would be as once they were, now that marriage was over, packed away with their similar mourning clothes. Yet almost palpable in the kitchen was Catherine’s resolve that what still remained for her should not be damaged by a fuss of protest over a confidence trick. The Guards investigating clothes sold at a jumble sale, strangers asked if a house-painter’s wife had bought this garment or that, private intimacies made public: Catherine was paying money in case, somehow, the memory of her husband should be accidentally tarnished. And knowing her sister well, Alicia knew that this resolve would become more stubborn as more time passed. It would mark and influence her sister; it would breed new eccentricities in her. If Leary had not come that day there would have been something else.
‘You’d have the man back, I suppose?’ Alicia said, trying to hurt and knowing she succeeded. ‘You’d have him back in to paint again, to lift the bits and pieces from your dressing-table?’
‘It’s not to do with Leary.’
‘What’s it to do with then?’
‘Let’s leave it.’
Hanging up a tea-towel, Catherine noticed that her fingers were trembling. They never quarrelled; even in childhood they hadn’t. In all the years Alicia had lived in the house she had never spoken in this unpleasant way, her voice rudely raised.
‘They’re walking all over you, Catherine.’
‘Yes.’
They did not speak again, not even to say goodnight. Alicia closed her bedroom door, telling herself crossly that her expectation had not been a greedy one. She had been unhappy in her foolish marriage, and after it she had been beholden in this house. Although it ran against her nature to do so, she had borne her lot without complaint; why should she not fairly have hoped that in widowhood they would again be sisters first of all?
In her bedroom Catherine undressed and for a moment caught a glimpse of her nakedness in her dressing-table looking-glass. She missed his warmth in bed, a hand holding hers before they slept, that last embrace, and sometimes in the night his voice saying he loved her. She pulled her nightdress on, then knelt to pray before she turned the light out.
Some instinct, vague and imprecise, drew her in the darkness on to the territory of Alicia’s disappointment. In the family photographs – some clearly defined, some drained of detail, affected by the sun – they were the sisters they had been: Alicia beautiful, confidently smiling; Catherine in her care. Catherine’s first memory was of a yellow flower, and sunlight, and a white cloth hat put on her head. That flower was a cowslip, Alicia told her afterwards, and told her that they’d gone with their mother to the ruins by the river that day, that it was she who found the cowslip. ‘Look, Catherine,’ she’d said. ‘A lovely flower.’ Catherine had watched in admiration when Alicia paraded in her First Communion dress, and later when boys paid her attention. Alicia was the important one, responsible, reliable, right about things, offered the deference that was an older sister’s due. She’d been a strength, Catherine said after the funeral, and Alicia was pleased, even though she shook her head.
Catherine dropped into sleep after half an hour of wakefulness. She woke up a few times in the night, on each occasion to find her thoughts full of the decision she had made and of her sister’s outraged face, the two tiny patches of red that had come into it, high up on her cheeks, the snap of disdain in her eyes. ‘A laughing-stock,’ Alicia said in a dream. ‘No more than a laughing-stock, Catherine.’
As Catherine lay there she imagined the silent breakfast there would be, and saw herself walking to Brady’s Lane, and Leary fiddling with his cigarette-making gadget, and Mrs Leary in fluffy pink slippers, her stockingless legs mottled from being too close to the fire. Tea would be offered, but Catherine would refuse it. ‘A decenter man never stood in a pair of shoes,’ Leary could be counted upon to state.
She did not sleep again. She watched the darkness lighten, heard the first cars of the day pass on the road outside the house. By chance, a petty dishonesty had made death a potency for her sister, as it had not been when she was widowed herself. Alicia had cheated it of its due; it took from her now, as it had not then.
Catherine knew this intuition was no trick of her tired mind. While they were widows in her house Alicia’s jealousy would be the truth they shared, tonight’s few moments of its presence lingering insistently. Widows were widows first. Catherine would mourn, and feel in solitude the warmth of love. For Alicia there was the memory of her beauty.
Gilbert’s Mother
On November 20th 1989, a Monday, in an area of South London not previously notable for acts of violence, Carol Dickson, a nineteen-year-old shop assistant, was bludgeoned to death between the hours of ten-fifteen and midnight. At approximately nine-fifty she had said goodnight to her friend Lindsayanne Trotter, with whom she had been watching Coronation Street, Brookside and Boon. She set out to walk the seven hundred yards to her parents’ house on the Ralelands estate, but did not arrive. Her parents, imagining that she and Lindsayanne had gone to a disco - – notwithstanding that the night was Monday – went to bed at eleven o’clock, their normal practice whether their daughter had returned to the house or not. Carol Dickson’s body was discovered by a window-cleaner the following morning, lying on fallen leaves and woody straggles of cotoneaster, more than a mile and a half away, in Old Engine Way. Not wishing to become involved in what he described as ‘obviously something tacky’, the window-cleaner remounted his bicycle and rode on; an hour later schoolchildren reported a dead body in the bushes in Old Engine Way. Since the window-cleaner – Ronald Craig Thomas – was known to take this route along Old Engine Way every weekday morning, he was later interrupted in his work and questioned by the police. At midday on that same day, in broadca
sting news of the tragedy, a radio announcer drew attention to this fact, stating that a man was helping the police with their enquiries. He also stated that Carol Dickson had been raped before her death, which was either a misinterpretation of information passed on to him or speculation on his part. It was not true.
