Claustrophobia (24 page)

She was keeping vigil. She considered the German word, the French word, the Italian word for
vigil
. What did people do at a vigil? Pray, she supposed. ‘Vigil', related to vigorous, full of life, she knew that from the root of the word; you could tune out anything if you focused on connections like this … and from vigour to rigour, and then
rigor
… she thought suddenly of Kathleen in the shed turning hard like that, all her soft suppleness in the chill grip of nothingness, stiffening to a
thing
, no longer a person. Empty of life.

A shudder went through Pen's spine, as if her own body would stiffen by association. Outside, something was hooting – a tawny frogmouth, perhaps, uncannily like a human sound.

Then there were voices, real ones, on the doorstep, and Derrick fumbling with the key, so Pen ran forward to unlock the front door.

‘Darling, this is Uwe, Peter, and this is Mrs Barber.'

The boys were tall, gangly, embarrassed but grateful to be there. They had that airport pallor that comes of standing or sitting upright for hours in sealed, air-conditioned halls.

‘Come through,' Pen smiled, ‘I'll make you some supper.'

Derrick went out discreetly to make preparations. Pen sat with the boys in the kitchen while they munched on the little pies and drank Milo, asking them about life in Wuppertal, and what they would do for Christmas.
As normal as possible
.

‘You are lucky here,' Uwe said. ‘Where I come from, if you want to get away, to live simply, there's nowhere to go. Too many people! This is maybe the last place left on earth where you could still find a way. To invent – to reinvent yourself.'

Pen thought, ‘He's sixteen, and already he wants to reinvent himself.'

Peter said, ‘Don't worry about him, he's a
Menschenfeind!
I like the big cities.'

‘You don't like it here so much?' Pen mused.

Peter tried to be polite. ‘Here it's beautiful, that's true, but when I first came, I thought, with all this space, all this emptiness … It makes you so alone with yourself. I thought I would just
zerfallen
, break up, you know?'

‘Disintegrate,' Pen said. She felt as if they could read her mind, see right through her.

The boys laughed. ‘Yes, exactly,' Peter said. ‘And I don't like that feeling.'

‘I do,' said Uwe, laughing and looking conspiratorially at
Pen. Then in a low voice he said, ‘I am glad we got to meet you. We didn't think you were real.'

‘Why on earth not?' Pen was amused.

Uwe looked at Peter. ‘Well, the other boys insisted you used to work at the college. But we did not expect you would be like this.'

Pen said, ‘What do you mean?'

But at that point Derrick stepped back into the kitchen, and Uwe shook his head with a smile. Pen inhaled deeply, pondering.

‘Anyway,' she said, gathering up the mugs, ‘we'd better let you boys get some sleep.'

‘Yes,' said Uwe. ‘We've got a hell journey ahead of us.'

Pen nodded. ‘So have we,' she thought.

Derrick sat upright on the bed to make sure they stayed awake, but it wasn't necessary; Pen couldn't have slept for the world. She lay on top of the sheets in her clothes and stared at the ceiling. They had to keep everything down to a whisper.

Fortunately, the room the boys had bunked down in was easy to close off. After they'd settled, Pen and Derrick crept out to transfer the body the short distance from shed to car.

Spades and torches were already packed. They would bypass the city on the northern side, still largely unlit and quiet at this hour.

Derrick put the car in neutral and let it roll carefully, half walking it down the drive to minimise noise. Pen dragged the wheelie bin to the kerb to give her a feasible story in case the boys did hear something outside. She stumbled on a loose potato, forgotten from the afternoon that already seemed
many lives ago. A dog down the street yapped three times. But nothing else stirred.

It was like an anti-burial. You felt the urge to mark the spot, to place some token of remembrance that would differentiate it as sacred ground. Even when pets died, people did that. Not to acknowledge the site – that was the obscenity. To flatten the earth again and spread over it a covering of dry pine needles, a baffling against the cries of the dead. Pen thought of Rottnest, the outrage of building a holiday resort upon a mass grave. Generations of daytrippers oblivious or indifferent. As walkers or riders might traipse right here, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

There was a strong wind lifting now, and the tops of the pines began to knock together, a ghoulish percussion, like a death march.

‘Let's go,' Derrick said, brushing off his gloved hands and carrying his tools back to the Volvo, parked on a nearby roadside.

En route he said, ‘Pen, there are some more things I need to know, and we'd better discuss them before we get back to the house.'

‘Okay.' She felt passive and calm now, willing to take direction.

‘This woman – Kathleen – is going to be missed pretty quickly. I mean, right on Christmas, you know. It's not going to be long before someone reports …'

He drove smoothly, waiting, but Pen did not know what to say.

‘She must have family?'

Pen shook her head.

‘But there'll be friends, neighbours. Colleagues. Everyone has someone. How strongly – I mean – will people expect you to know where she is? I'm trying to get the lie of the land here. What we're up against.'

Pen adjusted the air vents but still she could hardly breathe.

‘What we're up against,' she said.
We
. It occurred to her now that there was only
we
. There was no Pen apart from Derrick, because Derrick knew all. If he had not loved her, he could have turned her in.

