The Whole World (12 page)

We’d been roommates. He confided to me back then that his memory of colours was fading. The red he had that summer was less bright than the red he’d had five years before. I didn’t see how he could know it was less bright, since he would have to mentally compare it with the bright colour to notice. He repeated that he didn’t have the bright colour anymore—he couldn’t call it up in his mind—but he knew its absence. He knew that the red he used then wasn’t fiery or sharp or any other kind of feeling word that one might use to capture the saturation of a colour. He knew it like someone knows they don’t remember when they were one year old, or where they left their keys. So his memories were literally fading like an old photograph. Not a metaphor like most people mean—the details going away—but the colour actually draining. And these memories were his visual vocabulary, so his visual present and future and even his imagination were drained as well. I presume that Gretchen had had a similar experience. It put her attachment to her youth, and to the brightness of her early life, in perspective.

“Shall I go first, as a lookout?” Peter joked. I’d almost let myself forget that Polly’s mother was looking for me.

I laughed. Maybe I should have said yes.

I’d forgotten what the Georgian buildings on St. Andrews Street look like. They’d been covered for months, three cranes sticking out like antennae, while the new shopping mall was being constructed behind their facades.

I could have crossed at Emmanuel, but in my cowardice I craved the shelter of the scaffolding. I turned left down the pavement alongside the construction site and kept under it until I had to cross the street. More construction obscured me there, between Christ’s College and the bus station. I’d been under cover since coming out of Downing Street. The open green of Christ’s Pieces stretched in front of me. I hesitated to step out from the covered alley.

“Don’t be an idiot,” I said out loud. I made myself step onto the path.

Approaching footsteps beat behind me, under the alley’s temporary roof. I quickened my pace to keep ahead of them. Once into the park, I looked over my shoulder, but couldn’t make out more than a silhouette.

It was a woman. I don’t think she was a student; at least, she didn’t come across as studenty. Maybe it was the hair. The hair seemed like it belonged to someone’s mother. Polly’s mother.

I walked faster.

She was as quick as me, quicker. The distance between us shortened, despite my longer legs.

When she inevitably caught me up I whipped around to face her. “What do you want?” I shouted. I shouted it into her face.

She stepped back.

“Why are you following me, Mrs. Bailey?” I demanded.

She stepped back again. She wore a tracksuit, with a stripe down each leg. She had trainers on her feet. She flicked earphones off of her head.

“I’m sorry,” I stammered. Her glance flitted over all possible directions of escape. Back through the alley? Across the grass?

I pushed my hair off my forehead. “No, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else….” I walked closer, so I wouldn’t have to raise my voice.

She ran for the alley, probably because there was a homeless person in there. I suppose she thought I wouldn’t hurt her in front of a witness.

She wasn’t Mrs. Bailey—I realised that from her reaction—but she reminded me of Polly just the same. It was the turning and running.

I leaned over, hands on my knees, and tried to slow my breathing. The grass looked awfully close, closer….

“Nick?”

A soft, feminine voice. I sprang back upright.

“What? What do you want?” I spluttered. In that instant the voice was Liv, it was Polly and Gretchen and my sister. It was my mother, disappointed that I wasn’t staying home for dinner. I held my hands up in front of my face.

“I’m Miranda Bailey. Are you Nick Frey? Are you,” she asked, in light of the ridiculous outburst she’d just witnessed, “looking for me?”

She hadn’t followed me. Anyone with my address could guess I’d come this way. She’d simply waited.

“No, I, no …” I babbled.

“Are you all right?”

“Never better!” I flung my arms out wide. Then I started walking.

It was a public park. It’s not like I could stop her from walking beside me. It’s not like I could stop any of this.

We crossed the road together to New Square.

“Polly wrote me such nice things about you.”

“That’s very kind of her,” I said, staring straight ahead.

“I need to talk to you because you’re her friend.”

“You’ll have to ask her about that.” Polly had made it clear how she felt about me now.

