Staring At The Light (23 page)

He knelt at her feet, leaning into her knees; he reached for her face and brushed at her tears, but she still held her fists
pressed into her eyes. He buried his head in her lap and, smelling the animal smell of her, slid his hands beneath the skirt
and stroked her thighs. She stiffened; the tears continued; she removed her hands to press against his, stop him. ‘Don’t,’
she said. ‘Don’t. Please don’t.’ He remained as he was, gazing at her.

What was it light did to a face? Or was it the blurring of tears, his and hers? She was no longer harsh in feature, but childish
in distress, sexless, vulnerable, hurt, small, furious. ‘Don’t,’ she repeated. ‘Don’t you dare.’ Then softened it by adding,
‘Please,’ fiddling in her pocket for a handkerchief, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose. He watched all this closely. Puzzled,
severely alarmed. There was something so unfamiliar about her. The stutter had gone.

They’re brave, these nuns,’ she muttered. ‘Some of them suffered more than you and I put together, see? Don’t criticize their
style
. Or not in front of me. They’re the closest thing to family I ever had. Do you wonder I should think to stay? It’s so frightening
outside, so n-n-n-n-nice within.’ A deep breath. ‘So jj-j-just so … Oh, shit.’

He was ashamed of himself for welcoming the return of the stutter. Maybe he had never wanted her to be free of it, in case
she should find it easy to outstrip his use of words; it was the stutter that had drawn him in the first place. Him and the
builders, sitting in a caff, with them mimicking her behind her back until he intervened. Watched her smile into his eyes,
looking only at his eyes, nothing else.

She took a deep breath. ‘I’m not going to cry any more,’ she stated, ‘but I’ve come to love these nuns. We’ve something in
common. Their life is controlled absolutely by belief in God, mine by belief in you. It’s only natural that belief should
suffer from doubt from time to time, isn’t it? You gave up on your brother; you might give up on me. And the longer I stay
here,
the less use I’ll be on the outside. I can’t go out because you tell me I shouldn’t. Soon it might be because I
can’t
. And all the time Johnnyboy gets smaller and smaller in my mind.
Was
it him who hurt me? He stood in the dark and watched, and the fat man hit me. I’ve tried to put it right out of mind … I
don’t know who was giving the orders.’

‘He wouldn’t touch you. He’d always get someone else to do it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he never could bear to touch a woman.’

She was suddenly completely still. ‘Ah,’ she said, after a long pause. ‘I thought desire and hatred overcame such things.’

‘Not in his case,’ Cannon said, suddenly exhausted. How many times and in how many ways would he have to explain to women
what Johnnyboy was like? He did not have the words or the energy and, God knows, he had tried. Yesterday, to Sarah; a dozen
times to Sarah, innumerable times to Julie and they had believed him with wide eyes and open mouths at first, willing to accept
what he said. Shock was the great aid to belief. Julie believed because she had suffered at Johnny’s orders; how could she
be incredulous now? A calm life away from him was lulling her into a sense of safety, that was all, the image of John Smith
fading like the memory of a violent film developing into a series of cartoons.

‘No, Cannon, you’re wrong,’ she said, reading the expression on his face. ‘I’m not
less
afraid, I’m more afraid. It makes me weaker, not stronger, staying
here. I’m preserved – like – like a jelly!’ She laughed. ‘They like jelly, the sisters, they like childish food.’ She stroked
his forehead. ‘I don’t have to make decisions. I grow weaker rather than stronger, and that’s what makes me afraid. Not being
any use to you. And if he
did
find me here, threatened me, threatened any of
them
, then I’d have to run, Cannon, I’d have to run. Far away and not come back.’

She had been so ashamed of her injuries, as if she had inflicted them herself. He had wanted her to forget them; now he wanted
her to remember. The clock ticked past the quarter hour loudly. There was absolutely nothing to say and it was time to go.
The rain lashed against the door as she let him out, and she made to pull him back, but he kissed her quickly and pushed her
back inside. The light of the street outside made him nervous and he hurried away. Ran down the road until the convent was
out of sight, then huddled in a doorway, lit another cigarette. Why should anyone believe him simply because he told the truth?
Because he told it incompletely, that was why. Was selective with what he told, for fear of giving offence. Never told Julie,
never told Sarah what Johnnyboy said when he went to see him, after prison, long, long before the letter.
You’ve got to leave her. You don’t belong with her; you belong with me; we’ve got things to do. You wait and see; you’ll come
back. What? She was scarcely hurt at all. She asked for it. Let’s see if she’ll wait for you. I’ll test her for you. The worst
pain, I’ll find it
.

