Pleasure and a Calling (21 page)

O
F COURSE THERE WAS
nothing conclusive about the unexplained box of coloured matches found in the cemetery man’s hut. They could have been anyone’s. And of course the police were happy enough to suspect the cemetery man himself, who after all was found in the cemetery carrying the boy’s blue cardigan when the constable and others arrived to comb the park. It was the cemetery man himself who had seized upon the matches – found on the floor of his hut along with Anthony’s shoes and one of Angela’s socks – as evidence of an unknown third party. And what use would
he
have for novelty matches, he protested – a pipe smoker with a silver-plated pocket lighter he’d had since he was in the navy! You could ask anyone. But even to me this seemed a flimsy defence for a man found in a cemetery with the cardigan of an abducted toddler and unexplained shoes in his hut. He was a loner with no wife or family. And you only had to look at those teeth. These were the details that filtered out over the weeks. I can’t even say for certain that it came to court. The evidence of ‘interference’ was circumstantial. And you could hardly expose a pre-school child to the ordeal of a police line-up. Still, the
cemetery man was never seen again. It might seem unjust, but what if he
had
done something? We had all been warned about strange men in parks. It was a regret that the Damatos had had to move, though. They were indignant at the suggestion that their Anthony was the true owner of the matches and that he had escaped his playpen with the little girl in tow. But could anyone in the neighbourhood trust their children again with an Italian? That’s what people were saying. In fact, as everyone knows apart from some snobbish and ignorant people in Norfolk, Italians are devoted to their children. I for one loved Mrs Damato.

Within my own domestic circle, I remained the only suspect. Aunt Lillian, ashen-faced, demanded to know that afternoon what I had bought at the sweet shop. She turned out my pockets and found biscuit crumbs. I denied having been to the park. I shrugged when, perhaps a week later, the issue of the matches arose, prompting my father, anger in his face, to take the cupboard in the utility room apart in search of
our
coloured matches, which Aunt Lillian distinctly remembered seeing in there alongside a box of ordinary matches, torches, batteries, an ornamental lantern and other paraphernalia that seemed to be the random remedial ingredients for some minor future emergency.

It must be said that my father and Aunt Lillian were often at loggerheads about me. How vexing to have such a boy maniac in their midst, curdling their love and happiness and future.

And yet in the end my aunt must have felt that things had not turned out too badly. Certainly she seemed pleased enough with my progress when I visited her just before she died. She knew that Mr Mower liked and trusted me, and it was hardly in her interests to scupper my blossoming career at Mower’s (which was so reassuringly distant from her life in Norfolk) by casting doubt
on my character, whatever she might privately have thought. But Isobel? I remembered seeing her conversing with Mr Mower at Aunt Lillian’s funeral. If they had subsequently kept in touch, and it seemed reasonable to assume so, Isobel would surely have heard about Guy – especially when his funeral followed Aunt Lillian’s so closely (and I’m sorry not to have mentioned this previously; perhaps I was waiting for it to become a footnote). Might Isobel now share her concerns?

My precise recollection of events is confused. But one thing I do remember – in fact it was
on
the day of Guy’s funeral – was being asked by Mr Mower to fetch something from his house. He was expecting an important client, and because of the rush getting to the funeral that morning he had left a file he needed at home. It was upstairs on a lamp table on the landing, he said. His wife was away. I was wary. I found the file soon enough. I didn’t intend to poke around in his house – and of course Mr Mower was back at the office waiting for his urgent file – but a half-open bedroom door ahead beckoned. I pushed it open. It was just a small spare room with nothing in it but a small bed and a chest of drawers. On the chest of drawers was a framed black-and-white photograph and a candlestick, hardened wax pooled in its cup. The photo was of a boy, probably in his late teens, though it was hard to tell his age. He was smiling, but you could see in his eyes and lopsided look that his awareness of the world was skewed. His face resembled those I used to see peering from the bus that took mentally subnormal children to school when I was a boy.

I knew little about Mr Mower, other than that there was a Mrs Mower and a married daughter who lived in Spain.

When I handed Mr Mower his file, he touched me on the shoulder. No doubt he was affected by Guy dying unexpectedly (which I admit even took me by surprise), no doubt feeling bad
too for having paid off Guy’s contract when he was sick. But was he also thinking about his own boy?

Stella knew nothing about the boy, but Rita, who had been with the firm for years, said his name was Malcolm and he’d died in his twenties. ‘Handicapped,’ she said. ‘Died of pneumonia. Mr Mower thought the world of him, let him come to the office sometimes with his mother.’ Rita took out one of our cards. ‘Mower & Mower? That was Malcolm. He was the other Mower. Not many people know that.’

It occurred to me that one person who probably knew about Malcolm was Aunt Lillian – that she might have guessed Mr Mower would do his best with me, back at the start, when she’d sent me here for the summer. Perhaps she told Mr Mower I’d had difficulties at home, that this would be a big favour. What better way for him to seek a little purpose after losing his boy than to help another? And it could hardly have worked out better for everyone. How delighted they both were when I said I wanted to stay on and learn the business, to make a home of this town. And now with Guy out of the picture, what could go wrong?

Mr Mower did not speak openly about his plans for me, not even in the period of freshness following those two funerals. And yet I sensed a change of air, as if possibility itself was breathable and energy-giving. A year went by and then a second. Stella became accustomed to my growing seniority as Mr Mower handed me large projects he would normally handle himself. Meanwhile, I had been secretly working to put finance in place for deals of my own in the riverside development.

