The Man Who Went Down With His Ship (28 page)

‘Is he?' Bill Birling enquired.

‘No!' Irina almost yelled. ‘He is an international businessman. A financier. A trader. A – he may be,' Irina conceded. ‘I have no idea what my husband does. I very rarely see him any longer. He was a chemical engineer when I met and married him. And then – everything changed, and we came to England, and … But that has nothing to do with it,' the pale Russian woman roared in her quiet way. ‘So, maybe he is a gangster. Are we going to blame the children for the sins of their parents? Natalia may be very intelligent, but she likes to say silly things like all teenagers. She likes to boast, to shock. Where some children might say their parents are politicians, or famous actors, or – I don't know, she likes to say her father is a gangster. And because of that you are going to take the word of a lot of silly jealous sixteen-year-olds who are resentful of Natalia's popularity and prowess?'

She could feel her nostril flaring; her voice was growing shrill with indignation.

‘Fine, that is enough,' she declared. ‘You believe Natalia is a bullying drug-dealer who systematically and deliberately sets out to destroy her fellow students.
I
believe she is a kind highly intelligent young woman who refuses to accept any truth unless she has tested it for herself, who wants to explore the world not just accept other people's reports of it, and who – who refuses to be held back, held down by intellectual and moral –
lightweights
,' Irina said, glaring at each of the triumvirate in turn. ‘You want to expel Natalia? No, you shall not. I shall
withdraw
Natalia from this school, with, as you put it in your letter, “immediate effect”. I shall not have a daughter of mine accused without reason, condemned without proof.
That
is totalitarianism, of which I believe I have greater experience than you. Now if you would be so good as to send for Natalia, we will leave. I would be grateful if you could pack up her things and send them on – I will of course cover any expenses. How dare you accuse my daughter of being a virtual murderer – because she reads Dostoevsky? How dare you try to destroy
her
?' Irina paused for breath, and got to her feet. Her parting line, however, was addressed not to Nelligan nor
even to his deputy. Rather, she looked again at Nelligan's sister, whose eyes she had not liked to meet when she had flung out the word ‘lightweight', and said, with as much hauteur as she could manage, ‘And you, madam –
why are you wearing my daughter's earrings?
'

She had hardly realised, until she spoke, that Mary Kemp was wearing Natalia's earrings. The small blue diamond earrings that Ivan Kalugin had given his daughter for her sixteenth birthday, because they matched exactly the colour of her eyes. She must have noticed them subconsciously, Irina guessed, when she had tried to wither the threesome sitting in judgement on her, and had felt a little guilty about lumping the English teacher in with her brother and the dark-eyed deputy. But there could be no mistaking them: small though those diamonds were, they were unique.

If she had tossed a hand-grenade across the desk she could hardly have caused greater consternation. Mary Kemp went white and clasped her hands to her ears, obviously having forgotten that she
was
wearing Natalia's earrings. James Nelligan stared at his sister with a combination of horror and profound, somehow metaphysical disappointment. And little Bill Birling, who in his astonishment revealed that he loathed Mary Kemp for being not only more intelligent and serious than her brother, but more so – far more so – than he, looked first at the English teacher not just with hatred, but with contempt, and then at her brother with a sort of triumph. At last, the terrier-like scrum-half in the game of Battlement, the game of life, had seen the big beefy captain of the team discomfited, humiliated. And do what he like, say what he like, James Nelligan would never again recover his authority.

As it happened, James Nelligan said nothing. There was nothing he could say. It was his sister alone who could provide an explanation, and he could merely listen – and, now, judge her.

For all her shock and embarrassment, Mary almost immediately recovered her composure. She stood, she gazed at Irina as if the two women were alone in the room. And looking now, to Irina's
eyes, noble, even magnificent, she said in a quiet, gentle voice, ‘I forgot I still had them on. Natalia loaned them to me. I was admiring them the other day – they match so incredibly the colour of Natalia's eyes – and she said I should try them on, wear them. She said she hardly ever did any more. Pale-blue diamonds don't really go with her outfits … So I put them on, and Natalia told me I could keep them for a while if I liked, and –' Apparently dissociating herself from everything her brother had said till now, Mary Kemp told Irina, ‘I love your daughter, Mrs Kalugina. She is not just the most remarkable pupil I have ever had, she is, despite her age, the most remarkable person I have ever met in my life. I believe Natalia is a genius.' She paused. ‘I also believe, however – maybe just because she is a genius – she is a monster. What is more, I do not know whether I love her because she is a genius, or because she is a monster. But I suspect, on balance – it is more because she is a monster.'

