The Closed Circle (34 page)

He shook his head. “I don't know.”

After that, she could only think of one way of improving his mood. It involved raising Paul's hips until they were out of the water, leaning forward, taking the tip of his at first flaccid penis into her mouth, and then one minute's vigorous exercise with her head and neck. It seemed to do the trick.

Hours later, Malvina awoke with a start to find that Paul was lying sleepless beside her, his eyes wide open, staring into the semi-dark of their hotel room.

“Hey,” she said, stroking his hair. “What's up?”

“The debate starts in a few hours,” Paul answered. “What am I going to
do
?”

“Follow your heart,” said Malvina, and nestled against him as the noises of the waking city began to drift upwards to their window.

Paul sat through the whole debate next day. It lasted for six hours. The back benches and the members' side galleries were overflowing. The public gallery was packed.

Paul himself did not speak. He listened as Kenneth Clarke said:

If we ask ourselves today whether the case for war has now been established, I
think this house ought to say not, and there is still a case for giving more time to
other peaceful alternatives for enforcing our objectives . . . I have the feeling there is
a little blue pencil around a date some time before it gets too hot in Iraq.

Paul agreed with this. Any reasonable person would agree with it, he thought. He listened as Chris Smith said:

There may well be a time for military action . . . but at the moment the
timetable appears to be determined by the President of the United States.

He joined in with the cries of “Hear, hear!,” then looked around, having forgotten himself, to see whether any of the whips had been watching him.

He listened as Tony Blair said:

I think the case we have set out in respect of Iraq is a good case. I hope that if
people listen to it and study it in detail they will accept that if we do have to act and
go to war, it will not be because we want to, but because of the breaches by Saddam
Hussein of UN resolutions.

Paul was not convinced by this argument. He had never been convinced by it. And still he remained puzzled by the way this man, this apparently principled man, clung to his half-truths and would not be swayed—either by public opinion or by the words of his colleagues—from the path he had chosen, this narrow, unswerving path. It made no sense.
Why were we doing
this?
Why were we trying to talk ourselves into seeing a threat from a small, impoverished country thousands of miles away, with no proven links to terrorism and a clapped-out arsenal that had been dismantled years ago under the scrutiny of UN inspectors?

Six hours was too long to sit in the same spot listening to speeches. Even as the debate grew more impassioned, Paul's attention started to wander. He thought about Malvina and he thought about the practicalities of leaving Susan and he thought about that dowdy hotel in Regent's Park, and the insolent glare of the young man behind the reception desk. And then another thought popped into his mind. It had been lurking there for days, actually, waiting in the shadows, but this evening it marched out boldly to the forefront and assumed center stage. It was an outrageous thought, but one which he could no longer suppress.

He thought:
If we go to war against Iraq, Mark will be sent there too and we
can start using his flat again.

And this was what he wanted more than anything else in the world.

One hundred and twenty-one Labour MPs defied the government that night, and voted in favor of the rebel amendment. But Paul was not one of them. At the end of the debate, he walked into the No lobby, and then made his escape from Westminster as fast as he could, dodging the journalists and his fellow MPs.

He had followed his heart, and in response it pounded unremittingly as he walked home through the empty streets.

Spring

6

It took Claire almost three months to find Victor Gibbs. It was not an easy thing to do. Thirty years ago, back in those unimaginable, pre-computer, pre-internet days, it might have been impossible.

Even now, she had been obliged to enlist somebody's help, against her better judgment. But there had been no alternative. Her first computer search had turned up thousands of people called Gibbs, and writing to those with the initial “V” had produced no results apart from letters returned or short, polite assurances that she had found the wrong person. But then eventually, after a few weeks of these disappointments, she remembered that Colin Trotter used to work as a personnel officer at Longbridge, and made a reluctant decision to take him into her confidence.

She had been nervous about speaking to Benjamin's father on the telephone, but found him far more sympathetic than she had been expecting. Now that Benjamin himself had disappeared, he told her, he felt that he understood a little of what Claire and her family must have gone through. She assured him that the two cases were very different: that Benjamin was a mature (or at least middle-aged) man, that he knew what he was doing, that he could look after himself, that he had left of his own accord, and so on. Had they not heard anything at all from him, in the last two months, she wanted to know. Colin said that they hadn't, and seemed to have nothing more to add on the subject. But he agreed that he would go back to his old office at Longbridge in the next few days, and look through the files to see if they had any record of Gibbs's employment there.

He was as good as his word. A few days later, he called Claire and told her that Gibbs was still listed on the old card index system, and that in 1972 he had given an address in Sheffield for his next of kin. Claire checked the address against her computer listings and found that a member of the Gibbs family still lived there. It turned out to be Victor's brother. She wrote to him, posing as a fund manager from Longbridge and spinning some story about the firm having decided to pay out extra pension money to former employees. Two weeks went by before she was rewarded with a reply telling her Victor Gibbs's current address: he lived on the North Sea coast in Cromer, in the county of Norfolk.