“If you and Polly have been … intimate …”

“Good God, Mrs. Bailey.” I stopped in front of a rubbish bin. “I’m not going to talk about that with you.”

“There’s something you need to know.”

What? A disease? This was horrible. “Mrs. Bailey.” We faced each other. I put my hands on her shoulders. “You’ve got to stop. Please leave me alone.”

“You need to know that she’s a fragile person. You need to be gentle with her.”

Gentle. Had I been? I remembered pushing her up against the back of the lift.

She continued, “I think you’re good for Polly, you’re a good person. So I’m going to tell you this, so that you’ll understand what Polly’s going through, and why.”

And then she told me. I was stunned, of course, and sickened. She was matter-of-fact about it, having, I assume, gone over it so many times. She didn’t cry. She didn’t claim any part of the trauma for herself. I genuinely think she was telling me for Polly’s sake, misguided as that may have been.

“I’m so sorry,” I said automatically. Manners are a good fallback during times of stress. “That’s awful.”

In the lift, Polly had put her arms around my neck. I’m sure she did. But had she really wanted to? Or had she forced herself, trying to conquer her trauma by will? Were there signals I’d ignored? I’d stopped when she wanted me to.

Hadn’t I?

In my office, I’d only touched her shirt a second time because …

Because I wanted to. Because everything else about her acted like she wanted me to. There was just the hand, brushing my hand away. One hand, versus everything else about her: the way she was breathing and her open mouth.

And what I wanted.

“Polly’s a good girl.” Polly’s mother brought me back. “She’s a good girl, and she cares for you, and she’s been punished for caring for someone before.” I noticed that she’d not once said the name of the boy. “So you can understand,” she concluded, “why it would be a hurdle for Polly to let herself go again.”

I did understand. But, “Why didn’t she tell me?”

“She doesn’t want anyone here to know.”

Miranda looked very like Polly. Obviously older, but with much the same face. It gave the illusion of a future Polly time-travelling back to now to share this important information. But this wasn’t future-Polly. This was Miranda and she had no right. “If that’s so, then you shouldn’t have told me.”

“You need to know….”

“Polly will decide what I need to know. Polly will tell me when she’s ready to tell me. She’s brave, and she tried with me, and it’s no one’s place—not mine and not yours—to rush her into
anything
she’s not ready for.” I wanted to tell Polly that. I wanted to promise her patience. I wanted her to know that the lead was hers to take.

Miranda looked away from my indignation, staring at her purse held tight in both hands. “She’s lucky to have you,” she finally said.

Liv had said something like that last night, at the party. Just before the porter came, she’d said, “I’m lucky to have run into you tonight.”

Lucky.

I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. “No, she’s not.”

Miranda took a deep breath. She wasn’t done with me yet. “If you’d just go to see her …”

I cringed. No. Polly would have talked to Liv already. She’d be done with me. “I don’t think so.”

Miranda was offended, actually offended. She gasped. How dare I.

“Truly, Mrs. Bailey, I’m sorry. I just …”

“You just what? You just care about her, except for the part of her that hurts? That part of her that’s vulnerable? Is that ‘just’ it?” She looked so much like Polly in that moment, yet so angry. I don’t think I’ve seen Polly angry in that way. Then Miranda deflated. “I’m sorry. It’s only—she cares for you. I think you’re good for her.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think I’m much good for anyone at the moment.” Not Polly, not Liv. Not even Gretchen, on whom I’d forced an unnecessary truth.

Miranda reached for me and I stepped back.

She reached again, and I stepped back again, almost tripping backwards over the low fence that lined the path.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

I turned and headed toward the Grafton. Miranda didn’t follow me at first. I got almost as far as the compass rose embedded into the pavement where Fitzroy and Burleigh Streets meet. I heard her footsteps growing louder and I turned.

She ran for me, charged at me, really. When she reached me, she begged. “Polly will think it’s her fault. And it’s not. You’ve got to let her …” It ran down into incoherence, and then, at last, apology. “This is madness. I’m sorry. I know you’ll do what you feel is right.”

