Nancy pulled off her hat, disarranging her hair. She looked faint. ‘It’s too late, far too late.’
Riley watched her, as he’d once gazed into the waters of the Four Lodges. If you kept still, you could see the perch dart around in the green-black water. They were like torn scraps of aluminium foil. Something seemed to move in Nancy’s face. ‘I really wanted to go to Brighton’ — she looked down at the flagstones, the weeds in the cracks, the fag ends — ‘I really fancied the sound of the sea. A walk on the beach. And maybe a stick of rock. It wasn’t too much to ask, was it?’
‘No,’ urged Riley taking her hands, ‘and it still isn’t. We can still make it.’
‘Can we?’
‘We’re selling up, we’re moving out. We’ll leave this place behind.’
Nancy normally didn’t stare. She’d always been demure, one step back, a bit scared. At Lawton’s her shyness had kept her head to the page, even when he’d tapped on the counter. Now she faced him with wide, tired eyes. They were like polythene bags from the tackle shop, full of clear water. Something orange flickered, wanting to get out.
‘Nancy head off home, I’m going to see Prosser.’
Riley moaned as he ran. He knew that Elizabeth had worked out what he was doing when she turned up at Mile End Park. She held up a set of spoons and went through the same routine as Cartwright.
‘But you taught me how to do it.’ He was mocking her.
She frowned — a bit like Nancy a few moments ago — while he reminded her of that conference in her chambers. ‘You can keep the spoons,’ he said, and she sagged as if he’d squeezed her heart.
He ran even faster. All that manoeuvring, that hunger to win back something, belonged by a stream of deceit — the one he’d tasted with Nancy He just didn’t want it any more. It lay behind him — with every stride. ‘I’m going to Brighton,’ he shouted, knocking into some codgers by a newsstand. His arms flung out: they were in his way. The whole world was in his way He crashed against a bin, and spun, thinking Nancy had dropped a notch: she wasn’t in the usual place, and it terrified him.
13
There were no red mullet left, so the fishmonger at Smithfield Market suggested tench, a freshwater fish which, when duly cooked at St John’s Wood, turned out to be utterly disgusting. But they’d already drunk a bottle and a half of Mâcon Lugny so it didn’t matter. Charles was laughing like a schoolboy because he’d spilled half a glass on his tie when Nick said abruptly ‘Did Mum ever mention the Pieman?’
It was meant to be an introduction to what Nick had prepared himself to reveal. He was seeking a small piece of common territory upon which to build.
Charles carried on laughing and dabbed his chest with a napkin. Lining up his knife and fork, he replied, ‘I’ll thank you kindly never to mention that name in this house again.’
The laughter had ceased, and Charles’s face was bitten, his lips pursed. He moved his plate an inch.
‘Is he for real … this bogeyman?’ asked Nick, incredulous.
‘This conversation is over.’ Charles had that pale, helpless look that must have driven them all mad in the bank when explanations were in demand. He said, ‘You don’t need to know. Your mother’s dead. It’s over.’
They both became completely still, hands on their laps, concentrating on a half-eaten fish. This, I suppose, thought Nick, is what passes as a moment of truth. He’d been convinced that his father knew nothing of his wife’s crisis; but in that opening Edwardian rebuke he’d shown that he must know everything, that he always had done, and that he’d held back even the barest of explanations from his son. He’d watched Nick scuttling around in a yellow Beetle; he’d stood at doors and windows clocking that a parental secret had been breached: and he’d said absolutely nothing — and never had done, except to commend the merits of a trip to Australia … and Papua New Guinea.
Something like rage and love and fear swooped upon Nick: anger at the antics of his parents, passion for their protective concern, but a certain dread at what had driven them to behave like that in the first place. His mother had wanted to bring him home, to tell him; but his father hadn’t agreed: he’d been scared. ‘The Bundi do a butterfly dance,’ he’d said.
And Charles was still scared. But of what? And who? And why?
Nick folded up his napkin and went upstairs to the Green Room. This was where she’d planned it all, and this was where it would end — for him and his father. The only person who knew what the hell was going on was a half-wit crook, whose grubbing around had demolished Elizabeth’s self-respect.
Nick took the orange flyer out of his pocket. The wine had made him foolish, he knew, but also perceptive. Colours were slightly brighter than usual — like his insight; things wouldn’t keep still — like his resolve.
He dialled the number and listened.
He’d been a fool. He hadn’t seen the true crisis, even though he’d found the key and opened the box. The ‘not knowing and not being able to care’, Locard’s Principle (as applied), the ‘responsibility without blame’ — it was all good stuff, but these had only pointed towards a rarefied conscience. And yet there’d been something else in the box, right from the outset.
An answer machine clicked into action. Nick stubbed the button and dialled again. He waited, getting jumpy.
Nick had actually hit upon the critical question long ago, in a dingy pub near Cheapside. He’d ignored it, wanting to turn away from the idea that Elizabeth’s compassion had been a commodity for the client, a bonus thrown in with the brief fee.
But now he wanted to know what had really happened when his mother had risen to cross-examine Riley’s pitiable victim. For Anji, who’d had the guts to step into a witness box, the Pieman had been a dread presence, a reality that still exercised Mr Wyecliffe’s fascination ten years later. And what had Elizabeth done? She’d skilfully — and compassionately — made the Pieman into a figure from Anji’s tormented mind; she’d explained him away she’d made him a dream …
The phone was answered.
It had to be the wine, but Nick shrank from the voice, for it was otherworldly in its harshness. He pictured his father before a half-eaten tench … It was safe downstairs … and there was another half bottle of Mâcon Lugny waiting … but he wanted to know the answer to his question.
‘Who was the Pieman?’
Nick had to ask because he felt, obscurely that his mother had known all along, even as she’d taken Anji by the hand; that he had found the secret spring of Elizabeth’s disgrace.
Twenty minutes later Nick was at the wheel, over the limit, and driving east towards Hornchurch Marshes. He’d expected a reluctant conversation, not a demand for a meeting.
14
The Prior frequently reminded the community in chapter that, as the Rule made clear, there are times when good words are to be left unsaid out of esteem for silence.
With this counsel in mind, Anselm guided George to the Vault, saying very little. Before withdrawing, Debbie Lynwood led them to a simply furnished bedroom away from the bustle of the day centre. On a sideboard was a selection of games and puzzles in battered boxes. George studied the lids meditatively ‘Riley knew I was there,’ he said. ‘He was speaking to me.’
Anselm nodded at the rounded back of this lean, honourable man in his honourable blazer and tie. Adam’s sin, said Genesis, was that he wanted to be like God, to direct the great arrangement of things into which he had been wonderfully born; to know why good was good, and why evil was evil; maybe to make a few discreet changes. There are occasions, thought Anselm, when I would like to be God: long enough to understand this man’s fall, and to do something about it.