The woman raised her hands to her ears again and removed the diamond earrings; she handed them to Irina. ‘Here,' she said. Then she turned to her brother and said, ‘I am sorry, Jim,' gave Bill Birling a look that was still more contemptuous than his own, and left the room.

Irina wanted to call out after her, ‘Don't go, please, stop.' Instead, she looked back at James Nelligan and said, quietly, ‘Will you please call Natalia.'

Half an hour later mother and daughter were driving back to London, and Irina was asking, ‘Did you know she loved you?'

‘Yes, of course I did, Mum,' Natalia said. ‘It would have been pretty difficult not to.'

‘And did she ever – did you ever …?' Irina, frank though she normally was, couldn't finish her sentence.

‘Have sex?'

Irina, her eyes on the road, nodded.

‘Will you go to the police if I say yes?'

‘Do you want me to?'

Natalia considered. ‘No,' she at length said. ‘I don't think so.'

‘In that case I won't.' She waited. ‘Well?'

Again Natalia considered. Finally, she too staring at the road ahead, murmured, ‘No Mum. We didn't.'

‘Are you telling me the truth?'

‘Don't I always tell you the truth?'

‘Yes. But I thought maybe, just this once …'

Natalia glanced at her mother, and said, ‘We'll have to find another school now, won't we?'

*

They did, almost immediately; a sixth-form college near the house in Chelsea to which Natalia could go as a day-girl. By the time she started at the school, however, in early September, Natalia's hair was almost its natural colour again; she tended to wear either jeans and a white shirt or a blue skirt and a pale-blue blouse that brought out the colour of her eyes; and she told her mother that once she had finished school next year, and assuming she passed all her exams, while she might go on to university, she thought it more likely that she would go abroad somewhere. To Italy, maybe, or to France. She wanted to try to write a book …

‘I'm probably wrong, and I'm sure it's arrogance or stupidity on my part, but – I feel I've learned enough, Mum. At least for the moment. Now, I just want to try and put down – interpret what I know.'

‘You must do what you like, darling,' Irina said. ‘What you think is best. Maybe take a gap year—'

‘I think my life is going to be a gap year!' smiled pale, demure Natalia Kalugina. ‘But – we'll see.'

*

Irina did see, two and a half years later. She saw a great deal when an excited Natalia called her from Istanbul, where she'd been living for the past twelve months, to say she had just heard that her first little novel had been accepted for publication. ‘In England, the States, and Russia, Mum!' She saw more – she saw, she told herself, almost
everything – when, only three days later, on the Brompton Road, she bumped into Madeleine Morel, who had been Natalia's best friend at Battlement but with whom, so far as Irina knew, Natalia had not had any further contact after leaving the school. As she had not had any contact with any of her old friends, or the members of her set. ‘That's all in the past, Mum. That's
over
.'

Madeleine was looking well; she was in her second year at University College, London, she said. Irina invited her to have a coffee, and after the slim, elegant if somewhat nervous younger woman had asked after Natalia, and been told about the novel, Irina couldn't resist enquiring, ‘How was your last year at Battlement, Madeleine? All right?'

‘I suppose so,' Madeleine replied. ‘Though after the scandal, the whole place was in such a state of shock for about six months, we all felt in a way we were sleep-walking.'

‘Scandal?' Irina echoed. ‘You mean about Natalia leaving?'

Madeleine flushed. ‘No,' she said. ‘Didn't Natalia tell you?'

‘What?'

‘Right after she left – I mean about a week after she left – Mary Kemp, the headmaster's sister, killed herself.'

Irina, sitting in the coffee shop on Beauchamp Place, felt faint. ‘Oh, that's awful,' she said. ‘How terrible. Poor woman. Why?'

‘No one ever knew. But everyone said—' Madeleine hesitated. ‘That she was so much in love with Natalia that she couldn't live without her.'

‘Poor, poor woman,' Irina repeated.

Again Madeleine hesitated before continuing. ‘Though one or two people said it was because, after she left – Natalia wrote to Mary Kemp …' The young woman avoided Irina's eyes. ‘She said you were going to go to the police.'

‘I wasn't!' Irina protested. ‘Natalia told me not to. She said there was nothing to go to the police about. She – that's not true, Madeleine. It's not true.'

