Secrecy (17 page)

Claudia was holding these toward the light. Her face had no expression. She looked totally numb, and in fact, her body was numb.

They were all watching her. Her thoughts were contradictory and distorted, some of them already embracing Ted at the airport with such thankful relief and others in terror of the courts and prisons that awaited his return.

She bent over the pictures. In one Ted was dressed in what looked like a white uniform of some sort; a table with various heads and shoulders hid the lower half of his body. The other was a three-quarter view with a door in the background. And in each the face was unmistakably Ted’s.

“Yes,” she said, “yes, it is.”

There was a long silence. And the part of the mind that can, even in the worst, most painful situations, detach itself from the pain and see objectively, said to her, We are all feeling the drama of this. We are players in an extraordinary tragedy.

“Tell me about it, please,” she cried.

Mr. Prescott began. “As we said, it was in Vichy at the spa. We had lunch there a few times. There was this young man, a waiter, whom we both noticed. It was strange that, almost at the same moment, Carol and I were sure we knew him or knew who he was. Of course, we realized later it was because of all the pictures in our local papers. And we heard him speaking English, American English. We didn’t quite know what to do, how to handle it so as
not to tip him off. So we asked somebody for his name. It was Timothy Matz.”

“Maits?” asked Cliff.

“No, Matz. The suspicious thing is his avoidance of us. Hearing him speaking English, we tried to be friendly, although only in passing because he never served our table. We were sure he was deliberately staying away.”

“I think,” Mrs. Prescott added, “that he may have seen me with the camera. And I think he was worried about me because the last time we were there, when we were on our way out, he had a rather frightened expression.”

“I don’t know whether this is good news or bad news for you,” Mr. Prescott said gently.

“I don’t know either,” Cliff said, “except that at least Ted’s alive, and where there’s life, there’s hope. But what comes next is that tomorrow morning we have to tell the police and our lawyer.”

“It’s all right to hope,” Bill agreed, “but not to overdo it. We must be prepared to be disappointed sometimes. Then it won’t hurt so much,” he added kindly, “believe me.”

Claudia held the pictures up to the light again. Yes, there he was, a trifle thinner, perhaps, or perhaps not, but the face was his, his the dark deep eyes, the cheekbones, the narrow jaw … Ted.

There were so many questions.…
What are you doing in France? How did you get there? Are you well? Are you behaving yourself? Will you ever forgive me for reporting you? Will you understand that I must do it? That you must take your punishment?

“I’d like to keep these if I may,” she said.

“Of course. We had copies made, enough for you and for the authorities.”

Cliff warned the couple, “The police will be calling on you too.”

Mr. Prescott said, “No problem,” and rose to leave.

His wife took Claudia’s hand. The pressure and the glance into Claudia’s eyes were more expressive of understanding than any words could have been.
I, too, have children
, they told her.

“Decent people,” Cliff remarked later. “They weren’t getting any thrill of excitement out of this the way a lot of people would. Are you all right, Claudia?”

She knew what he meant. Where her health was concerned, Cliff was an incurable worrier. Regardless of the fact that the doctor had cut back on her heart medication and was most encouraging, he still worried.

Right now her heart was beginning to hammer at her ribs, to race so fast that she herself was frightened. Then she thought, For heaven’s sake, it’s only nerves, and why not?

“Just nervous,” she said lightly, “and who wouldn’t be on a day like this?”

She got up and went to the kitchen. A cup of herb tea might be soothing. After that, in a safe bed next to Cliff would come sleep and a few hours of deliverance until the morning.

*   *   *

The sky on this midafternoon in the middle of summer was empty, its pure blue absolute, without cloud or motion. The day, like all the days during these last three weeks, was empty. Beyond a few ordinary chores there was little to do but think. A thousand times Claudia had examined all the possibilities and probabilities involved in the discovery of Ted, and now her thoughts had run dry.

She drove slowly home from the supermarket. This would be a good time to walk or go for a swim or sit under a tree with a friend and talk, but she had neither physical nor emotional energy for any of these; she was in a lethargy, just sufficiently alert to control the car.

