Breaking Light (34 page)

‘I expect you know why I've come,' she said, at last.

‘I have a good idea, yes,' he answered flatly.

‘I know it's you – you have ruined us!' It was not what she had planned to say – certainly not – but a part of her was enjoying the drama of the situation, and her potential part in it. But ‘us'? She heard herself use that word with disbelief.

‘I object,' he protested, languidly, like some corrupted lawyer.

‘You
what
?'

‘I said that I object to such a simplified version of reality. I ruined your husband, but I gave you paid employment – reluctantly, perhaps, but I still think it ought to count in my favour. I didn't know who you were, at first – not until you told me your
husband's name.' There's a certain comedy to all this, he thought to himself.

‘Oh.' For a moment, she was dumbstruck by his straightforward confession. And a little disappointed – she had been looking forward to the interrogation part, to the drawing of blood as she presented her evidence, piece by piece. But he was right, of course. The document in her hand had nothing to do with her.

He stood up and crossed the room to turn on a lamp by the French windows. Outside, the wind was rising with the coming of darkness. Fallen leaves were whirling around the yard, riding their own dilapidated merry-go-rounds. Too fast; too fast. Sometimes a northerly gust would lift them away from their play and into the air, forcing some of them against the window, where they made a dry, scraping sound, like ghosts dragging their nails, wanting to make themselves known.

‘I know you take me for a plain woman, an uneducated thug's wife,' she said to his back. ‘Well, stupidity can be a great disguise, at times – but I believe in plain speaking.' She was calmer now. Steady.

A blood-red stain was spilling through the trees in the west. He turned his back to the window and looked about the room, wondering vaguely why it looked so unlived in. How could it be that he had not managed to make more of an impression? The furniture stood about like pieces in a stage set, or like extras in a drama about to commence: a stooped chair, ready to pull itself straight; a table on spindly legs, ready to leap; a book opened on the floor, waiting to say its lines.

‘Are you listening?'

He nodded, unable to speak.

‘So, you've quite deliberately ruined him, eh? I wonder how
long you've been plotting it – five years? Ten? Well, there's no need to answer; doesn't matter much now, does it? There's more where this comes from, you know – a whole file of it,' she said, waving the piece of paper – a sound like the leaves at the window; the ghosts from the past, pressing against him.

‘You were even behind the deal which made him have to give up the paddocks on the other side of the road to that holiday park … Those acres were part of the ancient tenement, you know. They have belonged to the farm for ever – it's mentioned in the Domesday Book. I suppose you thought it would hurt him, giving up the land?' She laughed softly, but then he thought he heard her sob. ‘Well, you were wrong there; he couldn't care less about the land. Always hated it. Hated the farm, he did, but it was a convenient bolt-hole for a con man, wasn't it? That old barn, full of this, that and the other … It's quite clear that you did it all to get at this old pile, but what I don't understand is
why
? You don't seem like a man who has any need for … all this.' She flicked her plump hand at the room. Perhaps she noticed how empty it was. ‘And then there's the question of why you wanted to hurt. And how did you know that the only way to get at him was to stab at his pride?'

‘Hurt?' he interrupted. ‘But you misunderstand … I never set out to hurt anyone – I just wanted to set things right. There was so much that had gone … well, wrong.' He turned back to face the French windows.

She ignored him. ‘So that's when I remembered, didn't I? That the great professor used to know my hubbie, way back …'

He could feel her eyes on his back, intense, probing.

‘And, anyway, as I said, I'm not as stupid as you may think; I can put two and two together. I knew from the time I saw that
photograph of the little boy and his family at Oakstone that the Bradley boy was somehow related to you.'

He swallowed hard. She had known all along.

‘So, once I'd found the file in the safe and read it word by word – all those transactions; I'm surprised he kept the documentation of such thorough failure on his part – I reckoned there must be something more to this story, a missing link, if you read me. And then I remembered you skulking around Edencombe on that rainy day. So I thought, hang on a minute, don't I know one of the nurses from up there … ? Oh, yes, I do: Mrs Smith from the WI.'

His limbs were suddenly fluid. He staggered back to the chair opposite her. She was watching him, sucking her teeth.

