The Professor of Truth (30 page)

I came to the outer door and found Kim, a few steps beyond on the patio, silently watching her husband. Without turning she motioned at me to be still. I leaned at the door on my bandaged feet, waiting for whatever was to happen.

With a grace at odds with his disarray and awkward gait, Parroulet moved forward. The further he went from the electric light of the house into the starlight and the shadows,
the less defined and more ethereal he became. I could hear terror and pain and rage in the cat’s repeated whine, and as Parroulet closed in the noise grew louder and more distressed. But Parroulet seemed quite calm. He was whispering to the cat, coaxing and reassuring it. He crouched now, just a few feet from the heap, almost lost from my sight. The cat continued to mewl, and Parroulet to talk back, till the cat quietened and it was hard to distinguish the one voice from the other. Minute after minute went by. Neither Kim nor I moved. At last Parroulet slowly raised himself from the ground, turned and started the walk back to the house. He moved into the light. He had the cat, wrapped in the scarf and held gently against his chest, and was still whispering to it. I could see only the head, the huge frightened eyes, the singed and scarred fur. Parroulet came inside. He did not so much as glance at me in passing. I might as well not have existed, and something in me resented his refusal to acknowledge me even now. Yet at the same time I could not but be impressed by his single-minded tenderness towards the cat.

Kim followed Parroulet upstairs, presumably to help care for the animal. Left alone, again I had to resist the temptation to sit and close my eyes. I shuffled out on my bandages to the far end of the pool, to look at the sky, the garden, the house.

How much of Sheildston had escaped the inferno? This would have been the first house in its path, so it was possible that, with the change of wind direction, the whole place had been missed. But other houses might not have been so
fortunate: burning debris flung out by the fire might have landed on properties where no one was left to extinguish it. If the fat cop had been right, only the three of us had remained in Sheildston.

And nobody, surely, would come up the road to view the damage till morning.

I couldn’t leave if I wanted to, even if Parroulet threw me out. I couldn’t walk a hundred yards, let alone all the way to Turner’s Strand.

The water left in the pool had a scum of ash and charred wood floating on it.

The sky was full of stars.

I am alive, I thought, really alive.

I remembered what Nilsen had said about that.

I remembered clearing snow around my house. Was that house still standing? Was Carol all right? Was there anything at all on the other side of the world?

I did not know. I knew only that I was where I was, and that I was alive.

IM REAPPEARED WITH TWO TINS OF BEER
.

“Sit,” she said. “Get off those feet.”

“If I sit I’ll never stand again,” I said, but I came over and we sat at the table. The coldness of the beer was so sharp it took away all other hurt.

There was a neatness, a composure about her that was remarkable given all that had occurred. Was this how she had got through everything life had thrown at her?

“How is the cat?” I asked.

“The cat will live. Her paws were burned. We put cream on them, and bandages. Like your feet. She is a good patient, but very frightened. Martin is looking after her.”

“Is he? Or is he hiding from me?”

She shook her head, but not in answer to my question. “You are both the same. We have been through all this, we survive, and the first thing he says to me is, ‘I will not speak to him,’ and the first thing you say is, ‘Is he hiding from me?’ ”

“Then I’d say he was.”

“He says he has nothing to say to you.”

“He has everything to say to me. Does he know who I am?”

“Yes, I told him last night. He knows you and what you think of him.”

“I don’t think anything of him. I want to ask him about what he said at the trial, that’s all.”

“That is not true. You think that man who died went to prison because of him. You think Martin told lies for money.”

“Didn’t he?”

She looked as if she might take the beer back. “You are not very nice, Alan Tealing,” she said. “Why do you do this? After what has happened? After I have helped you?”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“No?” She flared up, as she had before. “Then why don’t you just leave now? Go on! He doesn’t want you in this house. I don’t want you. Go!”

“You know I can’t.”

“No, not unless I take you. So what, then? You want to go or stay?”

“I want to speak to your husband.”

“Yes.” Her voice calmed again. “So be a bit more polite, I think. Then maybe something can happen, okay?”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She rubbed her eyes, shook her head again. When she caught me staring at her she said, still angry, “Smoke.”

“I know.”

She sighed. “He will see you,” she said. “He says no but he will. It is coming, that talk between you. It has to happen, for both of you. But first I will tell you who he is because you don’t know. You only know him from the trial, but that is not only who he is.”

I nodded.

“I said to you before, it is all chance that he was a witness. It is all chance that we are here, the three of us, still alive.”

“I understand.”

“To understand you must listen. So listen. When I first met Martin I did not think anything much about him. You know how we met? The same way I met you. He came to my shop, in Melbourne. He came with a coat to mend, a quiet, shy man. We talked. He came again, with some other things. Alterations. He had not been in Australia long and was not very confident. Because of this and the mending I never thought he was rich, even though he did not work. To me he was just lonely and wanted to have conversation. I liked him. We were good company.

“One day he asked me to go out with him. A drink, a meal. It took him a lot of courage to ask me, I could see, and because of that I said yes. And we became friends. For some weeks that was what we were, friends.

