Authors: Nicci French
'Don't you think that your preoccupation is going a bit far now, Jane. I mean, all of us - her
real
family, to put it frankly - we're trying to pick up our lives. I'm not sure it's entirely helpful to have you poking about in our past for your own private psychological reasons. Is this what your analyst has been encouraging you to do?'
His manner was mild and correct, and I felt like a schoolchild, unkempt and fidgety on his neat sofa.
'Okay, Claud, lecture over - so how do you remember her?'
'She was sweet and bright and loving.'
I stared at him.
'Don't look at me like that, Jane. Just because you're in therapy, you suspect anything that's straightforward. She was my little sister, and she was a dear child, on the brink of womanhood when she tragically died. That's that. That's how I remember her and that's how I want to remember her. I don't want you sullying her, even if she has been dead for twenty-five years. Okay?'
I poured another slug of sherry into my miniature glass, and took a sip.
'All right, what are your last memories of her, then?'
This time Claud did seem to think a bit before answering - or perhaps he was just thinking about whether to answer at all. Then he nodded with an expression almost of pity.
'I don't know what you're doing, but if you insist. We were all at the Stead arranging the anniversary party for when they arrived back from their cruise. I was to fly off to Bombay the following morning. Like most of us, Natalie was helping. On the day of the party and in the morning, you and Natalie and I were rushing about doing errands. Remember?'
'It's a long time ago,' I said.
'I remember taking her in the car to collect Alan and Martha's present, and we talked about what she was going to wear, I think. All I remember after that is that I took charge of the barbecue, and I didn't move from it until the early hours of the morning.' He looked at me. 'But you wouldn't know about that, would you? You were too tied up with Theo. Then I left before dawn the next morning with Alec. The first I heard of Natalie's disappearance was two months later when I came back home.'
I carefully picked up the crumbs on my plate with my forefinger.
'Did you see Natalie in the morning?'
'Of course not. I saw nobody, except mother, who drove Alec and me to the station at about three thirty in the morning. As you know. Come on, Jane, you're just going over and over old ground. And I can't help you much: I wasn't there the day she disappeared.'
He passed his hand over his forehead, and I realised how tired he was. Then he smiled at me, a goofy little intimate half-smile; the hostility went from the atmosphere and was replaced by something else, just as disturbing.
'Don't you know,' he said almost dreamily, 'how much I regret not being there? For a long time, I thought that if I hadn't gone off, then it wouldn't have happened. That I could have prevented it or something ridiculous. And I feel still as if I were separated from the rest of the family because they were all together in it, and I was apart.' He grinned mirthlessly at me. 'You always called me the bureaucrat of the family, didn't you, Jane? Perhaps it's because that's how I can feel properly a part of it.'
'Claud, I'm sorry if I've been blundering around.'
Without thinking, I took his hand, and he didn't take it away, but looked down at our fingers interlocking. We sat in thick silence for a few seconds, and then I drew back, embarrassed.
'What are you doing for Christmas?' My voice was too bright.
It was his turn to look embarrassed. 'Didn't you know? I was going to Martha's and Alan's, but Paul invited me to spend it with him and Peggy.'
'But they're coming to me.' A nasty thought struck me.
'Paul didn't think you'd mind.'
'It's impossible, Claud. It's impossible. Dad will be there, and Kim and her new lover, and the boys and Hana. Oh, shit, there'll be a TV crew there as well, filming us all. What do you want us all to do? Play happy families for the cameras?'
'It was you who said we could still be friends.'
I had said that. It was a stupid cliche, a fake consolation, and a lie, but I had said it.
'And I want to be with my sons at Christmas.'
I knew it was a terrible mistake. What was Kim going to say to me?
'All right.'
Twenty-One
I was sitting down, the dry moss of the stone scraping the curved ridge of my spine. I knew that Cree's Top was behind me. The River Col was on my left, its surface slate grey, reflecting the cloud cover which had obscured the sun. It was suddenly cold in my sleeveless dress and I hugged myself with my prickly, goosepimpled arms. The screwed-up pieces of paper were almost lost in the murky surface and, flowing away from me, they disappeared into the shades and reflections long before they were carried round the bend. The branches in the elms on my right rustled and swayed with a sudden breath of wind that threatened rain.
I stood and turned round until I was facing Cree's Top and looking along the path that wound up its slope. Sometimes bushes hid its progress until it disappeared into twilight. I walked determinedly up it. Each time I returned to this river and this hill which separated me from Natalie, the objects seemed more vividly present. The grass was a richer green, the river more detailed in all its ripples and flurries. On this occasion, the detail was not just more precise but somehow harder as well. The water looked heavier and more solid, the path was more rigid under my feet, even the leaves looked like blades that would cut the fingers that brushed against them.
This was a hostile, unyielding landscape that seemed reluctant to give up its secrets. I was nearing the brow of Cree's Top and I had a palpable sense that there was something bad on the other side. That was why the landscape had darkened. My body, my whole spirit, sagged in despair. Did I really want this? One moment of weakness was enough. I turned and ran down the hill, away from whatever was awaiting me. Were there not other places to go in this beloved landscape of my memory? I reached the foot of Cree's Top and ran along the Col. I knew instinctively that the path would wind away from the river and take me back towards the Stead and there I would find my family as they once were: Theo, tall and saturnine; Martha, dark-haired and beautiful, laughing and strong; my father, handsome and still hopeful for a life that could be fulfilling. There would be the remnants of that golden summer party.
But the path quickly became unrecognisable, as if I had wandered beyond the bounds of permitted territory. The woods thickened, the sky was closed away and I came to myself there on Alex's couch with tears running hot down my face, across my cheeks. I had to sit up and, with a sense of absurdity, wipe my neck and ears. Alex was standing over me with a look of concern. I explained to him what I had tried to do and he nodded his head reprovingly.