The worst pain was loss. That was the very worst
he could envisage. Loss of her; loss of hope. The worst pain for Julie would be loss of him. Johnny would know that;
he
feared the rot of his loneliness more than anything else. He knew exactly what he was doing in the waiting game: waiting
for love to rot. Christmas was too far.

Cannon did not want to go home. There was no such thing. Home had always been a house owned by Johnnyboy; he had not progressed
by a single step in all these years. He had regressed, because now he lived in one of Johnny’s houses as a trespasser, waiting
for discovery. Cold and wet as he was, he could not bear the thought of the drip through the ceiling, the damp heat, the sense
of imprisonment. Where, then? Who were his friends? Sarah, William, scarcely any other who did not belong also to Johnny,
and few enough, always, of these. He would have turned back to the convent, climbed the back wall, huddled in the familiar
yard, if only to be close, but he had a superstitious dread of that. The longer he stayed in the vicinity, the sooner Johnnyboy
would sense where he was. And the same would apply to Sarah. He was bad news to women. He began to walk.

On the main road, he saw the lights of the night bus, X12, Charing Cross, by the long route, offering for two pounds half
an hour of warmth and oblivion and, for the price of the whisky in his pocket, a borrowed blanket with the homeless. It passed
down the Edgware Road and into Oxford Street, a short walk from William’s. He thought of William’s basement room. The messy
room with the teeth where he had
been allowed to go to keep him out of the way of the real clients. William would never know; it was not for William to know.
He could get in easy. Lie down somewhere; that old chair, maybe. Think of his precious painting upstairs. Bonnard, sketching
his wife with love for the umpteenth time. A study for a painting rather than a painting, but fresh and lovely. Yes, he could
think of that. And it would be nice to sleep in the home of someone who did not even know that Johnnyboy existed. Be a guest
of someone who still had faith in him.

The rain dripped through the ceiling, unnoticed. The door of the attic swung open to the push of a hand. There was no sound
but that of the
plip, plip, plop
through the skylight and the sound of laboured breath. Too many stairs. Ah, a room bought with an artist in mind, for the
promise of light. Steps across the floor, a body stooping to retrieve the scattered drawings. Ink depictions of a face; the
hand holding them shaking. Looking at the features, the jowls, the malevolence, the age and the black teeth, snarling; the
angry face; the face full of need. The lonely face; the hateful face, captured by someone who would not, could not, look at
it without looking away. Finally, the face drawn with an element of affection.

He still loves me
.

He tore up the black and white sketches, thoroughly and systematically, and placed them in a pile.

The steps moved, the hands took the canvas from where it stood against the wall, placed it on the easel.
Noted the abundant hair, more red than brown in this light. He could not remember her being described as red-haired; frowned.
He had never looked at her before now. Glanced, looked away … hadn’t got close, couldn’t bear it. Looked again. Noted the
full mouth and the long, slender legs with the prominent muscles in the calves. Athletic legs; a figure of strength. Examined
with distaste the slightness of the breasts lying nonchalantly on the ribcage, the hand lying across the bush protectively.
He wanted to slash the picture, pierce it at that point, extend the wide mouth, half open to show the white teeth, but it
was only with the tip of a knife he wanted to touch; no closer. He bent, looked, memorized each detail of the face, the colour
of the eyes, the way the hair swept back from the forehead, the small nuggets of gold in the ears. Traced the shape of the
ears and the brows; moved his glance down, frowned at the pale flecks of paint around the neck, on the upper arms, the shoulders.
Little scars, superimposed on the paint, added as a kind of signature, like tiny hallmarks. These distinguished her.

The man went back to the wall and looked through the other canvases. Scenes, interiors, playgrounds full of children. No other
women. A dozen sketches of the same woman.