‘Of course the nurses aren't allowed – strictly forbidden, in fact – to disclose any information about the patients, seeing as it is an institution of a somewhat … delicate nature. However, Mrs Smith is a rather frail character, recently bereaved, and it didn't take me long to get her to spill the beans, the poor dear. It's not that she
likes
me – oh, no – and I'm sure she's, you know, moral and all that … I reckon she goes to that church on Sundays. But–' she fixed him with her eyes and there was something urgent in her gaze – ‘but I suppose there are moments in
all
our lives, stripped, sort of colourless and, at least to the rest of the world, darned
dull
, when the nastiest,
bloody
agony –' she caught her breath and continued – ‘I'm talking of proper pain here – heartache, that kind of thing – will make you go against yourself, I mean, go against who you are, your nature, right?' Her voice was softer now, almost tender, as if she was no longer talking about Mrs Smith and Edencombe, or, indeed, about the ruining of her husband, but about something altogether more personal.

They sat for a while staring past each other in glassy-eyed silence. How can I make her understand? he thought to himself. How can I make anyone understand why I had to do this, when I hardly understand it myself? Not compulsion, redemption, revenge – no. Setting the balance right. Joining things back together to make space for love. Nor would he be able to explain, he realised, why, now that he had recreated that place, he could not possess it. He could not unpack the boxes in the hall and he still hadn't opened the doors to most of the rooms in the house. The bliss to which he had aspired was still beyond reach, shielded from view by a sadness of cobwebs. He could no longer find a purpose. He was confused. He wanted somebody to whom he could tell the truth. But he could not think who such a person might be. He was a ridiculous figure, a freak, and they would be sure to laugh at him and his pathetic efforts. Bunny-boy, trying to set things right. The whole idea, the notion that everything would somehow be okay if only he got Oakstone back, was indeed laughable. If only he could return once more to Ithaca. To his own surprise, he started laughing. Leaning back in his chair, he laughed until he realised – oh, the horror of it, the shame – that he was crying.

But Mrs Ludgate, compact and contained in her chair, her feet not quite reaching the floor, looked at him calmly and, if it had not been so unthinkable, he might have thought that there was compassion in her gaze. She spoke again in her new soft voice: ‘There are things – bad moments – which can change your life when it really matters. It's happened to me, you know. I sort of stepped out of myself and became a ghost.' Her cheeks had reddened a bit and she spoke quickly, as if embarrassed. ‘It's like on all them chat shows on telly, when they keep telling you
that you have to have ambitions in life and fulfil yourself and stuff like that. Well, it ain't always that easy, is it? You forget all those things you were dreaming of doing, all those pathetic, lousy hopes. You forget
yourself
 – and then you have to spend the rest of your time trying to find your way back.' She stopped abruptly, looking away from him now.

Ah, yes, those moments she was speaking of – he knew them only too well and how inexorably linked they were with the search for love. Love. How truly helpless humans were in its hands. How it played upon our expectations. And yet, something else was at work here. However much one strove for it or against it, one's efforts were never enough; the cause and effect seemed always to be beyond one's powers. And the result – was it intentional or accidental?

Something – the fading disc of light from the lamp, which kept them in the dark, perhaps, or the unreal, Alice-in-Wonder-land quality of their new world – stirred a memory in him of another time, so long ago now, in this room, when he had kept himself just out of the circle of light, here by the fireplace: Mr Bradley's funeral, when he had first understood that he was lost to himself and that it was all out of joint. Had he realised then how utterly overwhelming his task would be, and how wonderfully all-consuming?

On the road beyond the garden wall, a car passed; the beams from its headlights found their way through the forked trees and across the lawn, so that they finally hit the gilded mirror above the fireplace. Unruly shadows came to life and stirred around Mr Askew and Mrs Ludgate. Then these dancing shapes were gone and the room seemed darker than before. But there was something else; yes, there was something quite new and they
both sensed it. There was an odd mood in the chilly room, a sense of intimacy and understanding, and the possibility of it was strangely encouraging to them both.

