The Light of Day: A Novel (5 page)

10

I come out onto Parkside. Opposite: the Common, a sea of glittering yellow leaves.

And what about him, the husband, Robert—Bob? Why does it still seem (to my crude, ignorant, private-investigator mind) like some bad kind of joke? Do gynaecologists marry? Can they have affairs? Can a woman love a gynaecologist? But she did, she did. And he wasn’t a gynaecologist when they met—of course not. Just a student, like her, who said he’d drive her, one summer, in a purple Mini-Cooper, to the South of France.

“I had the French, he had the car . . .”

And either a trip like that turns out to be a disaster—a disaster trapped in a purple bubble on wheels—or a lasting success. It was a success.

Wouldn’t gynaecologists be, like diplomats, immune— protected? And how does it work for women: “I’m a gynaecologist”—chill or thrill?

I’m a private investigator.

Clearly, he wasn’t immune. A girl under his own roof. Though it was the first and only time, Sarah swore, she
knew.
So, when it happened, however it happened, it must have hit him like a train. Under his own roof, with a
refugee
for pity’s sake. Surely, for that very reason . . .

And him a gynaecologist too.

It must have knocked him clean off his feet.

She would have moved in one Saturday, in September, three years ago. Become part of the household at number fourteen. Of course, she’d come before—to look, to be introduced. She’d have met Mr. Nash. “
Bob
—please.”

How do they deal with it—the professional tag that comes with them—as they hold out a hand? Do they learn a special kind of smile—a bit apologetic, a bit boyish? Or do they go for the breezy and frank?

I’m a private eye. Call me Dick . . .

“He works at Charing Cross Hospital, in Fulham—and privately of course. He does a day at the Parkside. Just up the hill. It’s handy.”

It looks out on Wimbledon Common.

All of it, anyway, on a trial basis. And maybe it wouldn’t be for long—till things “sorted themselves out.” She wasn’t allowed to work, to take paid employment, but receiving charity wasn’t against the law. And, yes, if it bothered her, then she could think of herself as their unpaid au pair. A sort of joke, of course, but, as it turned out, it was just how it was, in the beginning. She wanted to
do
things—she didn’t have to, but she did. To clean and tidy, to fetch the shopping. To show she was grateful, to be their servant, to earn her keep. An initial cool, polite, obedient stage.

And cooking, I thought, did she cook? Surely not, if that was Sarah’s speciality. But then she would have helped, perhaps—been Sarah’s under-chef. And yes (I guessed right), that’s how they really got to know each other, preparing meals. There are worse ways. That’s how the cool and awkward phase turned into something else. This girl about the place. A kitchen warmth. Good food, winter evenings. The smells that can creep from an oven and into the nostrils like kindness itself.

Did Sarah even learn a thing or two from her? What do they eat in Croatia?

In those days, not much, I suppose. What do refugees normally get fed?

But, as it happens, there was a connection. There was a ghost there in that kitchen, at the side of this girl who was ready to act like a maid. There were three ghosts. But the brother, the soldier of just a few weeks—his name was Milos—had once worked in a restaurant, first in the kitchen, then as a waiter. Too handsome—Kristina had said— to be kept in the kitchen for long. One summer, before it all happened, in the tourist days. A waterfront restaurant in Dubrovnik. Having a high old time—cutting a swathe through all the foreign girls.

You never know what’s in store.

But that first Saturday in September (Sarah would tell me later) was almost a disaster. It was almost the point where she’d had to say it had all been a terrible mistake.

All her own fault.

They’d picked her up—in the Saab—along with her few boxes and bags of things. It had all been arranged, discussed, agreed. But, to their surprise, she’d sat in the car not speaking, not even looking at them, as if she didn’t know them, as if she was under arrest. At any moment, it seemed—when they stopped at lights, a junction—she might have made a sudden bolt.

And when they’d arrived she’d just sat rigidly at their kitchen table, while Bob carried her boxes silently up to her room. This was her home now, her place, but it was as though she was trying not to be there. She said things, mumbled things to herself, but they weren’t in English, or any other language that Sarah could understand.

She just sat there, like a prisoner, in Beecham Close.