That was a laugh. So I laughed, a ridiculous, strangled giggle. I’m sure Miranda could smell the drink in me. This was the nice man Polly wrote her about?

I turned down Burleigh Street to end the conversation. I hunched up my shoulders to discourage her. “Leave me alone, Mrs. Bailey!” I said loudly.

But we’d already diverged. I saw over my shoulder that she was headed the other direction down East Road, toward her hotel. At the pedestrian light I finally felt far enough away from her to unclench my hands. I didn’t pay attention to the stranger next to me.

This person also crossed the street. He stayed just a step behind and beside me. At the mini-roundabout just off the main road, he grabbed me by the collar of my coat and shoved me up against the wooden fence. He wrenched my backpack off my shoulder. I got twisted around, and for a moment the strap caught on my wrist. He pulled, hard, and the bag jerked free. He ran, pounding his steps into the pavement.

My arm quivered. Ridiculous. He was just a teenager. There wasn’t any danger. He didn’t want to hurt me; he just wanted my backpack.

And the laptop that was in it.

My thesis.
Shit
.

That was my excuse. I took off after him. He was faster than me, but it felt good to run.

In my mind, I caught up with him. I slammed him up against a fence, like he’d slammed me. I wrenched the backpack off his shoulder. It was only fair. But my imagination had momentum; it didn’t stop there. I took out the laptop and raised it over my head. I slammed it down onto him. The plastic casing cracked, creating sharp edges. I beat him with it. I beat him bloody.

It never happened. He outran me through the park and I stopped and caught my breath.

I sank down onto the kerb, my shoes nestled in broken glass. Nothing desperate had been lost. A little money, a few cards in the front pocket, two books. My phone and computer could be replaced. I had backups of all but my latest work.

Thank God he’d got away. I couldn’t even hear his steps anymore. Thank God.

I waited for the adrenaline to subside. I didn’t want to bring rage inside the Chanders’ house.

I no longer had my keys. I didn’t want to chat in answer to the doorbell. It was late for them anyway—they go to bed by nine, usually. The front window was partly open, as usual; the house thermostat against all reason goes by the temperature of the unheated entry hall and so never stops pumping heat into the lounge. I pushed it up the rest of the way and climbed in. I still had on the gloves that Liv had returned to me.

On the next floor up, the girls were in bed. I stepped carefully and slowly, to dull the inevitable creaking of the floor. Their parents were making love, quietly, tactfully, so that the girls wouldn’t know. The door was closed and their sounds were discreet but definite as I went past.

Up another flight. In my room, on my desk, Mrs. Chander had left me a note: Miranda Bailey had phoned this afternoon. It was probably she who had been hung up on by Alexandra as well. She’d probably been behind the unidentified calls I’d got on my mobile earlier. I’d thought they were Liv. I’d made a lot of assumptions today.

I threw a shirt and socks into a bag. I needed only one more thing.

I pulled open the Russian inlaid-wood box Alexandra had given me Christmases ago—but there were only some francs and lire inside, my pre-Euro collection. Where was it? I always kept it in there.

I rifled through my wardrobe drawers, the contents of which were never well folded to begin with because I do my own laundry. I checked the top shelf of the cupboard—knocking down two shoe boxes that then spilled out shoeshine tools and a mini-humidifier. It wasn’t there.

Then I remembered the girls. They’d been through the boxes on my desk, in an innocent, curious way, and had admired it. Aahana said she’d always wanted a great key like it—like something out of
The Count of Monte Cristo
. I’d told her that great keys come with big old houses, and that this wasn’t for her. I remember putting it back inside and closing the lid. Aahana was usually a good child, but apparently not always.

Past the closed bedroom doors, all quiet now, down the carpeted stairs and into the cramped kitchen. The stove-top espresso maker was still full of this morning’s grounds and filled the room with an incense-like sharpness. Through the patio door at the back I could see the girls’ replica Chateau d’If, made of crates and scrap lumber.

