The Company of Fellows (38 page)

“
Well,” he
said. “It’s hard to tell from the exterior eggshell. Funny paint to
use, though, proper belt and braces job. You’d have to be doing
something pretty messy. Nice colour, though.”

“
Very nice,”
said Tommy. “It’s called eating room red.”

“
I know. I’m
pretty sure this wasn’t, though.”

“
No, I can’t
imagine Professor Shaw eating in his basement.” The thought had
crossed his mind that it might have been Shaw’s idea of humour.
Perhaps it was, but he couldn’t help thinking of reasons why
someone would want a tough, washable red paint in their
basement.

“
The coat
underneath is another Farrow and Ball.” He took Tommy to the far
wall, where he had stripped back what looked like a dado, a
three-foot high wash of pale blue-green.

“
Arsenic.”
Tommy felt Shaw’s mischievous hand giving him a series of gentle
pushes on the shoulder. The colour was familiar. It was one Tommy
had used many times, but that wasn’t it. He had seen it somewhere
else. Damn, he wished his head would stay still.

“
See how the
colour’s not even.”

“
Yes. Those
are outlines.”

“
They are
indeed. We could go into forensics together, Tommy, if there was
more money in it. Looks like they’ve been made by smoke – black,
not yellow-brown, probably by years of incense or something like
that. I see it all the time when I do bedrooms for middle-aged
bohemians in Jericho.”

Tommy couldn’t
move. He couldn’t speak. Somewhere just below the surface the
picture was forming of where he had seen the paint before. His
subconscious already knew the answer would be was too much for him
to take.

“
Which is what
this is, by the way,” Harry continued, in proud flow. “A bedroom.
See that in the middle, four and a half foot wide, that’s the bed,
standard double. The lowered bit to the side, that’s the bedside
table.”

He didn’t
scream. He didn’t pound the walls and cry. When the image came, he
went to the wall and leant his back against it and breathed deeply.
He ran his hands through his hair once and breathed again as though
he were just a little weather beaten, then his back slid slowly
down the wall until he was sitting on the floor. He had no idea how
long he was there. All he could see was a glimpse caught on the way
to the bathroom. A glimpse of the colour arsenic in a bedroom. A
glimpse of the colour in Becky’s room. Exactly the same colour Shaw
had painted the cellar that had been Carol’s room.

____

60

“
Hey! Hey,
Tommy, what the hell is it?”

At first he
was aware of a noise, then a voice, and finally of Harry crouching
beside him wondering what on earth to do. Tommy shook himself. He
didn’t know what had pulled him back. No, he did know. It was the
pull of the emptiness he had seen in those eyes, an emptiness he
had stored within himself like a black heart, an emptiness he saw
reflected back every time he saw Becky. It was a vacuum he hoped
was strong enough to suck him out of the rankness that he felt all
around him. “Sorry?”

“
Well welcome
back to the land of the living.”

“
Yeah, look,
Harry, can you do me a huge favour, please?” He had to get out of
here.

“
Well, I
thought I’d just done you one.”

“
You did.”
Tommy made himself breathe fully, slowing down his words. “Thank
you. Can you wait until tomorrow before you call the Warden over
here, please? It’s really important.”

“
God, Tommy,
the moment you’ve gone I’m waiting till tomorrow before I come back
here myself. You frightened the life out of me.”

“
Sorry.”

“
You want to
tell me what’s going on?”

“
No, Harry, I
really don’t.”

The cloying
Oxford air felt as fresh as a mountain breeze in Tommy’s lungs as
he stepped back onto Bane’s Avenue. OK, think. Take a long, deep
oxygen hit and think. No, that’s not going to work. There was too
much of the dirt and grease and grime of the human soul clinging to
the working parts of his mind. He got his mobile out and texted.
Two minutes later the phone rang.

“
Thanks for
calling. You haven’t told Rosie?”

“
No.”

“
I need to see
you. Can you sneak out to the Kings Arms for ten
minutes?”

He could sense
she really wanted to tell him it wasn’t appropriate, to yell at
him
why the hell aren’t you on the phone
to Rosie
, but that she couldn’t because
Rosie was with her. God, she didn’t have to say anything, didn’t
even have to sigh with exasperation and he felt told off like he
had done all those years ago when she’d torn into him because he’d
bought her the nicest cut of venison. He knew that wasn’t fair.
He’d put her in a corner, and he shouldn’t have done, but he
couldn’t think about that now.

“
OK.”

“
See you in
ten minutes.”

It was strange
that he should turn to Em now, he thought, after everything that
had happened in the past. After everything that was happening now
for that matter. Why not turn to Becky, his partner in crime, for
want of a better description of her? Why not to Rosie, his partner
in so many other ways that he hadn’t even begun to think about
properly? It was a good question, and the only answer he had time
for now made him feel patronising and sexist, and everything he
hated. It was as though he didn’t want to spoil things between
them, to pollute their relationship by smearing it with the
detritus that was swimming around his head.
That’s something you’ll have to get over
, he told himself.
She deserves to
know at some stage. More than that, she’ll have to know. How else
will you explain it when the black fog descends?
How else could she be expected to understand the
night sweats and the screaming and the days sitting on his Italian
leather sofa curled up and whimpering like a puppy, all the things
that he knew would come? She would have to know, but not now, he
told himself. Maybe that was it. He could only focus on this one
thing, couldn’t allow anything else to crowd into his mind and
deflect him. He had just enough power in the batteries for this and
no more.