‘I said it wasn't,' Madeleine murmured, still not meeting Irina's eyes.

‘Natalia will be so shocked when she finds out,' Irina said. ‘She was really very fond of Mary. She told me once, after she had left, that she owed her everything.'

Now Madeleine did at last look directly at her friend's mother. ‘Natalia knew,' she said. ‘I wrote her an email, telling her.'

‘What?' Irina breathed, feeling faint again. ‘Are you sure? I mean – maybe she never got your message.'

‘Oh she got it all right,' Madeleine said. ‘She wrote back.' There was a pause. ‘She said, “Well, now I've got the subject for my first book.”'

*

When Irina received a proof copy of Natalia's novel, and saw the title, she was not surprised.

Part black comedy, party murder mystery, the book told the story of a teenage girl who wants to be a writer, but who believes – who has been taught by an older woman, the headmistress of the school she attends – that to be successful in life, in any field including that of art, sacrifices must be made. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the success, and if one can offer up a human life to the gods – ‘Ah, how won't they then reward you?'

The novel was called
The Monster
.

‘Strauss! Peter Strauss!’

Already when he had seen the car approaching he had shrunk back – like everyone else in the street. And when the great black vehicle with its tinted windows had started to slow down, he had felt his stomach lurch, his legs go weak. There again like all the other passers-by, he had continued walking and tried to stare straight ahead of him; at the same time he had kept an eye on the car and wondered why it was pulling up. Of course it couldn’t be stopping for him, he had told himself. Nevertheless …

When he saw the rear window lowered, and heard his name called, not only his stomach and legs felt they had dissolved. Such was his panic he felt his whole body had turned to jelly. He thought he would faint. He told himself he was imagining things. It had to be a mistake. He looked around, wildly, and all those people who had shrunk away from the car, as their forebears might have from the plague-cart, now shrank away from him, the fear and pity in their faces mingled with relief.

He wondered whether he should run, but knew he couldn’t – he couldn’t move. He wondered whether he should deny he was Peter Strauss, but knew that that was useless, too. Oh God, he told himself, this cannot be happening. This happens to other people. And what compounded the nightmare, was that even as the driver’s door opened and a massive bullet-headed chauffeur in a black uniform got out, stared straight at him and opened the rear door, it occurred to him that he recognised that voice that had called. He couldn’t have; he
had
to be imaging things. And yet …

The chauffeur gestured with his chin.

Again Peter looked round, still more wildly than before, and saw now only pity on the faces of those passers-by, some of whom he recognised and some of who probably recognised him. Would they ever see him again? It seemed unlikely. Then, since there was nothing for it, and feeling as a passenger must on a plane that is crashing – knowing that even if he screams there is no way out – he managed to take one, and then another step towards that rear door.

He was nearly there. He looked up at the blue sky. He saw the clouds. Oh please, he wanted to cry. Oh please. Not me. What have I done? Oh please,
please
…

Making an effort not to lose control of his bowels, he ducked into the car and sat in the empty seat – next, he was aware, to an officer in uniform.

‘Strauss! Peter Strauss!’

Again that voice – and now as he heard it, and a split second before the officer removed his peaked cap, he remembered.

‘L?’ he said, his voice hoarse. ‘I mean …’ He felt sick with relief himself, and in a way still more terrified. ‘Should I – what should I call you?’

‘L will do just fine,’ the officer said; as, with his cap off, he allowed Peter to see his face. Nearly twenty-five years had passed; but with his short brown wavy hair, small pale eyes, large nose and grinning dangerous mouth, the man was still quite recognisable. As the L who, at eighteen, and in his final year at college, had spotted a thirteen-year-old just starting at the school; and had taken it upon himself to make the boy’s life a misery, both physically and emotionally.

The physical abuse that L had inflicted had taken various forms. He had tied his victim over scalding pipes in the shower room, sodomised him, and got his friends to sodomise him – or beat him if they preferred, or stick their penises in his mouth. He had made his victim do push-ups and other exercises, again and again, till all his muscles were screaming and eventually he collapsed onto
the concrete floor of the shower room – over which L and his friends had urinated, or defecated. And he had made his victim accompany him on long runs in the winter, and had lashed him around the legs with twigs, or stinging nettles, whenever he had slowed down.

The emotional abuse he had inflicted however, had taken just one form. Even while subjecting him to these tortures, L had contrived to make Peter Strauss fall in love with him.