The cardboard box making one end of the structure was mouldy and sagging from repeated damp, but the main part of it was grand, if precarious. It also had only a tiny opening, possibly to keep out adults, but mostly, I suspected, to heighten the dramatic prison effect. They were dramatic girls.

I probed with my hand, banging on the outside first to frighten spiders. On a nail inside the entry hung my key.

CHAPTER 5

I
cycled out of town on Barton Road.

I switched off my headlamp where there were streetlights, to conserve the battery for the dark stretches, which were utterly black. The route took me down curvy lanes, past the lit church towers of Haslingfield and Fowlmere, and over the moderately busy A505. The repetition of pedalling dulled my anxiety. I panted in exertion instead of panic. Suddenly the steeply banked single track I was on spilled out into an expensive cluster of new-build homes. There, in the last, weak glint from my weakening bicycle light, was a sign for Dovecote.

I tried to remember it, to calibrate my expectations. I knew the version in my mind, exaggerated over the years, would be less than accurate. Would the driveway stretch as long as it had appeared to me then, would the main house loom as massive and solid? Up till then, my experience with buildings of that size had all been school-related, all shared space. That Dovecote was owned by a single person had thrilled me. I used to fantasise about being one of those boarders whose parents didn’t bring them home for school holidays. I knew it didn’t work this way, but I imagined they got to roam the school grounds, and camp out on their own in the empty classrooms. I wanted to run up and down the stairs, and yell to hear the echo. In my memory of that fantasy, I’m slamming doors. It doesn’t feel angry, it just feels strong. Does everybody want to do that?

Lesley Harter had bought Dovecote to convert it into a hotel. To celebrate her purchase, she’d held a garden party on the grounds, avoiding the interior of the manor house, which had been in need of major renovations. I was nineteen then. I came with my family. I told a story that had happened to me just weeks before:

I’d been accused of stealing a woman’s purse in a crowd. A policeman had detained me but could find no evidence that I was the thief. I’d felt confident of my honesty, and never feared they would take me.

Everyone who heard it laughed. No one ranted on the unfairness of the accusation, because they had all felt it: I was unassailable. No authority would ever believe I had done it. It was a fine adventure—that was all.

But Lesley took me aside and said, seriously, “Nick, you’re a good boy. But if you’re ever in actual trouble, you can always come here. All right? It’s yours if you need it.” She gave me a key to Dovecote. “It may be a mess of reconstruction for the next few years, but it’s a place to go.” Her security code, she said, was the year Hatshepsut became Egypt’s first female pharaoh. I looked up the numbers when I got back to our family house, in a history almanac that had been kept in the bedside table of my old room ever since I was a little boy. I wasn’t surprised that it was still there. It’s amazing to me now what I’d taken for granted.

The sign ahead of me didn’t indicate whether Dovecote had yet become a hotel. For all I knew, Lesley might have sold the place. There could be a conference going on, or a wedding. But I didn’t really think so, just as I didn’t really think Lesley was changed. Lesley, who wasn’t fragile. Lesley, with whom no carefulness was required. I wanted to hold something durable, something that wouldn’t shatter if I dropped it.

I was certain that nothing had altered while I’d been looking the other direction, except that the cars had gone, full of party guests, leaving just a few special people or none. I felt I was nineteen, fresh from the hands of the police. I felt free.

Gates put a stop to my fantasy. Two expanses of chain-link fencing abutted sharp holly hedge on both sides. Pulling on the obstruction did little more than rattle the chain and padlock holding them together. I pressed my face up against the fence: There was a tarp-covered hill to one side, probably earth from digging foundations or a pool; and an incongruous temporary building on the other side of the drive, presumably a site office for builders. But the manor house beyond appeared whole. I know Lesley had planned only interior renovations for it; the more drastic work must be aimed at the outbuildings. I saw no cars. But there—a light in a window!

Richard had once said to me, dead earnest: “Don’t rush.” Meaning, I think, everything. Don’t rush with women, don’t rush away, don’t rush into.