“Then another day came when he said he wanted to take me somewhere, away for the weekend. It was separate rooms, very correct, or I wouldn’t have gone. I trusted him. He drove me in a big expensive car, a Mercedes, and that made me think, but it was not his, he had hired it. Maybe this was to impress me but I don’t think so. He knew me by then. He said when he had his taxi it was a Mercedes because it was comfortable and never went wrong. All the taxi drivers had Mercedes. And he brought me to Turner’s Strand, and then here. We stood outside the house. It was a beautiful day. The flowers, the trees, everything was beautiful. He said, ‘This would be a good place to live,’ and I agreed. Then
he took out the remote and opened the gate. I said, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘Come, I show you round,’ and we went in. The house was empty but all in good condition, not rundown like now. This is six years ago. He said, ‘Would you like to live here with me? This is my house.’ Well, I saw it must be true. ‘We could get married,’ he said, ‘if you want.’ ”

“He bribed you with the house.”

She made that shake of her head again. “You don’t want to think any good of him. It’s true I wished he had not shown me the house before he said about getting married. But that was his way and I knew right then that it wouldn’t have made any difference. I would still say yes. But I never say yes without time to think. So I told him, ‘I’ll give you my answer when we get back to Melbourne.’ ”

“You must have wondered where his money came from?”

“Yes, but I did not ask. He never said about the trial and I did not know anything about it. I decided to marry him because of what I knew, not because of what I didn’t know. I knew he was not cruel or bad. He was not clever enough to be a big businessman. He was not clever or stupid enough to be a criminal. Maybe he had won the lottery or maybe he had inherited money from his family, but he never said. He was old-fashioned, and I liked that. To ask me to marry him when we had not been in bed, that was something. He had not even tried to get me into bed. I knew where he was from and I knew he had come to Australia for a new life. That was his chance, same as me. What business was it of mine, his money? He said I would never have to work again. I said yes I would. It was my business, not his. He accepted that. So I said yes.”

A business transaction, I thought. “It doesn’t sound like you were in love,” I said.

“What do you mean by ‘love’? It is not a crime to marry. What does anyone mean when they say ‘love’? We were right for each other. He didn’t have to ask me, nobody made me say yes. We were old enough to know what we wanted.

“We got married. I closed my shop. We came here and furnished the house. This was our new life together. We swam in the pool, I grew flowers, he cut the grass. I cooked. Sometimes he cooked. I read books. He taught himself to paint. I set up my new shop. We got the cat.

“But then there was a change, after a year, not much more than that. I noticed it first because of the car. He had bought one, a Mercedes of course, and we went shopping or drove to different places on the coast or even to Sydney. But he always liked to come home, never to stay away for a night. He did all the driving. That car is too big for me even if I wanted to drive, but I don’t.”

Had she, like me, been afraid of failure? I did not think so.

“He bought me my little scooter which I liked more. So anyway, we didn’t go for drives so much. He would only go if I went with him, never alone, and after a while he didn’t go at all. The car stayed in the garage. It is still there. He didn’t even start the engine. I carried food and some small things from the town on the scooter, and every week or two weeks I went to the supermarket and did a big shopping and they delivered it. I say big but it wasn’t much. We lived like poor people, ate like poor people, and that is how we live now. He never went out, not even to walk outside the gate. He watched
TV or was on the computer or he painted. Or he swam up and down the pool or sat on the patio playing with the cat. He did not talk to the neighbours. He did not drink much, only smoked cigarettes, and even not many of them, not like he used to when he had the taxi. Sometimes he did not talk to me for a whole day. I asked him what was wrong. He said nothing was wrong. He looked empty, lonely, like the first time he came into the shop with his coat that needed a repair. I could not make him speak to me. So I went to work. I worked long days down there in the shop. That was why I had it. I always have to work. Like I told you before.”

“He painted,” I said.

“Yes. He liked to paint.”

“What does he paint?” But I already knew. I could see those two paintings in the gallery at Turner’s Strand. I knew they were by him.

“The sea,” she said.

“You have to work,” I said. “Maybe he has to paint.”

“When I work I feel good about myself. I don’t think he feels good about himself, even when he painted. And he has given it up now. Do you know the story of King Midas? You must. Everybody knows that story. Everything he touched turned to gold but it did not make him happy. It made him like a prisoner. Martin was like Midas. I was afraid that he would touch me, like Midas touched his daughter, and I would turn to gold, I would be a prisoner too. So one day I said, you must talk to me or I will go away. I made him say where the money came from. And he told me about the trial. He told me that the Americans paid him for giving evidence.”

“Did he say how much?”

“Yes.”

“They say it was two million dollars.”

She made a face. “If you know, you know.”

“Was it?”

“I don’t know exactly. Something like that, yes.”

“And did he say why they paid him so much? Did he tell you what kind of evidence?”

“That is between him and you. If you are asking did he say he made up lies to get the money, no, of course he didn’t say that. He said what he said and then he stopped. So I found out for myself. I looked on the internet. Everything was there. I don’t remember the bombing when it happened. I was in the care home then, I had plenty trouble of my own. I read many web pages about it, all the different ideas about what happened. I read about the trial. I saw your name and what you said. I learned a lot, more than Martin ever told me. All he said was where the money came from, and this was why he had a new name, and why he was here, and why he had no contact with his family or friends from home. So you see the money really had made him like a prisoner. Like King Midas in his palace. It has been this way for five, six years.”

I said, “Why have you stayed? This is not a life for someone like you.”

“Someone like me? Who is someone like me? What should someone like me do? Walk away from him? What good will that do? I didn’t want to leave him. I wanted to help him. When I knew the cause I was afraid for the same
reason he was—I was afraid that what had happened would come and find us and hurt us. When that man, Khazar, died, I thought maybe it was over and things would change, but nothing changed. Martin knew it was not over.”