What was false and what was true?
Thursday was endless, moving forward in jerking movements, and there was no doubt about Ivy avoiding her. They were avoiding one another. A nice bit of bonhomie engendered through alcohol and cruel laughter, and then to bed, and she had lost her mobile phone again, somewhere in the flat.
A longing for Carl, a conversation with Grace, an avoidance of newspapers and discussions about scratches. Ivy repeating how sorry she was not to be going home that weekend, but perversely excited about the prospect of ten pounds an hour for a whole weekend cleaning out a theatre between productions, if only Clean Co. would confirm, and they had. Never mind how the story slipped and slid a little as they talked in the bar after the class; Rachel was not sure if it was an office or one of the bigger clubs, the Dream Factory, the Lotus, the Shadow Place or whatever. Ivy, briefly seen on the Thursday, first thing in the morning, glittered with unholy happiness, and Rachel could only pity the enthusiasm for earning three hundred pounds cash, which was what she herself earned in far less than a day. Guilt.
Carl phoned. It was becoming a habit, but the phone calls lasted an hour. Grace phoned to discuss the menu for Saturday, sounding sunny and carefree. Her father phoned to say the bathroom was almost complete.
Why should she worry?
Dear Diary, I know he’s a good man. I know it.
The flowers glowed on her desk.
It was with huge relief that she drove out of London on Friday afternoon, the car on automatic pilot, Ivy further to the back of her mind, and a box full of goodies in the boot. As if to a family reunion to which she belonged. As if she ever would. Her small family never had any of those. Whatever relatives they had, Dad ignored. Rachel had always felt ignorant of the secrets of family life, always romanticised it.
The further she went from the city, the better she felt. Even the driving held no irritations, because it was a day when everything had worked and looked as if it would continue to do so, from getting up early in the empty flat, to moving unimpeded through the London streets on another fine, clear day which in itself seemed disposed to be helpful, to being able to leave work far sooner than she had hoped, to driving on roads which seemed to make space for her. Since this momentous weekend was arranged, she had suspected something would prevent it, and now it seemed nothing would. She was excited, the way she was the first time she went to the farm, was remembering the associations of pleasure rather than the darker side, determined that Carl and all of them would too. She had planned to use the extra time to detour to the sea, to borrow some of its energy, had left a towel in the back, but the urge to get there was too strong for that.
The countryside had changed subtly in a month; the slender branches which trailed against the side of the car as she turned down the narrow road to the farm seemed thicker and more determined, and the effect of plunging from light into darkness and then into light was more pronounced and exhilarating in this obscure road to a glorious place, making it seem hers and hers alone. She wondered if Carl would remember the way after so many years when he drove down tomorrow, and then thought, of course he would: it was unforgettable and nothing would have changed. Carl, stop thinking of Carl, and knowing full well that part of this excitement was wanting to see him again.
What would Ivy think if she knew was another recurrent thought. Rachel no longer knew what Ivy thought, told herself it was Grace who mattered more at this point. It was Grace who would carry it forward, and Grace was overjoyed with the chance. She would be there, setting the scene, ready to reconcile, smoothing everything, ready to embrace. If Rachel had doubts, and she did, many and various doubts, Grace on the phone dispelled them and treated it all like organising a small party, and it was Grace who said, nothing but good can come of this; there is no bad result, even if it’s upsetting. And Ernest is so pleased. You are doing good things, Rachel, you are putting salve on ancient wounds, and I am longing to see you.
Except, when she got there, pulled the car to the side of the road under the shade of a tree about fifty yards from the house and walked towards it, it was all completely quiet. She walked round the house to the ever-open kitchen door and found it shut. The garden was tidy, the yard was swept, and there was no sign of life, not even the rattle of Grace’s radio, no yell of welcome, simply an empty house. Rachel knocked on the door and tried the handle; nothing yielded or answered.
She stood back, shielded her eyes and looked up at the windows, which stared back blankly. The house seemed utterly dead, and the only sound which came to her was the humming of bees, busy round a lavender bush nearest the door. The sense of disappointment and mistake was almost overwhelming.
She could imagine the place the way she had never seen it, cold and uncomfortable in winter, with everyone locked inside. She looked up at the crooked chimney, at the mellow brickwork of the walls, which needed repointing, the broken gutter, smelt a faint whiff of rot in the air and remembered the rat, flung into the fire, and for a moment it was as if the whole place was an illusion and had never existed as she remembered it, except in her imagination, and the back door into the magic kitchen had never been open at all. No one lived here really. She shook herself, but could not avoid the feeling of how shabby it was, and how it was a place from which a teenage girl would have wanted to escape.