I abandoned my bicycle, threw my bag over the fence, and scrambled to join it, squeezing my hands and feet into the many tight little squares until I was high enough to jump down the other side. I thudded onto the drive and skidded till I rolled backward, gravel digging into my palms.

My new vantage point allowed me to see that the light had been a reflection of the moon off glass. The house was fully black inside.

I tilted my head back and closed my eyes.

Bloody idiot
, I thought. Light rain dotted my jeans. This wasn’t the first grand gesture of my life that had been completely ill-advised.

I remembered the flu I’d had as a child: the closed room, the pulled curtains, the piles of bedclothes on top of me.

We were still in London then. I’d read
The Velveteen Rabbit
, set in the old days of scarlet fever, and had got it into my head that anything I touched while ill would be burned. So I stayed away from all my things. I refused to have any toys or books in the bed with me, which Mum and Marie didn’t understand. I had learned the word “stoic” in my Greek history phase, and applied it.

One night, while a vaporiser puffed damp white air toward the bed where I slept, one of them tucked my cuddly lion next to my head on the pillow. In the morning I woke up nose to nose with it; some of my saliva had dribbled onto its mane. I screamed out loud, over and over again, a “horrible” scream Mum says when she tells this story. I thought I’d killed it, that it would have to be burnt up because it had touched me. I screamed and screamed and wouldn’t touch my mother when she came for me. I’d become convinced in that moment that I could ruin anything. I yelled until she and Marie stayed at the edges of the room, pressed into the walls by my noisy threats. I was the captain of my own ghost ship, and all I could do to save them was to warn them off.

Marie and Mum had looked so shocked at me those years ago. I’d gone suddenly wild, suddenly vicious. Eventually they left the room; otherwise I wouldn’t have calmed down. They didn’t know why I was upset, so they couldn’t explain the truth to me. They called for a doctor to come, which he did, and I let him examine me because, if I didn’t, Mum would have tried to help him. I’d rather he died than she, so I submitted.

It came out to him what I’d been thinking, and he talked me down like a man. It all deflated out of me. I hadn’t been brave, I’d been idiotic. I’d never felt so ashamed in all my life.

Mum sat on my bed but I wouldn’t say anything. She didn’t try to make me talk; she kept smoothing the covers. Eventually she told me about my uncle and how someone dying was the worst thing in the world. She told me that I’d been brave and good to try to protect her, and Marie, and Lion. She thanked me.

She told me I could have anything I wanted for lunch. I asked for a cherry lollipop and a butter sandwich. She offered to tuck my soft toys in with me, but I felt too grown up for that, suddenly. I felt heroic.

There was no one to bring me lollipops here. It was puerile to have come. I got up and readied to re-scale the fence.

My leap back onto it knocked over my bike on the other side. I hung there off the ground, in a staring match with my bike’s headlamp. It wouldn’t have enough charge to get me home. It couldn’t even get me back to the last pub I’d passed. I had to wait for daylight.

I got down off the fence and turned to face the building. It was bigger than I remembered. My memories hadn’t exaggerated; if anything, they’d minimized the length of the drive. By the end of walking it, the door couldn’t shock me. Its immensity was inevitable.

I poked my key at it, but the lock had been changed. It was smaller, for a modern key. This key she’d given me was large and old-fashioned.

The rain intensified into cold stabs against my shoulders and scalp. I shivered and followed the perimeter.

There were two more doors on that part of the house, both with new, small-holed locks. I kept on. The house was massive. I felt like the bricks were multiplying to keep ahead of me. I jogged, half believing I really did have to outrun them. I didn’t slow down until I got ’round the corner.

Around the back at last were the remains of the original house, much older than the impressive, decorative front that had been stuck onto it. This solid block had been adapted into a grand kitchen wing, at least it had been planned to be used that way.

It had its own door, which predated the rest. The key fitted and turned.

