Tamar (21 page)

“No,” Dart said. “I need to keep a clear head.”

“Shit. I’d forgotten. You’re on station tonight, aren’t you? What time?”

“Twenty-two forty-five until midnight. Not long.”

Tamar poured himself a small drink. “Okay. But the damn British. Don’t they know it’s Christmas?”

“Don’t you know there’s a war on?” Dart said, and they laughed; in England the phrase had been the everyday excuse for all sorts of lousy behaviour.

When Marijke came back down, the two men were hunched over the crossword, their heads close together. She felt excluded; they didn’t look up even when she reached for the bottle and poured herself a drink. So she came round behind them and put an arm over each man’s shoulder. She leaned down to them. Dart felt her hair brush his temple, breathed her perfume again.

“So,” she said, “tell me how this works.”

Tamar began to explain what an anagram was. Dart turned his head slightly so that he could see Marijke’s hand. Her forefinger was just a few millimetres from the bare skin of his neck. Slowly, holding his breath, he raised his own fingers towards hers.

“Stop,” she said. “How can I understand this? Not only is it mad; it is in English.” She lifted her hands to the tops of their heads and ruffled their hair. “Come on, talk to me. Make me laugh.”

Tamar sighed theatrically. “The same old story. Men engage in a peaceful, intellectual pastime, and along comes a beautiful woman and spoils everything.” He pushed the crossword away and tossed the pencil down. “Go on then, Dr. Lubbers — make Marijke laugh. You’re the one with all the stories. Nothing interesting ever happens to me.”

“That’s right, Ernst,” Marijke said. “You’ve said nothing tonight about Albert or Agatha. You must have news. How are Pieter and Bibi?”

Dart slapped his forehead. “Ach! I completely forgot. I have something to show you. It’s in my bag.”

He went out into the hall, and when he came back, Tamar was pouring Marijke another drink.

Dart put the medical bag down on the table and opened it. “Pieter and Bibi gave me a late
Sinterklaas
present,” he said.

It was a narrow box of grey cardboard with the words
THE MARIONETTE HOUSE
printed on the lid in green italic writing. Dart lifted the lid and took out a puppet. He held it above the table, suspended on its twisted strings from a wooden cross. The strings unwound and the figure spun in a slow blur.

Tamar said, “Hey, it’s you!”

It was Dart, unmistakably. The narrow head had carved waves of hair painted black; the body wore a tweed coat with a red cross armband on one sleeve; one mitten-shaped hand was attached to a bag painted leather brown. The legs sagged inwards at the knees when the feet came to rest on the surface of the table.

Marijke’s face lit up. “Oh, Ernst, what a beautiful thing! Fancy having a puppet of yourself. Aren’t you flattered?” She flopped down on the chair at the head of the table and held her hands out imploringly towards the marionette. “Come on, make him walk to me.”

Dart tried, but the skill of it was beyond him. The puppet moved towards her slumped and spastic, its feet dragging. He lifted it and tried again, but the hinged arms flailed and twitched and the feet clacked against the smeared pudding bowls.

Tamar, laughing, stood up. “Let me try.”

He held the crosspiece and adjusted the position of his fingers, then moved his hand slowly up the table. The Dart puppet advanced towards Marijke in a jerky dance. She muffled her laughter with her hands and drew back as if something both thrilling and menacing were approaching her.

Tamar twisted his mouth to one side and imitated a poor ventriloquist. “I am a doctor. I am told there is a woman here who needs my attention.”

Then in a quick movement he lifted the puppet towards Marijke’s face. She caught it in her fingers and looked delightedly into its face. “Ah, Doctor, at last! Come upstairs!”

Then her laughter bubbled over, and she leaned forward. The Dart puppet collapsed onto the table. After a second or two, Dart joined in the laughter.

“Let me have a go,” Marijke said, getting to her feet.

Tamar put the marionette’s crosspiece in her fingers and she experimented with the strings, concentrating hard, trying not to giggle, the tip of her tongue touching her upper lip. She rocked her hand, and the Dart puppet performed a slow arthritic jig while its head swivelled loosely from side to side.

“Very good!” Dart said. “Well done.”

“Now,” Marijke said, “I’m going to see if I can make him do a little bow.”

She tipped her hand forward slightly and parted two of the strings with her fingers. The puppet folded in the middle and raised its arms.

