The Orpheus Trail (7 page)

‘Good to have you back. You do understand we had to go through the accepted procedures. I’ll be in touch about the security upgrade.’

Silently I thought that now there was nothing worth stealing. Perhaps I should have opted for compensation, taken the money and run. But, when I asked her, Hilary was adamant that for the sake of the future I had to take up my old job again. If I were unemployed I would be looked at suspiciously every time I went after something new, and how long until the compensation ran out? To become a teacher I’d need at least a year’s retraining with no guarantee of an easier job at the end of it. More like a mob of ungovernable teenagers on the most run-down estate in Barking.

Post had continued to come in while I’d been away. Some of it Lisa had dealt with but there was a little stack of unopened envelopes. I began to go through them, tossing some of the contents into the shredder and putting others aside. Hilary rang in the middle of it.

‘How does it feel to be back?’

‘Strange. But I suppose I’ll get used to it. Do you fancy an official junket?’

‘Depends what it is.’

‘We’re unveiling the first piece of town sculpture since that of Queen Victoria for her Golden Jubilee. The mayor’s going to pull the cord that opens the curtains or whatever and then there’s a civic
reception
. I ought to show my face to prove I’m not still in the doghouse but it would be a lot easier if you were with me.’

‘Of course I’ll come if I can. When is it?’

‘That’s the snag. It’s very early in the morning for some reason, sunrise on midwinter day, the shortest day – however you care to think of it.’ I hesitated. ‘I wondered if you’d like to stay the night before. At my place I mean.’

I heard her pause before answering and I could imagine her straight look as she said very steadily: ‘I don’t think we’re quite ready for that, Alex. You don’t really know very much about me yet. Anyway the sun doesn’t get up until about eight. There are plenty of early trains.’

I felt a mixture of disappointment and relief. ‘Okay. I can pick you up at the station at about 7.15. That should give us time to get to Canvey Point where the ceremony is. I hope you can spend the rest of the day with me.’

‘I’ll take one of my days off. I’ve got some in hand.’

When I got in that evening Caesar was waiting for me to open the tin of cat food at once and fork the unappealing brown mess into his dish. He had got used to having me around all day and wasn’t pleased with the resumption of my old routine. I felt curiously drained. It had been hard work pretending everything was back to normal, as if I had never been away. Lethargically I checked the television schedules to see if there was anything that caught my eye. As I flipped from channel to channel I was suddenly transfixed by a programme on BBC
₄
. A concert of words and music from St John’s Smith Square in London for St Lucy’s Day. I hadn’t even known there was a St Lucy. I found the weekly magazine guide and began to read the accompanying puff. The concert was in aid of the partially sighted because her name meant light or, more grisly thought, she had torn out her eyes rather than be
forced into marriage, like the beautiful Asian girls one sometimes saw in newspaper photographs who killed themselves to avoid unknown bridegrooms chosen by their parents.

Wordsworth’s
Lucy Poems
, it said, in a new setting.

It could have been an epitaph for my own Lucy. And suddenly I was choking on a great sob for all the unknown lives gone into their graves, and a rush of guilt that I hadn’t loved her enough, known what she wanted, saw into what we call the heart, given her more of myself. It was as if all my life I’d been frozen inside and that when she died that coldness had become a rigid block of ice that was only now beginning to crack under some unacknowledged strain. Or could it be a new warmth? Caesar rubbed himself against my legs and sat down to wash the traces of dinner from around his muzzle with a delicate questing paw, and looking down at his vulnerability, I felt a new sob rising. He trusted me and I could crush him with a blow. Had my coldness crushed Lucy? We had never discussed how we felt about each other or about much else except our relative jobs and colleagues and the daily practicalities of our lives. From time to time I had gone off with a map on a cycling tour while she in turn had gone to visit her aging parents in Ipswich. Sometimes we took a walking week in the Lake District or Scotland. Was I weeping internally for her or for myself? Or for both of us? There was a blindness of the heart that Lucy hadn’t been able to cure even if she had tried. And that itself held a question I couldn’t answer. No wonder Hilary had sensed that I wasn’t ready for intimacy, that like Kay in the faery story I still had a splinter of ice in my heart.

