The Deadly Space Between (17 page)

‘Over you go.’

Our attempt to tie the tree onto the Renault’s roofrack revealed that the thing was too big for the car. The cut trunk projected over the windscreen like a medieval siege engine. Iso drove off at speed. I watched the fine silver branches banging against the windows on the driver’s side as it lurched about on the roof.

‘Whoopee! We’ve got our Christmas tree! Listen, Toby, we’re having Christmas at ours. I’ve invited Luce and Liberty and I’ve told Liberty that I’ll never speak to either of them again if they don’t come.’

I looked out of the back window to check that we were not being followed.

‘And I’ve invited Roehm.’

I felt the tree heaving on the roof.

‘Iso, was that wise? Luce is still up in arms about Roehm.’

‘She’ll never come round unless she gets to meet him. You’d have hated him if he hadn’t been kind to you.’

But you don’t hate men like Roehm. And Roehm was never disinterestedly kind to anyone. I stared at her disturbing confidence. She used all the wrong words. How do you react to a man like Roehm? You have two choices. You either follow him like the disciple who has just received the gospel through a Damascus experience, or you fear him to the core of your being. I hadn’t yet decided what to do. And I wanted to feel that I was still capable of a choice.

_{*  *  *}

Luce did not take the Christmas at Ours proposal at all well. She scented a plot to win her over to our side and our way of seeing things. But she didn’t suspect the coup d’état which Iso had devilishly planned. I negotiated with Liberty over the phone, as if we were the second-rank diplomats at top-level talks, the ones in grey suits with forgettable faces, who were sent in to put out feelers and assess the other party’s more intractable positions.

‘She’ll come, Toby. But she’s not happy. And she doesn’t like the break with tradition.’

‘Tough nuts. Iso’s as obstinate as she is. Are you having hell?’

‘Yup.’

‘Whadda you do?’

‘Listen her out. Then push off to chambers and get on with my preparation and paperwork. She sends me five emails a day.’

‘Oh no!’

‘Yeah, and they all start with stuff like “And another thing, she has never apologized for insulting my sexual preferences . . .” ’

‘I expect she thinks that we’re vicious and ungrateful.’

‘I’m afraid so. Luce is crackers, Toby. She thinks that you’ve gone over to the enemy and that Roehm is the incarnation of evil.’

‘Rubbish! All that’s happened is that Iso’s got a posh foreign boyfriend, who’s a bit older than the last one, likes her pictures and has stacks more money.’

This was a dramatic oversimplification of the case, but it was my official version and it was the one in which I most wanted to believe.

‘I know,’ said Liberty. ‘I can’t quite believe that Luce is carrying on like this. She sometimes sounds like the demon sister, Katie. We’re all perverts who’ve gone to the damnation bow-wows, etc. etc.’

‘We’ll have to form a cordon sanitaire around the warring parties.’

‘Keep at it. Good luck. So long, kiddo.’

We spent far more than we usually did that Christmas. Iso actually baked an armada of home-made mince pies. We did two trips to Safeway and she insisted on buying potatoes that were all the same size so that they would cook evenly in the oven. Roehm had vanished. I never asked where he was. I assumed that he was abroad. There were no messages left on the answerphone and her hair was blissfully free of cigarette smoke. Then the first of the packages was delivered.

I was lying on the sofa reading Stephen King when the doorbell went. I had to sign for a huge square crate that was appallingly heavy and addressed to both of us. One of the Securicor men helped me to carry it into the kitchen. He left the door open and a mighty gust of cold air ravaged the house. Once I was alone I turned up the thermostat and set about dismantling the package. It was an impenetrable Pandora’s Box. The outer carton was embedded in straw and sealed with black tape. Inside was a light wooden structure that appeared to have no hinged lid. It was sealed with staples. I searched for a screwdriver. It was only then that I thought to look at the shipment documents. There was no sender’s address, but the box had been sent through a company in Bern. It must have come from Roehm.

