As a boy Anselm had tried to understand the night sky. He’d had a real job finding the asterisms, despite his father pointing them out repeatedly, his patience fraying. Sagittarius, the archer, had been the hardest, but he’d seen it eventually, once he stopped trying too hard. Anselm thought of that wondrous moment of seeing now as he went back towards the house. But he opened the door without the wonder; he felt no wonder.
Sanjay took his phone and said goodbye. Harry was in his bedroom talking to his mother. That left Martin in one armchair, Dominic in another and Justin on the sofa. This was the Brandwell family as they’d been when the boys were children, Maisie somewhere else making tea. Anselm appraised their surroundings: the framed maps of a world misunderstood by mariners too close to see the truth; the shelves of novels: old, embedded culture. Dickens, Thackeray, Austin. French classics, too: Hugo, Flaubert, Daudet. Les extrêmes se touchent. Once more. Evil could find a footing anywhere. In pride of place above the mantelpiece was the carved, wooden mask. At Larkwood it would have been an icon.
‘Those three mouths make me shiver,’ said Anselm, addressing Dominic, his eyes on Justin. ‘Where’s it from?’
‘Sierra Leone.’
‘A gift from the Chief?’
‘Yes.’ Dominic looked past his brother at the carved face with its oval eyes and gaping lips. ‘The Chief used it to scare us when we were kids. Chase us round the garden. We used to ask him to do it. Play the monster.’
‘A gift to your parents?’ confirmed Anselm.
‘Yes. He thought my mother would like it. Local art.’
Justin was sitting on the edge of the sofa as if he was on a ledge without a rope. He was leaning forward, looking down between his legs, as if to measure the drop. An almost cruel compassion drove Anselm forward because now was the time to break Justin – and he had to be broken, because he’d lost the ability to break out. Paradoxically, it wouldn’t take much. All Anselm had to do was show that he was already inside Justin’s mind. That he’d already seen the dirt he was hiding.
‘“You don’t always have to talk about everything”,’ quoted Anselm. ‘Is that how it goes, Justin? Was that another frightening gift from the Chief? Just for you and no one else? Did he teach you the trick of when to be quiet?’
Perhaps that was one of the deeper reasons for Justin’s later cooperation, for why he’d allowed his name to be written on that brown envelope – the name that had surprised Anselm. He’d already learned to disregard his own suffering.
‘He said it was better for me. Better for my mum. Better for my dad.’
‘Better for him?’ Anselm wasn’t being wry; he wanted to know if Tabley had dared to bring himself into the equation.
‘He didn’t say.’
Justin hadn’t shaved; he was scratching his jaw as if he might claw the bristles out. His eyes were on the imaginary scree far below. The rocks where his life was lived out. Where he crouched and hid and cut himself. He seemed to be looking at Fraser’s dismembered body.
‘How old were you?’ asked Anselm.
‘Eleven.’ Justin sniffed, embarrassed.
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘How could I? His photo was on the wall. He’d married my parents. My little brother was named after him.’
Dominic raised his eyes as if his father had picked up that knife again. Justin didn’t need any more prompting. He was already talking about the now familiar pattern of accidents, apologies and power. It could have been Harry speaking, but it was Justin. He was unravelling their shared history. Nothing would be left but the loom. And Anselm leaned back, exhausted, knowing this was the moment Edmund Littlemore and George Carrington had been waiting for. This was the end result of Dunstan’s dying bid to catch a kind of war criminal. Anselm barely listened. He absented himself, thinking of the night sky, because Justin wasn’t really speaking to him; he wasn’t even speaking to his father; he was speaking to his brother, the one who’d been spared a lifetime’s self-disgust, and so much more. The one who’d met Emily and settled down. The one who’d grown to enjoy a good book in the evening.
‘He started becoming really friendly with you,’ said Justin, as if angling to see behind one of those sharp stones. ‘And I just knew it was a warning so I said, “Please don’t touch him.”’
And with that plea, a boy had come to an unspoken agreement with a man of God: that he could do whatever he liked to Justin, as long as he left Dominic alone.
‘He’d say sorry,’ said Justin, sniffing again. ‘Sorry for what he’d done and for what he’d made me do. He’d cry, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at me. Because I was disgusting … but he’d be holding onto my hand. That’s how I knew he’d be back. We both knew he’d be back.’
That’s when he started wearing the mask from Sierra Leone. While Maisie was out giving evening classes and Martin was in Saigon and Dominic was asleep next door, the Chief would come into Justin’s room as if they’d been playing in the garden. It wasn’t Tabley, not really; and it wasn’t Justin either. In time the Chief stopped saying sorry. It was as though neither of them was involved.
Anselm came to Justin’s assistance because there was too much to say, too much for Dominic to understand. It would take time; an awful lot of time. ‘When did it come to an end, Justin?’
‘When Tabley was transferred to Newcastle.’ At last he looked up. ‘I was fourteen.’
‘Three years?’
‘Yes. And then he shook my hand.’
‘Shook your hand?’ echoed Dominic.
‘Yeah. As if we’d been through hell together. Said he’d asked to be moved as far away from London as possible. Said he wanted a fresh start. Said you didn’t always have to talk about everything.’
In fairness, Sagittarius is one of the harder ones to find, thought Anselm. You have to look for a ‘teapot’, with the Milky Way coming out of the spout – the Milky Way is the steam – and once you see it, the whole sky takes on a new meaning. But it’s not easy. There’s no obvious link between an archer and a teapot. For a long time Anselm had seen nothing but the steam.
