The Pull of the Moon (29 page)

Mrs Ivanisovic is not going to be put off so easily. She is no mere German paratrooper disguised as a nun; Mrs Ivanisovic is a remarkable woman – hasn’t Pink Rocks said so? She is
determined not to give up her hold on life until she has winkled out the truth. Now she has completed her next effort and holds up the pad. The letters weave across the page; some look as if they
are trying to clamber over others in a general rush for the edge of the paper.
Did you quarrel.

‘Of course we quarrelled sometimes.’

She jabs her pen at the page, her frustration boiling over.

‘Please, Mrs Ivanisovic. I have told you everything I can tell you. If you are asking me whether Danny killed himself because we quarrelled, then I can assure you that wasn’t the
case. If something like that happened, don’t you think I would have said so at the inquest?’

She leans back against the pillows. The whisper of her breathing pulses gently across the room, mingled with the soft slow tick of the bedside clock. Another shower patters against the window
panes. All these years she has been pondering the question, wondering how it could possibly have come about that her clever, witty, talented son – a handsome young man on the brink of a
successful life, last seen in an ebullient mood, happy and in love – could have taken his own life, without a word of explanation or a note of farewell. I reassure myself that she has no
answers. Her theories rely on no more than wild guesswork: she imagines that we quarrelled and Danny took his life – in a misguided fit of pique after a lovers’ tiff. Or can she do
better than this?

I notice that my fingers are hurting. My hands have been resting in my lap and without realizing it I have been clenching my fingers, the nails digging into my palms. I imagine her voice, asking
him question after question. ‘Was it something to do with Katy? Was it something to do with Trudie?’ Some idiosyncrasy in the Broadoaks air conditioning sends a chilly draught across
the back of my neck.

She leans forward and works the pen again. It threatens to escape her fingers, wobbles and tracks across the page, as if tempted to express ideas of its own. I watch as she forms the letters,
coaxing the pen into the track of an S, then an I. The M is pitiful, shambolic.

‘Simon?’ I ask.

She nods. I pause, trying to recall her words during my last visit. How some fellow student of Danny’s had visited, but been shown the door. The nurse has already brought Josser unbidden
into my mind. Was it he who intruded upon the Ivanisovics? It would be just like Josser to imagine there could be capital to be made from feigning close acquaintance with Simon and Danny. When that
failed he might have fallen back on innuendo. Before the inquest I hadn’t known that Simon’s homosexuality was a secret shared by some of his peers at university. I suppose I imagined
them all as slow on the uptake as I had been myself.

‘It was true what people said about Simon.’ I proceed carefully. I don’t want to distress her. ‘And also – and also that he loved Danny – but he loved him as
a friend – not in a sexual way.’

I try to read her expression from what little I can see of her face. She affords me the movement which passes for a nod. She understands and more importantly believes what I am saying. I see
that she is drifting again. Her hands slip away from the writing implements, so I remove them. Watch the rain making patterns on the window. After a while the nurse enters to ask if I would like
some tea. When I say I would, she nods and vanishes, neither of us alluding to anything which has passed between us previously. She returns with a tray containing not only the necessary
accoutrements to provide several cups of tea, but also a plate containing four triangles of egg and cress sandwich and a slice of Madeira cake, all neatly arranged under a sheet of clingfilm.

‘How about Mrs Ivanisovic?’ I ask.

‘I’m sure she won’t want anything.’

I survey this unexpected bounty, remembering just in time to say, ‘Thank you very much.’

Once she’s gone, I reach into my bag in search of a foil of paracetamol tablets. It’s rather close in Mrs Ivanisovic’s room and I feel a touch headachy. Time was when you could
buy a decent-size bottle of painkillers to meet your needs through the whole winter, but now the nanny state will barely allow you a sufficient quantity to see you through a dose of flu. I press
the pills upwards until they break through the foil, extracting them slowly and placing them on the bedside table, not taking my eyes off the figure in the bed. Does she know something or
doesn’t she? How can I be sure? Mrs Ivanisovic makes a small sound – nothing so overt that it could qualify as a snore. Everything about her is fading: the flame which once burned so
brightly has grown dim. In my mind’s eye I imagine a column of smoke rising from a snuffed-out candle. I realize that I’ve forgotten what I was doing – continued to absentmindedly
liberate the tablets from their packaging until a small group of them has accumulated on the bedside table.

