Night Music (11 page)

Manus glanced at Faraldo, who merely nodded and smiled as though this, too, he had anticipated. He was counting the beads on his rosary, feeding them through his thumb and index finger like a man shelling peas.

“Your parents have told us a lot about you,” said Manus. “It sounds like you're a very special young woman. You wouldn't be fooling people now, would you, or playing tricks?”

“I ate Kathleen Kelly's cancer,” said Angela. “It tasted like old liver. I took the ulcers from Tommy Spance's stomach and turned them into pips that I spat into the toilet. They were no tricks.”

“Then children like you are rare,” said Manus. “Very rare.”

Angela regarded him with eyes that were more knowing than any teenager's eyes should be.

“It won't make any difference, you know,” she said.

“What won't?”

“What you're going to do. You think you can stop it, but you can't.”

“You're just a child, Angela. You have no idea what we can and cannot do. Aren't you afraid?”

“No,” said Angela, as Faraldo rose from his chair, the beads shining like dark eyes in the lamplight. “I'm not afraid.”

•  •  •

Manus and Faraldo came down the stairs and returned to the kitchen. Manus looked grimmer than before, and Faraldo's smile had faded. They asked for more tea, and for the next half hour they detailed to the Laceys the likely course of their investigation. This would probably be the first visit of many. There would be more doctors who would examine those who claimed to have been cured by Angela. Panels of clerics and theologians would be assembled. It might even be the case that Angela would be required to travel to Rome, he said, and when Mrs. Lacey replied that they couldn't afford to go to Rome, something of Manus's old spirit returned, and he grinned and told her the Vatican would pay for it all, and they would be well looked after.

“Do you think we might meet the pope?” she asked.

“We'll arrange for you to be part of a general audience,” Manus replied, “and we can take it from there.”

Mrs. Lacey glowed.

•  •  •

It was shortly after eleven when the priests finally left. The rain had eased off a little, and a car was waiting for them at the end of the lane: a black Mercedes, with a man in a suit sitting behind the wheel. Lacey offered them the use of a couple of umbrellas to keep them dry until they got to the car, but Manus politely declined.

“It's only a few yards,” he said. “We won't melt. We'll see you in the morning, and thank you again for your hospitality.”

The Laceys watched them get into the car and drive away. Mrs. Lacey went to check on her daughter, but Angela was already asleep, so she said a quiet prayer for her and followed her husband to their bed.

•  •  •

Dawn came, bringing with it clear blue skies, although the morning was cold, and a dampness hung in the air. Lacey woke first, and washed and shaved. He dressed in his new shirt, knotted a tie, and slipped into a cardigan to keep out the chill. He put the kettle on to boil as he heard his wife moving around upstairs. They had slept later than normal, so it was already after eight when he began laying the table for breakfast. He'd bought some fresh bacon, and thought that he might fry some eggs with it. They usually only had a fry on Saturdays, but this was likely to be a long, busy old day, and he thought Angela might appreciate a little treat. He'd just put the bacon in the pan when he heard a knock at the door. He removed the pan from the gas ring and went to see who was there. He hoped that it wasn't the three priests back already, maybe with Father Delaney in tow. He didn't have enough bacon and eggs for all of them, and he was looking forward to his breakfast.

He opened the door, and the tubby form of Father Delaney looked up at him from the porch step. Behind him stood two unfamiliar middle-aged men wearing black suits and clerical collars, each carrying a leather briefcase.

“Francis,” said Father Delaney, “I hope we're not too early. This is Father Evans and Father Grimaldi. They're the priests from the Vatican.”

Upstairs, Lacey's wife began to scream.

W
hen I was a boy, I attended a school that stood by a cemetery. Mine was the last desk, the one closest to the graveyard. I spent years with my back to the darkness of it. I can remember how, as autumn neared its end, and winter gathered its strength, I would feel the wind begin to blow through the window frame and think that the chill of it was like the breath of the dead upon my neck.

