Holding my sleeve over my mouth and nose to block out the smoke, I reached inside, turning the lock. Tibbot shoved the door then and it gave way easily – whatever had been up against it was gone, but as it swung back there was another rush of scalding air. The bottles of paraffin had showered the room with droplets of oil that flared here and there; the fire was licking high on the coat stand, and black smoke from the charring fabric billowed through the hall, making it hard to see. Nick lay on the floor and above him stood Charles, his hand and temple both bloody. He shook as his eyes met mine. I had no thoughts then but hatred of him. A second later Tibbot pushed me aside and rushed in; but the surge of air from the open doorway made the flames on the rug billow up, and they forced him back, coughing again. We both turned away from the stinging heat, and, when we looked back, Charles was running out through the rear of the house. The flames blew up again as he burst out the back door.
I took my handkerchief from my sleeve, held it over my face so I could breathe in shallow, panting breaths and flew to Nick, winding past the flames on the rug. He was lying on his side, turned away from me. I dropped to my knees and froze at the sight of his blackened face as Tibbot rolled him on to his back and put his head to Nick’s chest. ‘He’s not breathing,’ he said. There were broken pieces of bannister around us, smeared with blood where Charles’s hand had touched it.
‘Nick,’ I rasped, my voice barely loud enough to be heard. On the rug, needles of glass from the broken paraffin bottles glistened in the firelight. ‘Nick, can you hear me?’ I bent to listen for any sound. There was nothing. I felt like I was holding his hand while he stood on a precipice.
‘Look at me!’ Tibbot ordered him, smacking Nick’s cheek lightly. There was no response. ‘Look at me.’ He slapped again, more forcefully this time. I watched for any sign of life. The colour was gone from his skin. Tibbot felt Nick’s wrist for a pulse, searching for it, seemingly unable to find anything.
‘Is he alive?’ I whispered, my heart thudding against my chest so hard that I thought I would break apart. ‘Tell me.’ A spray of oil flared by my hand, burning it. Tibbot glanced at me, a grim look on his face, as he moved rapidly to Nick’s neck to feel for a pulse. Then he started pumping his hands up and down on Nick’s chest, alternated with blowing into his mouth. I sat and watched, wondering if it would ever end. After a while, Tibbot checked Nick’s wrist for a heartbeat, and then his neck again. He went through the cycle of actions again and again, each time feeling for a pulse.
And at the end, for ten, twenty, I don’t know how many seconds, he knelt with his fingers pressed to Nick’s neck, all the while looking at me. And then he slowly sat back and lifted his hand away. ‘No!’ I shouted. My hands searched desperately over Nick’s chest, trying to find the heartbeat that would save us both.
‘I’m sorry,’ Tibbot said quietly.
‘No!’
‘He’s gone.’
‘I won’t… no!’
Without warning, Tibbot grabbed me and dragged me aside, falling against the broken bannister. I looked back to see a bundle of flames and burning fabric tumble to the floor where I had been kneeling, the fire flooding out from it as it hit the boards. The coat rack was now a mass of light and more fell, separating us from Nick. The smoke was getting thicker.
‘We have to get out,’ Tibbot coughed, his chest hacking.
‘He’s–’
‘He’s gone. We have to get out!’
All I could feel was my skin burning. It could have all burned away. And, as I looked up, I saw Hazel in the doorway, standing just as she had done when a policewoman brought her to our house after her mother’s death.
I ran to her, my arms outstretched, turning her so that she couldn’t see the broken form on the floor. She put her arms around me and I felt her tremble with tears that began to wet my own cheeks.
All I could do was stroke her hair and pull her tighter. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ I said. ‘I’ll look after you. I’m here. I’ll look after you.’
39
What do we see, when we see the land ahead? We see endless possibilities. For our nation, our new way of political life presents a land ready to be filled with people and human endeavour.
I walked all the way to Checkpoint Charlie today. I don’t know what I was expecting to see. I stared at the gap covered by that impenetrable curtain of rope, holding Hazel’s letter tightly in my hand.
The paper that she had written on was fine and heavy, the sort we had many years ago for correspondence but no longer use because there’s no call for delicate and mannered words now. She was starting at a new school, and she told me about her teachers and some of the girls in her class. They’re going to be studying The Great Gatsby later in the year, she said, so she’ll be putting the copy that I gave her to good use. She had enclosed a photograph of herself in her new uniform, and I looked at it again in the afternoon light. It was green with gold detailing – so much cheerier than the heavy navy blue on our side. I found that somehow comforting.
Fellowman arranged it all, of course, in return for the name of the doctor in Los Angeles who supplied the drugs to Lorelei. I had expected at least some sort of reaction when I explained that the exit visa was for Hazel, not me, but he remained quite impassive, quite inscrutable, and I had the impression that this was the real Ian Fellowman, not the one I had seen at Mansford Hall. After all, it fits better with what he does. I should probably have guessed earlier, but, what with everyone else playing games, it’s not surprising that one passed me by.
It was from him that I discovered Charles had listened to the telephone conversation between Nick and Adam Cutter the day before Lorelei’s death. Adam, drunk as usual, had told Nick that Lorelei claimed to be carrying his child; and he asked if it were true they had been having an affair. Nick had only cursed her and slammed the telephone down without answering. That was what Adam had considered a confession. Anyone else would have thought Lorelei’s claim to be no more substantial than her other stories but Charles took it to heart.
Such a fool he was for her. How she could make us doubt ourselves.
So the next morning, before he went to work, Charles brought Lorelei some Champagne to toast their emigration to Ireland. While she wasn’t looking, he dosed it with something to end her pregnancy. Common rue from a greengrocer’s, it seems. He found it detailed in one of the practice textbooks. He hadn’t wanted to kill her; the opposite, really – he just wanted the life together that she had promised him.
Fellowman told me all this after the Secs told him. They had found Charles sitting in his flat. I imagine he just wanted someone to listen to him.
Rue. Regret. Two meanings. I went to Southwark Library last week to look it up. There was a battered old volume in which medical students had made notes. ‘Abortifacient effect,’ it said. But it’s hard to get the dose right. Adverse reactions: ‘Gastric pain… renal failure… vasodilation and coagulopathy… systemic failure…’ I didn’t understand it all, but I understood enough. The book also mentioned that it produces little blisters on the skin if you handle it wrongly, so that was probably the rash I saw on Charles’s hand that day at the surgery.