When Mr Mower called me into his office one morning to announce his retirement – along with the offer that I run the firm under his name for a small share – he was surprised when I said I’d have to think about it. He was even more surprised
a few days later to find that I had the money to make him a generous counter-offer to purchase the firm outright. A shadow fell briefly over his face – as if, perhaps, I had gazumped his own idea, ungraciously seized my future before he could give it. But then he smiled. It was his turn to think about it, but he wasn’t going to refuse. In the end he insisted on a smaller sum but also that he remain for a time in the wings, to aid the transition. After a year, the Mowers sold up and moved to Spain, to be near their daughter and grandchildren, Heming’s was born, and all was happiness.

I
GAINED UNLAWFUL ENTRY
into Abigail’s life a few minutes after I saw her leave for work the morning after the business with Mr and Mrs Sharp, her hair damp from the shower. I was surprised that she had been out on her usual run. Bumping her bicycle tyres down the front steps, she looked tired. No doubt she was anxious about her precious Douglas. Her last text to him was just after midnight. Perhaps she feared a last-minute reconciliation with his wife. I watched her cycle off, down the road, then dismount at the gap in the wall that led down to the river path.

I had no doubt that this time the key would fit, though I paused to enjoy a moment of calm before turning it. Then I closed the door behind me, shut my eyes and inhaled, holding that first taste in my nostrils. Of course, it’s nothing more than molecular. But also how magical, especially at that time of day, when the slow lingering charge of a person is still in the air. It goes beyond the steaming aromas of morning – the mingling of coffee and shampoo and croissants. Here was Abigail in essence, arising from the rustle of clothes against her skin, the warmth from her bed, her spearmint breath, the brisk eruption of human
dust in the simple tightening of a shoelace. Thus do we leave the signs of ourselves. Its seduction is narcotic. The dreamiest high, the thrill of newness. A fresh drug to try.

When I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was what I assumed to be Sharp’s pair of matching holdalls standing side by side in an unused breakfast room. Not wanting to spoil the day, I moved on, capturing each unfolding scene with my small camcorder. The front room was full of heavy furniture, a bow-legged coffee table, vases, clashing patterns. Upstairs was Abigail’s mother’s large room, heavy with dead smells, a good-sized guest room, a box room containing a single tubular-framed bed, and then … Abigail’s vast double with its light woods, girlish treasures, 1960s lamp and zebra-print rug, a desk, a laptop, the red curtains I had seen from the street glowing in the night, her mother’s ginger teddy. Here was her music docking station, her TV set, DVDs and bookshelves of novels and poetry, popular psychology and philosophy manuals and travel guides. This was still her living space, a teenage retreat she had moved back to as an adult. There were boxes yet to unpack. More books. More poetry, old university books. It was as though, after her mother’s death, she had not yet allowed herself to fully occupy the house. For now, I touched nothing, opened none of the drawers, searched for no diary or photographs or letters. This was not a day for greed but thanksgiving. Sometimes what you have is all you need. Having slayed dragons to be here, it was enough to be buried in the softness and earthy scents of her bed, its autumn leaf-patterned quilt left in a careless heap, the pillows creased and unshaken from her night’s sleep.

O sweet, fragrant slumber!

By the time Abigail returned I was safely above, locked into the mustard-painted attic, with its cherished junk of memories:
board games, toys, a doll’s pram, a walnut-cased stand-up radio, boxes long ago marked with their contents; the careful repository of a family shrunk to one.

I had unpacked, laid out my bedroll in an enclosing cell of heaped furniture, and raised the skylight blind to the starry blue heavens. I showed my moneybox key to the camera and cut my mark deep into a floorboard. She ate in the echoing kitchen (I was glad to discover that the gentlest jousting of knife and fork sounded through the house) and then came upstairs. Oh my. I lay quiet in the faintly starlit darkness as she moved around. I heard her speak (to whom?) on the phone. She listened to a radio talk programme. Perhaps she read a book, or sent one more anxious plea to Sharp’s voicemail or inbox. At some point she went to the bathroom and used an electric toothbrush. She coughed lightly. Her mattress creaked as she rolled over to turn off the lamp or set her alarm. Perhaps she cried a little. Who could be happier?

I have had my moments of accident and adventure. I have filmed myself cowering in the dusty underspace of a bed while a man in a hurry to catch a train ironed a shirt in the same room. I have been illuminated without warning in the small back garden of a young woman after dark (I might as well tell you now that this was Zoe). My best moments have resembled feats of comic heroism. Imagine me, for example, at the Houths’ of Anders Close – flight from Florida due in at six, taxi booked for 7.15 to whisk them home for, what, 8.15, 8.30? I was up with the birds, showering, hoovering, zipping my weekend bag, enjoying a relaxed breakfast. I washed and dried my juice glass (I’d brought my own juice), bagged my rubbish, swept up the cake crumbs (a good slice from most of a Dundee stowed in the larder), cooled the kettle, scrubbed and replaced the cafetière. Bang on schedule, the taxi was at the kerb, children clamouring
to be let in. As the front door opened, I left noiselessly from the conservatory at the rear, slipped into the garden shrubbery and through a narrow but well-used gap in the hedge that gave on to the hospital grounds (where I happen to know Mrs Houth works in an administrative capacity). I am generally scrupulous in making a clean exit, though on this occasion it pleased me to think of Mrs Houth halting in her steps while her husband struggled with the suitcases. ‘That’s odd,’ I imagined her saying. ‘Can you smell coffee?’ A small aromatic mystery getting smaller with each sniff of the air.