Rosalie Mannion, fifty a month ago, peeled potatoes at the sink in her kitchen, listening to The Archers. Middle age suited her features; her round, pretty face had taken charge of what wrinkles had come, by chance distributing them favourably. Still a slight figure, she had in no way run to fat; the grey in her hair lent it a distinction that had not been there before. Her brown eyes had lost only a little of the luminosity that had been distinctive in Rosalie’s childhood.
‘Hullo,’ she called out, hearing her son’s footsteps on the stairs. She didn’t catch Gilbert’s reply because of the chatter of voices on the radio, but she knew he would have made one because he always did. The Archers ’ music came on, and then there was talk about irradiated food.
At the time of her divorce it was decided that Rosalie should have the house. That was sixteen years ago, in 1973. There hadn’t been a quarrel about the house, nor even an argument. It was Gilbert’s home; it was only fair that Gilbert’s life should be disrupted as slightly as possible. So 21 Blenheim Avenue, SW15, was made over to her, while the man she’d been married to joined another woman in a Tudor-style property near Virginia Water. Rosalie returned to the botanical research she’d been engaged in before her marriage but after three years she found herself so affected by tiredness that she gave it up. She worked part-time now, in a shop that sold furniture fabrics.
At the back of Rosalie’s mind was the comforting feeling that 21 Blenheim Avenue would one day become Gilbert’s livelihood. She planned to convert the attics and the first floor, making them into self-contained flats. She and Gilbert would easily find room to spread themselves on the ground floor, which would of course retain the garden, and after her death that pattern would continue, and there would be an income from what Gilbert’s father had invested on his behalf. Gilbert, she knew, would never marry. At present he worked in an architect’s office – filing drawings, having photocopies made, taking the correspondence to be franked at the post office, delivering packages or collecting them, making tea and coffee, tidying. In the evenings Rosalie heard about the inspirations Gilbert had had about rearranging the contents of the drawings’ cabinets or heard that Kall Kwik were cheaper than Instant Action by twopence a sheet. ‘Oh, great,’ was all anyone at the office ever said apparently; but his mother listened to the details.
‘Was everything all right today?’ she asked when he came downstairs again on the evening of November 21st. He rooted in the kitchen drawers for knives and forks and table-mats.
‘Mega,’ he said, telling her about his day while he made the mustard.
He assembled the cutlery and the table-mats with the galleons on them, and took a tray into the dining-room, where he set the table and turned the television on. They always ate watching the television, but not with plates on their knees, which both of them disliked. They sat side by side at the table and when they’d finished Gilbert helped to wash up and then usually went out, walking to the Arab Boy or the Devonshire Arms, sometimes driving over to the Bull or the Market Gardener. Rosalie had often listened while he explained that he liked to relax in this way after his day’s work; that he liked having people around him, while being alone himself; that he liked the sound of voices, and music if someone played the juke-box. He didn’t drink much; cider because he didn’t care for beer, a couple of half pints in the course of an evening. He often told her that also. He told her everything, Gilbert said, looking at her steadily, his tone of voice indicating that this was not true.
The window-cleaner, Ron, had been reprimanded by the police inspector in charge of the case, and later by a sergeant and by a woman constable. The body in the cotoneaster could have been still alive, he was told; it hadn’t been, but it easily could have. It was the duty of any citizen to report something of that nature, instead of which he’d callously ridden off.
Ron, who happened to be the same age as Gilbert Mannion – twenty-five - replied that he had a contract: the shop windows in Disraeli Street and Lower Street had to be washed by nine o’clock; if he delayed, either in the work itself or on his journey to it, that deadline would not be met. As well as which, he had been unnerved by the sight of a half-dressed girl lying all twisted up like that, her two eyes staring at him; no one like that could be alive, he maintained.
For five hours the police had worried about Ron Thomas. He had previous convictions, for petty larceny and damage to property. But there was still nothing to connect him with the crime that had been committed, beyond the fact that he’d failed to report it. In reprimanding him on that count, the inspector, the sergeant and the woman constable managed to assuage their impatience and frustration. The night before, between the hours of ten-fifteen and midnight, Ron Thomas’s whereabouts were firmly accounted for. ‘You appear to be a brute, Thomas,’ the inspector pronounced in a take-it-or-leave-it voice, and turned his attention to a silver-coloured Vauxhall that had been noticed in the vicinity.