By now, she wished she had detoured to the sea. She was early, that was all. Perhaps she should drive away and come back, begin all over again, reverse the film. Instead she found herself trying to imagine what Carl would think, and how he would have seen it as a young man. Waiting there, rooted to the spot, she was also trying to reverse the clock on what she now knew about Ivy, what the life drawing class and the evasions so unwittingly revealed, a knowledge so negative and diffuse it amounted to nothing more than a glimpse of something savage which should be ignored, because who would not be so in Ivy’s shoes, with Ivy’s life, which had never been far from the endless, brutal cycle of life and death, nurture and slaughter which was the real business of life on a farm with animals.
Rachel went back to the car and fished out the towel and T-shirt she had left in the back, and walked in the direction of the lake. The day had grown hotter, the evening would be balmy; she would test the water and try at the same time to see the lake as Carl might see it, and then, when she came back, the slate would be clean, and Grace would be there and the house would take on the warm colours of its owners. Remembering the way as if she had done it a thousand times, already feeling the healing sensation of water on her skin, she halted at the last bend in the path, ready to savour the view, closed her eyes for a minute. When she opened them, she saw a new innovation, a large, hand-painted sign stuck on a stake, reading DANGER. KEEP OUT. POISON WATER. Then she could see Ernest in the near distance, crouching at the edge of the lake. He held out his hand to a swan which floated close to him in the shallows. The swan pecked at whatever he held in his hand and swam away gracefully. Ernest remained as he was, with the breeze off the water ruffling his white hair. It was a pretty sight; Rachel quickened her step and shouted hello. Ernest did not move; he was as unresponsive as the house. She came up behind him and touched him on the shoulder. He turned and smiled sweetly and vacantly, squinting in the sun, as if he did not recognise her at all. There was another stab of disappointment, then of anxiety: was he all right, had his memory gone, was she not important enough to remember, and was it too late for Carl to make any difference?
‘Is it safe to swim, today, Ernest? It’s me, Rachel.’
‘Hello, love, lovely to see you. Do you know, for a minute I thought it was Ivy. Sit yourself down, girl.’ He patted the ground next to him.
‘Ivy’s not coming,’ Rachel said, wanting to remind him who she was. ‘Not this time.’
‘I expect she’ll be here later,’ he said.
He continued to pat the ground next to him, and she sat. Ernest gazed back over the water to where the swans and their cygnets glided towards the opposite bank of vivid greens. Rachel’s desire for immersion in the water faded; she could not share the space with the swans, because of what she knew, and whatever the season of the year, she would always be afraid of them. Nor did she want to undress with Ernest watching, so she sat with him, trying to see the calmness of the lake and not imagine the sound of gunshot, the presence of blood and feathers drifting up to the bank.
‘Lot of feathers earlier in the year, when they moult,’ Ernest was saying. ‘Not so many now.’
‘How do you get them to eat out of your hand?’
‘Practice.’
‘Where’s Grace?’
‘Oh, she’s making ready for the slaughter, or going shopping for knives, or something like that. She keeps leaving me alone just when I need help,’ he said, sounding petulant. ‘Ivy and her keep arguing about exactly what it is they’re going to do. You’d think after all this time they’d know. They want me out of the way, and then she wants me there. Sometimes she talks to me, sometimes she doesn’t. Bugger them.’
‘Ivy’s not coming,’ Rachel repeated. ‘She’s working this weekend.’
‘Is she?’ he said, suddenly confused. ‘Oh, that’s all right then. Because Carl’s coming, you know. Poor Carl.’
He snorted into a large handkerchief dragged out of his pocket with an effort.
‘I loved him, you know. Loved the elder and loved the younger. Should have been my son. He loved me, that Carl, we used to love each other, down here, that Carl, poor lonely sod, never forgot it. We were boys, although he was a big boy, yes, very. Rachel’s bringing him. That boy should have been my son all right, though it was only his father knew anything about pigs. And this lake. It’s his lake. I want him to see it before they kill him.’
‘Kill who, Ernest?’
He looked at her, puzzled, and then back out over the water. The swans had disappeared and half the lake was in shade.
‘They want to kill Carl, sweetheart. And the soldiers wanted to kill him. They want to drown him here. Like Cassie drowned. Only the swans won’t care, it’s the wrong time of year for caring about anything. I told Carl he was wrong for never teaching his boy how to swim.’
He got to his feet, and Rachel did the same. He pointed.
‘It never gets much deeper than eight foot. Only in the middle. If he wants to get away, he stays out of that. Goes towards the swans, not away. As long as he remembers he can’t swim. When he shot the swans, he waded in, nearly didn’t get out.’
He sniggered.
‘She doesn’t know about the rats. I got Vernon to collect some rats. Lots of rats from the barns, still plenty left. Couldn’t afford that poison, too much money. One got in the house too. There’s rats on that bank over there. She’ll not go near a rat.’
‘Are you feeling ill, Ernest? What the fuck are you talking about?’
