‘I thought that was the point of the Memos,’ her father said. He laughed oddly, and laid his hand on a stack of paper on the table. ‘Do I have to read it?’ He lifted the top sheet, up to head height – it was a printout, the pages a long concertina, the strip of punch-holes down the side so pleasing to tear off; then he let it drop, with a momentary rippling noise. ‘Why don’t you just tell me what it says?’
‘No, I think you should read it yourself. Of course, I don’t know how accurate it is, I haven’t seen the diary for that period, and we all know Freddie could enhance things a certain amount, but . . . it’s good,’ said Ivan. ‘I don’t want to spoil it for you.’
Her father sighed. ‘Has Evert seen it?’
‘I thought it best not to upset him.’
‘What about me?’
Ivan put a hand on his shoulder, then took it away. ‘I don’t think you will find it upsetting.’
‘It’s just more stuff about Dad . . .’
‘Well . . . yes,’ said Ivan, ‘it’s about an affair, you know – another one . . . I must say it came as a surprise to me.’
‘Daddy,’ said Lucy.
‘Oh, hello!’ said Ivan. Both the men glanced round, alarmed for a second – then not alarmed at all. ‘Well, I’ll leave it with you’ – Ivan stood up and smiling remotely at Lucy, patting his pockets as if remembering what was next on his list, he went past her and into the hall. She came forward. Her father’s right hand, alien and familiar, large, big-knuckled, scrubbed up for the occasion, lay on the document. With his left he pulled her in.
‘Are Mummy and Una still here?’
She said they were. She stood and read the beginning, ‘The evening when we first heard’, and later bits, between his fingers . . . ‘Evert Dax’ . . . ‘secretary’; her father watched her for a moment, then read too, shifting his hand to cover the rest of the page – but she was faster than he was. ‘Is it about you, Daddy?’
‘Oh, I don’t think so, no; it’s something Freddie wrote about your grandpa.’
‘Grandpa David,’ she said.
‘That’s right.’ He picked it up, rolled it as best he could, tried to push it into his jacket pocket; it was quite thick. She’d become aware, mainly from something Timothy’s mother had said, of some sort of problem about this particular grandfather, and his getting divorced from Granny Connie.
‘Is it nice?’
‘I’m sure it is – it’s about when they were at Oxford, you know, in the War.’
‘Freddie and Grandpa were?’
‘Yup.’
‘Oh,’ said Lucy, ‘I didn’t know that’ – the War again, the great dreary fog that old people conjured up and disappeared into whenever they had a chance.
Her father frowned at her. ‘Do you want to go?’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘You’re supposed to say yes, then I’ll have to take you.’
‘Oh, well, yes, then,’ she said, ‘of course.’
About the evening, and the sale of Evert’s pictures, she felt she knew more than most. Her mother had had the whole story from Ivan, and explained it to her crossly: ‘He needs the money, Lucy, and that’s that.’ Her father was more sympathetic: ‘It’s all very sad really – it’s that great big house, it’ll fall down if he can’t find some extra cash.’
‘The House of Horrors?’
He allowed the name, but he didn’t much like it. ‘You’ve never been there, have you?’
‘Mummy said when I was very small.’
‘I mean not to remember.’
She agreed she hadn’t; though in her mind she had visited it, and in a taxi once she was told they’d just gone past it – she’d twisted and stared back, at the tall bleak terrace of identical houses, grey brick, white porches, with numbers on the pillars, she didn’t know which number it was. Now that real grey house had to coexist, rather feebly, with the more enduring one she’d imagined before.
‘Well, we’ll go and see, shall we?’
‘Before it falls down?’ She looked narrowly at him.
And so it was that two months ago, on a cold Sunday morning, they had taken a huge walk up the Fulham Road, turning into Cranley Gardens at last about eleven o’clock. She saw now which house it was, though several were shabby and neglected, with dead brown plants on the balconies and weeds round the area railings; Evert’s house had a piece of tarpaulin suspended above the top-floor windows. ‘It’s just to catch anything if it drops off,’ her father said. They darted in under the porch. There was a muddle of doorbells, several not working, new ones fixed with makeshift wiring. He let her work it out: DAX / GOYLE: she pressed it, smiling forbearingly. As they waited he explained: Mrs Lenska, the Polish widow, had the ground floor (‘Please, Press Hard, Twice!’) and Parfitt, a banker no one ever saw, the first floor. The basement was empty, because of the damp. The smart new entryphone, more permanent-looking than the rest, had the label DRURY.
‘Hello, it’s Lucy!’ she said, and after a moment’s uncertainty they were in.
On the table in the hall she noticed many unopened letters. They climbed the stairs, Lucy just behind her father, peering at the antiquated lift that ran up the centre in a cage. ‘Evert’s father had that put in,’ he said. ‘You know, having only one leg.’
It was just the sort of thing she’d been expecting. ‘Oh, dear!’ she said.
‘I’m afraid it hasn’t worked for years.’ She assumed he meant the lift.
There was a tall window on each turn of the stair, throwing dirty light across the carpet, which was worn through to the floorboards in places. As they climbed they passed large dim oblongs, huge hooks, black drapery of cobwebs where pictures must have hung for a very long time. When they reached the landing they saw them stacked against the wall, in their heavy gilt frames, trying to stay dignified while peering nervously over each other’s shoulders. The pictures left hanging, perhaps not worth selling, looked hopeless without them. Lucy was intrigued to be walking upstairs in someone else’s house and looking at things. On the second-floor landing there was a nasty sweet reek that went to the back of the nose – she wasn’t sure what it was, though she’d smelt it once or twice at home, when friends of Una’s had been round. A lock snapped, a door opened and two men came out, in jeans and T-shirts, no shoes – it was rather odd because it was a lavatory. She said nothing but as they went into the room in front they must have heard her, and her father. ‘Oh, my god!’ said one of them, and the other turned too and said, ‘Ooh, hello . . . !’ They were young men, in their twenties, and the first one had extraordinary big eyes swimming in his face. She didn’t think they could be workmen.
Her father put his arm round her shoulders. ‘Is Evert around?’ he said.
They both laughed. ‘Which one’s he?’
‘Is he the old guy?’
‘You’re in his house,’ her father said.
‘Oh, are we!’ The one with huge eyes giggled and gripped the other round the arm. ‘We’re just friends of Denis’s,’ he said. They went into the big room beyond, still laughing, their arms round each other. The sense that something wasn’t right made Lucy stick close by her father – she followed him into what seemed to be a pleasant drawing room, but the curtains were still closed, and with only a couple of lamps on it was hard to tell. In the odd daytime gloom she made out Denis Drury, lying on the sofa, looking away from them.