‘Why didn’t you say something to me?’ asked Dominic.
‘You were only eight. It didn’t seem right. And anyway, I think you’ve forgotten.’
‘Forgotten what?’
‘I kept telling you to stop asking Tabley to play the monster in the garden. You were the only one who liked it.’
Dominic had to move. He stood up as if there were insects crawling over his skin. He plucked at his shirt and jerked his head, listening to Justin talk as he’d never talked before. He could have been describing the weather. How he’d tried to escape the guilt until, twenty odd years later, somewhere between narcotic rapture and prescribed medication, he’d told his father enough of what had happened to make any further hiding a waste of time.
‘Heroin?’ repeated Dominic, leaning his head against the wall.
‘You never get over what’s happened,’ said Justin. ‘It’s there all the time. It surfaces when you least expect it, when you’re about to have a great time, when you’ve met someone special, when you’re sitting in the dark. It comes back. Like a pointing finger. Kitchener’s. Only it’s not “Your Country Needs You”. It’s “You Are Dirt”. “You’re shop-soiled”.’
Dominic couldn’t turn away from the wall. Justin was explaining how, having told his dad, he thought things would be different. He’d shifted some of the weight by sharing the secret. He’d started the Bowline. But that had been a distraction, really, something that took him outside of himself. A finger can’t point at you when you’re too busy to walk slowly down the street; too busy to read a good book; too busy to meet someone special. He’d tried to salvage something from the experience: he’d used it, once or twice, to reach people who couldn’t be reached. People like Fraser.
‘He told me I should have left him lying on the tracks … so I told him my story, told him I knew what it was like to die and stay alive. And then he told me he’d been abused, too. That he’d been handed round the staff in a care home. I believed him … I thought I understood him better than anyone …’ For a moment Justin’s eyes glazed; and Anselm knew he was back on the bridge, being taunted. He’d faced his worst nightmare. Fraser had farmed the experience of his victims to give himself credibility … taken their tears and resistance to kindle some pity; and Justin, quick to believe and slow to question, hadn’t only been fooled, he’d given him another opportunity. He’d placed him at the heart of his own family.
‘I can’t imagine what you’ve been through,’ whispered Dominic, his forehead still against the wall. ‘I can’t begin to understand what you’ve felt all these years … but you brought Fraser into my home.’
‘I thought he could be trusted … I thought he was a—’
‘You did nothing, Justin. Harry told you what that bastard had done to him and you did nothing. Why didn’t you at least get rid of him?’
‘I tried, but he wouldn’t leave. He refused. He was keeping an eye on Harry, making sure he didn’t speak—’
‘But you’re the one who told Harry to keep quiet. Why? For the sake of the family? It doesn’t make any sense. You’ve pulled the family apart.’
Justin glanced at his father, and Martin’s hands rose as if to cover his mouth. His intimations were taking shape. ‘I can’t help you any more, son. You have to explain yourself. Too many people have been hurt. We don’t understand … Why didn’t you expose Fraser?’
‘After I’d kicked his teeth in he vowed it would never happen again.’
‘So what?’ snapped Dominic, coming away from the wall.
‘He said if I didn’t keep quiet … if I didn’t help him keep Harry quiet … then he’d tell the BBC, he’d tell everybody in the street, he’d tell the police, he’d—’
‘I don’t give a damn who he threatened to tell. I’d tell the BBC. I’d go to the police.’
‘That’s not what stopped me, Dominic. He threatened to tell Mum.’
Dominic frowned. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? You put your hand over Harry’s mouth because you didn’t want Mum to know about Tabley?’ He moved to the chair vacated by Maisie, sitting on the edge, glaring at his brother. ‘That’s what you call keeping us together? Putting my son through hell? Because Mum adored Tabley?’
‘No, Dominic. I don’t. It’s what I call being trapped, doing what you don’t want to do because you’re so confused you can’t see straight, because you can’t sleep at night, because you daren’t get up in the morning, because if Fraser had said anything, it wasn’t only about Tabley and it wasn’t only about me. It was about Mum herself.’
‘What do you mean?’
Justin faltered – and in that instant, Anselm realised that Justin had lied. And with great skill. He’d said he couldn’t speak out because of Tabley’s standing: his photo was on the wall, he’d married his parents … Dominic had been named after him. But under Dominic’s questioning this unchallenged explanation now crumbled. Justin showed a spark of protest but then – amazingly – it simply vanished, like a blown-out flame. He spoke through a kind of haze: ‘I told her, Dominic. Right at the start. I told her everything. Dad was in Cambodia and I went to Mum and I told her what had happened and I asked her to stop him. But she didn’t believe me. I’d told all this to Fraser. He was threatening to tell her she was to blame … tell everyone. Not just family. The press. The police. The court. Anyone who’d listen.’
Dominic was shaking his head, smiling insanely. Martin’s arms had dropped apart and he was looking at the ceiling as if he’d been crucified.
‘You told Mum?’ echoed Dominic. ‘What did she say?’
‘Nothing.’
‘That’s not possible. She must have said something.’
‘She didn’t.’
Dominic tried again. ‘She must have reacted … She must have done something.’
Justin seemed to look back at that now distant moment. And for a second or so, he turned into that frightened, trusting boy. ‘You’re right, I’m sorry. I forgot. She went into the kitchen and made some tea.’