It was the sight of Charlotte, walking alone on the side of the road, that aroused her. Not having seen the girl in over a year, Claudia’s impulse was to stop the car and call out. Her second impulse was to drive on. Cliff had reported, and indeed Bill himself had confirmed, that Charlotte did not want a meeting.

“It’s not that she’s angry at you, far from it,” he had tried to explain. “It’s only that the connection, the memory …” He had faltered to a stop.

Well, she could certainly understand that. It would not be an easy meeting for me, either, she thought, making a sudden painful connection to that time when, first left alone with a child to support, she had dreaded the sight of a tradesman to whom she owed money. Now she owed Charlotte a great deal more than money; hers was a debt that could never be repaid.

It was this thought that changed her mind so that
she stopped the car and waited for Charlotte to catch up.

They were both startled and unsure what to say. She’s grown fat, Claudia thought irrelevantly. And she said the first thing that came into her head, which was the natural query, “Where are you going? Want a lift?”

“No, thanks. I’m just taking a walk.”

“Will you come back home with me for a while?”

“No, thanks.”

Clearly, Charlotte wanted to get away. Good manners alone constrained her. Claudia, however, was suddenly determined not to let her get away.

“You feel strange with me,” she said, “and no wonder. I can’t blame you. But we were friends once. At least I thought we were.”

Charlotte nodded.

“I know it’s asking a great deal,” Claudia persisted, “but can’t you try to separate me from—from what was done to you? Can you try to remember some of the things we did together, the lemon tarts and the books?”

In a gesture of dismay Charlotte’s hand flew to her cheek. “The book on ancient architecture, that big book of photographs—I never returned it.”

“I never missed it.”

“I’m terribly sorry.”

“You may keep it, Charlotte.”

“No, I’ll ask Dad to take it to you.”

“Will you perhaps come with Dad?”

“I can’t—you see, it’s really your house, not you, that—”

The house. Yes, of course. It probably happened in the living room on the sofa. She will see that room forever, imprinted like the room in the hospital. We all have them, only for most of us they are not as horrible as hers, these images printed in black on white or carved in stone.

“What if I came to see you sometime at your house? I can bring Rob and Roy, if you want me to. You must have missed them.”

Charlotte was looking away down the road, obviously wanting to be released. “I don’t know,” she answered.

At that Claudia put the car into gear. “Well, anytime,” she said, and drove off thinking, I can only try.

The doorbell rang while she was sorting the groceries. She opened it to admit Casper from the police department.

He said at once, “Don’t be alarmed, there’s no bad news, or good news, either, depending on how you want to look at it.”

They sat down and he began, “Here it is in a nutshell. The report just came in. The young man is not Ted.”

A sigh, heavy as a groan, rose and fell in Claudia’s chest; whether it came out of a vast relief or from dashed hopes, she could not have told.

“No, definitely not. The French police traced him from the restaurant where he was known as Timothy Matz, the name he gave those people, the Prescotts. They traced him to the university at Grenoble, and found that he really is Timothy Matz. He and his
brother worked all summer in France and then went on to study. The authorities at Grenoble met the parents on a visit. They come from Kansas. The mother is a teacher, and the father does some sort of work for the blind. They were very thorough, the French police.”

“The pictures,” Claudia murmured. “I was so sure.”

“It happens. Don’t they say everybody has his double somewhere in the world? Makes sense. Let me tell you some more that’s really amusing. Timothy Matz was suspicious of the Prescotts. He saw them photographing him, and he wondered why. It scared him. He thought they were criminal types.”

“I guess it would scare you to have strangers staring at you like that. They said he looked suspicious. It all fits, doesn’t it?” She sighed again. “So, where do we go from here?”

“To the FBI. Our department has already been in touch with them. We’re all, the parents of the girls, too, naturally, and all of us in the department, in a hurry to get this solved.”

“This” being Ted, Claudia thought. And the parents of the girls are in a hurry. Wouldn’t I be, though, if I were in their shoes? Or in Bill’s, or in Charlotte’s?

And mustering all her resolve, she said quietly, “I’ll do what I can to cooperate. You can tell everyone that no matter what my personal grief may be, I understand that the law comes first. Ted belongs back here to face it. I will not cover up for him. If I should hear from him in any way, you will know it.”