The door opened outward. As soon as I swung it toward me, beeping emitted from a box on the inside left wall, echoed by distant beeping elsewhere inside. Really, I didn’t know if the house was occupied or not, and, if so, whether it was still owned by Lesley. I leaned in, not technically entering, to press the glowing green number keys in the order she’d told me five years ago. The noise persisted until I pushed in the largest button, an “enter” rectangle. The beeps cut off, leaving only the loud hum of the now pounding rain. The house must still be Lesley’s. I leaned into the blackness inside, giving a few seconds for a dog or person to come investigate.

When nothing happened, I put my foot onto an old stone block, the step down to the original floor. At first I felt it was a hollow under my foot, smooth from centuries of use, wobbling me. I sought to steady myself with my left leg, planting it down hard, alongside my right. But it too wobbled and then swung out forward. My first foot pushed sideways, sliding behind and under my other leg, stretching them past each other into a horrible right angle.

Cheap plates. Lesley had rigged the one unmodernised door by putting actual dinner plates on the slippery step below it, as a bit of extra homemade security for the old door. Whether this was a Victorian method of security or one of Lesley’s own invention, it had served its purpose.

One plate spun and the other shattered. My right hand plunged down onto another plate, which sent my upper body falling. I ended up lying on the floor along the step, my legs blessedly together again, with a conk on my head from the corner of the stone and a sharp pain in my left ankle.

I lay there for a while, until the cold blowing in from outside and the cold coming up through the stone floor pushed through my daze. I hauled myself up to sitting. Pressure on my left foot caused a starry burst of agony around my ankle.

The weather had gathered itself into a temper. I managed to close the kitchen door by hopping up and out on my right foot. Bringing the door back with me was harder, necessitating a hop back onto the slippery concave stone, which, even empty of plates, was slick. I fell again and this time bashed my hip.

“Shit!” I said out loud. “Bloody hell.”

The thermostat didn’t respond to my nudging, but the heat was at least minimally on, I would guess to keep pipes from freezing. I was sceptical that the tap water was potable, but there were two long-dry glasses in the sink, so I took a chance that I wasn’t the first to drink it. The pantry had a few long-life foods. It was obvious Lesley stayed here only occasionally, probably to monitor progress on the outbuildings or as a pied-à-terre. Telephone service was not yet connected.

My right foot started to swell. It too must have been hurt, but, in comparison to the horrid pain on the left, I hadn’t felt it. I wrapped myself in a coarse blanket folded near the door; it was probably meant as a mat for wiping muddy feet when the place was occupied. I only needed, I was sure, to get through the night.

The utilitarian gates were convincing evidence that Dovecote was not yet finished. The rain would stop and the builders would return. Surely.

The stone floor in the kitchen would only chill me worse, so I crawled out into the hall beyond. I reached up to press the button on the switchplate by the door. A lamp hanging from a bulky chain glowed a sallow yellow in response. I pressed the second button. The room beyond suddenly dazzled—hundreds of pinpoint stars shone from the ceiling onto a wooden table near twenty feet long.

I shuffled into the dining room on my knees, staring up. Even with the enormous table, the room felt vast. There were no chairs yet, no sideboards. Just space. I leaned back against a wood-panelled wall to marvel. Had she put in constellations? Or was the patterning random: space observed from another galaxy entirely?

The door to the hall fell shut,
crack!
My arms flung out in surprise, to steady myself. And my left hand recoiled from a sharp point.

More than a dozen sets of antlers were piled in this corner, some of them huge, and my disturbance sent them toppling toward me. One pair of spirals fell into my lap. They were monstrous up close.

Marks high on the walls showed where they all had once been displayed. Of course Lesley would have taken them down. She’d never tolerate anything along the lines of hunting or taxidermy.

I pushed them away, with a horrible clatter, and backed toward the now-closed door, sliding on my bum. Obviously, I’d nudged the door when I’d entered, that’s all. For some reason I needed to open it again. It seemed important to confirm that the hall was still on the other side of it.