The Poison Tree (18 page)

It wasn’t much of an impact—I had been traveling faster than the car—but it was enough to send me to the ground. There was the crunch and whistle of foot pedal and hand brake being engaged simultaneously, and the driver was out of his seat in seconds, his stricken face looming over me. Rex skidded to a halt so quickly that his shoes made an indentation on the sun-melted surface of the road. I could feel a dull thrum in my leg where the car had hit me and in my hip where I had landed, and knew that in the morning twin bruises would color the outside of each thigh. I would deal with that then.

“I’m fine,” I told Rex, the driver, and the growing crowd. “Really, I’m fine.” I pulled myself up by the bumper and transferred my weight first onto my left leg and then onto my right. Nothing broken. I looked to the spot I had last seen Biba. She was gone.

“We’ve lost her!” I said. “Rex, we’ve lost her.”

“I know exactly where she’s gone,” he said with a sigh, and he gestured toward a tiny square at the end of the lane. I jogged away from the driver, his concern turning to anger as I vanished from his sight, rounding a corner to where Biba had stopped.

The house she stood outside was half-obscured by a weft of clematis threaded through wrought-iron railings, but they couldn’t disguise its size or gloss or beauty. It looked like a photograph from one of Rex’s beloved property pages. It was built of that same London stone as the house in Queenswood Lane, but this building was low and wide, not long and lean. Wooden shutters in the windows, a mature garden, and a graveled drive whispered money. The only vulgarity was a red sports car parked at an angle.

Biba’s finger was pressed to a buzzer on the gatepost. No voice crackled over the live intercom and when the gates swung slowly open she looked surprised and unnerved for a few seconds, as though she hadn’t really expected them to admit her.

“What’s she doing?” I said to Rex as she turned sideways and slid her frame through the bars. “Whose house is this?”

“My dad lives here,” he said.

“Your dad lives here?” I echoed, as we crunched across the drive in Biba’s wake. Now that the shock of Roger Capel’s existence had had time to sink in, I was beginning to take this personally. I felt that I was being played with. Why had she lied to me? Why had she let me feel sorry for her, and pretended to be poor when they came from this kind of money?

“Colin!” a voice came through a garden gate and a latch was fiddled with. “You’re early.” There was a rustle and some footsteps from a side gate and through an archway that evidently led onto a back garden, Roger Capel emerged, the smile sliding slowly off his face. I heard the gates click shut behind us.

“Hello, Daddy,” said Biba in the little-girl voice she used when she wanted Rex to do something for her.

“What are you two doing here?” he asked, poor mathematics or disinterest not allowing him to count me as one of his visitors. His voice was broad East End, a surprise that compounded the others; I’d always assumed Biba’s flawless vowels came from years of careful breeding.

“We were just passing,” said Rex, his panted breath giving the lie to this feeble improvisation.

“It’s not a great time,” said their father, looking over his shoulder.

“It never is,” said Rex bitterly.

“If we’d called first, would you have seen us?” asked Biba.

“Of course I would.”

“Bollocks,” she shrilled, and the word was a glass bauble on her lips. “We haven’t seen you for over a year. You ignored the invitations to all my plays. You forgot my twenty-first.”

Roger Capel drew himself up in defense.

“I didn’t forget your birthday, I bought you a present.” Then, after dredging his memory: “A bag.”

“What color was it?” she said.

“What?”

“The bag. Your thoughtful gift. That you personally chose and in no way got Jules to buy. What color was it?” Roger Capel didn’t answer.

“Listen, darling, I’ve had a lot on my plate,” he said.

“So I see.” She unfolded the magazine. “Not too busy to tell the world about your amazing new life though, are you?”

He shrugged. “I can’t help what journalists put.”

“So you didn’t say all that stuff about year zero and wiping out the past? Christ, Dad, you can’t airbrush us from history. We’re here. We exist.” She threw the magazine onto the gravel. “You just wait until I’m a famous actress. Then you won’t ignore us. Then you’ll be proud to call me your daughter.”

I bent down to pick up the magazine. Roger Capel suddenly noticed me. It was as though I had to touch something to become visible to him.