I take two of the paracetamol with my first cup of tea. The second cup accompanies the sandwich and a third helps wash down the cake. Soon after I’ve finished, a minion I haven’t
seen before – a pretty girl with auburn hair and a mint green overall – appears to collect the tray. I am only just quick enough to palm the little collection of white tablets, which
has been sitting all this time alongside Mrs I’s plastic dispenser of sweeteners.

‘When you want another cup of tea or anything, you just ring the bell,’ the girl says.

It is evidently assumed that I am going to be here for some time.

TWENTY-EIGHT

The ‘concrete guy’, as Danny called him, showed up promptly at half past eight. I was halfway downstairs when I heard his pick-up arrive, but Simon got to the door
ahead of me. I had only expected one workman, but the concrete guy was accompanied by a youth who was perhaps a couple of years younger than myself, and a little terrier dog which ran across to
nose about under the lilac. The older man had thinning auburn hair, a check shirt, and trousers whose original colour was now indeterminate, being so spattered with the skimmings of jobs long past.
His skin had been reddened by years of exposure to the sun and was dotted with a thousand pale brown freckles. His companion wore workman’s jeans and a Rod Stewart T-shirt, so well washed
that its lettering had faded to a ghostly grey. They appeared to be perfectly ordinary and could not possibly have imagined the dread with which we shuffled out to greet them, exhibiting all the
unwillingness of bad boys sent to the headmaster for the cane. Nobody managed to smile.

It was evident that the concrete guy (who Simon introduced as Vic) mistrusted us on sight, because his opening words included the phrase ‘cash up front’. Simon attempted to protest
that he understood the arrangement was cash on completion, but once it became apparent that Vic had no intention of unloading his cement mixer until our money was safely in his pocket, Simon backed
down and went inside to fetch the cash, leaving the rest of us to stand awkwardly alongside the pick-up. There was no disguising the exchange of satisfied looks which passed between Vic and his
sidekick. Local Builders 1, Suspicious-Looking Hippies nil.

Vic pointedly counted the cash before carefully stowing it in the back pocket of his trousers. While this was going on I glanced from Danny to Simon and back again. We would have to be very
careful – palpable tension might make the builders suspicious.

‘Right then,’ said Vic. ‘Let’s see the job, shall we?’

Simon led the way round the side of the house and across the garden to the pond. While we were still ten yards away Danny gave a shout and began to run. We had all in the same instant seen the
little dog shoot ahead and dive into the hole. Sand flew upwards while Danny charged headlong to the rescue and Vic bellowed, ‘Gerrout of it, yer bugger.’ At the sound of Danny’s
approach and his master’s voice the dog – clearly thinking better of it – emerged and trotted away.

‘Thinks ’e’s gonna find a bone,’ the youth said cheerfully.

I couldn’t bring myself to look at Danny, fearing to read in his expression how much the terrier had uncovered. Danny was about to hop down into the hole, but he was checked by Vic, who
said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll soon smooth it out again.’ By this time we had all reached the pond and it was too late to do anything anyway. I glanced down at the spot where the
wretched dog had been burrowing, but the hole he had made was hidden behind the little pile of sand he had dug out of it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Simon edging around the pond in order to
get a better view. I had a desperate urge to sit down. My ears buzzed and spots danced in front of my eyes. This was it. We were going to be found out – right here, right now.

Simon startled us all by jumping into the sandy hollow and kicking the sand back into place with his boot. ‘Bloody dog,’ he said. ‘We spent ages yesterday, getting it perfectly
smooth.’

I saw Vic give him a funny look – probably wondering why Simon was getting so het up over nothing. Danny strolled round to offer Simon a hand back up. I saw him say something quietly and
Simon gave a half-nod. Vic didn’t appear to notice. He began to survey the job, taking an agonizing length of time to peer into the sand-lined hole from all directions, walking slowly round
the outside, humming and hawing and chuntering about the angle of the sides and whether they were too steep to take the mix. Just when I began to be afraid he was going to say it couldn’t be
done, he jumped into the hole, landing heavily on a spot immediately above Trudie’s head. We watched in horror as he began stamping about, leaving his great boot prints all over Simon’s
smoothed-out sand. I imagined the soil compressing into Trudie’s features. It was all too much. I charged headlong across the grass and vomited into the rose bed.