On the last day of February, 2003, she drove out to see him.

The weather was worse even than on the day she had visited the Warwick university library, and the journey took much longer. She set out from Malvern at nine o'clock in the morning and arrived more than five hours later. Already exhausted and frazzled, she parked the car in a pay and display car park and walked to the seafront. Rain, made skittish by the buffeting wind, slapped into her face and stung her eyes. The waves rolled grey and lacklustre on to the pebble shore, and a vaporous mist had closed in, dampening everything. Soon, Claire was chilled to the bone.

It was a Friday afternoon, and the town felt dead. A couple of amusement arcades were open, sending a neurotic medley of electronic noises out into the street—partly the jittering of the games machines themselves, partly the thunder of dance music from merciless speaker systems—but there were few punters inside, and the shops and cafés weren't doing much business. Claire pulled her fleecy raincoat tightly around herself, and found that she was by now shivering uncontrollably: not just with the cold, but with fear at the prospect of the encounter she was about to inflict upon herself. She had thought that perhaps, during the long drive, she might have been able to devise a strategy for this meeting, or at least think of something to say—an opening line if nothing else. But her mind remained blank. She was in a panic. She had no idea what this man was going to be like, how he would react to her unannounced appearance, so she would have to improvise. Her worst fear was that he would turn violent. But she had to be prepared even for that.

She had committed the address to memory, and after a few minutes' walk found herself standing outside a narrow, three-storeyed terraced house some streets away from the seafront. The doorbells suggested that it had been divided into three flats; Victor Gibbs supposedly lived in Flat B, although there was no namecard under that particular bell. She pressed the button and heard a distant ring and waited. Nothing happened.

Claire pushed the bell a few more times. She noticed a lace curtain move on the ground floor, and soon a shadow appeared behind the frosted glass of the front door. A woman opened the door and said:

“Are you looking for him upstairs?”

“Yes,” said Claire. “My name's—”

The woman wasn't interested. “He'll be in the pub. The Wellington, probably. You can't miss it—round the corner and half way down the next street.”

“How will I know him?” Claire asked.

“Black hair—he dyes it, I reckon—leather jacket, always sits in the same corner, next to the dartboard. Reads the
Express.
You'll see him all right.”

Claire mumbled a few words of thanks. The woman nodded and the door was closed.

The pub—like the whole town, it seemed—was more than half empty. A juke box was playing some terrible song by Simply Red and there was no one behind the bar. Claire spotted Victor Gibbs almost immediately, and at once a current of apprehension ran through her, even though he looked perfectly ordinary—just as his neighbour had described him, right down to the newspaper. Finally she managed to get served. She asked for a glass of fizzy water, and took it over to the corner, where she sat at the table next to Gibbs. She drank in silence next to him for a few minutes, glancing across at him occasionally, not bothering to make the glances surreptitious, wanting to be noticed. She began to feel a little calmer. He was in his late fifties, she reckoned. Not terrible looking, not as bad as her sister had long ago implied by calling him “Vile Victor.” He was reading the sports pages, and the next time he looked up, she smiled at him. He held her gaze for a moment, wary, slightly incredulous. He did not look like a man who was used to having women smile at him in pubs. He probably thought she was on the game, which was not the impression she wanted to give. Perhaps she should go to the bar and buy some cigarettes, so she could ask him for a light: but she hadn't smoked since the night of Benjamin's concert, back in December 1999. The taste of it would probably bring on a coughing fit.

Gibbs was looking at the racing results and writing notes against them in blue biro. This was what gave Claire the idea. She took her diary out from her handbag, opened it, and then pretended to fumble in the bag, as if she had forgotten something. After which, she sighed pointedly, and leaned across to Gibbs.

“Excuse me,” she said, indicating his pen. “Is there any way I could borrow that for a minute?”

He gave her the same wary, disbelieving look, and handed her the pen without a word. She scribbled some nonsense in her diary, then sat back for a moment, affecting to think, while she put the pen in her mouth absently.

“Oh—I'm sorry,” she said, as if coming to her senses, and offered to hand the pen back to him.

Gibbs smiled. “It's all right. You keep it. Plenty more where that came from.”

Claire smiled back. “Thanks.”

“You look tired,” he said then, laying down his newspaper.

“I've just had a long drive.”

“Oh?” He folded the newspaper carefully, smoothing the creases with firm movements of his hand. “Where've you come from?”

“Birmingham,” Claire lied.

“Ah, good old Brum,” he said. “I know it well. Lived there for years.”

“Really?”

“Going back a bit now, mind you.”

“Which part? I'm from Harborne.”

“Oh, I wasn't far from there. Bournville. I used to work at the Longbridge factory.”

“Small world,” said Claire, sipping her water.

“What brings you to Cromer?”

She hadn't even thought of an answer to that: but an obvious one quickly presented itself.

“I'm here to see my sister.”