It was not the tortures themselves that had prompted this response. Rather, the fact that as well as being a bully and a sadist – and a star athlete and boxer – L had revealed himself to be the best-read boy in the school, the most musically knowledgeable; and the first person ever to recognise that young Peter Strauss had talent – or even genius, it was once suggested. Sometimes this talent seemed to drive the older boy mad, as if he couldn’t bear not to be possessed of it himself. Other times, more often, he felt proud that he was the only person who did so recognise it – and saw it as his task to nurture it. ‘You have to have steel put into you,’ he had shouted at Peter. ‘You have to have fire put into you. Otherwise your talent, as it matures – as you mature – may become … fluttery. Pretty. Whereas if I make you strong … Oh,’ the eighteen-year-old had said, longingly. ‘You can be great, Peter. You can be – extraordinary.’

It was not only by inflicting pain on him and raping him that L sought to make his protégé strong. It was also by teaching him to box, and box well; by teaching him to shoot, in the school’s military corps; and by getting him to make clear, somehow, to the members of ‘The Gang’ – as L’s side-kicks were called – that they were fawning stupid thugs who would never amount to anything in life. And to bear the further abuse to which, as a consequence, he was subjected.

‘I can’t
bear
fluttery things,’ Peter remembered L shouting one day – when they had gone off to the country together, and for the first time L had made him shoot something living. ‘The Spanish like killing bulls. But I like killing – no, not necessarily killing,
hurting
, fluttery things. I like ripping the wings off butterflies. I like breaking the fingers of semi-talented pianists and violinists’ – he did, too; Peter had seen him do it, even while managing to make it look like an accident – ‘who refuse to explore the outer limits of their talent, but just – flutter around on the edge of it. I like – there Peter, look!’ L yelled, as a pheasant, alarmed by his voice, flapped up from the undergrowth. ‘Fire! Fire!’ He waited a second, and watched; and as Peter squeezed the trigger and the bird crashed out of the sky, he turned back with bright eyes to look at his creature, who felt giddy and sick, but dared not show it. ‘Good. Well done!’ L continued to study the marksman, and did of course see his revulsion, however hard Peter tried to conceal it. But he pretended not to, and grinned. ‘It’s great, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Whenever I fire and hit something – it’s like coming. Now, let’s go get a rabbit.’

‘Why?’ Peter said, quietly.

‘Why what? Why do I hate fluttery things? I don’t know,’ L said. And then: ‘because we’re only here once, and it seems to me, while we’re here – we should go to the very ends of the earth, so even if we die tomorrow, we know we’ve been there. Whereas people who just hover around the entrance, just stand at first-floor windows and say “Oh what a pretty view” – I despise them. They’re just tourists. And – all right, that’s what most people are meant to be. Are happy – in a manner of speaking – to be. But when, once in a while, you find someone who could go further, who could even point out things to you you’ve never seen, take you places you’ve never been to yourself or even suspected existed – and that person refuses to do it – I see it as my mission to destroy him. To make him wish he had no ability, no talent at all. That’s what I mean when I say I hate fluttery things. And that’s what I won’t …’ Suddenly uncontrollably, insanely angry, the young man caught himself, and grinned. ‘Well that’s the theory, anyway. In practice, I’m just a psychopath who enjoys inflicting pain and killing things. And …’ The roller-coaster dipped again, and once more he was serious. ‘I shall kill you, Peter Strauss, if you don’t
fulfil your – destiny, let’s call it. One day, however long it takes … You are the first person, the only person I have ever met or am likely to meet who could, really – yes, go all the way. And if you don’t, I swear to you – I shall be like a demon in your dreams. Haunting you. And even though ten, twenty years may pass, one day, when you’re least suspecting it – when you’re just walking down the street maybe, trying to look insignificant, normal … Look!’ L shouted, as another pheasant rose into the air. ‘Shoot it, Peter! Kill it!’

Dutifully, and not feeling so sick now, Peter raised his gun, and shot.

At the end of Peter’s first year at college, L left; to the relief not only of all the people he had tormented, but of his friends, such as they were. Even the masters were glad to see the back of him; unsure what to make of this young man who seemed to delight in out-bullying the bullies, out-arguing or out-shining the more intellectually brilliant boys, and in regarding both with a contempt that was as all-encompassing and all-consuming as a swarm of locusts.