And then—“Thank God”—the tears had come, in a gush, in a flood that went on for minutes, and Sarah had simply put her arms round her while she sobbed and moaned, and had known then that it would be all right, once the tears had stopped, they could make a start.

She’d never seen Kristina cry before. She’d seen the student with the frown and the dark eyes that were dark in some extra way, but she’d never seen her cry.

I can see it. You have to put yourself in the scene. The two of them in that kitchen. The girl sobbing and Sarah holding her, as if there was no question who needed protecting.

But him? What about him? What did he do with the two of them glued there together at the kitchen table? He’d carried up her boxes, like some servant. His feet had crunched on the gravel as he’d to-and-froed from the car.

He felt it too. A relief. It would be all right now, after the sobs. A lump in his own throat maybe—though, God knows, he’d heard enough women sobbing, in his job. Not such a mad idea, not such a bad idea, after all. A good idea. But right now—standing there empty-handed in the kitchen doorway—what should he do?

A gynaecologist. But this was a woman’s thing.

He’d have made himself scarce, he’d have beat a wise retreat. September: a nip in the air. But he’d have gone outside, warm from lugging boxes, paced around, like a man whose wife is in labour. He’d have thought of other things. His son in Seattle, maybe, who didn’t even know yet (would he have to?) that a Croatian refugee girl would be sleeping in his bed.

He’d have looked at the garden, at the trees, beyond, in other gardens, screening other houses all around. The first berries. Spiders’ webs glinting. But even out there he might have heard the sobs, somehow tugging at his own chest, and as he paced he might even have peered through the kitchen window and met his wife’s eyes (Kristina’s head buried under her chin) staring steadily back at him.

I know what he’d have thought: a thought that had never occurred to him before then. The nape of Kristina’s turned, shuddering neck. That he couldn’t do it, could he? It wouldn’t be permitted, would it? That simple, obvious and healing thing Sarah was doing. Put his arms around her.

11

She brought in the photos the following Tuesday. It’s true, it’s better that way. The file in my head. The less such things have to pass in the mail between me and my clients the better. Suppose everything turned out just as she wished—but then he discovered that all along he’d been watched.

They cross a line, it’s not a simple line. They’re the injured party, but they’re spying on their husband. Up to something too.

They enter a little web of deceit.

It’s true, I didn’t really need the photos. I had to follow a man and a woman in a car. It made me seem scrupulous. It meant she might call by my office again.

She knows all this by now: the days when I got her to visit me.

She came late in the afternoon, direct from her classes again. A Tuesday—Tuesday and Friday afternoons: English classes. And was this another afternoon when, right then, at the Fulham flat . . . ?

Almost five-thirty. Dark outside. The way people change on a second, a third meeting, as if the air around them changes as well. She must have been carrying those photos with her all day—her husband and her husband’s lover tucked up inside that shoulder-bag.

If I’d been a fool I might have said to Rita: “It’s okay, off you go . . .”

She had something more than the photos: the date and the flight. (So I had the job.) There was a light in her eyes when she told me, a small brief flush. I saw how she might look—must have looked once often enough—when real happiness washed over her face. Her glance by the Fine Foods section: What’s it tonight?

Maybe I had the thought: she looks like she’s about to be released.

It was to be a Monday evening, in three weeks’ time, Monday 20th of November. The girl was to fly to Geneva to be officially cleared as a returning refugee. Then on to Zagreb.

How did this work? “Officially cleared”? It had all been openly arranged? Her husband had shown her the ticket—as proof, as pledge? Or just said? It wasn’t his ticket, of course. But then there might have been two—or none.

Geneva. That might mean anywhere.

But all these things she must have thought through herself. Why was she sitting there, why had she come again, if anything was sure?

I said, “You’ve seen the ticket?”

“She’s got it.”

I looked at her. There are ways of checking if someone’s on a passenger list.

“The flight exists. Seven-thirty—in the evening. And I’ve checked—she’s on it. Just her.”

So, a detective too—a detective glow in her face. But he might always book a ticket for himself meanwhile. And if you wanted—what’s the word?—to abscond, elope, disappear, you might go to some pains to cover your tracks. Even buy an air ticket you never intended to use.

