Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart (17 page)

It really feels as if my past is growing closer. It seems I simply have to summon up the energy, cast off this terrible weight of deadness. That's all it will require, I guess, to make the final breakthrough.

Energy.

“Perhaps,” she says, “you might return some other day?”

I still gaze at her in only partial understanding.

“I was saying, I think it's time for you to leave.” She tries to urge me to my feet by pulling at my shoulder.

In doing so, she drops the ring.

I pick it up, rise slowly from my chair. My limbs feel leaden. “Why did she give it you?”

“She didn't.”

“But…?”

She says impatiently: “They brought her back here in a state of shock.”

“Who did?”

“And then the doctor sedated her.” Her responses seem a bit awry. Is it her or is it me? “For several hours I sat by the bedside, held her hand. He came back, gave her a second shot, said she wouldn't wake until the following day. He was a fool. I shouldn't have trusted him. Ought never to have left her. They shouldn't have brought her here in the first place. She woke up in the night…”

“Yes?”

She looks at me almost as if I'm not there any longer. Her look seems to pass right through me.

“And that's something else that's going to haunt me forever. The way she must have felt when she woke up and found herself to be alone.”

After a pause, her eyes refocus, perceptibly. “Somebody found the ring on the staircase. One of the lodgers.”

“But for God's sake!” I say. “What happened to her?”

“She disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Walked out of the house that same night. Never came back.”

“But people don't just disappear.”

“The police said otherwise. If that's what they want to do. And if they want it desperately enough.”

“But she was drugged—a zombie. Wandering aimlessly. How could they not have found her?”

She makes no answer.

“Did she have a suitcase?”

“No.”

“Nothing?”

“Just her handbag. That and one of the cuddly toys that Thomas had been given. She thought it might have grown to be his favourite.”

“But no clothes?”

“The frock which she'd been put to bed in; the coat I'd taken from her cupboard and spread on top of her for extra warmth. I don't know if there was anything else—underwear and stuff like that—squashed inside her handbag.”

“And money? What about money?”

“She had a post office account.”

“Then couldn't the police have traced her through that?”

“No.”

“But why not?”

“Nor could they trace her through her ration book.”

“Excuse me, ma'am—but why in the hell not?”

“Simple. They finally assumed that Cassidy wasn't her real name.”

For several seconds I merely stare at the old lady. “My God!”

Then: “Oh, my God!”

“She'd always wanted her son to be called Cassidy.” She says it quite calmly.

“But surely you told them?”

“No.”

“No?”

“It was the name she'd been going by for months. There was no reason to suppose she'd now revert. Besides, after a few days I decided to respect her privacy, her right to choose. If she didn't want to come back I didn't mean to force her.”

“But she wasn't in a fit state to know
what
she wanted.”

“She didn't want continual reminders of Tom—that much I could be sure of! I telephoned the farm in Suffolk; in case she might have returned there. But I didn't tell them anything, pretended only that I'd lost her new address. Also, I was going to try to get in touch with a friend of hers, Trixie, in Norwich. But as I say. By then I'd decided that Rosalind had the right to self-determination.” The old lady's tone had recovered much of its authority. “And, anyhow, if she were dead what difference would it make?”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, yes. I already thought she might be dead.”

“No.” I shake my head. “No, ma'am. No.”

“I suggested they should drag the Leg-of-Mutton Pond. That's where she often used to go and sit with Tom. But they said it was a costly operation and there wasn't enough evidence to warrant it.” She pauses. “And it wouldn't have brought her back, either. Would it? So what the hell?”

At last I manage to reply. “No, ma'am. She isn't dead. Rosalind is not dead.”

She actually smiles at me—a small smile—touches my wrist for a moment with one arthritic hand. “My dear young man. How can you sound so positive? You don't know anything about it.”

“All I do know is, she can't be dead. She can't be. I assure you.”

“What nonsense.”

“It's instinct, ma'am. Conviction. Not nonsense.”

“I can't make you out, Mr Cassidy.”

“And besides. If she had intended only to jump in some pond, why would she have taken her purse?”

“Forgive me, that's naïve.”

But then she offers me another gin.

“And if you like,” she adds, “I could go and rustle up a sandwich.”

In view of recent events both offers are surprising.

I accept the first, decline the second. After I've fixed the drinks we spend ten minutes looking at some snapshots. (The pictures of the baby show how beautiful he was. Rosalind wasn't simply being partial in what she had written to Trixie.) There are several of her mother. “Yes, her mother. I feel that I'd have known her anywhere.”

“Well, of course. There's a very clear resemblance. Change the hairstyle, slim down the face…”

“Mrs Farnsworth? May I see her room?”

Her indecision—whatever she may say—has little to do with any possible objection from the present tenant, who won't be back, I finally hear, until after six. It has more to do with her unvoiced fear I could be schizoid. You don't have to be a clairvoyant to perceive that.

“But why would you want to see it? I needn't tell you it's completely changed.”

Yet we do go up. And there are certain things that won't have changed: the doorknob, the window, the shape of the room, maybe even that maze of hairline cracks across the ceiling. The wallpaper was hers. So were the curtains—dirty, discoloured, faded—but still hers. “What about the bed…?” At the moment it's unmade but Mrs Farnsworth doesn't seem to notice. And Mr Turnbull need never realize he's had visitors. “Would it have been in that same spot when Rosalind was here?” It fits neatly into an alcove.

She nods. I sit on the edge of it, tentatively. She points out—a bit drily—that it wouldn't have been the same bed.

“Is there any piece of furniture that would have been the same?”

“Oh, my dear young man.” She partly contradicts what she had told me at the start. “Wait until you're ninety and someone asks you to describe a room when you were half that age. Possibly the chair was here. Possibly the table.”

