The Miracle Inspector (10 page)

The spare bedroom was the first room he came to at the top of the stairs. It was empty. Next, the bathroom. He pushed the door open and looked inside. There was a rumpled-up T-shirt and a pair of white knickers with blood on them on the floor. He was overwhelmed with terror. Someone – Jones? – had been here and raped his wife. Someone had hurt her. They had cut her with a knife or raped her or hurt her so much, they’d made her bleed. He picked up the discarded clothes and looked at them. The T-shirt didn’t give anything away but there was definitely fresh blood on her knickers. He flung the clothes down, started gasping for breath, gasping. He couldn’t see. Was it a panic attack? He was blinded by tears. Where had they taken her?

He went to their bedroom, expecting the worst, but she wasn’t there. He blundered about the house, looking for clues. Was she dressed or undressed? Had they bundled her, naked–

The front door opened and closed. Footsteps. He wiped his nose and eyes with the back of his hands. If only he had a gun. Tomorrow, if he lived, he would buy a gun.

‘Hello?’ It was her voice, puzzled. ‘Hello? Lucas?’

She came upstairs. ‘Lucas? Are you alright? What’s the matter?’

She hadn’t been hurt. There was something, some reason why he’d known all along she was alright. But he couldn’t put his finger on it. What was wrong with him? What was happening? He went from the bedroom into the bathroom. He ran the cold tap, washed his face.

‘Lucas?’

He stared up at her, like a guilty child, his eyes red from crying. ‘Hay fever,’ he said. She’d have seen the flowers.

‘Oh God, you’re in an awful state. They’re so beautiful, those flowers. Are they from you?’

‘Yes.’

She saw the T-shirt and the knickers on the floor. She picked them up, embarrassed. ‘I didn’t expect you home. Are you sure you’re alright, Lucas?’

‘I thought you’d been hurt.’

‘I had to go to Fiona’s next door for tampons. Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I didn’t expect you back.’

‘I thought you might be pregnant, this time.’

She winced a bit. He was sitting on the loo, seat down, staring at her. She had a cardboard box in a brown paper bag in her hand.

‘Look, do you mind?’ She waved the bag at him.

He did mind. He couldn’t tell whether he minded more that she wasn’t pregnant or that he was such an idiot that he was sitting on the toilet seat crying over a pair of knickers streaked with menstrual blood.

He got up, went downstairs, left her to it.

He wondered if she was on the pill and hadn’t said anything about it. The thing about birth control was that a woman was supposed to have her husband’s permission to use it. It was for her protection. It was something to do with rapists, paedophiles or terrorists – everything was, these days. It was the same with alcohol. Women weren’t supposed to drink it without their husband’s permission. That was to do with the rape laws, which were very complex. You’d rather be the Inspector of Cats than the Inspector of Rapists, that’s for sure.

He wondered if she wanted a cat. He wasn’t even sure if she wanted a baby. Should he tackle her about being on the pill? He could offer her a cat and then catch her off guard and ask about contraception. If he said it was against the law to take it without his permission, she’d laugh at him. He ought to look, work out her hiding place, if she had one.

If he still had the cameras, he could install them, not to spy on her naked, just to check that she wasn’t taking birth control pills. That wasn’t a betrayal. That was just checking that she wasn’t betraying him, which was different.

He got some food out of the fridge, to make dinner. She came downstairs and separated the flowers into three small bouquets and put them in vases.

‘Thank you for my flowers,’ she said. She came and stood behind him and cuddled him. It was the way he’d imagined it except that he wasn’t dressed in a green apron like Arthur and she wasn’t pregnant.

She offered to help with the cooking but he didn’t let her. She took an ibuprofen tablet, sat on a chair, hugged herself and winced. He chopped vegetables and took no notice. If she was pregnant, he’d have made her a cup of tea or something.

‘Would you like a cat?’

‘Hmm?’

‘I could get you a cat?’

‘Flowers, a cat – you’re overwhelming me with presents today. What have I done?’

He carried on chopping. A green apron like Arthur’s would be handy for when he did the cooking, actually. Otherwise your trousers got spattered and you went about smelling of onions.

‘Have you done something you’re not telling me, Lucas?’

‘Huh?’

‘Well, flowers, kittens, that little teddy bear – is that for me?’

The teddy bear was still sticking out of his pocket. She couldn’t have the fucking teddy bear if she wasn’t pregnant, that’s for sure. Arthur had given it to him for their baby.

‘It’s for Christina.’

‘The disabled girl?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s sweet.’

She took the teddy bear out of his pocket and she put it on the table, propping it up next to one of the vases of flowers. He wasn’t sure how to ask her about the birth control. He’d just have to come out with it.

‘You know they’ve got all sorts of different birth control pills now.’

‘What do you mean?’ She sounded very sharp.

‘Christina – she’ll be on birth control, won’t she?’

‘What on earth are you on about?’

‘Paedophiles. Imagine if she got pregnant.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Lucas. Are you wondering if I’m on the pill, is that it?’