Tamar and Dart applauded. Marijke made a little curtsy, then lowered the puppet onto the table. It slumped in a sitting position, its legs splayed.

“I think he’s a very sweet little gentleman,” Marijke declared. “Don’t you, Ernst? Do you think Pieter would make one of me? We could make them dance together.”

“I’m sure he would. I’ll ask him.”

Tamar reached for the bottle but paused and turned his wrist to look at his watch.

Dart remembered. “Damn. What time is it?”

“Ten twenty.”

Dart sighed heavily. “Right. I’d better think about getting organized.”

Marijke pulled a long face in sympathy. “I don’t think it’s fair. It’s Christmas.”

Tamar said, “I daresay that in London there’s some poor bloody signaller looking up our call sign and thinking exactly the same thing.”

Marijke stood up. “Let me make you some coffee to take with you. It won’t take a minute.”

Dart put on his coat and wrapped the scarf around his throat. Marijke gave him coffee in a jug and kissed him.

Then Tamar said, “I’ll wait up for you. We ought to have a last drink.”

Dart saw very clearly the look of displeasure that Marijke gave Tamar. There was only one way to interpret it: she did not want Tamar to be in the kitchen when Dart came back from the barn. Dart felt a surge of exhilaration so strong that for a moment he felt that, like his own marionette, he would fold and fall. It took a huge effort of will to keep his face expressionless.

“Good,” he said. “I’ll see you later, then.”

When he stepped outside, it was as if he had been plunged into a well of ink. He could see nothing at all. The coldness shocked him sober. He inhaled sobs of air that were like pebbles in his chest. Eventually he moved cautiously into the dark, feeling the ribs and knuckles of the ground through the soles of his shoes, hearing ice crack in diminishing ripples of sound. He hit the wall of the barn before he knew he’d reached it. Inside, he found the lamp hanging on its nail and after a good deal of fumbling managed to get it lit. He carried the pool of yellow light up the stairs.

The fast bleeps of Morse came through the fizz of his headphones at exactly twenty-two forty-five.

He blinked in surprise when his hand wrote the
signal ends
code after just seven minutes. He waited, listening to white noise for several seconds in case there had been a mistake, then acknowledged and closed down. His vaporized breath drifted towards the lamp and disappeared. He spread the silk code sheet on the table and deciphered just the last two lines of London’s message:
HAPPY XMAS AND A VICTORIOUS NEW YEAR STOP NOW PISS OFF SOMEWHERE WARM SIGNAL ENDS.

Smiling, Dart disconnected the transceiver and stashed it and the battery away in the thatch behind the crippled chest of drawers. He felt a sort of giddiness, knowing that he’d be with her again so soon.

Outside the barn he stood immobile for some time, forcing himself to endure the cold and his impatience, while his sight readapted to the darkness. On other nights, he had emerged from the barn and heard the distant drone of aircraft and the continuous muffled thud of faraway explosions. Tonight the silence was absolute. He looked up. Through a sudden breach in the clouds he saw a sliver of clear sky brightly crowded with stars. Even though he was in no way superstitious, he allowed himself to see it as a portent, a sign that wishes would be granted. He closed his eyes and shuddered, perhaps because of the cold or perhaps in response to the strong thrill of anticipation that ran through him.

He felt his way to the corner of the barn and halted, puzzled. A narrow track of light lay on the ground some way ahead of him, crossing the yard. He hadn’t noticed it on the way out; but then he had been staring blindly ahead, fearful of falling. It took him a few seconds to work out that it must be coming from the kitchen window. The blackout curtains had not been closed properly.

He had almost reached the safety of the farmhouse door when a perverse little notion took hold of him. He never did work out why. Perhaps he wanted to delay the pleasure of holding her and so make it more intense. Perhaps he wanted to see into that golden room from the outside, delighting in the fact that soon he would be inside it, no longer exiled. He knew that his father had sometimes done this, returning from work in the dark; he had stood outside his own window, watching his family, marvelling at the fact that he would soon be part of it again. Or maybe Dart was simply obeying a spy’s instinct. For whatever reason, he made his way to the window and peered in.