“Who is this person?” he said to Rex.

“Dad, this is Karen. Karen, this is obviously my father. Roger Capel.”

“What happened to the fat one?” said Roger.

“Right, that’s it, we’re going,” said Rex, anger lending him temporary authority. His fingers found the exit buzzer on the garden wall under a tangle of clematis and the gates began slowly to part. “I’m sorry you’re not pleased to see us. But we do need to talk soon. About the house.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” said Roger wearily.

“It’s our home,” said Rex. “We haven’t got anything else.” Roger folded his arms. “
Please
,” said Rex. There was a catch in his voice.

“I’m sorry, Rex. We’ve been over this. It’s just not something we can afford.”

Every conversation today was raising more questions than it answered. I was confused, but Biba clearly knew exactly what this was all about.

“Can’t afford it?” she shrilled. “How much did this house cost? How much did this
car
cost?” She picked up a garden rake that leaned against the wall. I stood rooted, useless with fear and the bright, shameful need to know what would happen next. I didn’t have long to wait. With surprising force, Biba raised the rake over her head and brought it down onto the windshield of the red sports car. It bounced off the glass and the alarm began its penetrating, high-pitched pulse.

The noise brought Jules Millar into the front garden. She looked just as though she had stepped out of one of her advertisements. Everything about her looked freshly washed, from her swinging blond hair to the white dress she wore. Roger Capel stepped protectively in front of her as Biba swung the rake down onto the car again, this time making a dent in the windshield that sent a frosted crackle across its whole surface. A baby’s wail drifted from an upstairs window, a horrible discordant accompaniment to the shriek of the alarm. Jules looked from the house to the car and then at her husband.

“I’m going to call the police, darling,” she said.

“No need,” he said. “They’re going.”

Rex closed in on Biba from behind. I was close enough to hear his whispered words.

“You’re not helping,” he said. “Come on. I’ll sort it out. I promise. Just let it go.” Finger by finger, he unclawed her hands and replaced the rake against the wall. She clenched her fists and released them again before allowing him to shepherd her back through the gates. Outside, she barged past a well-dressed man in his forties, cradling a bottle of champagne in the crook of his elbow. This, I guessed, was the Colin that Roger Capel had been expecting, the reason he had dropped his guard and opened his gates to us. On the other side of the gate, Roger had managed to silence the alarm and Colin’s words echoed down the lane.

“Bloody hell, Rog! Did those kids do that to your Audi? Who were they?”

The long walk home was silent. I had prepared for tears and histrionics, was even hoping for the clarity and explanations they might provide, but Biba was quieter than I’d ever known her. The smoke from her cigarettes cast a force field around her I didn’t dare attempt to penetrate. I let her march ahead and fell into step with Rex. I began with the less urgent question.

“What was that about the house?” I asked. “What did you mean, sort it out?”

“It’s not actually our house,” said Rex. “We’re just his tenants. Actually, that’s not strictly true, because we don’t pay him rent. But it’s all in his name. He was Mum’s next-of-kin, so it’s his. We don’t legally have a right to it.”

“But he can obviously afford it. He doesn’t need that house.”

“He sees it as a future for his family.”

“But
you’re
his family.”

“Not according to that interview,” he said.

When we walked back past Kenwood, the families had been replaced by knots of friends and lovers in their teens and twenties, cans of beer and bottles of wine now added to the picnics.

“She told me he was dead, you know,” I said, looking at my feet. “Why would she do that?”

Rex sighed. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “She probably wishes he was. I know I often do. I’ve thought about killing him, I’ve had dreams where I’ve actually done it. Not that there’s any point in killing him unless he signs over the house. We’d definitely be homeless then.” He smiled to show me he was joking and rolled up a shirtsleeve that had come undone, meticulously folding back the flapping cuff before turning it over and over on itself. “The thing is, we need to persuade him by being reasonable and trying to rebuild a relationship with him. That’s not going to happen if she goes around attacking his cars and yelling at him. I’m so angry with her, I could kill her, too.”

