Painting The Darkness (49 page)

‘Good afternoon, Richard,’ James said with a smile. ‘I’m sorry if I surprised you.’

‘No, no. Not at all’

‘Benson told me to come straight in.’

Benson, Richard knew, would have told James nothing of the kind. Nevertheless, he might well have been persuaded to let him enter unannounced. The question was why James should have wanted to take Richard unawares. To surprise him in just the mood which had indeed been upon him? To steal some glimpse of what he truly thought? With an effort that may have been apparent, Richard retreated towards an inexpressive professional manner. ‘What brings you here?’

‘I thought I’d look in on my way back from Warburton’s.’

‘A satisfactory consultation?’

‘Warburton remains confident, certainly.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

James took three slow casual steps across to a bookcase and leaned back against it, his elbows propped on one of the shelves. ‘Actually,’ he said, smiling amiably, ‘my visit does have a particular purpose.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘I wondered if you would do me the favour of accompanying me on a journey this afternoon.’ He paused. ‘A journey, you might say, into the past.’

‘What exactly do you mean?’ Richard told himself to be cautious, but already he could feel the curiosity stirring within him.

James pushed himself away from the bookcase and moved to the window. ‘I’ve been thinking of undertaking the journey for some time, as a matter of fact.’ He put his hand to his mouth and patted his lips nervously, as if missing a cigarette. ‘I should not care to have to go alone.’

Was this a devious ploy or a cry from the heart? As ever, Richard could not be sure. ‘If it’s so important, I’ll happily go with you. But what’s our destination?’

‘Wapping, Richard. The spot where I thought to end my life twelve years ago. I feel I must go back – to exorcize the memory.’

So that was it: a risk too great, surely, for any impostor to run. With a rush of remorse, Richard wondered if it really was a memory James was seeking to exorcize – rather than the distrust that had grown between them. Either way, this promised to be the crisis he had sought that very morning to engineer. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We’ll go.’

James looked back at him. ‘I wouldn’t want Constance to hear of it. She would think it morbid. That’s why …’

‘You waited until she’d gone away?’

‘Yes.’

It was as good an excuse as any, Richard reflected, if an
excuse
were needed. But pretext and reality had fused too often in his mind to be separable now. ‘I’ll say nothing to Constance. When do we go?’

‘At once, if you will.’ James glanced out of the window. ‘It’ll be dark in an hour. There’s no time to lose.’

They took a cab to the Tower and walked from there, through St Katharine Docks and on towards Wapping, threading their way along the confused and crowded thoroughfare of wharfs and warehouses, struggling to make themselves heard above the clattering hoofs and grating wheels.

‘It’s kind of you to come with me, Richard,’ James said. ‘I do appreciate it.’

‘It’s the least I can do.’

‘I worry that you feel excluded from the family because of this wretched business.’

‘I fear that’s inevitable.’

‘When it’s over, I hope you’ll agree to handle all my affairs.’

‘If you wish it.’

‘I do, I do.’ Ambiguity and suspicion had infected all their exchanges. Richard was not sure now what his own words meant, let alone James’s.

The light was fading and the neighbourhood coarsening as they pressed on eastwards. Shambling beggars and gaping barefoot children were beginning to outnumber tradesmen. The Thames glinted at them and tracked their steps from the far ends of sloping bale-hung alleyways. For Richard this was a disconcerting alien world, where trust and treachery threatened to become indistinguishable, where he had fewer ways than ever of knowing how much his companion remembered – or how much he had merely imagined.

‘There’ll be so much I don’t know,’ James went on, ‘so much that’s changed in twelve years. I intend to be a model landlord, but I’ll need your help and advice.’

‘Then, you shall have it.’ For an instant, the prospect was one to savour. This man would be so much worthier
a
client than Hugo, so much more deserving of Richard’s advice. Then they passed over the swingbridge across Wapping Basin and entered, or re-entered, the miniature world James had recalled at the hearing: Wapping High Street, with a neglected graveyard on one side and the Town of Ramsgate public house on the other. ‘This is the place, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ James replied. ‘This is it.’ He led the way up the next street on the left, to where rusty creaking gates gave on to the burial-ground. He pushed them open and Richard followed him in.

