Authors: Laura Wilson
An Empty Death (6 page)
He slid the card under the blotter on his desk. In some ways, more paperwork made life more difficult, but in others, it was a godsend. For as long as he could remember, embossed papers had been substitutes for achievement, and nowadays identity cards had become substitutes for personhood, if there was such a word. His new medical qualifications would have to wait until his visit to Mrs Dacre, too; he wasn’t going to use counterfeit documents if the real thing turned out to be available. Besides, he needed to find out which university Dacre had attended. In order to create a convincing fiction, it was important to stay as close to the truth as possible. He had an idea that Dacre had studied at St Andrews in Scotland. This, if correct, would be excellent - as far away from London as possible.
He opened the bottle of beer he’d been saving and stared at the end of the envelope that stuck out from behind the clock, praying that the widow Dacre hadn’t evacuated herself from Norbury. The sooner the wheels were set in motion, the better. Meanwhile, he’d continue to use his spare time well. Learning, he’d found, was easy, as long as there was a point to it, and he’d always had a good memory. So much for his mother, and the teachers who’d scoffed at his ambitions and abilities. ‘MB, ChB,’ he murmured to himself. Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Chirurgery. That was the old-fashioned word for surgery. ‘MB, ChB’. Lovely, resonant sounds, full of promise, but, for the time-being, they, and everything else he craved, were on the other side of the door of opportunity, and that was locked against him. Life had not given him the key, so he must force his way in by whatever means were necessary. It was as simple as that.
Seven
T
he four days after he’d posted the letter to James Dacre’s mother had seemed an eternity, but on the fifth, he came home to find a letter waiting for him on the japanned tray on the stand in the dingy, narrow hall. Beatrice Dacre (Mrs) would be delighted to receive him for tea on the date he’d specified.
he four days after he’d posted the letter to James Dacre’s mother had seemed an eternity, but on the fifth, he came home to find a letter waiting for him on the japanned tray on the stand in the dingy, narrow hall. Beatrice Dacre (Mrs) would be delighted to receive him for tea on the date he’d specified.
A week after that, the train had jolted him towards Norbury, clad in flannel trousers (pressed under the mattress), shirt, tie, and jacket, his hair neatly brushed. He’d given a lot of thought to a suitable present, and finally, with a great deal of luck and even more expense, had managed to obtain an oval tablet of pre-war Elizabeth Arden soap.
The journey was risky - for all he knew his own mother still lived in Norbury. Supposing she spotted him? Would she believe the evidence of her eyes, or would she simply note, with sadness, the young man who so resembled her only child? It was a Saturday, so perhaps she’d be at the Tennis Club - provided, of course, that it still existed, the Croydon area having had it pretty badly. It occurred to him, then - incredibly, for the first time since the war began - that his mother might be dead. After all, he hadn’t seen her for twelve years.
How old would she be now? Fifty-something? Sixty? He’d never been entirely sure. He felt no guilt - she’d have thrown his life away if he’d let her, with her grim satisfaction at ‘having come down in the world’.
The train pulled into Streatham Common. He stared out at the station, with its taped windows and sandbags piled on the platform, and the desire to jump out and head back into London was so overwhelming that he had to grip the edge of the seat and grit his teeth in order to stop himself rushing for the door. It wasn’t the risk - in the past he’d always got a kick out of that - it was being far, far too close to the place he’d once called home.
Norbury, at first sight, seemed the same. Shabbier, but everything was still there: the cinema, the Express Dairy, his old school, and the sweetshop that sold fancy chocolates in beribboned boxes that they could never afford (and now with a cardboard wedding cake and empty cartons in the window).
He walked up the hill towards the avenues of mean, semi-detached villas, identical post-1918 suburban architecture, coated in stucco, with creosoted gates. They looked even smaller than he remembered, and the corner of his old street was upon him before he realised exactly where he was. Catching sight of the road name, he stopped, making sure he was hidden behind a privet hedge. He craned his neck to look down the street. As far as he could see, all the houses were still there.