Rachel did not know if he was talking in the past or the present, listened to his rambling with increasing alarm. She was tempted to feel his forehead in the hope of finding evidence of a raging temperature, but for all Ernest’s wholesomeness, she did not want to touch him. He shifted his gaze from the far bank, stared at her as if only just noticing there was anyone there, and then put his head in his arms.
‘All this planning and practice,’ he muttered. ‘Makes me so tired.’
‘Planning and practice for what, Ernest?’
He raised his head from his arms and winked at her.
‘Doing away with the enemy, my dear. You always have to keep a weapon. You always have to do that. The soldiers are going to do it. Should always have been woman’s work, so much better at it than the men, but so much more cruel. I’d just have shot him, more in sorrow than anger, you know, but that’s not how they want to play it. They want him to know what it’s like to drown. There was never any time for that sort of revenge in the war. My father told me. Better to kill them quick and be done with it. Besides, he’ll be harder to burn if he’s full of water, heavier to lift, too.’
He plucked a blade of grass, held it between his two thumbs and split it cleanly. Then he did the same with another, and wove the two together.
‘Should be using a gun,’ he grumbled. ‘I’ve still got that old rifle left. The one Carl learned on with his dad; me too. World War Two rifle, that; my dad kept three of them. Had to hide that one, so old no one noticed. Grace doesn’t know about that.’
He turned to face her. ‘When’s Ivy coming?’ he said.
‘She’s not coming,’ Rachel said for the third time.
‘That’s a pity. Never mind. I expect she’ll get you to help. She’s good at that.’
He patted her bare arm. His hand felt cold and left a green mark on her skin.
Rachel scrambled to her feet, left the towel and ran back in the direction of the house. She wanted to run further away than that, back into the womb of the city, anywhere far away from the lake and the sinister ramblings of an old man. Kill who? Who did he mean, was he talking about Carl the elder, Carl the younger, had his addled brain gone back to the war, thinking of death and killing and drowning, not reconciliation, peace or the sight of a once-loved face? She was full of horror for what was in his mind; it couldn’t refer to the present, it couldn’t.
She drew breath near the house, slipped through the gate into the back garden, and there all was normal. Grace’s car was parked at a crazy angle to the gate, there were supermarket bags in the yard, the kitchen door was open, and as she drew closer, she could hear Grace singing to the radio. She emerged through the door, bent to pick up her shopping, saw Rachel, dropped the bags and threw her arms open wide in a jangling of bracelets. The shopping seemed to contain a record number of plastic sacks and cleaning stuff, enough for a year.
‘Gorgeous! You’re here! I saw the car, and I thought what the hell … Oh darling, you came to an empty house, I can’t bear it … how awful.’
Then there was the almighty hug, the sweet smell of her, one hand grabbing Rachel’s loose hair, smoothing it, the other hand rubbing her back as if to make something better. Back to normal, the whole world spinning back to normal.
‘Good journey, darling? Must have been, to be so early. Where did you go? Are you starving? Is it time for tea, can’t be too soon for a drink, come in, come in … oh, it’s so nice to see you … What’s the matter, sweetheart? You look like chalk.’
She had to respond to the hug, she could not resist, but then her body went wooden. Grace held her at arm’s length, studied her.
‘What is the matter?’
‘I’ve been down by the lake, listening to Ernest. Has he lost his mind, Grace? Tell me he’s lost his mind.’
‘What was he saying?’
‘About killing … someone. He was rambling …’
‘Oh, my poor darling,’ Grace said. ‘It was one of those moods, was it? I’m afraid, yes, his mind’s been wandering all over the place. Overexcitement. It’s because of selling the cows next week. Yes, dear, I’m afraid the decision’s been made, sell the cows and keep the pigs. I’ve been trying to keep him away from the lake, but he keeps on going back. Makes him maudlin. Oh, I wish you hadn’t been early and had to face that. It’s all very tiresome. What exactly did he say?’
She turned away and bustled into the kitchen, tripping over bags. Moving about automatically, Rachel began to help, picking up bags from the floor and heaving them on to the table.
‘None of it was very exact. About drowning someone in the lake … rather than shooting them. He mentioned Carl … a rifle.’
Grace nodded understandingly. The kettle on the hob was boiling noisily, the washing machine hummed in the corner. The sinister images began to fade, but not disappear.
‘Yes,’ Grace said. ‘That’s the way it usually is, and it’s not getting any better. Can you see now how urgent it was to get Carl here sooner rather than later? Before my darling husband slips his moorings completely? Seeing Carl might change all that, of course, I’m hoping it will, because most of the time he’s entirely rational and normal. We went to the doctor during the week. Alzheimer’s creeping in, but slowly so far. An early stage, still plenty of time for happiness. The mind goes back to the distant past all the time, can’t hold on to the present.’