‘This is where you waited? This is where you chose the stone to weigh you down?’

‘Yes.’

Richard looked around at the cluster of crooked gravestones and mould-draped mausoleums, his breath clouding in the frosting air. It was possible, yes, all too possible. On this frozen patch of funeral-planted land, between the drab crammed vastness of the slums and the grinding ceaseless commerce of the river, a man might truly have sought an end to misery. In that moment, though only for that moment, Richard was convinced. ‘I’m glad your nerve failed you,’ he said, resting his hand on James’s shoulder. ‘You deserved better than to be brought to this.’

‘Did I?’ James glanced round at him, his expression indecipherable in the gathering gloom. Then, abruptly, he stepped away towards the gates. ‘Shall we take a look at the stairs I followed down to the river?’

‘By all means.’ But James’s movement had been too quick for Richard’s liking. It was as if he had recoiled from sympathy, as if he had found either the memory or the deception too painful to bear. As they walked back in the direction of Wapping High Street, Richard sensed that his companion was at his most vulnerable in this place and at this time. If he were ever to drop his guard, this would be the moment. ‘You meant what you said about being a model landlord?’

‘Certainly.’

‘You’ll have much to consider. The Irish property, for instance. It’s been entirely in the agent’s hands since your grandmother’s death. You went there once, I think.’

‘To Carntrassna? Yes, when I was a boy.’

‘With your father?’

‘Yes.’

‘What year? Do you remember?’

‘1859. Soon after Grandpapa’s death.’ And shortly before, Richard calculated, Gervase paid the Carntrassna agent ten thousand pounds for no known reason. ‘Papa felt that, as his heir, I ought to meet his mother.’

‘Did you enjoy the visit?’

‘Hardly. I found County Mayo raw and forbidding.’

‘And your grandmother?’

‘Not one to suffer fools – or children – gladly. She was rather … intimidating.’

‘Do you remember the agent there? A man named Lennox?’

‘No. I can’t say I do.’

They entered the alley that cut down between the Town of Ramsgate and the walls of neighbouring buildings towards the river. Light and warmth were fleeing from the day, with mist rising ahead of them from the brown and turbid mass of the Thames. At the end of the alley, a flight of steps ran down and vanished into the water. They halted at the top of them and looked around at the soaring weed-fringed faces of brick that the warehouses showed to the river, at the distant slime-hazed wharfs of the Surrey shore, at the lapping murky infinity where the Thames passed on towards the sea.

‘A dismal spot,’ said Richard, after a lengthy silence.

‘A dismal spot for a dismal deed. It is strange to return here – after all these years.’

‘Does it feel as you expected?’

‘I don’t know. I’m glad to have come, though – as I’ll be glad to leave.’

The tone of James’s voice swayed Richard more than the
words
he spoke. Such a tone could not, he sensed, have been assumed for his benefit. It conveyed the memories this spot held for him more poignantly than any word-perfect courtroom testimony. It carried the unmistakable ring of truth.

‘Shall we go now?’ said James, after another wordless interval.

‘If you’ve seen enough.’

‘I believe I have.’ A violent shudder ran through him then, more violent than the encroaching chill could explain. ‘Quite enough.’

Richard nodded and set off back along the alley. Before he had covered ten yards, he realized that James was not following. Pulling up in puzzlement, he turned and saw his companion still standing at the top of the steps – rooted to the spot, it seemed – staring down into the river. He called his name, but there was no response, no sound or movement to indicate that he had heard. Richard walked back to him and reached out to touch his shoulder. Then, at sight of the expression on James’s face, he stopped.

Previously, it had been too dark in the alley to make out a man’s features, but now a lamp had been lit in one of the lofty warehouses to their left, casting a sallow distorted rectangle of light down on to the steps and a portion of the river beyond. Pallid and flickering though it was, it sufficed to show Richard that James was in the grip of a disabling terror.

‘What’s wrong?’

Still there was no answer. Following the direction of James’s gaze, Richard looked down at the base of the steps, where the lamplight showed grey opaque water and a floating litter of matchwood slapping idly at the lower treads.

‘For God’s sake, man, what’s the matter?’