She stared at him now, imprinting his expression on her very retina, like a newborn creature that has to remember in order to survive. If Derrick chose, even for a moment, to let go … She must never, never alienate him. There was no longer anything to hold back. Pen tugged at her collar again; again she could barely breathe.

‘I don't know,' she said finally. ‘She wouldn't be expected back at work till February, when teaching starts again. But as for friends … I never met them, Derrick. She was planning to go to Paris.'

‘To Paris.' Derrick swallowed. ‘On her own?'

‘To stay with some people. But maybe she cancelled, or she would have left by now.'

‘Well, that may work for us, if her neighbours think she was going away. Was she a talker?'

So clear-cut, practical. But you had to keep a level head.

‘She might have said stuff. Though I asked her not to.'

‘You were discreet,' Derrick murmured. ‘Of course you were.'

Pen strained for traces of sarcasm, but there were none. He reached left and squeezed her hand.

‘It's all right, Pen. You don't need to doubt me. I'm the same as I've always been. Except more so.' He laughed. ‘You might as well tell me everything – you can't escape me now, can you?'

Pen wanted to laugh too, but she wasn't sure he was joking.

The orange light of the streetlights flashed every now and then across his ginger beard.

‘Now,' he said, ‘the facts. Who else might know?'

‘There was one woman she mentioned me to, on the phone,' she continued. ‘But I don't know how much – at that stage she didn't know where I lived … There'll be an investigation, won't there? And if Kathleen could track me down, she must have talked … oh, Derrick.'

Derrick clutched her shoulder. ‘Don't panic, Pen. We will get through this, I promise you. You're a capable woman, and you've taught me how to be capable too, over the years. Look how far we've come! And we have a very strong incentive now,' he said, sliding his hand down to rest on her belly. ‘In any case, if they don't find the body they have nothing.'

‘That's a very big if,' Pen whispered, her throat dry.

Derrick smiled. ‘I can handle a big if. And so can you. So long as we pull together.'

His voice was soft and sure. Before long, Pen was drifting into a numb and bobbing sleep, as if in the lightest of boats, a halcyon's nest.

She woke to the smell of pancakes and maple syrup, and the warm cadences of male voices carrying from the kitchen.
She didn't remember getting to bed, but clearly Derrick had matters under control.

She thought, ‘Now I am permanently under his control.'

If she could lie here forever, and not let the day begin …

But it would begin, and it was only a matter of whether you let it crash over you like a king wave, or caught that wave and rode it to safety.

She showered, dressed brightly, as Derrick had suggested, in a loose cotton sundress and slingbacks, and dug Kathleen's handbag reluctantly out of the wardrobe. It must be dumped in a bin somewhere – on the way back from the airport, perhaps. But first she would have to remove any sign of identification.

The bag was clean and tidily arranged inside, as Pen knew it would be. There was a purse with a small amount of cash, a booklet of cards, a chequebook, a comb and a lipstick. The lipstick said Café au lait on the base. Pen wound it up and touched the tip, angled and slightly curved where Kathleen's mouth had taken its stroke. She went to the mirror and watched herself paint a perfect cupid's bow where her own dull mouth had been.

Then she tucked the lipstick into the soft patch pocket of her sundress. Cards and chequebook and comb would be burned; the cash she could drop into one of those airport donation bins. The idea of spending it seemed indecent. But the lipstick she would keep until it was worn down, eaten away. There had to be something she could keep.

The boys were still at breakfast when she came out. Uwe's blue eyes opened wide under his grassy blond fringe. His mouth was shiny with syrup.

‘Mrs Barber,' he exclaimed. ‘You look lovely.'

Pen smiled. ‘Thank you, Uwe. Did you boys sleep okay?'

‘Like a stone,' Peter said.

‘In English,' Pen corrected, ‘we say, like a
log
.'

The boys laughed.

Uwe said, ‘I kept dreaming and then waking. There was an engine, very early – maybe someone goes to work?'

‘Probably the rubbish truck,' Derrick said, catching Pen's glance and pouring her a decaf.

Uwe pulled a chair out for her, and sat gazing as she drank. ‘You will be a beautiful mother,' he said.

Pen blushed. It felt good to have a compliment, but slightly sickly coming from one so young, though he was already taller than Derrick. Uwe was as wide open as a flower, and the way he'd said
beautiful
made her tingle. He was rather beautiful himself, in that girlish stage some boys went through. She averted her gaze, not knowing how to answer.

‘Oi, stop embarrassing her,' Derrick said, ‘or we'll have to pack you off to Wuppertal.' He got up to run the sink, patting Pen gently on the back.

‘Now eat up, darling,' he said, yawning and stretching with satisfaction, ‘and we'll get this show on the road.'

Tracy Ryan was born and grew up in Western Australia as part of a large family. She has taught literature, creative writing and film at various universities in Australia and in England, and worked as a bookseller, editor and translator. She has also lived in Ohio in the USA. Her poetry has won many awards. C
laustrophobia
is her fifth work of fiction.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Barry and Penelope at Transit Lounge, and also to Van, Nathan, Glen and of course John.