This, then, was the one. The one whose face he had always refused to see.

He took her off the easel and put her back against the wall. Closed the door softly behind him.

You have to live; whatever else you have in mind, you have to live.
Always eat when you are hungry; always drink when you are dry; always scratch when you are itchy; don’t stop breathing or
you’ll die
.

Hardly a profound philosophy, but perfectly good enough. Cannon had not phoned. The year would soon be reaching its shortest
day. Another foggy, early Tuesday morning, and this was it.
Two bdrms; bath, wc, lge living room; no stairs. Convenient for transport
. Convenient for everything, as if that made all the difference. A place to put a car three streets distant, but the car didn’t
matter. Sarah hated her car: it distorted her view of the city; there was no-one to talk to in the car. This flat was walking
distance from all that mattered. A mansion block, second floor; shabby without real decay; homely. An acquired taste, she
was told. Someone had died in it recently.

She knew it was home as soon as she turned the corner. A little worn; a little scarred; just like herself.
Following the agent inside, Sarah saluted the late occupant with a surreptitious sign of the Cross and a hidden bow to her
memory. The dead warranted respect and she needed the blessing.

The place had the stamp of an elderly occupant who had been less than mobile. There was a high armchair by a fireplace in
the huge living room, next to a table, flanked by a sewing box and a footstool, facing a television, a self-contained island
of furniture in an otherwise empty space. There was a radio on the table. Between this assembly, suitable for long sitting
with everything to hand, there was a well-worn path across the floor to the kitchen which was small to the point of miniature,
with old-fashioned appliances and open shelves within easy reach. There was a cooker of ancient but efficient vintage, an
antique fridge and every indication that the occupant saw no necessity to change anything. No aspirations to anything other
than adequacy and established routine; comfort without frills, nothing that required complex instructions. Someone had been
here who cooked the same things, in the same way, every day; Sarah felt a profound affinity with her.

‘Of course, you’d need to gut this and start again,’ the agent was saying, as they peered into the bathroom. Old bath, stained
and clean, disused; newish shower shoved in the corner; hardly enough space to turn round. A bedroom with a large, low bed,
depressed on one side nearest the door. A lady who had learned to economize with furniture as well as with movement; she had
dispensed with obstacles
and would have walked through her flat in a series of the shortest routes in a rigorous but dignified routine that sustained
and allowed her independence. They went back to the living room. There were two large windows, a high ceiling with a flaking
cornice decorated with grapes and tastefully tinged with smoky yellow; pale, unadorned walls. The sense of empathy was as
powerful as a sweet smell. The air was clean and fragrantly dry. Happiness beckoned.

‘What the family should do is get some money together, do it up and
then
sell it. They’d make so much more, but they haven’t time, and it’s chicken and egg – they don’t have money until they sell
…’

‘Who lives either side?’

‘Old block for old people. They’re mostly deaf. I’m not sure anyone else even knows she’s died.’

I
know. The light streaming through the south-facing windows turned the old carpet to full, faded gold. The empty walls were
an open invitation. Shall I die here? Sarah thought. I may die friendless, but I do want to
live
here.
Now
. This minute. Perhaps I have never wanted anything quite so much in all my life. She sat in the old lady’s armchair and asked
again for her blessing. She looked at the wall above the fire and imagined the favourite ornament she might have seen.

An empty flat; deaf neighbours. Cannon could live here until Christmas, if she could get him in. She put to the back of her
mind the fact that Cannon had not phoned.

*

‘I want to buy it
now
,’ she said to Matthewson, standing in his office with arms crossed, a strange attitude he thought, in someone who had come
to ask for advice. She should have been humbler. ‘How do I secure it? How do I make them take it off the market?’ She was
so fierce he almost wanted to laugh. He had rarely seen her so passionate, although when she was he scarcely listened, because
it was always about some hopeless cause of a person and she had the loser’s habit of defending the indefensible.

‘Throw money at them. It usually helps. Most vendors find it irresistible,’ he barked.

‘Why can’t I exchange contracts
today
?’ For God’s sake, she had never even mastered the finer points of conveyancing, such as delay, prudence, patience,
caveat emptor
– the essential rule of let the buyer beware.