Would I have gone down into the dark to bring back my lost wife like Orpheus? Even with a magic harp, lute or Papageno’s pipes that could neutralise death? Could I ever love anyone enough? Could they love me enough to follow me up into the light? Or would my doubts
always cause me to look back and push them down into the shadows again while I went on alone, to be torn to bits by the very emotions I’d suppressed?

It was still pitch black when I picked Hilary up at Southend Station. She kissed me lightly on the cheek. ‘What a time to hold a junket. It had better be spectacular.’

‘Thank you for coming. I’m rather dreading the whole thing and very relieved not to be responsible for any of it. I hope you’re well wrapped up. We have to stand around waiting for the sunrise or
something
. Then it’s champagne breakfast in a marquee.’

As we drove along the promenade against the morning rush hour traffic, a smear of grey began to show itself out over the sea.

‘Where exactly are we going?’ Hilary asked.

‘Canvey Point, the tip of the island, only of course it isn’t an island, only a promontory. We’re just crossing over Leigh Beck. If it was light enough you could see Hadleigh Castle. Now we’ve turned back towards the sea.’ Lights appeared ahead, leading forward to a car park where we were beckoned on by an attendant and waved into a space. Doors slammed as people spilled out, pulling on gloves and huddling down inside their coat collars. A sign pointed us towards the exhibition. We breasted a sand dune and came to a halt on a natural rise from the shore that provided a perfect raked theatre before the estuary mudflats, that now began to gleam here and there as the misty grey light was caught on the surface of little rock pools. Suddenly the sky was washed blue with small clouds floating in it that began to blush an almost indecent pink. Against this theatrical backdrop we could see a tall structure raised on a plinth and obscured by a dark curtain. The light was turning golden, the pink and blue being driven out. Beyond the tall mysterious shape the sea still showed a flat
gunmetal
grey, quite still, as if the tide was held on a cusp between ebb and flow.

‘Look,’ Hilary said pointing behind us. A perfectly round white moon hung in that still blue region of sky looking towards the sunrise. And then, as if to a triumphal chorus, the sun itself lifted a bright rim over the horizon making a path of light across the sea towards the installation. As it reached the structure silhouetted against it, the
curtains were drawn back on both sides to reveal a huge transparent egg through which the light streamed, picking out a dark core at its centre.

There was a gasp from the crowd and then what seemed a
commotion
breaking out at the front where the dignitaries were. ‘Can you see what it is? I’m not tall enough,’ Hilary said.

‘It seems to have a human shape at the centre.’

A young man beside me said. ‘There’s something wrong. That isn’t how it’s meant to be.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I’m one of Reg North’s students. I helped him with the installation. There’s meant to be another egg in the middle that’s opalescent, and then another darker inside that. Like Russian dolls.’

‘Come on,’ I pulled at Hilary’s arm. ‘I’m going down there. Hang on to me.’

I pushed through the crowd that was now noisy with reaction and speculation.

‘It’s not a real child; it can’t be,’ I heard a woman saying.

‘They get up to anything these days. Bloody obscene I call it, and we’re paying for it.’

The word ‘child’ seemed to run through the crowd in a chilled whisper like a breaking wave.

We reached the front at the foot of the plinth. The mayor and my chairman seemed struck dumb. I looked up at the huge egg with what looked like the body of a child floating in the middle, lit now by the full disc of a blazing winter sun. The boy was naked except for some kind of necklace that caught the light as if on fire, his arms outstretched in welcome, the childish penis contracted into a scarfed acorn of flesh. Someone, I thought must be the artist, was shouting.

‘Cover it up. Pull the bloody curtain.’

‘We can’t. It opens automatically. It’s light sensitive to the sunrise.’

‘Christ! Then get rid of the bloody people.’

A man I recognised as one of our local police inspectors stepped forward. ‘I’ve sent for reinforcements to deal with the crowd. Now, sir, what’s your explanation?’

‘How the fuck do I know? It was alright when I left it yesterday.’