Smiling and excited, I splintered the wood and burst in upon the treasure. The contents of the box were packed in fine, shredded coloured strips of paper, which I threw out in handfuls. There were bottles of ginger, marrons glacé, Turkish Delight, exotic spicy chocolates, a litre of Kirsch, and a sinister green phial of Grande Chartreuse. There were even two exquisite tiny vats with curling spouts and glass stoppers sealed in wax, containing olive oil and vinegar seasoned with walnuts. Carefully buried in the surrounding packaging were fragile glass and wooden angels destined for the purloined tree. All the delicacy and excess of Christmas was packed into that magic box. I danced on the ruptured cork tiles with pleasure at the gift, exultant as a spoilt child. I replaced as many of the treasures as I was able to do and rang Iso at the college. It was the last day of term and she was overseeing the studio clean-up and writing her reports.

‘Guess what he’s sent us . . .’

‘He hasn’t, has he? . . . Oh, Toby, he shouldn’t have.’

‘He is coming, isn’t he?’

‘So he says.’

‘Luce’s nose will be way out of joint.’

‘God! Do you think she’ll start a row?’

‘If she does, it’s her problem. Come home quick. I want to show you everything.’

Two more parcels came before Christmas. One contained twelve bottles of vintage champagne. The last one was slender and official. This was delivered, not through the export company in Switzerland, but from central London. The box within a box was wrapped in Christmas paper, a forest of silver stars. And the label was addressed to me in Roehm’s peculiar Gothic script. We laid it reverently beneath the Christmas tree.

Luce and Liberty arrived early on Christmas Eve. They were invited to eat with us and then spend the night at our house. Luce swept over the threshold, dressed in black and white. She looked exactly like Cruella De Vil. The house was transformed. Iso had hoovered everywhere and packed all our daily junk into the Glory Hole. The luxuries from Switzerland were laid out on trays. The Christmas tree was alight with real candles. Next to the presents was a large fire extinguisher illegally borrowed from college. The fridge was full of champagne. It looked as if we had suddenly come into money. Luce began to melt.

‘Oh, Iso,’ she said, the old gentleness surging back into her voice, ‘you shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble and expense.’

I pulled Liberty aside and dragged her up the stairs.

‘Did you know that Roehm’s coming? Have you told Luce?’

‘Iso warned me. And no, I didn’t dare.’

‘Shit! What’ll we do?’

‘Brazen it out. And if she storms off home I’m not going. Where’d you get all that stuff?’

But as she looked at me she guessed and burst out laughing at the realization Luce had been upstaged as Lady Bountiful. Liberty wasn’t naive. She knew that Luce used her gifts to control us and to keep us in her debt. It was a complex exchange of love and money. The usual terms of engagement had been breached.

‘Brilliant!’ Liberty and I giggled all the way back down the stairs.

We were opening the second bottle from Roehm’s crate of champagne when I heard the panzer’s roar coming down the quiet street. He didn’t park where he usually did, but came right up to the front door. I pulled back the curtain so that the monstrous chariot was visible. Iso burst out laughing. The panzer’s windscreen was picked out in multi-coloured fairy lights. I flung open the front door and there stood the strange gigantic man who had seduced us both, his arms filled with glittering ribboned parcels.

‘Happy Christmas everyone,’ said Roehm.

The really extraordinary thing about the whole situation was that nobody shouted, lost their temper, went all frosty or stormed out. Luce went a little whiter under her mask of elegant paint and her pupils narrowed to slits, as if she were a cat facing mortal danger, or a junkie feeling the first rush. But it’s very hard to be devastatingly rude to someone twice your size who has just oozed over the threshold bearing armfuls of expensive presents. Roehm was eerily at home in our house. He knew where everything was, even things we thought we’d lost. He was as easy with me as he was with Iso. He shook hands with my aunt and her lover as if he was honoured to meet them both. His courtesy was generous, but not excessive. He waited for everyone else to sit down before lowering his menacing weight into one of our straight-backed chairs. He finished opening the champagne without an explosion. He let the vapour rise from the green mouth before taking the tall glass in his hand. He said very little. He took his time over everything. He stepped outside to smoke, but lit Luce’s cigarettes one after the other. He sat back and waited for all of us to come to him.

