The Half Sister Page 10

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ she snaps at Edmund, ‘take the boy away from here. Anywhere. He needs some fresh air.’

  From the back door Diana watches the two figures, the tall man holding hands with the child, growing smaller as they walk away from her towards the meadows. That is what it would have looked like if they had children. He would have taught his son to shoot, spent even more time tying flies on his river, frittered away summer evenings in the garden bowling overs, and she would have been the mother who didn’t quite get it, not having had hearty brothers who went to prep school or jolly fathers who drove the horse box to pony club. Well, they were right to have agreed no children; it would have changed everything, and, besides, an aversion to family life is something they have in common: one with parents who loved too much, the other with parents who loved not enough or not at all, or at least not when it mattered.

  As soon as they are out of sight, Diana regrets letting them be together. She’s sure the boy will talk although she hasn’t heard a word from him since Edmund dragged him back from the cattle grid. She wants to speak first so that Edmund will not hate her; she can already see the way he is identifying with the child, but it has been so hard to find the right time. When he gets back, she promises herself, then she’ll confess. They must have headed to his precious chapel. Edmund likes to believe, or to pretend to believe, or to believe in his own childish version of belief; people often do when someone they love dies. This Solomon of Valerie’s, he was one of those born-again types according to what she said. Will someone tell him in prison that she was killed? She can’t imagine the relationship would have lasted anyway. The dead remain dead. She is not a believer. Her father, her mother, her sister: all dead. The absolute finality of that knowledge hollows her out, and she slumps at the table with her hand resting instinctively on her stomach, a woman pregnant only with loss. Who knew stillness could be so strong? That the silence of saucepans in a cupboard could be so loud? Both Valerie and her mother have been absent from her life for a quarter of a century and she never cried until now? How will she ever stop?

  The only way she knows how to stop feeling is to start doing; getting things done is what Edmund admired about her when she worked for him. Precisely, with one finger and a tissue, Diana dabs at her eyes before remembering that she is not wearing make-up, then she starts to put things back in the right place. As she opens the cupboard doors, the china inside slides towards her and, despite her frantic attempts to push things back, everything crashes onto the floor. Side plates, soup bowls, breakfast plates splinter and smash onto the tiles. Some things are damaged in ways not yet visible; she realises the shelves must have tilted in the quake. As if possessed by a poltergeist, Diana lurches from cupboard to cupboard. It’s common sense that the doors should remain shut, but her need now is to open everything, allowing the glasses to cast themselves onto the flagstones in thousands of crystal shards, inviting the jars of jam and chutney and gherkins to splatter their innards all over the floor, daring the bags of flour to jump and burst and shroud the room in ashes.

  So there you are. Diana is sobbing on the floor, blood on her hands and feet, her trousers sticky with what is left. This is what it’s like, the shit, here, for everyone to see and no little plastic bags to scoop it up and hide it in a bin. Who can possibly think it right for the boy to stay a moment longer at Wynhope, living in a mess like this, cared for by the madwoman who murdered his mother? Someone needs to take him away for his sake, for her sake, for all of their sakes.

  Past the little lake, over the iron footbridge into the meadow, Edmund and Mikey head towards the chapel with the dog who plunges in and out of the water, showering them both as he shakes himself dry and scattering the mallards. Edmund catches the beginnings of a smile on the boy’s face, but all along the stream where the fronds of the ferns are sealed like secrets they walk without talking. From time to time the ground beneath their feet is saturated and boggy, and Edmund remembers liquefaction, the sludge which surfaced in New Zealand after the huge earthquake there, the very silted and thickened and muddied stuff of history, sucking on the toes of the children who will inherit the earth. Perhaps it will seep through this meadow grass as well, as if its time has come.

  ‘That’s where we’re going.’ He points across the parkland towards his very own tiny chapel, an early Norman rock of a church, an oak tree of a door to welcome them. ‘Isn’t it fantastic?’

  Mikey nods. He is limping a little through the pasture and trying to keep his trainers white.

