The Edge of the Fall (46 page)

But that wasn't what happened at all. Mama loved Emmy. Everyone loved Emmy. Every day, new people came to the house. They didn't want to see Arthur, they only wanted to hold the baby, look in the blankets, coo over the thing. He sat in the room and nobody wanted to talk to him or play with him.

They all knew what to do with Emmy straight away. He kept making mistakes. He asked Mama if he could play with Emmy but as soon as he held the baby she screwed up her bright-red face and started crying.

‘What have you done to her?' said Muriel. Emmy hated him, he could tell.

Everything he did was wrong. Mama was always with the baby and Papa was tired and seemed angry with him.

Now, two years later, he didn't know why the drive was taking so long and Thompson wouldn't stop. He crossed his legs.

He tried thinking of something else, trees or a boat. But the need inside him built, fast and hard. ‘Please,' he said. ‘I need to go.'

Finally, Thompson slowed at a verge. But just as Arthur was climbing down, he felt it all let through and there was a terrible gushing. He couldn't stop it. He never could, once it started. The stuff soaked through his trousers, down the side, over the wheels.

‘Sorry,' he said, hopelessly, to Thompson, feeling the sickly heat on his legs. He was standing on the verge, weak, a baby. The people passing could see as well, all of them laughing at the baby who wet himself!

‘We're nearly there,' said Thompson, distractedly. ‘I don't know. Maybe we could get some clothes from the trunk. But probably best to wait, have a bath when you get there.'

‘Have a bath?' Arthur didn't understand. Why would he have a bath at wherever they were going? He had baths at
home
.

‘Yes,' said Thompson. ‘That's the answer.' He patted Arthur on the shoulder. ‘Poor little chap. Don't worry. These things happen. Once we get there, they can get you nice and clean again.'

And then he knew. He knew he wasn't going to see a friend or go out for a picnic. So when Thompson turned up the great drive of a giant house, knocked on the door and a bent old man answered, Arthur knew what was coming next. The old man sent them to a waiting room and a tall man with spectacles arrived.

‘Oh no,' he said, looking at Arthur in disgust. ‘I shall have to call for Matron.'

A thin woman with a bun arrived and looked at Arthur in horror. ‘Already. Mr Eccles, we are going to have trouble with this one.'

He knew he was stuck there, at the place called Winchester Hall, with Mr Eccles and Matron and a thin bed he wet every night so that all the other boys laughed at him, called him baby, threw pencils at him in the classroom, hit him in the playground. The teachers shrugged him off, said he shouldn't be so weak. Matron wrote his first letters and he traced over them. She said
he was telling his mama how happy he was, because of course he was. He tried to put what he was really feeling into the words, sure she would see and understand. But she wrote back telling him how pleased she was that he had settled in and they would see him at Christmas. That was when he realised he had weeks and weeks of it yet.

And then when he did go home, he thought they'd welcome him like a hero. Instead, Mama was always thinking about Emmy and Papa was still cross with everyone. They talked of how
lucky
he was to have so much money spent on him, those expensive fees at Winchester Hall. Papa went on about how no one had cared so much about
his
education. But still, Arthur thought, he had endured it and now he would get his reward. Then after Christmas, he saw that the maids were packing up his trunk. In January, when they sent him back again, he cried for the first nights. But after a while he decided – if his family hated him enough to send him here, then he would hate them back. He would find a way.

If they hated him when he was good, kind, gentle to Emmy – well, now he would give them real reason. If they had no love for him, who cared? He didn't. Well, he couldn't lie to himself, he did care, but he would try not to, and if he kept pretending, it would become the truth.

Later, when he was at Harrow, he told himself that they'd set him free. The other boys were always trying to please, worrying about how their families would receive their reports. Not him. He didn't worry about what they thought. He'd just narrowly avoided being expelled at school – escaped only thanks to the three large payments from Rudolf to the new arts building – then he failed his entrance exams for Cambridge (or did not even try, as the headmaster put it). He laughed at his family. He didn't need them. They
owed
him – money, experiences, position.

He took a job in the office of Mr Christopher, Rudolf's supplier. He looked down on the other men there, the greyest things in the world. He resented Rudolf for forcing him to work, it was unfair. Other fathers wouldn't have done it. He arrived late, left early and, when that didn't work, kept turning up so drunk he could
barely see. Still, Mr Christopher was so indulgent that even that didn't get the response that he wanted. He had to grasp one of the secretaries and drag her into the back room for a kiss before Mr Christopher declared that wasn't the sort of behaviour he'd ever thought he'd see in a family firm – and Arthur was free. Rudolf had stormed up to town and shouted at him in some collection of German syllables.
Just speak English, why can't you?
Arthur had said, laughing. That had made Rudolf even angrier. But who cared? Rudolf had paid the rent in advance so Arthur had the flat in Berkeley Square for another six months. He was going to enjoy it. So he did. He borrowed money and every night he found a party to go to – easy enough if you were a rich, handsome young man. He went to balls, dinners, dances, pleased pretty girls, nodded at mamas – smiling inside, because he was never getting married until he was at least forty.

After a few months, the parties grew not stale, but a little the same. Similar music, dress, decoration – and always the same people. It became like school, seeing the same chaps day in and day out. And no matter how much you drank, it still didn't help to make anything seem different. He was sitting on a bench one night, watching pretty, virtuous girls dance with upstanding men, feeling as if he'd rather be anywhere else – and Ernest Wyerling came to sit by him.

‘You look like I feel,' Arthur said.

‘It's all so dull.'