I clamped my lips together with my teeth. The notion of phlegmatic, mousy Rex in a murderous frenzy was too ridiculous to contemplate with a straight face, and I knew that if I started to laugh all the tension of the day would come spilling out in a giggling fit I wouldn’t be able to control.

By the time we turned back onto Hampstead Lane, the light was fading and the roads were clearer. Cars whizzed past, covering in minutes the circuit it had taken us most of the day to complete, and when we turned home into Queenswood Lane, it was nighttime proper and the street was the color of green ink.

In the Velvet Room, Biba perched on the end of the sofa while Rex slumped into the red armchair.

“Want to talk about it?” was the best I could do. She shrugged. “Why did you say that he was dead?”

“I didn’t!”

“You did, Biba. You told me both your parents were dead. You actually used the word
orphan
. That time in the bar. The day we met.”

“Oh.” A brief break in eye contact and a small shrug was the nearest I would get to an apology. “Well, I was drunk. He might as well be. He seems to be wishing us out of existence, so I’m trying to do the same to him.”

“And your mum . . .”

“Yes, well. That one is true. I wouldn’t make something like that up. It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to us.”

“I’m sorry you had to find out from a newspaper,” said Rex. I froze. How long had he known that I’d been through the box under his bed? Then I realized he was referring to the magazine I still clutched in my hand. “I assumed you knew.”

“It can’t be easy to talk about,” I said. “And I’m sorry. I really am. I’m so sorry.”

“Stop saying sorry, for fuck’s sake,” said Biba. “It wasn’t your fault. We all know whose fault it was.” She glared at Rex, who looked at the floor.

I voiced the thought I’d been playing with for the last hour. “I’m sure you could get a lawyer to get him to sign the house over to you,” I said. “I’m sure there must be precedents for it. It’s your childhood home, after all. You must have some rights. He isn’t poor.”

I expected their admiration for my brain wave. Instead, twin expressions of horror dismayed me.

“But he’s our
dad
,” said Biba. “We can’t take him to court. What kind of person sues their own parent?” Rex nodded in agreement.

“But you might get the house,” I pressed. “You’d have security for the rest of your lives if he gave you the house.”

“Yes,” said Biba. “But then he definitely wouldn’t love us anymore.”

That night in bed, I lay awake on my right-hand side. Bruises, like sunburn, are nocturnal, and the one on my left thigh was waking up as I tried to sleep, a soft dark badge to commemorate the day’s chases and revelations. I had always thought of unconditional love describing a parent’s devotion to a child, not the other way around. You hear about mothers who can’t stop loving their rapist sons, and fathers who stick by daughters who steal and kill. It had never occurred to me that children, even grown-up children, could persevere with a futile devotion to a father who had replaced his first children with new babies with the detachment of someone choosing to upgrade his car or his home.

R
EX’S PAROLE OFFICER IS named Ben Weaver. He is oozing with the youth, eagerness, sincerity, and incompetence of a recent graduate. He sits nervously on the edge of our sofa. I can’t tell if the shirt, tie, and cardigan ensemble he is wearing is wildly stylish or the result of absolute sartorial disinterest; those clothes could mark him out as one of the beautiful, fashionable people or a lonely nerd. He can only be seven or eight years younger than I but the generation gap is a chasm.

The purpose of the interview is to set Rex on a career path. Ben keeps using the word
rehabilitation
in reference to his time away. Rex doesn’t take exception to this but I do. He is not a real criminal, not in the way that other men are. It is a bitter irony that to explain this to people would jeopardize everything we have achieved since the night he was arrested.

“Most of the people I work with aren’t lucky enough to have Rex’s setup,” says Ben, steam from his cup of tea misting his horn-rimmed glasses. “I mean, they don’t all have this kind of family unit waiting for them. I’ll be honest with you, I’m used to putting them straight back into the benefit system because I know they’ll be reoffending within the hour.”

“But not Rex,” I say as calmly as I can.

“Absolutely! Not Rex,” says Ben brightly. He studies the paperwork in front of him again. “Anyway, he doesn’t qualify for unemployment benefits because he’s got you to support him. So . . . during your rehabilitation you completed a diploma in systems analysis,” he says. “What does that mean, exactly?”