Iso glared at Luce triumphantly. Roehm’s perfect manners had entirely disconcerted my aunt. So did his hospitable silence and his extraordinary size. As I watched her observing him I saw how he had begun to fascinate her, as surely as if he was moving slowly from side to side, his deadly hood extended, presenting a steady unreadable gaze, his concentration fixed, his eyes pale and gleaming.

We did not notice the passing of midnight. We did not hear the bells. The moment of Christmas was upon us, but we were absorbed in ourselves, the little drama of our domestic lives, and the careful rearrangement of our identities around the still figure of Roehm.

I noticed how little he moved and how intently he listened. The cabinet in Vienna again appeared before me. And I wondered if the doctor sat like this, relaxed, concentrated, unmoving, listening as his hapless victims disgorged their past in broken sentences. For that was exactly what we were doing. Roehm provided the stage, the lights, the orchestra and we began to act out our lives before him. Every sentence that began ‘Remember when . . .’ necessitated, out of sheer politeness, an explanation of the circumstances and the time in which the event occurred. Characters in the action had to be described, the events anchored in landscape. We produced the back story, then the main narrative. We presented our histories to Roehm.

He gave us his full attention, peaceful and encouraging. His attitude towards us, consoling and remote, resembled the priest whose forgiveness, however desired, is merely that of the mediator. We became convinced that we were heard by one greater than the messenger. And in his presence we ceased to be trivial and self-absorbed. Our stories became wittier, more telling, our observations more pertinent and just. We became better people than we were.

As the night drew on we stood up, saving the presents for the coming day. We were warm, drunk, satiated and content. We slept the sleep of the righteous and for once, on that rare Christmas morning, we were at peace with one another and ourselves.

I overheard Luce lecturing Iso in the kitchen. I smelt her cigarettes.

‘You mean he went home last night? I don’t believe it. And shall we see him today?’

‘Well, I still think he’s too old for you. But I’m fair-minded enough to admit that he’s charming.’

‘Just don’t get in too deep . . .’

‘I must say he’s been very generous . . .’

‘He must be very fond of you both . . .’

‘I have to be frank, Isobel, there aren’t many men prepared to take on another man’s half-grown child.’

‘And there is one thing which I did like. He was very civil to Liberty. I’m always sensitive to that. She’s so shy that people often overlook her.’

‘Listen, my girl, are you absolutely certain that he’s not married? He must have been married at some time in his life. He wears a wedding ring. Rather a lot of rings in fact. At first I thought there were rather too many for a gentleman, but I’m not a snob and academics are often eccentric. Nevertheless, no unmarried man knows his way around a kitchen quite so effortlessly.’

‘Well, you damn well should find out. Ask him directly.’

‘And what did you give him for Christmas? Oh, one of the larger ice paintings? Shouldn’t you have kept that for the next big exhibition?’

‘Good morning, Toby darling. And happy Christmas. I’m afraid your charming scientist has left us to open all those presents quite unaided.’

The Christmas tree touched the ceiling, soaring well past the Victorian moulding. We had wedged it in a heavy box with logs, but it remained a little unstable and the needles fell in showers, over the presents, the television, the armchairs, the carpet and the fire extinguisher. It smelt of resin and outdoors. Iso doted on the stolen tree, which was the first one we had ever had. The Swiss decorations spun and shone in the firelight. We sat down in our pyjamas and dressing gowns greedily inspecting the hoard beneath the tree.

We opened Roehm’s presents one after another. I think I was the only person who noticed that these gifts were ambiguous, uncanny, even disturbing. They were too perceptive, too well chosen. Iso’s raft of expensive oils and brushes in a handsome wooden box appeared conventional enough, but I could read her too well not to register the quality of her joy. They were a brand she coveted but could seldom afford. Each single tube cost over £18. But here, spread out in abundance, were the substances she desired: gold, lapis lazuli, indigo, cobalt blue, vermilion. Liberty discovered a biography by a famous American judge on the Supreme Court, which she had longed to read and been intending to buy when the UK edition came out in the following year. But this was the American hard-cover edition, autographed by the judge herself. She let out a snort of pleasure when she saw the scrawl beneath the printed name.