A woman called Mathers had seen it, as had a couple who’d been kissing in a doorway. The car drove down Old Engine Way earlier in the evening, nine or so it would have been, then turned into a cul-de-sac – Stables Lane – where it remained parked for half an hour, although no one had emerged. Mrs Mathers, who lived in Stables Lane, heard the engine of a car and went to the window to look. The headlights had been switched off; Mrs Mathers had the feeling that whoever was in the vehicle was up to no good and remarked as much to her sister. The couple in the doorway said that when the headlights came on again the car turned very slowly in the cul-de-sac; as it emerged into Old Engine Way, they were dazzled by its lights for a moment; they couldn’t see its occupant.
‘Occupants more like,’ the inspector wearily corrected when the couple had left. ‘Some slag on the game.’
Even so, a description of the Vauxhall was put together, its bodywork scraped and rusty, its radio aerial twisted into a knot: within minutes, calls came in from all over London, of silver-coloured Vauxhalls with such distinguishing features. Some of the calls were malicious – the opportunity seized to settle old scores against the owners of such vehicles; others led nowhere. But a woman, phoning from a call-box, said that a friend of hers had been driven to Stables Lane the night before, at the time in question. The woman gave neither her name nor her profession, only adding that her friend had been driven to Stables Lane because there was a family matter to be discussed in the car and Stables Lane was quiet. It was assumed that this was the prostitute or part-time prostitute suggested by the inspector; as with Ron Thomas, interest in the silver-coloured Vauxhall was abandoned.
Gilbert was dark-haired, five foot eight tall, sparely made. His features were neat, a neat mouth and nose, brown eyes very like his mother’s, high cheekbones. Everything about Gilbert went together; even his voice – soft and unemphatic – belonged to a whole. The most distinctive thing about him was that – for no apparent reason, and even when he was not being loquacious – his presence in a room could not be overlooked; and often his presence lingered after he had left.
When Gilbert was two there had been an intensity in his gaze that Rosalie considered strange. Staring at the leg of a chair or at his own foot, he managed not to blink for minutes on end. He made no sound, and it was this she found unnerving. He took to examining, very closely, the palms of his hands. He splayed his fingers the way an old man might, and still in silence appeared to search the skin for flaws. Then, as abruptly as it all began, the staring ceased. But when he was five certain small objects from the kitchen disappeared – teaspoons, egg-cups, a potato-peeler. They were never found.
When he was nine Gilbert underwent psychiatric attention. The immediate reason for this was because one day he did not return from school. He should have returned on t
he bus, travelling with a handful of other children who lived in the same neighbourhood. Later that afternoon the police were informed, but Gilbert wasn’t found and there were no reports of his having been seen anywhere. At half-past seven the next morning he rang the bell of 21 Blenheim Avenue, having spent the night in the basement of a block of flats. He gave his mother no explanation. Silence replaced his normal eagerness to communicate, as it had when he had first begun to examine his hands and when the kitchen objects disappeared.
Soon after that Gilbert refused to do the homework he was set and took to sitting, silent and still, in the classroom, refusing to open his books or even to take them out of his satchel. When asked, he again offered no explanation. The doggedness that was to characterize Gilbert in adult life began then: a psychiatrist declared that the child believed he was being deprived of certain rights, and a psychoanalyst – some time later – read the trouble similarly, while presenting it with his own professional variation and an adjustment of jargon. Gilbert, fourteen in 1978, spent that year in a centre devoted to the observation of erratic behavioural tendencies. ‘Gilbert’ll be encouraged to share his difficulties with us,’ a man with a beard told Rosalie, adding vaguely: ‘And of course there’ll be regular counselling.’ But when Gilbert returned to 21 Blenheim Avenue he was the same as he’d been before except that he’d grown almost two inches and possessed a noticeable fuzz of down on his upper lip and chin. Since the time he’d refused to co-operate in school he had successfully taught himself mathematics, Latin, geography, French and rudimentary German. He read voraciously, mainly history and historical biographies; in correctly spelt, grammatical prose he wrote long essays and talked to Rosalie about Cavour and Charlemagne and various treaties and land settlements. In 1984, when he was twenty, he disappeared for a week. At the end of the following year he disappeared for longer, but sent Rosalie picture postcards from a number of South Coast seaside resorts, saying he was OK, working in hotels. Later he didn’t elaborate on that, and the next time he disappeared there were cards from the same area; when he returned he had acquired a Skoda. His mother never discovered when and where he had learnt to drive, or in what manner he had obtained the licence she discovered in one of his dressing-table drawers. He worked for a while in the potting department of a jam factory before moving to the architect’s office, which he said was a more interesting place to be. A social worker – a conscientious woman who had known Gilbert during his time in the behavioural centre – still occasionally visited him, coming to the house on Saturday mornings, when he didn’t have to go to work. Talks excessively about photocopying, she noted once, and felt it was too harsh to add that Gilbert’s loquaciousness was very boring to listen to. In the end, remarking to Rosalie that her son did not appear to be benefiting from her counselling and had settled well into his employment, she ceased her Saturday-morning visits. Seems satisfactory, she noted. Gives no trouble.