Some said he would come to a bad end; others that he would go far. But both agreed that in the current uncertain political climate, he was likely to find an outlet for his peculiar gifts.

The only person who missed him was Peter Strauss; and he missed him with a passion that was almost as great as his sense of liberation – his joy that the horror had gone. Or perhaps, he sometimes thought, his passion was still greater than his joy …

Whatever he felt: L never really abandoned him. Peter completed his own five years at school. He went on to university. And he abruptly left university when, at the age of twenty-one, he at the same time published his first book, had the first exhibition of his paintings, and was hailed, almost overnight, as ‘the brightest hope of his generation’. Yet for all that in the meantime he had not heard from the man again, the demon with which L had threatened him – the demon that
was
L – was always in his mind. Making him work, work, work, making him strive,
strive, strive for always better, higher, more extreme things – and making him feel, by the age of thirty, that he had already exhausted his talent. Some of his friends called him ‘The Colonel’, because tall, thin, and inclined to severity, he seemed to pursue his career with almost military zeal – and besides, ‘You
look
like a Colonel.’ Others called him ‘The Puritan’ because fair of hair and grim – at times – of lip, he seemed to pursue his career with almost religious zeal – and besides, ‘You look like a puritan. Some bleak, Protestant pastor.’ But neither the one group nor the other, Peter suspected, realised to what extent he tried to keep up that outward appearance so that no one – above all that invisible but ever-present L – should suspect that inside him there was some soft, feeble, and yes, fluttery creature. A creature that was only too eager to lie back and rest; and might have done so had he not needed to earn a living, and not been scared that if he even attempted it, L would come to get him.

It was, he sometimes thought, as much to get away from L, as to distance himself from the political turmoil, that he had sold his flat in town and retreated to a small town on the banks of the River R——. All right, as government after government fell, the extremists gained in power, ‘The Leader’ took advantage of the confusion to advance his own cause, and with a combination of cunning and ruthlessness eventually got himself named head of state, wisdom dictated that people such as he – so-called intellectuals, and homosexuals – should keep as low a profile as possible. But fear – fear of L looking into his soul and seeing that what had once soared like an eagle now but weakly flapped its wings in its nest – was what made Peter listen to the voice of wisdom. To listen to it, and conclude that even should The Leader be killed and his regime overthrown – as sooner or later they must be – he might stay on where he was; coming in his middle and then old age to be taken for a retired military man, who had never been ‘the marrying kind’; or a Protestant pastor who had lost his faith, and never ceased to regret it. For surely, Peter argued, even if that threat that L had made all those years ago had been real,
he wouldn’t come to seek him out here, would he? Not in this provincial backwater where, for the present at least, ‘P. Strauss, artist’ was hoping to survive by living off his savings, and painting flower-paintings or portraits of local worthies and their families. Once the war was over he might think about getting back to serious work. But till then – surely, surely, he asked himself time after time when he woke at four in the morning and was unable to get back to sleep, L would stay away till then?

Surely, surely, Peter told himself now as he sat beside L, the real L, in his black armour-plated car, he should have realised that the answer to that question was ‘no’. What was happening had been bound to happen, and he had been crazy to think he could get away. All right, maybe the real L wouldn’t be quite so terrifying as his imaginary L, but—

Even that hope was absurd. Of course he would be! Still more so, probably. Imaginary demons were one thing; senior officers in an elite division of the state police were something altogether different. Not for nothing did people cringe at the sight of these huge black cars as they made their way through the narrow streets of the town. Not for nothing had he always cringed himself. One could fool oneself all one liked; not talk about ‘that place’ that had been built some fifteen kilometres up river. But even if one pretended it didn’t exist, still when there was a wind from the north-east, the smell that came to one was unmistakably the smell of death. Moreover, every now and then one of those black cars would be seen cruising the streets at night, and in the morning it was reported that Mr X or Miss Y had ‘gone away’. ‘Probably just visiting a relative,’ people said – not daring to ask the family or neighbours of the missing person for confirmation of this fact. But they knew that having left, it was most improbable that Mr X or Miss Y would return.

As it was most improbable – Peter told himself for the second time in five minutes – that he would return; to his flat in Mozart Street; to his quiet life. Of course it was possible that L had just spotted him walking down the street and told his chauffeur to stop
because he wanted a chat for old times’ sake. But the chances were …

He had left a window open at home, he remembered. Oh well, he guessed it didn’t matter. Someone, eventually, would close it.