Now I go and sit on the chair, put my hands on the table. A table small and square—rickety and badly scarred.

In the middle of the room, beneath a forty-watt bulb.

It's twenty to ten. The couple next door has just returned from what I'd be willing to swear was a day of begging, combined with several hours spent in the pub. In a while they'll probably start to bawl at one another. For the moment, though—and running true to form—they've already switched on their wireless; and equally true to form have switched it on at full volume.

“It's a grand night for singing,

The moon is flying high

And somewhere a bird

Who is bound he'll be heard

Is throwing his heart at the sky…”

I want to beat against the wall, I want to scream at them to stop. Almost any song but that, almost any song but that! I press my hands against my ears. I can't shut out one decibel.

I'm sitting at the table, hunched into my yellow coat, watching the shadow of the light bulb swing in the draught that blows from door to window. And my hair is stringy, my dress is creased and stained, my whole appearance…slatternly.

But the room I'm sitting in, it's not the room in Worsley Road.

The light bulb is flyspecked and unshaded, the partly-drawn curtains thin and skimpy. The filthy nets aren't even hanging right. The bed looks as though bedbugs might infest it.

Tom's Dalmatian puppy sits on the pillow. There are times when I can scarcely bear to look at him. And yet always when I go to bed I take him with me. I cry into his fur.

Not just during the night, either. I spend three-quarters of my day attempting to sleep. But whether I'm in bed or elsewhere—for instance, sitting at this table—my thoughts fly back repeatedly to that one unchanging topic.

If only I'd stopped to ask Jane if she wanted any shopping. Other mornings I had done so.

If only I hadn't made that extra piece of toast.

Which was pure greed…especially with Tom getting so impatient to be taken out.

Selfish and greedy. No wonder his father had finally seen through me; decided on escape.

But all my life I've been selfish. Who would deny it? A selfishness pointed up, only last year, by the death of my mother.

I should have realized she was ill, should have realized it for months. Ever since the early summer she had been mentioning a number of minor things.
Apparently
minor things. If only I had paused to listen; to think about someone other than myself.
Truly
think.
Truly
listen.

That beggar now…he'd only asked me for a cup of tea. Oh God, the price of just one cup of tea…

And I'd wanted to give it to him, too. That was the dreadful part. The sun was shining. I'd been feeling happy. I'd even thought about ice cream; just a few minutes earlier I had actually thought about buying an ice cream! And then, while even in the act of pulling open my handbag, with the old man's eyes already watching and grown hopeful, I'd suddenly remembered. I had only a ten-shilling note and a couple of farthings. And I was too mean to part with the one and too embarrassed to offer him the other.

But why hadn't I asked him to wait? I could have changed the money in a shop.

Oh God, a ten-shilling note—and with that I might have bought the life of my child!

And the life of my child's children.

A ten-shilling note—and with that how many hundreds and thousands of lives might have been purchased?

But the sins of the mother.

Shall flatten.

And splatter.

And destroy.

On each of these words I bang my fist down on the table. (Oh, if only I could have been the one to be flattened and splattered and destroyed!) Bang my fist down hard, with intent to make it hurt and bleed; then stare at it, amazed, as though awoken from a trance… In fact, I've done more damage to the table than I have to my hand. I lay my forearms on the splintered wood—place my head on top of them—and howl.

“Oh, I don't know what to do! I don't know what to do!”

I slide down from my chair; slide down deliberately. I crumple on the floor. I crawl across the carpet.

“My dear, you're ill.”

There's an old lady leaning over me.

“I'm going to call the doctor.” She lays a trembling hand upon my shoulder.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“My name is Farnsworth. Jane Farnsworth. You've just been…”

Jane? Jane Farnsworth? But the woman standing before me has wrinkled skin, white hair. How can this possibly be Jane?

The carpet is worn. In places, threadbare. Even where there's any pile left, some of it is matted with the spillages of countless years of slovenly behaviour. Is this my carpet? My own beautiful, expensive carpet which I saw in a shop window and hoped at once I might possess? (She's right, I'm obviously not well… Am I wandering? Have I gone out of my mind? But I don't want any doctor.) My fingers dig into my prized, once-lovely carpet. My fingers are tanned and strong and have a scattering of hair. These fingers can't be mine.

Yet in that case what's become of me?

What am I doing here?

Five minutes later, I am standing at the front door.

“That carpet? That was hers, wasn't it?”

“The one upstairs?” She doesn't even question how I knew. “Yes, I forgot about the carpet.”

But then I just don't get it, ma'am: how could you ever have allowed
…?

She replies as if I'd spoken.

“I sold most of her belongings, gave the money to some charity. But I felt there should be one or two things left to commemorate her presence…or her passing. But, it's true, I oughtn't to have left the carpet: an act of vandalism against the very person I loved best in all the world. Are you certain you'll be well enough to travel?”

“I'm truly sorry to have put you through all this.”

“We could always ring to get a taxi.”

“No, ma'am, you've been very kind. I'm fine. I appreciate your hospitality.”

I'm fine. Yes, ma'am, only one thing wrong with me now—even if that one thing does, as it happens, threaten to be terminal.

You see, ma'am…I'm remembering.

23

I don't know how I get back to Tom's office.
Was
it by taxi? Or was it by tube? Or bus?

Or even on foot?

And I don't know what time I arrive. It could have been a year since our parting in Grosvenor Square—whereas it's not yet a full week since I first walked up this steep and narrow staircase.

“You're earlier than I expected,” says Tom. He sounds preoccupied.

“Why? You told me you'd leave at half-past. Or
probably
leave at half-past.”

“Yes. Half-past-
five
. Not four.”

“And now it's—?” I look at my watch. “Oh, you've got to be kidding!”