'Jane, you're not in Narnia or Oz or some theme park where you can wander off in whatever direction you like. This is your own memory you're exploring. You have to give yourself up to where it's leading you. Don't you feel that you're almost there?'
Alex Dermot-Brown was not the sort of person whom I would normally have considered to be my type. He was a scruffy man who lived in a scruffy house. His jeans were worn in the knees, his navy blue sweater was stained and dotted with fluff, it was obvious that the only styling his long curly hair received was when he frequently ran his fingers through it while in animated conversational flight. Yet I had become attracted to him, of course, because he was the person to whom I had opened up, the man whose approval I was seeking. I recognised all that. But now I realised with some excitement that he was as avid about my quest as I was, and as hopeful about its prospects. I felt a lurch deep in my belly at the same time. It reminded me of the early contractions I had had with Jerome, those little pre-shocks warning me that I was really going to have to give birth. Soon I was going to have to face up to something.
A balding man in a grey suit stood up. He looked as if he had come to the hall straight from work.
'Well
I've
got something to say.'
Do you know those public meetings or discussions when the chair calls for questions and there is a long silence and nobody dares to say anything and it's all rather embarrassing? This wasn't like that at all. Everybody had something to say and most of them were trying to say it at the same time.
We had realised from the start that the local residents would have to be involved, at least on an informal basis, in the setting up of the hostel. There'd been a meeting of the Grandison Road residents' association to discuss the issue and they had demanded a public meeting with the authorities responsible for the hostel. It wasn't clear quite what this demand meant, or whether it even needed to be acknowledged, but it was decided as a matter of tact to respond. Chris Miller of the council planning department was notionally in charge of the project and was going to chair it and Dr Chohan, a psychiatrist from the out-patients department of St Christopher's hospital, was going to be there, and Pauline Tindall from social services and then at a very late stage Chris had rung me and asked if I could come along as well.
I reluctantly agreed, if only to keep an eye on any rash spending commitments that Chris might make which would then duly come off my budget. This was an evening on which I had arranged to meet Caspar for a drink. I rang to cancel and apologise but when I mentioned to him what I was doing, he became interested and asked if he could pop along and sit in the audience. He said he wanted to see me at work. I told him not to bother and that it would be only a formality.
'It won't be a formality,' he said. 'These are people's homes you're dealing with. You're going to be bringing mad people into their area. The only worse thing you could be proposing would be a veal factory or a vivisection laboratory. I don't want to miss this, Jane. Public meetings like this are what the British do now instead of watching a bear being baited or a public hanging.'
'Come off it, Caspar, this is a totally uncontroversial project.'
'We'll see. Meanwhile, you must remind me to show you an interesting study that was done a few years ago at Yale. It suggested that when people have made a public commitment to a position, then contrary evidence, however strong, only reinforces their commitment.'
'So what are you saying?'
'Don't expect to convince anybody by rational argument.'
'I don't need a study from Yale University to tell me that. Maybe I'll see you there.'
'I might be lost in the mob but I'll see
you.'
I locked my bicycle to a parking meter outside the community hall just five minutes before the meeting was due to start. When I entered I thought at first I must have come to the wrong occasion. I had expected a few old ladies who had come to get out of the rain. This looked more like a warehouse party or a poll tax demonstration. But there on the distant platform were Chris and the gang. Not only was every seat taken but the aisles were crammed and I had to squeeze my way through in a flurry of apologies in order to reach the platform where Chris was looking red-faced and nervous. He kept coughing and filling his glass with water from a jug. As I sat down on the municipal plastic chair reserved for me, he leant across and whispered hoarsely:
'Big turn-out.'
'Why?' I whispered back.
'There's the Grandison Road lot,' he said. 'But there's a whole lot from Clarissa Road and Pamela Road and Lovelace Avenue as well.'
'Why are they all interested in a little hostel?'
Chris shrugged. He looked at his watch and then, after a nod at Chohan and Tindall, he stood up and called for silence. The boiling hubbub settled down to a light simmer. Chris introduced us all and then said a few words about how this policy reflected the local council's ommitment to make care in the community effective. It was to be hoped that this hostel would be the first of several in the borough, and that it would be a model of humane, practical and cost-effective treatment for recovering mental patients. Did anybody have any questions? There was a forest of hands but the balding man in the suit was the most assertive.
'Before I ask a question,' he said, 'I would first like to express what I think is the mood of the meeting which is that we local residents are appalled that we were not consulted about this institution being placed in our area and that we consider it to have been done in a disgracefully underhand way.'
Chris tried to protest but the man brushed him aside.
'Please let me continue, Air Miller. You have had your say. Now it is time for us to have ours.'
It was a speech rather than a question but the thrust seemed to be that it was quite unsuitable for a mental institution to be installed in a residential street. When he had finished, Chris took me completely aback by turning to me and asking for my comments. I said something about the hostel not being an institution. My entire brief had been to design a building for people who had no need of residential care. The only supervision that would be necessary would be, in certain cases, to ensure that prescribed medication was taken. That the hostel was another house in a residential area was the whole point.
A woman stood up and said that she had four children, aged seven, six, four and almost two, and that it was all very well to talk about care in the community but she had her children to worry about. And for that matter there was the Richardson Road primary school which was only two streets away. Could the doctors absolutely guarantee that the patients in the hostel would be no danger whatsoever to local children?
Dr Chohan tried to explain that these were not patients. They were people who had been discharged, just like a person who has left hospital after suffering a broken leg. And just as such a person might require a crutch for a few weeks, so some mental patients require some lightly supervised accommodation. Patients,
people
he corrected himself, who were a potential danger in any way at all would not be in this hostel.