  ‘Not the best shoes for this sort of walk,’ says Edmund. ‘We’ll get you some boots of your own. You’ll need boots.’

  Of course the chapel is still standing, how can he have doubted it, it is built of sterner stuff than the tower, Babylon and all that. The chime of the handle, the push of air on air, and the whisper of peace hushes out from the darkness and ushers him in to the scent of lilies grown in the Wynhope glasshouses and the breath of prayer.

  ‘Monty has to stay outside,’ he whispers, ‘but you can come in. This is a very special place.’

  Gripping on tightly to the dog’s collar, the boy hesitates at the threshold.

  ‘It’s just a sort of chapel,’ Edmund explains, wondering if it is possible that the boy has never been in a church. ‘That table with the cloth is like the altar and, just here, this a font.’ He is going to ask if Mikey has been christened, but stops himself. The boy and all he represents about contemporary English life are a mystery to him. He runs his hands around the circle of rough stone where the children of the estate, including him, have been named for hundreds of years, but not any longer, for that tradition, like so much else, will die with him.

  ‘‘I know it’s very dark inside, but once you’re in, your eyes adjust and you can see very well.’

  The boy does not move. It is as if he is deaf as well as dumb.

  ‘You don’t have to be a Christian. No one has services here any longer, they’ve taken down the cross. This is just more’ – he struggles to explain exactly what the chapel is for him – ‘like my special place. The walls are two foot thick. It’s a thousand years old.’ The numbers have no effect. Edmund tries again. ‘Do you know why I come here? Why I thought you might like it?’

  With daylight behind him, the child’s face is inscrutable.

  ‘Because when I was a boy, about your age, my mother died. She was ill for quite a long time. But then my father died as well, when I was a bit older than you. He died in the tower as well. It was unexpected, at least I didn’t expect it. So, it was a terrible day, like this is. And I come here to talk to them when I’m lonely. I light a candle, that’s why there are two candles, can you see?’

  There is the slightest nod of the head.

  ‘I thought you might like to light a candle for your mother, now that she’s dead. Because she is . . . dead. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’

  Edmund never dreamed his story could be told so simply, that telling might feel like giving. The chapel only ever seated twenty in its box pews, but since being deconsecrated, it has only ever seated one and he takes his place on the aisle end of the second row back. He is struck by the way he has spoken, such ordinary words coming from nowhere when they were needed most. Maybe the spirit still works here on the tongue, even with the artefacts gone; maybe the place can lay its hands on the sickness he feels in his stomach every time he thinks about Valerie, her inconsequential body lifeless amongst the fallen buttresses. The snatch of the latch jolts him, the boy is pocketing the key, the rook nesting in the beams above him screeches a siren alert, and Edmund is suddenly small and scared again, half a memory of hide-and-seek and teatime and voices counting backwards from twenty in the derelict graveyard. But he is mistaken. In fact, with the key in his possession, the boy is not locking him in, but creeping down the aisle, leaving small damp prints on the tombs beneath his feet. Stopping in front of the empty altar, he crosses himself. It occurs to Edmund that everything he has been told about his sister-in-law
and her son may not have been gospel truth.

  ‘You can light one of the candles,’ says Edmund. ‘Here, let me help you.’

  The flicker is reflected in the boy’s eyes as they place the third candle alongside the others. It sends a steady incense of grief into the darkness.

  Back in the kitchen, Diana is on the phone when she catches sight of the two of them returning. Edmund is looking down at the boy as if he is listening, the boy is looking up as if he is talking.

  ‘We’ll keep him until you can sort something out,’ she is saying. ‘But he can’t stay here for long, it wouldn’t be right. No, I’m not the right person at all.’

  The two of them are standing together in the kitchen door, clearly shocked. She sees herself as they must see her, surrounded by fragments.

  ‘What on earth has happened?’

  ‘It’s called an earthquake, Edmund. It’s what happened when you weren’t here.’