‘You
could
, if you were sillier than I thought. You can make a contract on the back of an envelope, if you want. I agree to buy 1 Acacia
Avenue for
X
pounds sterling, and he, she or it agrees to sell signed by both. Perfectly valid, and perfectly senseless, of course. You
could be sold a wreck with a motorway through it … pub next door … service charges. Those places have monstrous service charges.
A survey, of course – got to check the roof and the drains. All that. Weeks. Get someone in the firm to do it. Usual discount,
of course.’

‘I don’t care about the roof and the drains. I want to buy it
now
.’ She sounded like a child demanding to be taken to a party.

He shrugged. She was behaving like the most intractable kind of client who would not listen. ‘There’s one small point,’ he
murmured, relishing the fact that she had asked his opinion. ‘I don’t like to mention it, but have you got the money?’

She glared at him.

‘Have you sold
your
flat?’ he persisted.

‘Almost.’

‘Ah.’ That was news. Mrs Matthewson would want to hear about that. He sensed that Mrs Matthewson would feel a vague sense
of unease if she did not know where Sarah was. So would his wretched son.

‘Money?’ he said again.

‘Enough.’

‘Well, give it to them,’ he shouted. ‘Give them a thousand to take it off the market and promise exchange and completion within
a month. Only
don’t
sign a contract. Please.’

‘Not even on the back of an envelope?’ She was smiling now, somehow comforted by the yelling. How is it, he would ask Mrs
Matthewson, that she takes her reassurance in such strange ways? The mere fact that Ernest had failed to say
Don’t do it at any price
was enough to provide some kind of moral support for impetuosity – but, then, he had liked the sound of the address. Montague
Mansions, Marylebone. Faded grandeur, but still grandeur: Mrs Matthewson would approve of an easy walk to Selfridges.

‘It’s very convenient for my dentist,’ Sarah said.

The cigarette was back in hand, sure sign of defiance, tension or relaxation, he wasn’t sure, only that it
was indicative of something alien. The sight of it infuriated him all over again. ‘I don’t
care
who it’s near. Unless
it’s
a client. You’ve
work
to do. As well as the art collection.’

‘Ah, that. Don’t worry about
that
.’ Beaming at him, as if a hundred-thousand-pound budget was nothing. The insouciance turned charm into anger.

‘But I do worry about
that
. I want a report. You’re a
consultant
in this regard, don’t forget. Trusted for expertise. You have to take it seriously. As long as you aren’t subverting any
of the damned art budget on the deposit for your own bloody house.’

The silence was palpable, thick and sticky; a boundary crossed. He had gone too far. There were innumerable times when he
had accused her of white lies, evasions, abrogations of responsibility, general moral perfidy, but he had never suggested
she could be tempted by theft. It was the lawyer’s cardinal sin: they could lie to a client in this culture, lie to each other,
but never steal. She may have once left priceless title deeds in a taxi, billed for a fraction of the proper price, given
glib and erroneous versions of the law, seduced the male clients as well as their opponents, commandeered the irrational devotion
of others, but stealing was another kind of sin. He was ashamed of his own tongue; kept his head bowed and wondered what to
say next in the face of her righteous fury, but when the silence continued and he was brave enough to look up she was blushing.
An alarming sight against the red hair; he doubted he had seen such a phenomenon before; it was almost as frightening as seeing
her cry.

‘There’s no apartment worth that much,’ she said. The door closed quietly.

Convenient for my dentist
. Certainly the flat would be convenient. Half of her male acquaintance lived within striding distance. There was Mole, a
short walk in the other direction; the estate agent, closer; the judge; then Master Ralph of the high court and his service
apartment occupied Tuesday through Thursday; one or two more, past and semi-present, a couple of ghosts, but convenience did
not dictate the choice, never had, any more than any of the nice men who wanted her near and also wanted her far. Except William.
William mattered. William would like it; she and William liked the same things. She wanted to show it to him, tell him how
she had fallen in love with that old lady’s chair, the dimensions of the room in which she sat, the things she might have
seen and the things she had left. Tell him about how she had forgotten minimalism and about that last tribute to posterity
which she had found in the bathroom cupboard when no-one else was looking. The old darling’s dentures, looking for company.