He stood still, rooted to the pavement. He hated the cheapness of the little houses with their box-like spaces and thin internal walls. His family had been forced to move here from a bigger, better, double-fronted house with a circular driveway, a car, a cook and a maid. His lip curled as he remembered how, as a young boy, his father had introduced him to approving business associates as the third generation. ‘One day, son, all this will be yours,’ he muttered in mocking imitation. When he was eight, the second generation had managed to lose the family business, and with it the house, the car, the servants and all the money.
The memory of his father telling him they’d lost everything still sickened him. He hadn’t understood. ‘It’s our home,’ he’d told his parents, ‘they can’t take it away from us.’ But apparently they could. ‘I’ll make some more money,’ his father had said. ‘We’ll have our house back again.’ His mother had said in a cold, hard voice, ‘Don’t lie to the boy. The fact is, we don’t belong here any more.’ The silence after that had been painful, like a piercing high note singing in his ears, making him swallow and run from the room.
They didn’t belong in the little house, either. They were no good at being poor - not that it was actual poverty, like living in a slum, but a desperate sort of lower-middle class gentility. Their furniture was too big for the pokey rooms, but there was no money left to buy smaller pieces. As a result the attic and one of the upstairs bedrooms were stacked high, and he was relegated to the box room with its small window overlooking a meagre strip of garden that didn’t even have enough space for a proper tree. He thought of the decanters standing empty on the sideboard beside the rows of unused tumblers, and the pathetic fire, never quite catching or going out, but filling the room with smoke.
His mother had never let them forget that they’d slipped several rungs, and his father, growing ever more stooped and miserable, had tried, ineffectually, to ‘make the most of it’. His father had finally managed to secure, through the recommendation of one of his remaining friends, a job as a clerk. Then he’d died - a perforated ulcer - when his only child was fifteen. By then, Todd’s wish to become a doctor had already been dismissed by both his mother and his teacher.
Remembering his mother’s thin smile of wintery contempt, and Miss Dunster’s patronising moue (‘Perhaps something a little less ambitious, dear. Why not learn a trade?’), hot and sickening fury made his stomach lurch. There was nothing more galling in the world than being expected to fail. How dare they, the bitches? I never belonged here, he told himself, never. He must get to Mrs Dacre; get what he needed, get out, and never return. He spat, savagely, on the pavement, and turned away.
He still felt the rising bile as he stood on Mrs Dacre’s small porch, his hand on the ornamental knocker, letting it fall smartly, twice. Hearing footsteps, he straightened his hat, and then the door opened and there she was: a thicker version than he remembered, the curves having solidified to a tubular bulk, with eyebrows raised in delighted surprise. ‘Come in! I was so pleased to get your letter!’
In the time it took for her to shoo him down the hall in a flurry of exclamation marks and almost tow him into the sitting room, Todd decided that the key to success here was innocent flirtation.
He dug into his pocket and produced the cake of soap with a diffident air. ‘I bought you this. I thought you might like it.’
‘Soap! How lovely! I haven’t seen this brand for ever so long. It’s terribly kind of you.’ She blinked, and, for a moment, he had a horrible feeling that she was about to cry. ‘Oh, dear . . .’ She pulled a handkerchief out of the sleeve of her cardigan and dabbed her eyes delicately. ‘I am being silly. It’s just that I don’t often . . . you know, it’s so nice to be able . . .’
‘I do understand,’ he said. ‘I’ll go if you’d rather - if it’s too . . .’ He looked into her eyes for just long enough, and then down slightly at her lips, and a little further - a gentlemanly way of showing that he acknowledged her as an attractive woman, as well as a nice one. ‘Mrs Dacre,’ he said, ‘I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘No, please,’ she said, slightly flustered and blushing faintly, as was his intention. ‘Don’t mind me. Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll fetch some tea?’
Another judicious glance - eyes and lips, eyes and lips. ‘That would be very nice.’
