Moses sat at the kitchen table as Auntie B put the finishing touches to the evening meal. Outside the lawn had turned blue, and birds clamoured from the webbed branches of the cedar tree. Uncle Stan stalked in and out of the room, ransacking cupboards for things of no importance.
‘How was your journey up?’ The floral print of Auntie B’s dress tightened across her wide back as she stooped to check the oven.
‘Not too bad. The trouble was, I went out with some friends last night, to celebrate, and I think I drank a bit too much.’ Even now, Moses was conscious of having to imitate good humour.
‘Well,’ Auntie B said, ‘it was your birthday, after all. People often get a bit tipsy on their birthdays, don’t they?’
A bit tipsy. Moses smiled to himself. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I feel a bit better now.’
Auntie B twirled round, her eyebrows high on her forehead, her mouth the shape of a lozenge. ‘Would you like a drink? Hair of the dog?’
It was as if she had learned this last phrase from some book without ever having been able to imagine how she could apply it to her own life but here, suddenly, was the chance, and she had taken it, and felt bright, naughty.
‘No thanks, Auntie B. Coffee’s perfect.’ He drained his cup to prove it.
Auntie B hovered with the percolator. ‘Another cup?’
‘Yes, please.’
Uncle Stan bustled into the kitchen, eyebrows bristling. ‘Where’s that magazine?’
Auntie B turned the upper half of her body and, beautifully bland, watched Uncle Stan as he began to pull drawers open. ‘What magazine?’ she said.
‘You know the one I mean,’ said Uncle Stan, in some kind of agony.
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Oh, come on, poppet.’ In an excess of irritation, he finally looked at her.
The corners of Auntie B’s mouth tucked neatly under her round cheeks. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Stanley. I don’t know where your silly magazine is.’
Uncle Stan sighed dramatically and hurled himself from the room. Moses grinned at Auntie B.
‘He’s always losing things,’ she said, one eye on the door.
Nothing had changed, Moses thought. Uncle Stan had to worry and pester. Auntie B needed somebody who she could gently scold, hold up to ridicule, and then later, Moses suspected, draw towards her white upholstered bosom.
Two comfortable days went by — birthday presents, meals, TV. Auntie B produced endless cups of tea and coffee, and was constantly inventing excuses to cook or eat. Uncle Stan griped about money, aches and pains, old age.
It wasn’t until Sunday evening that they broached the subject that they had, in their own meandering way, been leading up to.
‘Well, shall I go and get it then?’ Joints cracking, Uncle Stan rose out of his armchair.
Auntie B scarcely glanced up from the news. ‘Why are you asking me, Stanley?’
Uncle Stan let out a rasp of exasperation. Life could be such a bugger. He left the room and returned five minutes later with a suitcase. He placed the suitcase on the coffee-table.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘this suitcase was left to you by your real parents, Moses. Don’t know what’s inside it. Haven’t got an earthly. None of my business, really. All these years it’s been up there in the attic, getting dustier and dustier, waiting for you to be twenty-five. Well, now you are, so you’d better have it.’
Moses listened carefully as Uncle Stan told him what little he knew about the suitcase. Strange how familiar it seemed to him, though he had probably never seen it before. He picked it up and turned it round in his hands. It was as if it had once occupied a space in his memory, only to fade with time until it became so dim as to be invisible. The blank space had remained, meaningless until solved, like a riddle. A space that the suitcase, reappearing again like this, fleshed out, filled in, fitted.
One foot six by two foot six. Old leather, black where scarred. Battered brass catches. No tags or stickers, though. No marks of identification. And dusty enough to write your name on. So he did. Moses, he wrote.
He didn’t open it that night. He waited until he got back to The Bunker the next day. On the journey down he noticed how light it was, almost as though there was nothing inside. That would be funny, he thought.
He opened a bottle of wine and put some music on. He placed the suitcase on the sofa. He turned the tiny key in the locks, first the left, then the right, and snapped the catches open. He lifted the lid.
A smell drifted up — something like dusty roses. A scent, perhaps. But a scent that had been preserved, that had aged. He parted the tissue-paper.
The contents of the suitcase were as follows:
1 dress
1 pair of red shoes (child’s size 2)
1 photograph album.
That was it.
Unfinished Histories (1972)
It was after ten o’clock at night. Arms pinned behind his back, almost as if handcuffed, Chief Inspector Peach stood at his office window. The storm was building. Staggered flashes of lightning took pictures of his massive silhouette. The trees over the road heaved, strained, testing the strength of their roots. Rain hissed down through the light of a single street-lamp, fine as silver wire. In the intervals between thunderclaps a typewriter could be heard, scratching and clicking beyond the door like an insect.
Storms made Peach think. Their explosions loosened the order in his mind. Thoughts long buried came tumbling down. He turned away from the window and crossed the room to his desk, his boots deliberate on the wooden floor. The angle of his head, lowered in thought, blurred the line of his jaw; his double chin had, with the years, almost doubled again. He sank heavily into his chair.
There were times when he saw himself as a premier surrounded by dissidents, when he saw his office as the object of endless plots and conspiracies. Deep down, he knew this was nonsense, morbid nonsense, and an injustice both to himself and his colleagues, but then the sound of thunder came to him, unfurling miles away, rolling across the countryside, breaking against the glass of his window –
He still remembered — how could he forget? — the weeks in 1959 when that feeling had washed over him, sucked him down, when no amount of struggling could bring him back to the surface. Though he had trusted nobody, he had been forced to turn the running of the village over to three of his sergeants while he retired to bed — to rest, recuperate, re-think. And there had been moments when he doubted whether he would ever return.
The breakdown –
Sheets of glass, infinite and tough, between himself and everything else. Sheets of glass thickening, thickening. Until he couldn’t hear anything any more, until he couldn’t make himself heard. He didn’t want to think about it. He had worked through it, that was the main thing. When the feeling came now, he took it for what it was — the accumulating weight of responsibility, a sign of fatigue, his mind telling him to ease off. He obeyed. At sixty-four, he couldn’t afford to go through all that again. He might really never come back this time.