William found that he took pleasure in the day’s work, as if his fleeting acquaintance with violence the weekend before and
the prospect of a stunning new client had acted as a stimulant to energize his eyes and ears, and make him notice things he
otherwise ignored. It was the energy of complete distraction; the power, suddenly, to acquire extra vision; he recognized
it as
mild neurosis. He seemed immune even to irritation. There were dentists of another kind than himself, to whom the human contact
was all and the surgery simply a means to it; perhaps he was becoming such a dentist, whose pleasure was all in the kinship
with the patient. He was jovial, complimented Tina on a new shade of hair, and then said he preferred the old in case the
remark smacked of sexual innuendo, but she seemed to consider any compliment at all a step in the right direction. He wanted
to thank her for tidying the glory-hole, something he had noticed mid-morning when he went down there and found it cleaner
than he remembered, but instead he debated with her how they should deal with the man in the waiting room who was likely to
slide out of the chair at the touch of the needle. It was always the big men who fainted. There had never been a heart-attack
yet; the fainters came round; the allergic survived; and this bright morning he was actually noticing the contrast of patients.
Miss Mallerson, a busy barrister, flying in to discuss a variety of cosmetic treatment to augment her powerful teeth, demanding
grave explanation for the sixth time of the various improving treatments she would never find time to complete. Then the dignified
alcoholic restaurateur of uncertain years, as passively proofed against life first thing in the morning as he was late at
night, deceptive in his calm, frenetic with misery when anaesthetic, retarded by wine, took longer to work and his raddled
face, at the end, looked the same way it had at the start.
When
Mr John Smith came in for surgery,
when
, not
if
, he must ask what he did for a living
because it was relevant to the drugs. Was he a boozer? Did he work with tar? Did he smoke?

He felt like the Mad Hatter in
Alice in Wonderland
. Do you know why the hatter was mad? he asked Tina. Because of the mercury he used in the making of hats, ha-ha. We don’t
use mercury amalgams so much in teeth any more, but they are useful. Californians want them out, you know, quite the worst
thing to do, destabilizes the stuff, and it wasn’t the solid form of mercury but the vapour that made the hatter mad. Mid-afternoon,
she gazed at him sternly.

‘You’d better behave. Say your prayers. There’s a nun in the waiting room. Two of them.’

The second nun had a severe face and pale blue eyes fit to scan far horizons; the first looked as if she could not speak and
required guidance to cross a road. They both sat bolt upright, suspicious of the luxury. The elder admired Cannon’s loaned
sketch, enjoying the view of a naked woman stepping out of her bath. The other had turned her back on it.

‘Ah,’ said Pauline. ‘Look who’s here, Imelda. The inquisitor’s apprentice.’ She stabbed a finger in the direction of her companion.
‘This one grinds her teeth. What are you going to do about it?’

Several hours later, when Sarah sat opposite him, he found himself examining her face for familial resemblance to her aunt.
It was there, in the brilliant, watchful eyes and the strong chin. Hers, too, might be a gaunt face in her older years. An
over-strong face, softened by the cloud of hair. Something had
happened to William. Ever since Saturday he had not been able to stop looking at faces. In three days the bruise on his own
had faded away to nothing. If Sarah had a child, it would look like her; she should have a child for that reason alone, even
if the child looked as she did this evening. Jubilant, secretive, worried.

‘I met your aunt,’ he announced. ‘We had an extraordinary conversation.’

‘Yes,’ said Sarah drily, the dryness hiding the pride, the surprise and the repeated sense of being outmanoeuvred. ‘She’s
unique and amazing. Should my ears have been burning?’

He hesitated. ‘Yes. Yes. She’s enormously proud of you.’

‘Well, strike me down, Lord. First I knew.’

He touched her hand, found himself looking at her as if he had never seen her before. Yes, she was definitely worried as well
as happy and, in the same way he had been throughout the day, he was talkative to the point of giddiness. Various subjects
would remain on the incommunicable list, Cannon’s twin for a start, but how beautiful she was; what a series of colours. Pauline’s
eyes had faded with age; those of her niece were intensely blue, full of welcome mischief, and her mouth soft and desirable.
If there had not been so much to say, he would simply have sat and stared at her.