Danny was beside me in a moment, holding my shoulders, uttering words of comfort. ‘Come inside,’ he said. ‘Come on . . .’

I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand, tried to calm myself. I was shaking violently. As if from a long way off I heard Vic ask, ‘What’s wrong with her then?’ and
Simon’s voice, discreetly lowered – presumably issuing some platitude about a tummy upset.

‘I’ll go in,’ I said. ‘You’d better stay out here with Simon.’

Danny only paused to consider this for a moment before nodding. ‘You’re right,’ he said.

I stumbled off in the direction of the kitchen, feeling like a coward and a traitor. Once inside I stood trembling beside the sink, imagining what might happen if the blasted dog jumped into the
hole again or Vic took it into his head to start poking about or scraping away some of the sand; but after what seemed like hours I heard the unmistakable monotonous rumble of the concrete mixer.
By the time I felt able to return, having washed my face and changed my T-shirt, work was well under way.

‘Better?’ asked Danny and I nodded, miserably aware of a lingering taste of vomit, which matched the sickness in my heart.

The concrete mixer had been set up close to the pond, where it stood tumbling its contents a few feet from where Vic was at work, kneeling on a big board in the bottom of the pond, using a
trowel and flat to apply a smooth layer of concrete like a master chef icing a giant inverted birthday cake.

Not wishing to leave Vic and his mate unsupervised, Simon and Danny had offered to help, affecting a willingness to learn by their involvement. Vic accepted this readily. He evidently liked the
idea of having this expanded workforce at his disposal and when I arrived he found a role for me too – I was to act as tea lady, keeping the menfolk continuously supplied.

In truth there was only a limited amount of fetching and carrying for the labourers to do, so Simon, Danny and Gordon (as the youth turned out to be called) were left for long periods with
nothing to do but stand about, watching Vic at work. Gordon was a garrulous lad, blissfully oblivious to the level of indifference his observations inspired in us. He tried football, then pop
music, and when those lines of conversation failed he diverted to television, but we were not fans of
The Fenn Street Gang
and hadn’t seen
Top of the Pops
in weeks. His attitude
toward us was a mixture of curiosity and condescension. In common with many of those who entered the workforce in their mid-teens, he viewed university students as work-shy parasites, who enjoyed
long holidays at the expense of the working classes ‘and half of them not doing anything useful after – I mean it’s all right if you’re studying to be a doctor . . .’
Yet at the same time we represented a form of glamorous independence, living out here all summer, not having to keep regular hours and answerable to no one – probably getting up to all kinds
of wildness – orgies and drugs, like what was reported in the
Sun.

We all instinctively understood the need to humour Gordon. He was incurably chatty and sure to tell his mates about the job he had worked on at some funny old place inhabited by a bunch of
hippies. Our best hope was to appear uninteresting – because it was soon clear that Gordon assumed all manner of excitement might be available. ‘Bet you have some great parties up
here,’ he said, and ‘’Ave a lot of friends down, do you, at the weekends?’ To these and other enquiries, we responded with a negative. We just worked in the garden and kept
the house tidy – dull as ditchwater, that was us.

It was from Vic, however, that the most alarming question of the morning came. He was kneeling on a board in the pond, smoothing concrete across its curving side – the angle of which had
not after all proved too steep for the mix to be applied. ‘Where’s that Trudie, then?’ he asked.

There was a horrified silence. Vic was concentrating on what he was doing and didn’t see our faces. ‘I suppose she’s still in bed, is she?’

I stifled my Tourette’s. Simon couldn’t take his eyes off the place where Vic was kneeling. Danny recovered first. ‘She’s not here any more,’ he said.
‘She’s moved on.’

Nothing more was said on the subject just then, but while Gordon took off on another digression into the world of Slade and T. Rex, I began to speculate frantically about Vic’s question.
How on earth? Then I remembered that Trudie had accompanied Simon into town, the day he embarked on his quest for a helpful builder. She had evidently introduced herself to Vic -and probably to
every other builder they had called on. And they would hardly have forgotten her – it was not every day a Trudie showed up in your yard. It was only a matter of time, that was all. I half
wished Sergeant Mathieson would walk around the corner of the house and arrest us there and then, just to get it over with. Simon was standing in front of me and I noticed that, like mine, his
T-shirt was soaked in sweat.