‘So you’re saying it’s been tampered with? How was it supposed to be? After all we’ve seen this sort of thing before. With animals for instance; a cow and a shark wasn’t it? It looks to me like a dead child in there, in which case we’re dealing with murder. Wasn’t there a case of human foetuses being used in some way for so-called art?’

‘Look. That isn’t the kind of thing I do. I’m out to make something beautiful not just to shock.’

‘I’ll have to ask you to come to the station to make a statement of course. Meanwhile we need to remove the body. How do we get in there, sir?’

‘The same way whoever tampered with it got in.’

‘And what would that be, sir?’

‘How should I know? I suppose they must have melted the weld that holds the two halves together. With a blowtorch. There must have been more than one of them. The two halves are quite heavy. I had the help of several students when I put it up. Anyway we don’t know that what’s in there isn’t just a model, a dummy.’

‘I’m afraid that won’t do, sir. It’s quite clear to me what we’re dealing with here. Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to get back at you in this way?’

‘Everyone’s got enemies but I can’t think of anyone who would do this. You need to know what you’re doing for a start. I think it’s more likely to be some kind of sick joke by someone who hates installation art.’

Suddenly the inspector made up his mind. ‘There’s nothing to be done here. Constable, call up the traffic department. They can send one of their car-removal transporters.’

I looked up again at the floating child, suspended now with a halo of sun around his head and thought of Apollo and Ra. He seemed to be almost smiling. At least his face was composed, tranquil.

The artist had disappeared round the side of the plinth. When he came back he was clearly excited. ‘It’s not mine. I thought it was and somebody had got at it. But it isn’t. It’s a substitute.’

‘How do you know, sir? You seemed pretty certain before.’

‘I was upset. And I didn’t imagine that anyone could have put something in its place but looking at it more calmly I can see that no
one could have altered mine without smashing the whole thing. It was all of a piece, like an old-fashioned marble with a barley sugar design running through it. This is just a glass shell with something floating in it. Like a glass coffin.’

‘Nevertheless, sir, I must insist you come with me to make a
statement
. Help us with our enquiries. After all you’re the only one who knows how and where such an object can be made. And we can try to trace your own piece of work.’

This seemed to further calm Reg North. ‘Can I leave you for a moment?’ I said to Hilary. ‘I’ll just have a word with my chairman and then we’ll go and get breakfast. I imagine the champagne reception is off.’

I walked over to where the mayor and the chairman were standing together. The transporter had arrived quickly and a team was
dismantling
the piece under the supervision of the artist who now seemed keen to help.

‘I’m sorry about this, Mr Tarrant. Very disappointing,’ I said.

‘And a bloody waste of money. Why us? Why this town? Nothing’s gone right since we found that grave. That king or whatever seems to haunt us like some malign influence. First the robbery, then the fire on the pier, now this.’

‘If there’s anything I can do to help,’ I heard myself offering.

‘At least they’re taking the bloody thing away. But I can see the enquiry dragging on for weeks. Unless the police can get some sort of a lead. That artist North isn’t off my list of suspects, I can tell you. Could be some sort of getting back at authority. What do you think, Kish? Is it a real child in there?’ The chairman used surnames as if we were at some long defunct public school.

‘We can only hope not.’

‘You can deal with the police, Kish. You’ve got more experience and more patience than I have. I’d only lose my temper. Keep me up to speed on it. Meanwhile we go on as normally as possible.’

‘I doubt if the press will let us do that,’ the mayor spoke for the first time. ‘I need a drink. Let’s see if they haven’t taken all the champagne away yet.’

Hilary and I drove slowly back into town, following the transporter
where the egg shape now lay on its flatbed shrouded by blue plastic sheeting.

‘There’s a little café I know on the front where they do a really hearty breakfast. That should warm us up.’ The cold seemed to have lodged somewhere in my gut and was radiating icicles through my bones. ‘You must be frozen. I’m sorry I got you into this.’

‘You weren’t to know. And anyway I wouldn’t have missed it. It’s a pretty routine existence in conservation, no matter what people may think. Weeks of work for often a rather unspectacular result. Whereas who knows where this might be going?’