One day, in the bleakness of January, when the light was already fading as the clock struck four, I glanced over my shoulder and saw a man staring back at me. Nobody else noticed him, only I. His skin was the gray of old ash long from the fire, and his eyes were as black as the ink in my well. His gums had receded from his teeth, giving him a lean, hungry aspect. His face was a mask of longing.

I was not frightened. It seems strange to say that, but it is the truth. I knew that he was dead, and the dead have no hold over us beyond whatever we ourselves surrender to them. His fingers touched the glass but left no trace, and then he was gone.

Years passed, but I never forgot him. I fell in love and married. I became a father. I buried my parents. I grew old, and the face of the man at the school window became more familiar to me, and it seemed that I glimpsed him in every glass. Finally, I slept, and when I awoke I was no longer as I once had been.

There is a school that stands by a cemetery. In winter, under cover of fading light, I walk to its windows and put my fingers to the glass.

And sometimes, a boy looks back.

T
he worst part of the aftermath was that she kept seeing him: when she walked down the street; when she went to buy a newspaper or milk; when she managed to work up the courage to leave the house for any length of time—to read in a café, to catch a movie, even simply to take a stroll in the park before the sun set, because she no longer liked being out after dark. She began to believe that she might be going mad. Surely he couldn't be in all those places, not unless he was actively stalking her, but in her calmer moments she understood that this was a small city, and it was just bad luck that the person one most despised in the world, the man whom one least wished to see, should be he whose path seemed destined to repeatedly cross one's own.

The trial had come close to breaking her, leaving her almost as bruised and humiliated as the original assault. Oh, the police had been kind to her, and the prosecution barrister had gone over all of it with her in advance—how she wanted to see him behind bars just as much as Carolyn did (although that couldn't have been true, not unless he'd raped the barrister as well), how she would do all in her power to ensure that this was the ultimate outcome, but, you know . . .

And Carolyn did know, because after it happened—after he'd watched her dress, her tights laddered, her panties ripped, while he smoked a cigarette and asked if they could see each other again, I mean, Jesus Christ—she'd done the worst thing possible: she'd gone home and taken a shower, because more than anything else she wanted to rid herself of every trace of him, to scour him from her, inside and out. She'd still been a little drunk, too, but not so much that she didn't realize what had just happened to her. She'd told him “No” over and over again, and fought him as best she could, but he was bigger and stronger than she was, and treated it like it was some kind of game, smiling all the while, whispering that he liked a girl with a bit of fight in her.

It was so strange, at least to her, but it was clear that he didn't think he'd done anything wrong, or perhaps he'd simply convinced himself this was the case in order to live with his actions. She couldn't believe that, though. She'd seen it in his eyes all through the trial, and heard it in his testimony: he felt himself to have been truly wronged. He used the word
consensual
over and over, spinning to the jury a version of what had occurred that had credibility because he imbued it with his own credence. In the end, it came down to his word against hers, and the jury chose to believe him. That was how Carolyn saw it, even if the barrister tried to convince her otherwise as Carolyn wept in an anteroom after the verdict, a soft voice explaining that it was a matter of reasonable doubt, and there simply hadn't been enough evidence to convict.

Now Carolyn was drifting through the wreckage of her life, tossed on gray seas, prey to tides of anger and depression. She was on a leave of absence from work, assured that her job would be waiting for her when she decided she was ready to return, but the office was growing impatient, and she was being gently pressured either to come back or to accept a payoff. The latter would be the end of her, she thought, because she still retained the hope that she'd be able to resume her previous existence. The weekly therapy sessions helped maintain what was rapidly coming to seem like a fiction, but only for a day or two, and then she'd begin to drift again. Her parents were dead, so she couldn't turn to them for support, and her only sister lived in Australia. They spoke regularly over Skype, but it wasn't the same, and so Carolyn's isolation grew.