‘I am sorry, truly, that you got caught up in this. And I freely admit that I may have been prejudiced against you because of your association with
him
. It's only natural, after all.'

She looked up, with a genuine air of surprise. ‘Oh, no, please don't be sorry. I wish he was dead!' she said with vehemence.

He stared at her for a moment and it was as if he had seen her for the first time. She was not all that ugly, he noticed. Quite pretty, really, if it hadn't been for that caked make-up. Her eyes were of such an unusual blue. ‘That bad, was it? Yes?'

She said nothing.

‘Why didn't you leave him?'

‘We had a child. A daughter.'

He nodded. ‘Yes, I remember now …'

‘I was trapped, like a fly in one of them orange stones …'

‘Amber.'

‘Yeah, that's the one. And, once she had got away – once she was safe – I didn't really care. I was nothing to him; he left me alone for ages when he was out … roaming with Billy and those other friends of his. Or when he lived in London for weeks on end.' How she hated them all and their bloody ‘business' – the stink of it, the rubbish they talked about it. ‘There was some freedom then, which I enjoyed. I had the farm to myself. And I convinced myself it was all I wanted. That I mustn't rock the boat. That loneliness wasn't the worst of it.'

How come he had not seen it before, that extraordinary integrity in the face of her predicament? And then, in a flash, he recognised, behind her mask, the young girl in the pink
uniform, serving in the pub on the moor, and he remembered her kind eyes from so long ago. Could it be that she had always been on his side?

‘Why did you answer my ad?'

‘Oh, several reasons, really.' She was blushing. ‘I remembered you from all those years ago in the Moor Cross Inn … I felt bad for you that time. You were so helpless. It was quite brave of you to walk into that shit hole.'

He looked up at her quickly and saw that she was concentrating to find the right words, so he listened.

‘I thought, at the time, that I had never seen anyone as alone. Then, when I saw you again at the trial – after all those years – I thought about all the parts of my life I had lost since I last saw you. And it stirred something in me. I thought perhaps we were rather similar – and I thought that, whatever we have lost, perhaps we could help each other find ourselves again.' She had reddened, he saw, before she added, ‘Except that you're so bloody arrogant at times.'

He nodded, ignoring the last remark. ‘Yes, I think you're right … I think we probably are, in some respects – alike.' He looked at her and smiled. What an odd turn of events. ‘Oh, I almost forgot,' he said. ‘I did force him to sign over the farm into your name.'

She looked at him and laughed in genuine appreciation. ‘How very crafty of you, Professor!'

He rolled his eyes and waved a hand in mock smugness.

‘But … there's something else, isn't there? Something to do with that … that person in Edencombe?'

He looked up at her in alarm and she let it drop.

‘You still haven't told me …' she continued instead. ‘I know he was awful to that boy, your friend, the one they called Fluffy, but what did he do to
you
?'

‘My brother.
That boy
was my brother.'

He stood abruptly and crossed the room to the French windows, opening the doors. The cold night entered, smelling of burnt bracken and the coming of winter. As he turned back to her, the warm glow from the lamp embraced him, but the light had gone out in his face. ‘What did he do to
me
? Oh, I don't know, nothing that you'd call criminal, I'm sure. He made me betray … everything.'

*

Gabriel's resolution to save Michael from Jim of Blackaton and
set things right
had been made in St James's Park on a Saturday morning in summer, after his first year at university. It was a moment of perfect tranquillity and clarity. The sun was steaming the dew off the lawns and the two old spinsters living in Duck Island Cottage were already up and about, scattering feed for the early birds. A couple of geese flew in over the lake and landed in a sudden, spectacular show – a sequined crescendo. A rainbow formed briefly in their wake, but it disappeared before revealing its treasures. Hundreds of years previously, when the park was still no more than a swamp, two crocodiles had lived amongst the waterfowl. Imported from a warmer climate, they would yawn in bewilderment on a morning like this. Gabriel, his crumpled suit sodden with dew, yawned too as he sat up on the bench, where he had ended up after a night on the tear. He offered his face to the sun and smiled in revelation. It was
obvious that he would have to treat his mission with great discretion, patience and perseverance. He had, at last, a
real
purpose.