Tea was made in between her hurried but precise words. She cleared a space on the table with her elbow and put down two mugs.
‘This really isn’t fair on you, darling, when you’ve been such a complete brick. He’s fine as long as he’s away from that damn lake. I’ve got a theory that something horrible happened there when he was a boy, just after the war, when people would kill one another for food and horrible things were happening everywhere, something he’ll never say, long, long before Cassie and everything else. It keeps coming up and drowning him.’
‘Featuring Carl?’
‘Yes. Carl who he always adored. Boy worship. The glamour of being foreign, all that shit. And whatever he said, darling, he’s not talking about the here and now. I’ve told him Carl’s son is coming to see us, coming home, but I didn’t tell him when. He doesn’t know it’s tomorrow. Oh, bugger this tea, it tastes awful. Let’s have a good stiff gin. You deserve it.’
‘I thought I saw you in London last week,’ Rachel said. ‘I must have been thinking of you.’
Relief was washing over her, like a cool shower.
‘Fat chance,’ Grace snorted. ‘I just can’t leave him, but I’m telling you, lovey, when this is over, wild horses won’t keep me away. Now, tell me all about Carl. What does he sound like? Do you think roast pork is the right thing to give him for lunch? Rather wintry, isn’t it?’
There was nothing more comforting, more distracting than domestic detail. It banished anything fantastic. When Ernest came in, he greeted Rachel affectionately, as if she had never seen him by the lake at all. And then she thought, Grace is going to need Ivy and me and a grandson to help her through this. There had to be something good in the future for Grace, and that was all that counted.
And Carl would be free of his past.
Donald Cousins sat with Judge Schneider in his tiny retiring room off Court Seven, arguing quietly. Not quite an argument, but a sort of debate, slightly at cross-purposes, and with the inevitable gaps. Certain fictions had to be maintained between the best of friends or enemies; Donald knew this from having children.
The first fiction was that Donald was not a cunning, underhand bastard who took advantage of hospitality and sneaked around other people’s personal documents in the very early hours of the morning, thus knowing the route to the Wiseman place from the road atlas which was open on the desk. He also knew the contents of the judge’s last will and testament.
The other fiction hanging round Donald’s Friday-afternoon conversation with Carl was that Donald had done nothing in the meantime except become reacquainted with the ordinary day job and its unrelated investigations. Under cover of that convenience he had discovered that Ivy Wiseman was on the books of several cleaning agencies, and her name featured all over the shop. The same researches, conducted by others, had her placed, possibly, at the back of the theatre where the man had been stabbed, as well as, possibly, in the office where the man had drunk bleach. There was no connection with the man in the ambulance in Leicester Square. The Wiseman name came up nowhere else, except as a peripheral part of that dead-end enquiry featuring the young man from London who had drowned in circumstances no longer regarded as suspicious. Donald had found this connection interesting, but did not mention it. Never mention anything to a judge unless you have the evidence for a warrant, and he didn’t, even if the same judge had given him a comfortable bed.
The last of the fictions was that he was not worried, and that he did not like Carl Schneider very much indeed. He was not going to tell him what he thought of him, probably ever, but he would have liked the chance. You are naïve, and honourable, and pig-headed, and you know fuck-all about women.
‘Two things, Carl, about going to this house in the middle of nowhere. Are you sure your ex isn’t going to be there?’
‘Yes. Rachel said. That’s the whole idea.’
Rachel said, Rachel said … Didn’t he know Rachel could be part of the problem? Was the problem? A cunning bitch, dyke or not. Carl was not going to be told.
‘You’re absolutely sure?’
‘Yes. Ivy’s working. Ivy never misses work, Rachel says.’
OK, Rachel says it. Donald believed it because Blaker had said the same. Ivy never missed the chance of work, matter of pride.
‘OK, Carl. Good luck. Keep me posted. Families, eh? But what you don’t want to do is fall in with what everyone says. Don’t be a complete patsy, obeying orders. Be early, be late, be something. Take control.’
‘Will you ever stop being a policeman? Are we going out for dinner next week, man to child-free man?’
‘That’d be nice, Judge. I’ll show you the real world.’
It was only several hours later in his empty Friday evening, when he returned to the police team which had done so much more to so little effect, because all they had unearthed was the fact that there were several people who had been present together at the scene of the theatre and the office, that Donald took advantage of their work after everyone else had gone home. Heads had been knocked together to get agencies and companies to reveal the names of their legal workers, their illegal workers, the lists and shifts of the non-cohesive casual labour they planned to use for the next three days. He studied these with interest.
Ivy featured on two lists as a regular and reliable worker, and on one she was booked to work the whole weekend, as she had done before. But this time her name had been crossed off.
Ms Wiseman, it seemed, had phoned in and cancelled.