When he saw
Emily through the window of the coffee room, impatience sculpted in
her figure, he knew exactly why he’d called her, and it surprised
him almost more than anything else in the past week and a half. He
needed to be with someone who was good. With Emily, there was
nothing hidden, nothing dark, nothing dangerous. She was someone
with no contours of ambivalence at all. He had forgotten what
goodness was like. No, he had never even believed it existed, and
almost certainly he didn’t now, but as he saw her he felt the
immense strength that something quite so simple could provide.
Something that doesn’t look to the right or the left or ask why.
Something that was everything Tommy wasn’t. He knew his reason for
calling her was ever bit as patronising as the reason he hadn’t
called Rosie, but he didn’t care. Now wasn’t the time for nuance.
Now was the time for paragons and ideals, time for him to turn for
inspiration to his favourite hero from years ago. And, to his
shock, that was Emily.

“
Tommy, what
are you playing at?” She was as close to furious as he could
imagine her.

“
Sorry.” It
was something he seemed to be saying a lot recently.

“
No, Tommy,
sorry doesn’t cut it. I shouldn’t be here. I have a job, I have a
life, I have a husband I love, and I have a best friend who’s in
love with you.”

Tommy took a
moment to register what she’d said, and then he found himself
smiling despite everything that was happening. There was no point
disguising how it made him feel, and he could see at once in the
way her face softened that Emily knew his smile was real. “I’m not
going to say it,” he said. “I haven’t told her yet, and I want to
tell her first. I want to get it right this time.” Perhaps that was
too close to home, he thought, but Emily still seemed to be
smiling.

“
So you’re in
love with her?”

“
It was you
who said we should get together. Or that’s what she said,
anyway.”

“
OK, I’ll take
the credit. But in love already. That’s a bit quick.” There was no
bitterness, no judgment in her voice; just a statement of fact. “I
take it that’s not why you called me.”

“
No. I called
you because I feel like shit. I needed to offload on someone and as
you hardly have me down as Mr Wonderful anyway, you’re it. I didn’t
put that well, did I?”

“
No, Tommy,
you didn’t.”

“
Now I’m here
it doesn’t seem so important.” Tommy shrugged. He could feel
himself withering under her gaze, could sense the exasperation in
her breathing, and he knew he deserved all of it. “That’s worse,
isn’t it?”

“
Yes.” They
grinned together. Making a joke out of it was the only way they’d
get anywhere. “It’s to do with Becky, I presume?”

“
Yes.”

“
Does Rosie
know about this? Or is it more than just meeting me you’re keeping
secret?”

“
She knows I’m
poking around.”

“
Does she know
where you’re poking?”

“
This is
probably an unhelpful metaphor.” Tommy laughed. Emily joined in.
“She knows I’m trying to find things out about Becky’s
dad.”

“
Which implies
that’s not all you’re doing.”

“
Not
really.”

“
Not
really?”

“
I’m sorry.”
There was no way to put it tactfully. “Becky thinks you got it
wrong. She thinks Charles was murdered.” Tommy waited, watched to
see what her judgment would be. There was none.

“
I thought she
probably did. Let me guess. She thinks you’ve got a bigger brain
than me so you’re more likely to get it right? It’s OK, you have
got a bigger brain than me. But I hope at least some of the many
brain cells realise that if you have a shred of evidence that a
crime has taken place you should go straight to the
police.”

“
Lecture
over?”

“
It’s not a
lecture, Tommy, it’s advice. I really didn’t imagine I’d ever say
this two weeks ago, but it’s advice from a friend. If you, or this
girl you’ve known less than a fortnight but seem willing to put
everything, including your sanity, on the line for, think Professor
Shaw was murdered, and personally I see no reason whatever to think
that he was, please don’t get involved in some vigilante
crusade.”

Tommy reached
over and took her left hand, and for the first time he noticed her
wedding ring. It must suit her being married, he thought, if her
ring seems so natural that he’d only just spotted it. He felt a
momentary wave of happiness that she had found someone. “I
won’t.”

“
Thank
you.”

“
Promise me.”
She looked straight into him, and squeezed his hand.

He knew there
was a voice somewhere telling him that everything she said was
right. But he also knew that right now he couldn’t afford to look
where it was coming from.

“
I won’t,” he
repeated. “Thank you.”

*

Emily watched
him leave. She felt for a minute as though she wanted to cry but it
soon passed. As it passed she knew that the time when she wondered
what kind of father he would be, what kind of lover, what kind of
husband, had passed as well. Forever. And its passing wasn’t a good
reason for a tear. Those questions belonged to someone else now,
and that was a good thing. Besides, now he was her friend, and that
made her happy. And worried for him.

____

61

Tommy felt
his head clearing as he walked back up Parks Road, past Keble
College and the Natural History Museum. He knew it wouldn’t last,
but he could feel something of Emily’s strength pulling up the
blinds. He could feel her holding his hand and gently encouraging
him,
Come on, Tommy. Just a little longer.
Just think clearly for a little longer and let me take care of
everything else. Don’t worry about afterwards. I’ll be here to help
put you together again afterwards, and so will
Rosie
. If he’d been more impressionable,
he thought, he would have wondered if this is what people mean by
the voice of God, the still small voice of calm. And if he had been
more cynical he would have wondered if he was just projecting the
voice of his therapist.

He sat at his
laptop and opened the Word file back up,
Things we can only do once
. Why did
he think the answer was in here? Because things you can only do
once are the things that really mattered to Shaw. Not just
philosophically. Tommy was certain of that. These were the things
that mattered to him in life. That was why waiting had been so
important to him, because these are the things that you cannot
repeat. Wait a second too long and the moment has passed; not long
enough, even by a second, and you’ve lost the chance to get it
right forever. It was the same fragile perfection that existed in
the incarnation of Christ, something else that could only happen
once.