  Despite the BBC Live updates and emergency contact numbers and hashtag hysteria, for most people the reality of the whole event is more than a little disappointing: the dramatic footage from the CCTV showing the guests running screaming from the Travelodge is less impressive when you know that nobody actually died; the multistorey car park collapsing like a pack of cards looks terrifying until you realise it is only one corner of one level and the only victims are an abandoned Ford Fiesta and the supermarket waste-disposal bins. People needed to feel part of the tragedy that social media told them was unfolding, this scythe which passed within a whisker of their ordinary lives. They want to leave flowers and write notes and hold vigils, and Wynhope is the obvious shrine. In so many ways, Diana craves attention and visitors, just not this sort of attention or this sort of visitor. The police and the electricity board and the vicar, all of them have some legitimate role in their disaster, but the busybodies, the do-gooders from the village with their gifts of packets of long-life ham, and the sightseers who never normally get an up-close-and-personal look at the lives of the rich and powerful or a walk-on part in a national disaster, now get two for the price of one. They are not welcome. Garage flowers are laid at the lodge, coins are thrown in the pond at the feet of the bronze boy, the press call endlessly, and even though Edmund’s solicitor friend issued a statement on their behalf, they are insatiable. Online, Diana reads all about it, noting all the things the press have got wrong, not least describing Valerie as her sister. Apparently Valerie was a tragic victim who had only recently courageously escaped from an abusive relationship and started a whole new life with her small son; she was a wonderful woman (said the neighbours), always with a smile, and she loved her little boy to bits, but how the hell did they know, she only moved there recently. Friends (friends?) said she always had a good word for everybody; everybody except me, thinks Diana. She only had one word for me: liar.

  Sally is away in the Caribbean, missing the whole thing. Other acquaintances pop in, but can’t stay. John’s visit is welcome, of course; a temporary cover over the hole in their lives is better than nothing. What was it he said? Something about it needing more than a sticking plaster to put things right and that Grace will come when she can and since the lodge isn’t safe, that could be some time. Diana senses that something has changed in the hierarchy but she can’t put her finger on it; pity the housekeeper wasn’t six foot under the rubble, she thinks.

  It isn’t until a structural engineer arrives with the police that the solitary constable who is apparently on guard at the gates makes an effort to disperse the vultures. The engineer brings news that the state of emergency in the county is no longer in effect; Diana cannot see how it will ever be lifted at Wynhope. He conducts what he calls a PEBI survey and nobody asks what the letters mean; Edmund wonders how they would all fare measured with a spirit level and a plumb line. Later, the surveyor declares that Wynhope is habitable on a temporary basis in restricted areas pending further diagnostic testing. He hands Edmund a form.

  The evaluation of usability in the post-earthquake emergency is a temporary and approximate evaluation, i.e. based on an expert judgement and carried out in a short time, on the basis of a simple visual inspection and of data which can be easily collected – aiming at determining whether, in case of a seismic event, buildings affected by the earthquake can still be used, with a reasonable level of life safety. – Post-Earthquake Building Inspection

  ‘In other words, no guarantees,’ summarises Edmund as he leans on the car and signs his name.

  ‘Not in this life.’ The surveyor smiles, then perhaps realising the error of his ways, leaves rather hastily.

  Meanwhile, the other two officials have introduced themselves as SOCOs, Scene of Crime Officers.

  ‘Crime?’ queries Diana.

  ‘Or untimely death.’

  The man and the woman with names in plastic labels around their necks and gloves on their fingers are interested in only three things: the building regulations regarding the construction of the pool, locked doors and keys. They do hope she’ll be able to help them.

  On the garden bench, Mikey sits with the dog, kicks his feet against the wooden bars and listens. He can help them. Kick. Kick. Kick.

  ‘Michael, stop that.’