She bustled off, leaving Todd to look round the room. The first thing that took his eye was a single photograph, framed in silver, in the middle of the mantelpiece: James, in his gown and mortar board, his 27-year-old features already settling into jowly complaisance. For a moment, he stared - the innocent, smiling eyes that looked back were remarkably like Mrs Dacre’s - then looked away. He noted the brightly polished coal scuttle and the fire-irons on their stand by the grate, the chintz-covered armchairs, the small fumed-oak tables, and the porcelain shepherds and shepherdesses in a glass-fronted cabinet. There was even a selection of mottoes - Bless This House, and the like - executed in hideous pokerwork, hung about the walls. He read them, lips curling, and only just had time to reset his features to an expression of polite anticipation as James’s mother returned with a tray, on which sat the tea things and a small cake. Jumping up, he said, ‘You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble.’
‘Not at all. I had some fruit saved, and it was so nice to bake again. James always loved my cake.’ As he moved to take the tray from her, she said, with a little giggle at her own daring, ‘Please, don’t stand on ceremony. I’ll just set it down here, and we’ll be quite comfortable,’ and deposited it on the pouffe beside his chair.
When he was settled, none too comfortably, with the tea and cake on his knees, and they’d had twenty minutes or so of chat about Dacre, and Todd’s memories of school, she said, ‘Everything I have left of him is in there,’ and gestured towards the sideboard. ‘Photographs and memories. Would you like to see?’
This was going to be even easier than he’d hoped. ‘Yes, please.’ Beatrice Dacre removed a wooden box from the sideboard, then, producing a small key from beneath a porcelain yokel, fitted it to the lock.
She sat down again, the box in her lap, and threw back the lid. Catching a glimpse of certificates, Todd hastily drained his cup and craned forward to look.
‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’ she asked again.
Barely managing to conceal his impatience, Todd said, ‘No, of course not. I have so many happy memories of James myself.’
‘Do you, dear? You know, I’ve been thinking since I got your letter, and I can’t remember him ever mentioning you. Other boys, but not you.’
He had to get hold of that box. ‘Didn’t he?’ He gave her a relaxed smile, as if that was mildly interesting but not important.
‘Oh, well, it was quite a time ago . . .’ Mrs Dacre took out a large handful of papers.
On the pretext of leaning forward to put his cup back on the tray, Todd caught a glimpse of the name James Walter Dacre on a school certificate. Dacre’s middle name was the same as his own original one! Better and better, he thought, forcing himself to look straight at Mrs Dacre with an expression of restrained anticipation.
‘Those are just certificates and things,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to see all those. I’ve got photographs from when James was at school,’ she said. ‘I expect you’re in some of them.’
‘I’d like to look at them, very much - if you wouldn’t mind.’ He leaned into her, brushing her arm as if by accident. He was sure she’d noticed, but she didn’t flinch. ‘I don’t have anything like that.’
‘Haven’t you?’ Mrs Dacre pulled away from him slightly, sounding surprised.
‘Lost in the bombing,’ he explained.
‘Oh, yes, of course. Dreadful. Ah, here we are.’ Leaning towards him once more, Mrs Dacre passed him a postcard-sized photograph of a toddler in a jumper that buttoned at the shoulder, cheeks and lips rosily hand-tinted, grinning against the painted backcloth of a photographer’s shop. This image, like the ones in the official prep-school pictures that followed, big boys standing at the back, small ones sitting, cross-legged, at the front, had the doughty sturdiness and the eager, open gaze that he remembered. He stole a glance at Mrs Dacre, anticipating tears, but she was dry-eyed, frowning at the rows of boys in their caps and blazers. ‘I can’t see . . . which one are you?’
He saw, too late, that she’d produced a class photograph, this time mounted, with the names of the boys pencilled on the cardboard surround. Todd took a deep breath. He hadn’t bargained on that.
‘I can’t see any Thomas,’ she said.
‘Let me have a look.’ Todd took the photograph from her and puzzled over it. He could see himself - properly captioned, of course, with his real name - in the second row, half-obscured by the boy in front, cap pulled down over his face. ‘Do you know, it must have been after I’d broken my leg. I was off school a while that year. My mother wasn’t very pleased. Let’s see if I can find myself in one of the others. May I?’ He picked another photograph off Mrs Dacre’s lap, one without captions, careful to have minimal contact with her knee.
‘Look,’ he said, scanning it. ‘There I am.’ He was on the end of a row, slightly apart from the others, looking as if he were trying to step away from the picture.
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