He, on the other hand, remained unaffected by it all. He'd been cleared in court, although some residual taint from the trial still adhered, but he'd kept his job, and she'd heard that he now had a girlfriend, too. She wondered if the girl knew about the trial. Probably not, or if he had been forced to disclose it, he'd surely have presented himself as the victim, falsely accused of a terrible crime by an unhinged woman, because that was the kind of bastard he was. Sometimes Carolyn thought about calling his girlfriend and telling her the truth. Carolyn knew her name, and where she worked.

God, she hated him. She hated him so much.

•  •  •

The card arrived on the first day of November. It was made of expensive stock, and came in a matching envelope with rough edges, the kind of stationery that cost more than a book. The note was handwritten. It read:

I can help you.

Below it, written in the same clear hand, was an address in the south of the city. No contact number, no e-mail: only the address.

Carolyn stared at the card for a moment before tearing it up and throwing it in the bin. She'd had her share of weird mail since the trial. Her identity was supposed to be secret, but sometimes she thought that every dog in the street must have been barking her name. She'd received printed quotations from the Bible, most of them alluding to the immorality of premarital sex, and implicitly suggesting that she'd got what she deserved. Those, at least, were marginally better than the ones that
explicitly
stated she'd got what she deserved and added words like
whore
and
slut
just in case the message wasn't getting through. A few letters of support found their way to her as well, often from women who'd been through what she had, offering to meet her for a coffee and a chat if she thought it might help, but those she put in the bin along with all the rest. She didn't think about the expensive card again, not even when she poured another half-eaten meal over it later that evening before taking a sleeping pill and embracing oblivion.

•  •  •

One week later, a second note, identical to the first, arrived in the mail. That, too, went into the bin, although only after a slightly longer period of hesitation.

When the third appeared on her mat, she did not destroy it.

•  •  •

The house was part of a pretty row built at the end of the nineteenth century, all well maintained and with new, or relatively new, cars parked outside. The houses had no front gardens, just narrow stone terraces that most of the residents had brightened with planters or ornamental trees, all except whoever lived at number sixty-five, before which Carolyn now stood, taking in the clean windows behind which the curtains were drawn, and the red front door with the paint that had just begun to peel.

She opened the gate, walked up the short path, and rang the doorbell. She heard no sound inside and wondered if the bell might be broken, but within seconds the door was opened by a tall, sickly woman with prematurely white hair and a face that appeared to be composed of skin without any flesh. It clung so tightly to the shape of her skull that Carolyn could see the whiteness of the bone beneath, as though her sharp cheekbones might at any moment erupt bloodlessly through their covering. Her eyes were gray-blue and protruded from their sockets like pale bubbles about to burst. She moved slowly and carried the weight of her impending mortality like a hissing black cat on her shoulder.

Carolyn wasn't sure what to say. She produced the card and began to introduce herself, but the woman simply stepped back and gestured with her left hand, inviting Carolyn to enter. The hallway beyond was dark, lit only by a lamp with a thick yellow shade that absorbed more light than it dispersed. The red-and-white wallpaper was the kind of flock found in old bars, and the patterned carpet was so thick that it swallowed the soles of Carolyn's shoes. Somewhere a clock ticked, but otherwise all was silent.

Carolyn stepped inside, and the door closed behind her.

Only then did she become aware of the smell.

•  •  •

It was later, once she had returned home, put her clothes in the wash, and showered to get the stink from her skin and hair, that she managed to place the odor. She recalled visiting the zoo with her parents, and the peculiar stench of the reptile house with its lizards and snakes, and the alligators that lay as still as stones in their ponds. That was the smell that pervaded number sixty-five, but she had no time to think about it while she was there, for the thin woman led her to a back room of the house dominated by a big bed, the adjustable kind found in hospitals. Beside it, in a wheelchair, sat another, younger woman, her legs covered by a tartan rug. The room was very warm, and Carolyn began to sweat.