‘Life is dull.'

‘Why don't you come and make money with me?'

‘Are you making money? How?'

‘Well, that, I will have to tell you.'

An hour later, they were in
such
a place, boxes of tea and coffee smuggled in without paying duty. It was a warehouse in the East End. They could box up the imports, sell them on.

The idea was flawless. Arthur emptied his accounts, borrowed more from Rudolf. Wyerling busied himself putting it all into the business. One night he took Arthur to an opium parlour in East London, where all the girls looked like they were for sale.

Wyerling said they needed to store the stuff at Arthur's. And he needed more money. Arthur borrowed yet more from Rudolf, saying he was looking at properties. Wyerling wrote to him, saying they'd do well, really they would, just wait a little longer. Arthur began to ask him about the money, but Wyerling said to just wait a little longer, ‘Then we will have success!'

When Wyerling stopped replying, Arthur went to his rooms and his landlady said he'd gone. Arthur was left with piles of boxes. Perhaps, he thought, all the buyers that Wyerling had mentioned would contact him.

That's how Rudolf found him, sitting on one of the boxes of hopeless tea.

‘So this is what you've been doing with all the money?' He'd pushed his way in, along with the solicitor, Mr Pemberton. They were pulling open the boxes. Arthur watched them, feeling again like the tiny child his father had always ignored. He'd been about to do something useful. He'd been about to make his family
money
.

‘That's it,' said Rudolf, sitting up, his hands full of tea. ‘I've done everything for you. And still you throw it in our faces. This is a crime, you know.'

You've done nothing
, he wanted to say.
Not a thing
.

‘I'm sending you abroad before you cause more trouble. You can cool your heels there.'

Three days later he was on the boat to Paris. And in the horrible small room Rudolf had reserved for him, he became afraid of the noises. He knew nobody. The city banged and squealed around him. He was in the cart again, going to Winchester Hall, his legs hot and wet with urine.

He slept late next day and went out for a walk in the afternoon.
This is your new life
, he said to himself.
You must enjoy it
.

He was alone.

That night, he walked out again. He took the bridge over the river, past Notre-Dame. Everyone was in groups; giggling families, a couple with their arms around each other, a group of German schoolgirls deep in conversation. They all had each other. What was wrong with him? Why could no one love
him
?

‘
Psst
,' came a voice. ‘
Vous cherchez une amie?
'

He looked around, could see no one.

‘
Psst
!' came the voice.

He moved closer to the wall of a house. Was the noise coming from there?

‘
Une amie?
'

He moved closer, saw the shine of two bright eyes, a white face. A girl stepped out, small, dark-haired, wearing a thick coat.

‘Monsieur?'

‘
Oui
,' he ventured, wishing for the first time that he'd paid more attention in French. ‘
Une amie
.'

‘You look for friend?'

He nodded. She put her arm in his. ‘
Avec, moi?
' she said. ‘
Suivez-moi
.'

He did. He followed her and he talked to her. She was his friend. She smiled, said
oui
here and there, so he supposed she understood. Maybe she didn't. But he couldn't stop. He talked and talked. He told her about his family and his father and how he tried to make them proud but he couldn't. How his mother didn't love him, had always preferred his sister. ‘Why did they love me at all?' he said. ‘Because they did. Before Emmy came along.' They had loved him. Verena had held him close, rocked him, told him stories. He might have said that parents could only love one child at a time – but Michael and Celia had come along and his parents seemed to love them alright.

‘There is always one in a
famille
,' said the girl. ‘One that everyone blames for everything that goes – how do I say –
mal
?'

‘Bad.'

‘Everything that goes bad. It is the fault of one. That was you.'

‘That was me.'

‘It makes everyone else good. If you are the bad one. All families have to have the bad egg.'

Are things that simple?'

‘Yes, sir.'

Of course they were. There had to be one bad egg.

‘
Suivez-moi
,' she said, holding her hand out next to a dark-looking door. ‘
C'est bien
.'

Looking back, he pinpointed this as the moment he felt free. He was not just away from it all, with the girl, but he realised that she'd given him the truth about his family, made him see how it wasn't his fault, there was nothing he could have done to change it. He never forgot the lightness, the expansion he felt with her. In the months, years that followed in Paris, and then back in England, he kept it at the forefront of his mind. Sometimes he would be doing something and he would say to himself – what would the girl from Paris do? When he wanted to be free, what would she do? He would think of her, holding out her hand, that first night, and the liberty would enter his bloodstream – and so he would do the thing and then he was free.

THIRTY-FOUR

London, March 1925

Celia

Emmeline clutched Celia as they walked forward. ‘Stop it!' hissed Celia. ‘You're hurting me. It's only a prison.' You'd think, she wanted to say, that you'd be used to this. But this prison wasn't the same one as Mr Janus's, a place where a hundred men were locked up together for demonstrating for votes or miners' pensions or inflation or whatever else. They were going to see Arthur and he was being held on suspicion of murder.

‘Come through, ladies,' said the officer. ‘This way.'

They stepped into a grey corridor. The floor was so filthy you could almost feel it through your shoes. Celia pulled free of Emmeline's hand. She knew she was being cruel, but she couldn't stop herself. I'm afraid too, she wanted to say.

‘This way, ladies. Keep up, please.' The officer led them through another corridor and then to a heavy blue door. ‘Here's our man.' He tugged out a heavy set of keys, opened the door. ‘Just a moment, please.' The door slammed after him.

‘Don't lean on the wall,' Celia said. ‘That's probably as dirty as the floor.'