At last, James spoke, in a husky quavering travesty of his former confident tone. ‘Don’t you see it?’

‘See what?’

‘In the water.’

‘I see nothing.’

‘Nothing?’ James stared at him incredulously.

‘Nothing at all.’

‘Then … Then it must be …’ he looked back down the steps, and his voice trailed into silence.

‘Must be what?’

At first, James did not reply. He took several deep breaths and squared his shoulders, as if preparing to exert some enormous effort. Then he turned towards Richard, his expression clear and self-controlled. ‘Nothing,’ he said, in a voice to which calm and rigour had been restored. ‘It’s as you say, Richard. Nothing at all.’ And with that, quickly yet without the least sign of haste, he strode away along the alley.

He had turned into Wapping High Street and vanished from sight before Richard began to follow, bemused by what had happened, cheated of the crisis he had anticipated yet sensing that a different kind of crisis might nevertheless have occurred. But what kind he did not know, for he had seen nothing, on the steps or in the river. And whatever James had thought he had seen was invisible now beneath the fog that rose from the water like the final exhalation of countless drowning men.

Chapter Fourteen

I

DURING THE LENGTHY
interlude between hearing and trial, the outside world had succeeded in entirely forgetting the case of
Norton versus Davenall
. A five-month truce had sufficed to blank out all awareness of even its most sensational aspects. To the public mind, it seemed as if it had never happened.

The law, by contrast, had not forgotten. It had merely bided its limitless time until, with neither haste nor hesitation, the appointed day drew near. The truce was about to end.

On the very last afternoon before its expiry, James Norton and Constance Trenchard were walking arm in arm across the grassy slopes of Parliament Hill, breathing the clear air with the desperate pleasure of two who knew such idle freedom would soon no longer be theirs to enjoy.

‘Russell thinks it may last two months or more,’ said James, with a heavy sigh. ‘I wish it could be over quicker. I wish I could just snap my fingers and have done with it.’

‘But you can’t,’ said Constance.

‘No,’ James replied, shaking his head. ‘It seems it must be endured – if I’m to be accepted for who I am. A heavy penance for such a modest privilege: to use my real name. Sometimes I wonder why we shouldn’t simply run away together and forget the whole thing. If Hugo wants the baronetcy that badly, why not let him keep it? I’ve done
without
it so long I’m not sure I care one way or the other.’

Constance looked at him uncertainly. ‘You don’t really mean that?’

‘Part of me does, yes. The part that made me stay away all those years.’

‘And the other part?’

‘It tells me not to run away a second time. Besides …’

‘Yes?’

‘I don’t have the right to ask you to do such a thing. For your sake, if for nobody else’s, I’m determined to see this through.’

She leaned up to kiss him. ‘We’ll see it through
together
.’

He smiled. ‘It’s not too late to change your mind.’

‘Oh, but it is. This very day, Richard has instituted divorce proceedings on my behalf.’ She stepped back. ‘You look surprised.’

‘I didn’t think you’d feel able to consider such a move until the case was over.’

‘The case doesn’t make any difference, James. That’s what I want you to understand. It doesn’t matter to me who the world says you are. I already know. You’re the man I’d gladly marry tomorrow if I were free …’ She blushed. ‘And if I were asked.’ Then she shrieked, for he suddenly clasped her about the waist and whirled her in a circle.

‘As soon as you’re free,’ he cried, ‘you will be asked.’ He kissed her, and they laughed breathlessly, turning to look down in smiling private triumph at the grey and smoking city. ‘James Davenall and Constance Sumner will marry – after a twelve-year engagement. You have my word on it.’

Just as Constance was about to reply, there came a shout from behind them. ‘Davenall! Is that you, Davenall?’ They turned to see two smartly dressed men of about James’s own age walking towards them. One was thin, sallow-faced and lugubriously moustached, the other portly, ruddy-complexioned and smiling broadly: it was evidently he who had called out. About ten yards to the rear, a third
man
stood watching them with little apparent interest, although the two had seemingly just left his company. ‘It’s Jimmy Davenall, isn’t it?’ said the red-faced man as they drew nearer.

‘Yes,’ said James cautiously. ‘I don’t believe—’