Casper nodded. “These are hard times for you,
and I’m sorry. Sorry that you people, that a man like Mr. Dawes, has to go through all this. He is one of our most respected citizens, he and his father before him. It’s tough.”

Yes, tough indeed. You can’t imagine how tough.

“Well, I’ll be going along, Mrs. Dawes. You’ll be having your next visit from the FBI.”

“And many more afterward, I suppose,” she said wryly.

Casper agreed. “Unless they break the case fast. With Interpol in the act they may very well do it.”

“So that’s where it is,” Bill concluded when they were taking their evening walk, “in the hands of the FBI.”

It was the first time in many months that there had been any mention of Ted’s name between Charlotte and her father.

“I know it’s a horror for you to be reminded of him, and I certainly don’t intend to harp on the subject, but it will be mentioned in the newspapers and by people you meet, so you might as well be realistic about it. Those two other girls must feel the same horror you do.”

Not exactly, Charlotte thought. He didn’t get them pregnant and sick. At the same time she was aware of an element almost childish in her comparison. It was like saying:
You
may have a broken leg, too, but
my
break is a compound fracture.

“I met Claudia yesterday afternoon,” she said. “She stopped the car when she saw me.”

“And what then?”

“She asked me to go home with her, but I wouldn’t. I can’t go to that house, Dad.”

“I’m sure she would come to ours if you asked her.”

“She said she would.”

“So, did you ask her?”

“I didn’t say yes or no.”

“Charlotte, I think you should have said yes.”

Sometimes she was sure that she could read his mind. Now he was thinking that she was in need of a mother. Everyone knew that a fifteen-year-old girl needed a mother, she thought ironically.

“I just think you need a woman to talk to.”

Because Elena went away, he meant but had not said, because hers was another name that they, in their mutual hurt, rarely spoke these days. And he was right. For the whole year past while away at school, she had known only kids and kids’ talk. It left her often with a sense of floating unanchored. Sometimes, although you were too proud to admit it, you felt the lack of a person who would tell you what to do, even though you might not want to do it. A father, no matter how wonderful, was different.

“I’m thinking besides that it’s rather awkward for you not to be on speaking terms with my brother’s wife. Try to forget whose mother she is, Charlotte. She can’t help that, and she is suffering because of it. You even said once that you were sorry for her.”

Yes, it was in the car coming home from Boston, and Elena’s mocking laugh had scoffed.

She was silent. Her father was asking a favor of her now. For the whole year past he had asked nothing
of her; he had cared for her as if she were a basket of eggs that with the slightest jar would smash. He must be very, very weary of all this. The whole year had been a year to remember—or rather, if it were possible, a year to forget.

“All right. Tomorrow I will ask Claudia to come,” she told him.

They had walked as far as the river. On the other side between the road and the marsh the Dawes mill loomed like a soiled gray ship run aground. Bill stood there gazing at it. The wind was strong. Charlotte, shivering, crossed her arms over her chest and waited for him to speak; she still felt the worry and weariness within him.

Presently he said, “I’m afraid we’re going to have trouble with our tenants before we’re through. I don’t feel comfortable with them. It’s not the kind of operation we expected. Do you notice anything different? Look out over the marsh.”

“Well, there are no ducks. Is that what you mean?”

“Precisely.” He stood there frowning. “I don’t know. Perhaps I’m imagining things. I don’t know.”

“Well, there are butterflies, anyway. Look, Dad.”

Crossing the river, heading south, there appeared a flying army, a broad band of monarch butterflies.

“Starting toward Mexico for the winter. Look at them speed. Hundreds of them, with more to follow. They know summer’s almost over.”

He meant:
The butterflies know where they are going, and you had better make up your mind too
.

She was uncertain whether to stay or go. She had
been sure that she hated Kingsley, but she was not so sure now. For why did she often weep at night in Margate Hall? Yet when she was there, she was rid of certain haunting ghosts. The mournful emptiness of Elena’s room at home; the terror of rounding a corner to find that Ted had reappeared.