  He can help them. Kick. Kick. Kick. Kicking isn’t enough. He has got words, he can sort of hear them, but they haven’t come out for a long time now. Perhaps he needs to practise. In the house, he decides to find a private mirror; that’s how Mum said he should learn his lines when he had a solo to sing at school. At the top of the stairs, he taps on John’s false wall, which is where the door to the tower was before it all fell down. It’s like the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe film – once there was a whole world behind this wall. Prising his fingers between the hardboard and the stone, Mikey wants to see behind the boarding up. His memory is so clear – the smell of washed towels on the four-poster bed, the potty, his mum’s laugh – it’s impossible that there’s nothing left. Did everything fall with the tower, not just the stones, but the things that happened in it? Did it get swallowed up by the empty pool? If he could only see behind the wall.

  ‘Michael! What are you doing up there?’

  As silent as a snake, he slides on his tummy into the bathroom and studies his reflection. He does not think he can talk to himself.

  ‘Michael?’

  The narrow stairs that go on up offer an escape route, up to the very top of the house where he can’t go any further, and there he finds an empty room and shuts the door behind him and listens. No footsteps. This is his place. It’s so empty he can spin in it, run in it, even do a somersault in it. There’s nothing in here except him, everything he knows and everything he is. The sloping ceilings don’t get in the way; he’s too small to bump his head, and although the cupboards along the floor at the end are stuffed full of junk, that’s okay, because he can clear them out and that can be his hiding place. Peering through the bars on the front windows, he sees that everything is a long way down and quite small, toy cars and plastic trees and four grown-ups in a huddle like Playmobil men. He can’t hear what they’re saying from up here, but he knows Diana’s lying to them all, even to the police. I would climb to the top of the house and fight for you, that’s what his mum said to him, and he said that he’d defend her with his life, like a soldier. But he didn’t, did he? No more secrets, no more lies. He can cry but he can’t talk. If his voice isn’t working, he’ll have to think of something else. Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-a-tat-tat. And they all fall down. Instinctively, he slips the key to the nursery door into the pocket of his jeans.

  ‘Michael’s fine,’ Diana says, back outside. ‘He’s playing in his room. And here, I’ve found some custard creams.’ She wishes she could offer the investigators the proverbial cup of tea which would have made small talk so much easier, standing around on the lawn like it’s a drinks party. ‘Isn’t it obvious how Valerie, how she’ – Diana swallows – ‘how it happened?’

  And the investigator is saying she’d be surprised, around each tra
gedy is a story: old people’s hearts stopping seconds before the force eight blows and the tree falls on the roof, hardly knowing a thing, which must be a comfort to the family; a travelling salesman trapped by a fire started by an electrical fault in a hotel which should never have passed planning; three young males from Afghanistan locked up by gangmasters in one room, working twenty-four seven to earn their freedom while carbon monoxide leaks from the boiler. Sometimes these stories even bring people to account.

  Snapping the top off the custard cream Diana remembers the Christmas biscuit tin. Valerie always had first pick, always took the custard creams. Out of all the biscuits snug in their red plastic homes, the custard creams were the only ones Diana ever wanted.

  ‘I thought you said Mikey was in his room.’ Edmund points to a face at the window on the very top floor. ‘Is he safe up there? Shouldn’t you be with him?’ He raises his hand to the boy in a sort of half-wave.

  ‘Why me? Oh, forget it. I’m sure he’s fine exploring the nursery. There are bars on the window, and for goodness’ sake, Edmund, don’t encourage him down.’ Diana recovers herself. ‘There’s no knowing what he might do.’

  Or say. That is a half-thought, a wasp against a window.

  The SOCOs begin with the pool. It will be helpful if Edmund can provide them with the drawings, the building regs, all the paperwork, and Edmund says of course, but it may be a day or two before he can sort it all out, he’ll need to dig it all out, no joke intended. No laughter. This is a serious business, but the investigators are easily satisfied by his excuses because they have a more interesting hypothesis to explore. After the earthquake, Valerie was alive. She had time to escape before the aftershock destroyed the tower. She couldn’t escape because the door was locked and she couldn’t find the key.

  ‘It seems we can’t find it either,’ the officer concludes, blowing on her hands to warm them up. Perhaps Diana can help? Is the door to the landing usually locked?