‘I was thinking about Christina. I’m on my way to visit her in a minute.’ He wasn’t. But the detail added authenticity to the line of questioning, he felt.

‘But it’s dinner time.’

‘Do you take the pill, then?’

‘You’re saying it’s my fault I’m not pregnant? You want to divorce me and marry some little fourteen-year-old and get her pregnant instead? Imagine some fourteen-year-old child trying to give birth to your big baby with its big head stuck in her cunt. No wonder so many of them die in childbirth.’

Angela said cunt? Maybe she was upset. Maybe she wanted to get pregnant and she was upset about it. He hadn’t thought of that. He put down the vegetable knife and washed the smell of onion off his hands as best he could. Then he went and sat down next to her. He stroked her hair and kissed her face. She closed her eyes. A tear trickled down from one eye. He hoped it was the onions that were making her cry.

‘Angela?’

She didn’t say anything. What should he do to cheer her up? He’d already given her flowers. He was cooking her dinner. He couldn’t give her that teddy because he’d said it was meant for a disabled child.

‘Why don’t you come and see Christina with me? You’ll like her. I told her about your singing.’

‘Did you?’

She was pleased about that.

‘We’ll have some dinner and then we’ll go.’

Right, so now he was taking his wife to see a child who was not going to be declared a miracle, against all official rules and policy. He’d spent a lot of money on flowers. He hadn’t got an answer about the birth control. He didn’t know whether to feel sorry for Angela or himself or both of them. He didn’t know anything. But then he went to bed pretty much every night feeling that, so tonight would be no different. One thing he was sure about, though, he was going to start being more honest, less reckless. He’d get them to Cornwall and then their problems would sort themselves out, most likely.

But at least Angela was more cheerful. She sat there and wrinkled up her face and tapped her finger on her lips. He could see that she was casting around for a lighter subject for them to talk about. There wasn’t much to choose from: his work, her day, what was for dinner. She came up with something, though. Jesmond.

There was no way she could be allowed to know what had happened. He had to protect her. ‘He hasn’t been back here, has he?’ So much for being more honest.

‘No.’

‘He’s such a phoney.’ His voice was crackly as he said it, like a gramophone record played by old people remembering their youth in a scene in a really bad film on TV.

Talking about Jesmond was like some awful test, to see if he could still deny he loved the man, even knowing he was dead. He now saw with horrible clarity that, as he was affected by Jesmond’s death, the sneering attitude he’d always adopted must simply have been a mask, a way of protecting himself from admitting he cared about the man in case he disappeared like so many others of his generation. But he had to keep up with the sneering, otherwise Angela would suspect something had happened to Jesmond and ask about it.

‘He believes in something,’ she said. ‘That book of his…’

Lucas thought about Jesmond, his complexion highly coloured and veiny like a pink geranium, his hair longish and curly like a Beethoven wig. He wished Jesmond was standing in front of Angela, book in hand, declaiming his awful poetry. Women loved that sort of thing. Poor old Jesmond.

‘I wondered what you knew about him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘About his personal life?’

‘I don’t know anything.’

‘Didn’t your dad ever tell you stories about when they used to go around together?’

‘He took it upon himself to be Poet Laureate for a united England without ever being invited by anyone to fill that role,’ Lucas said. He recited a phrase at random from
This Faerie England
, from memory: ‘This colossal opportunity to build a new community…’

‘Don’t take the piss.’

‘So far as I know,’ Lucas said, ‘he was a reprobate and a shagger and a drunk. My dad didn’t say much to me about Jesmond before he died – and obviously he hasn’t said anything to me about anything at all, since.’

‘Your dad’s not the only one, Lucas. I miss my dad, too.’

Lucas put on some music and they ate their dinner in silence, without hostility, preoccupied with their own thoughts. Both were thinking about Jesmond. If they had only known it, they might have been able to bring some comfort to each other.

Angela wondered if Lucas had somehow sensed that she had formed this ‘relationship’ with Jesmond through his letters, and that he was jealous. She cheered up at the thought that she might be able to persuade Jesmond to start writing to her – not as a lover but as a correspondent, a friend – next time he dropped round to the house.

Lucas looked over at Angela and regretted asking about the contraceptive pills. What was it he had heard somewhere? Never ask a question you don’t know the answer to. It was the sort of wise advice that only came back to you after the event. He wished he could say it was the sort of advice he was always getting from his dear old dad. But his dear old dad had been a waster and a drunkard. Angela might kick against it sometimes and complain and grumble. But it was a wonder he had turned out as well as he had.

‘Maybe we should talk about our parents,’ Angela said as they were getting ready to go out.

‘Maybe we should,’ he said. But then he started brushing his teeth with ostentatious, foaming vigour, as if she should take her turn first.

‘I know what you think of your dad but you never talk about your mum.’

He spat the toothpaste into the sink and wiped a finger round his mouth to make sure there was no white residue on his face – so unattractive, even between married couples. He said, ‘She was a woman who believed in possibilities.’