She’d thought of it all, all the possibilities. All the same, there was this brightness about her. This was really happening. A release? A verdict at any rate. The look of a bright, hard-working student waiting for a result. I felt for a moment as if I was her teacher now.

I thought of Helen, when she was young. How she hated me.

“And you’ve brought the photos?”

“Yes.” She unzipped the shoulder-bag. Her homework, ready for handing in.

She took out a stiff-backed envelope, pulled out the photos and put them on my desk, leaning forward in the same huddling way you might to show snaps of your kids.

How had she chosen? For “recognition purposes.” The one of him—of Bob—showed a man in a holiday pose: a loose shirt, the sleeves rolled up, a pair of sunglasses tucked in a breast pocket, a pullover round his shoulders. A smile just breaking. A good-looking man in his mid-forties. What do gynaecologists look like? What are the tell-tale signs? He looked like some lean and handsome cricketer, a good eye, a straight bat. A flop of dark hair across his forehead, which you could picture him smoothing back.

What do you say? Some guff? Commend them on their choice of husband? I didn’t have to ask: it was taken two summers ago—before Kristina had arrived.

The photo of Bob that appeared in the papers must have been from a professional file. For use in some medical brochure. Head and shoulders only. A picture of clean-cut reliability. A studio shot.

The photo of Kristina was the poorer picture—even a little blurred. (Was that why she chose it? Were there so many to choose from?) A slim girl in jeans and sweater and an old outdoor jacket that didn’t look like her own. Sarah’s? Bob’s? It was in the garden at number fourteen. She seems to have been involved in some physical task—sweeping up leaves maybe. She’s holding the handle of some broom or rake. But she looks as though the camera’s surprised her, trapped her into an expression she can’t quite manage—she would have looked better if she’d been caught unawares.

That first autumn (I guessed right), before anything had begun.

I found these same photos again among all that stuff I never burnt. The one of her is the bigger mystery. A poor photo, or something blurred in her? Who took it, and why? (It was Bob who took it—it was his jacket.) Italian, you’d think—who would say “Croatian”?

She could be eighteen, she could be twenty-five. She didn’t look like the woman I’d see three weeks later, if only briefly and never from closer than a few yards. Stepping in and out of a black Saab.

But all that was after she’d—bloomed.

And anyway (trust a detective) people don’t always look like they look.

I studied the photo and nodded. What was I supposed to say again? That she looked like trouble, a marriage-buster? That she looked like some lost soul anyone would have wanted to take into their care?

But I knew what we were both thinking (I think). There they were on my desk, like a couple, as if they’d been picked. There we were like judges. Were they a pair, a match? Was that how it was meant to be?

I turn and drive along the edge of the Common. The light through the trees is like the light through the spokes of a wheel.

How do you choose? How do these things happen? I think Rita will go and run a dating agency. It’s just my fantasy. The same job, but in reverse. One day, after extra-careful consideration, she’ll say to one of her clients: I’ve got just the woman for you.

I heard Rita cough, that afternoon, outside. She can’t hear what’s being said in my office—any more than I can hear what she says on the phone—but she can hear when things get heated, desperate, hysterical. Nurse Rita. Or when nothing’s being said at all.

I shuffled the photos matter-of-factly. Perhaps I coughed myself.

“Good,” I said. “Now I’ve seen. And now we have a date and time.” Perhaps she noticed the “we.” “If the flight’s at seven-thirty and check-in’s an hour earlier . . . Fulham to the airport, that’s a straight run—but at that time of day . . . Will you have a way of letting me know when Mr. Nash will pick Miss Lazic up?”

She gave me a look as if I was being slow.

“He won’t ‘pick her up.’ He’ll be there.”

“I see.”

She took the photos and slid them back carefully, like precious objects, into the envelope. Then into the bag. There they go, back into their nest.

“Yes—now you’ve seen.”

A strange look, as if there’d been some flash of nakedness.

All I’d seen were her knees.

She zipped up the bag.

I said, “I’m about to close shop anyway.” (Sometimes Rita locks up too. And she could think what she liked.) “Would you like a drink?”