Rosalie did not share that sanguine view. She did not believe her son was satisfactory. She had not believed it for a long time, and was aware that the afternoon he had failed to return from school was a single bead in the chain of unease that was beginning to form. When he had been taken into the behavioural centre her hope was that he would remain there indefinitely. ‘Now, let’s try to discover why you wish that, Mrs. Mannion,’ one of the staff had pressed her, his manner loftily clinical. But when she said it was simply something she felt, she was brought up sharply. It was pointed out to her that the centre was for observation and study, and the accumulation of case histories: in that respect it was doing well by Gilbert, but it stood to reason he could not remain there. Her son was fortunate to have her, she was informed. She had a role, that same lofty manner insisted, without words. She was, after all, the mother.
On the evening of Tuesday, November 21st Gilbert helped with the washing-up as usual, and then said he intended to drive over to the Bull public house. He reminded his mother where it was, as he often did: at the corner of Upper Richmond Road and Sheen Lane.
‘I’ll not stay long,’ he said.
On the nine o’clock television News a picture was shown of the straggling cotoneaster and the dead leaves where Carol Dickson’s body had lain. Carol’s mother, appealing for witnesses to come forward, broke down in the middle of what she was saying; the camera lingered on her distress.
Rosalie turned the television off, not moving from where she sat, using the remote control. For the moment she couldn’t even remember if Gilbert had gone out last night, then she remembered that he had and had come back earlier than usual. It was always the News, on the radio or the television, that prompted her dread. When a fire was said to have been started deliberately, or a child enticed, or broken glass discovered in baby-food jars in a supermarket, the dread began at once — the hasty calculations, the relief if time and geography ruled out involvement. More than once, before she became used to it, she had gone to lie trembling on her bed, struggling to control the frenzy that threatened. The second time he sent his picture postcards, her mocking little screen had shown a burnt-out dance hall, fourteen fatalities obscured by blankets in a Brighton car park. There had been a fire — deliberately started also, so the News suspected — on a cross-channel ferry four days after Gilbert had announced, ‘I’ll just take the Skoda here and there.’ He had been away when a branch of the Halifax Building Society was held up by a gunman who left his weapon on the counter, a water-pistol as it was afterwards discovered. He had been away when an old woman was tied to a chair in her council flat and only an alarm clock stolen from her, which reminded Rosalie of the teaspoons and egg-cups and the potato-peeler. She was certain a kind of daring came into it, even if the chances he took were loaded in his favour: he did not place himself in danger, he had a right to survive his chosen acts of recklessness, he had a right to silence. He would not be caught.
Last night he had come back earlier than usuaclass="underline" again, unable to help herself, she established that. But the recollection hardly made a difference. As soon as she’d seen the place where the body had been and noted the tired bewilderment in the police inspector’s eyes, she knew there was a mystery; that weeks, or months, would pass without progress, that the chances were the crime would remain unsolved. She knew, as well, that if she went to Gilbert’s room she’d find not a single leaf of cotoneaster, no titbit taken from the girl’s clothing. There wouldn’t be a scratch anywhere on Gilbert, nor a tear in his clothes, nor a speck of blood in his Skoda.
It had never been said that Rosalie’s marriage failed because of Gilbert, but often during the sixteen years that had passed since the divorce she wondered if somehow this could be so. Had she, even then — when Gilbert was only nine — been half destroyed by the nagging of her fears, made unattractive, made limp, wrung out by an obsession that spread insidiously? None of that was said: the other woman was the reason and the cause. An irresistible love was what was spoken of.
Rosalie had often since considered that the irresistible love had picked up the fragments that were already there. Hidden at the time — like something beneath a familiar stone, something that had arrived without being noticed as a danger — was the reason and the cause. This view was strengthened by subsequent events. Since the divorce there had been kindness from men who liked her, theatre visits and tête-à-tête dinners, hints of romance. But there had always been a fizzling-out, caution creeping in. She tried on all such occasions not to talk about her son, but she knew that he was somehow there anyway, and dread is hard to hide. It intensified her solitude, spread nerviness and was exhausting. In the fabrics shop, when voices all around her were saying what a terrible thing, it wasn’t easy to keep her hands from shaking.
‘I’ve brought you back the Evening Standard,’ Gilbert said, smiling at her. It was a habit of his to pick up newspapers in public houses. He played a game sometimes, watching the people who were reading them, trying to guess which one would be left behind. He never bought a newspaper himself.
‘Thank you, dear,’ she said, returning his smile. I believe Gilbert has stolen a car, she had written to his father, who phoned as soon as he received the letter, listening without interrupting to everything she said. But he’d pointed out, quite gently, that she was merely guessing, that it was suspicion, nothing more.
‘Cake?’ Gilbert said. ‘A Mr. Kipling’s, have we?’
She said there was a cake in the kitchen, in the Quality Street tin.
‘Tea?’ he offered.
She shook her head. ‘No, not tonight, dear.’
He didn’t leave the room, telling her instead about his visit to the public house. He had drunk half a pint of cider and watched the other drinkers. Two girls were crawling all over a man with a moustache, a man who was much older than they were. The girls were drunk, shrill when they laughed or spoke. The red, white-spotted skirt of one of them had ridden up so far that Gilbert could see her panties. Blue the panties were.
‘Funny, that,’ Gilbert said. ‘The way she didn’t mind.’
On the front of the Evening Standard she could see a half-page photograph of Carol Dickson, not a particularly pretty girl, her mouth clenched tight in a grin, bright blonde hair. She might have guessed he’d bring in the Evening Standard; she would have if she’d thought about it. ‘You’re an imaginative woman,’ one of the experts she’d pleaded with had stated, fingering papers on his desk. ’Better, really, to be down to earth in a case like this.’
In the public house an old man had bothered him, he said. ‘Busy tonight, ‘ the old man had remarked.
Gilbert had agreed, moving slightly so that he could watch the girls, but the old man was still in his way.
‘Fag, dear?’ the old man offered, holding out a packet of Benson & Hedges.
She could always guess, Rosalie sometimes thought: what would happen next, how he wouldn’t refer to the girl on the front of the Evening Standard, how the panic would softly gather inside her and harden without warning into a knot, how the dryness in her mouth would make speech difficult.