“I see. Waiting for her now, are you?”

Claire shook her head. “She's a doctor. She was supposed to have the day off today but . . . some emergency came up.” (Her invention had failed her, but he didn't seem to notice.) “Had to go into the surgery and won't be free till the evening now.” She looked across at Gibbs and could see that already he was almost hooked. “So,” she concluded, “what on earth can you do in Cromer when you've got a wet Friday afternoon to spare?”

Gibbs rose to his feet. “Well you can start,” he said, “by having another drink.”

Claire realized that she had never actually done this before—come on to someone, flirted with them—and was amazed by how easy it was. All she had to do was listen, for the most part. Gibbs was not talkative at first, but after another pint of bitter and a whisky or two he became positively chatty. Claire found herself almost touched by how eager he became: eager to impress her, to put on a good show. He talked a lot about the races and the system he had devised to beat the bookies and how it averaged out that he was clearing about twenty pounds a week. Gambling seemed to be his passion, these days. He also did the pools and bought more than fifty pounds' worth of Lottery tickets every Wednesday and Saturday, and once they'd had enough to drink he took Claire out to demonstrate his expertise in the arcades. They played the game where piles of 10p coins appeared to be teetering on the edge of a shelf that moved slowly backwards and forwards, giving the impression that if only you could drop another 10p coin in at exactly the right moment, a waterfall of loose change would cascade out of the machine and into your hands. Gibbs explained how it was all a fix and more than half of the coins were glued to the shelf, but you could sometimes make a profit if you won some coins at your first half dozen attempts and then moved straight on to another shelf or another machine. He showed Claire how it was done, and she stood beside the machine, watching him with admiring eyes as he played on, now and again leaning towards him to throw in some crassly complimentary remark. Once or twice he let her drop the coins in herself. The second time she tried it she won £1.80, and Gibbs laughed and clapped his hands delightedly and touched her on the shoulder.

When they left and walked to the nearest café she wondered whether to take his arm but decided that would be too forward.

They sat opposite each other at a formica-topped table and ordered two cappuccinos. “Frothy coffees,” Gibbs called them. It was getting on for four o'clock and outside the light was starting to fade. Rain flung itself angrily against the café windows.

Claire had chosen this table herself. It was in a tight corner of the café, and Gibbs was sitting with his back against the wall. To get out, he would have to squeeze past her. If she pushed the table further towards him, he would be boxed in completely. He was trapped, in effect. Which meant that her moment of opportunity was now presenting itself, and the confrontation could not be put off for much longer.

She could tell that Gibbs, too, was getting anxious to move things forward. He looked at his watch and said, “After we've had these you should really come back to my flat. We could watch television or something. I've a pack of cards.”

Claire nodded, non-commitally.

“What time d'you think you'll be going to see your sister?”

“Well, actually . . .” She looked him in the eye, and gave a shamefaced sort of smile. “The thing is, Victor—I wasn't telling the truth about that.”

He stared back at her blankly. “Your sister doesn't live here?”

“I don't have a sister,” said Claire, in a quiet voice. “My sister's dead.”

“Oh.” Clearly, he had no idea what to make of this. “I'm sorry to hear that, Claire.”

“At least . . . I'm pretty sure she's dead. She disappeared a long time ago. Almost thirty years. I never heard from her again.”

Gibbs was watching her carefully, perhaps beginning to think that she was deranged. “Well then,” he said. “So . . . so what are you doing in Cromer? You told me it was your sister you came to visit.”

“Do you mind if we talk about her for a minute?”

“No, no. Of course not. Whatever you want.” He shifted in his chair— suddenly noticing, at some subconscious level, that he was hemmed in by the table. His whole manner was starting to change.

“Actually, Victor,” she said, “I've got a feeling you may have known her.”

“Known her?” He laughed. “What are you on about? You and I only met a couple of hours ago.”

“I've got a letter here,” said Claire; and she took a folded piece of paper from her handbag. It was a colour photocopy of the original, the best her local library could provide. “It's the last letter my sister ever wrote to her parents. Would you like to have a look at it?”

Gibbs took the letter from her and spread it open on the table. He looked down at it, elbows apart, resting his chin on his hands. He stayed that way for a long time. He didn't move, didn't look up. Claire waited for him to say something. She was conscious of a murmured conversation at the table behind her, and the periodic noisy spluttering of the cappuccino machine.

Finally Gibbs looked up, and slid the letter back to her. His expression gave nothing away, but his face had lost some of its blood, now, and there was the slightest of tremors in his hand.

“What do you make of that?” Claire asked, when there was even more silence between them.

Gibbs shrugged. “What's it to do with me? I don't bother much with other people's business.”

“This is your business,” said Claire. And added: “I think you wrote that letter.”

After a second or two, Gibbs tried to get up. “I think you must be potty,” he said. But his legs were trapped by the edge of the table. “Let me out, will you?”

“Sit down, Victor. We're going to talk about this.”