The glass was studded with tiny beads of ice, and it took his eyes a couple of seconds to focus. Tamar was sitting on the same chair as before, but now Marijke was sitting on it also. She was on his lap, facing him, her legs straddling his, her hands gripping the back of the chair. The green dress had slid to the top of her thighs. Tamar was gazing into her face, which was hidden from Dart by the black tumble of her hair. Tamar’s mouth moved silently. His hands were somewhere inside her clothes. Marijke took one hand from the chair and gently forced his head back, lowering her face to his. Tamar’s hand appeared and pulled her hair away from their faces as if to display more clearly the way their mouths fed on each other.

Dart felt a bitter howl climbing in his throat and jammed the side of his thumb between his teeth to stifle it. He forced himself back from the window. He slipped and staggered but did not fall. When he was steady, he crossed his arms and held himself tight. He lifted his face. The stars had gone; light snow, as fine as grains of salt, swirled slowly into his vision. It looked like the sound of static in headphones. He closed his eyes.

He stood like that for a long time; he could not think what to do next because he did not want to think at all. He grew as cold as the stone cold weather.

After Grandad’s death, several days passed before we could face going to the flat. The police had wanted Mum to go that same day, the day he died, and she’d put her coat on and picked up her keys before she cracked up and told them she couldn’t do it.

When we did go, it was just terrible. Mum drove into the car park and headed for her usual space on the balcony side of the flats, but then she gave a sort of gasping scream and swerved away. She parked at the side of the block instead. Neither of us said anything, but we both knew why she’d done it. In the lobby two people were already waiting for the lift. When they recognized us, they pretended to change their minds and headed for the stairs.

It was dark inside the flat because the curtains across the glass balcony doors had been closed. (By Grandad? By the police?) We didn’t open them. I put the lights on. We were both crying in a quiet, sniffly sort of way, but we didn’t talk. Mum went over to the bureau to look for various bits of paper and documents that the solicitor had told her she’d need. I went into my bedroom to get . . . well, I don’t know what, really. I think at the time I just wanted to leave everything there and close the door on it. The first thing I saw was the box, this box. It was on my bed. An ordinary shoe box made of brown cardboard. It had string tied around it, fastened with a tight knot. The lid had been sealed with parcel tape and had a small white adhesive label with
TAMAR
written on it. I absolutely did not want to touch it.

I was still standing there staring at it when Mum came into the room.

She said, “He’d got everything ready. He must’ve . . .” She choked up. I looked at what she was holding. “See?”

There were two cardboard files, some large brown envelopes, and a long thin white envelope with the word
WILL
printed on it. The whole lot was held together by a thick rubber band.

Then Mum saw the box. “What’s that?” she said.

“I dunno.”

“Is it yours? I mean, do you think —”

“I dunno,” I said again. “Can we go? I want to go.”

When we were in the lift, I saw she’d got the box under her arm. In the car she handed it to me, but I wouldn’t take it. She looked at me for several seconds and then dropped it onto the back seat. When we got home, I went straight indoors. Mum brought the box in and put it on the shelf in the hall. At some point in the evening, I took it upstairs and put it right at the back of my wardrobe. I didn’t open it until nearly three months later.

Why didn’t I? The reasons changed as time passed. At first, the box simply scared me. It had scared me as soon as I saw it. I had to assume that Grandad had put it on my bed just before he’d thrown himself off the balcony. Perhaps it had been the very last thing he did. Perhaps he was already naked when he put it there. If there was some connection between the box and what was going on inside his head at that moment, I really, deeply didn’t want to know about it. Also, it seemed to me that there was something, well, sinister about the way the box was tied shut with two thicknesses of string and sealed with strong tape. As if to keep something from escaping. I did get it out, just once, and when I shook it slightly, I heard things shift inside with a dry, meaningless sound. Later, as I said before, my grief and hurt changed to anger. Grandad might have been overwhelmed by loss and despair, but he still had something to live for, someone who would need him even when his wife no longer knew who he was. Namely me. And killing himself had been the cruellest possible way of telling me that I wasn’t enough. A slap in the face, a punch to the heart. How dare he? That was something I found myself thinking, often saying it out loud: how dare he? So then it was a sort of bitter stubbornness that stopped me opening the box. I refused to. If what was in there was some sort of parting gift, I didn’t want it. If it was some sort of message or explanation, I didn’t want to hear it. Once or twice I got close to putting it out with the rubbish.