The Invisible Ones (16 page)

“Been thinking,” he says, “you should meet Ivo, maybe, after all.”

It’s Tene Janko. He has got someone to drive him to a phone box. He has thought about this.

“Yes. Good. Where is he?”

None of my inquiries have turned up his whereabouts. I was beginning to think him as elusive as his former wife.

“He’ll be with us. Tomorrow. If you want to come over.”

“Same place?”

“Same place.”

“I’ll be there at about . . . eleven?”

I put the phone down.

“Why’s he phoning me now?”

“Because he knows you’re getting suspicious?”

“They’re getting their stories straight.”

“You want me to come?”

I shake my head.

“Softly, softly.”

I wonder about Lulu Janko—has she been talking to her brother again?

It might have been during lunch that the mad, bad idea came into my head. Hen’s gentle pokes about my mystery date this evening—of course, I have none—and the wine I drank joined forces in a decidedly unhealthy way. My father used to say—or anyway, said at least once, in a rare moment when he wasn’t shouting at the television—“Find out what you’re good at, and do it.”

All right, I thought, over the half bottle of burgundy (Hen drank water) and the carpetbagger’s steak he insisted on standing me as a birthday present. All right, I will.

So here I am, hours later, doing what I’m good at outside a house in Richmond. It’s a large house, with elegant proportions over four stories and a wrought-iron balcony spanning the first floor. Floor-to-ceiling windows are swagged with heavy curtains. The front garden is a discreet jungle of evergreens.

Initially, I sat in my car with a telephoto lens, but the drive is too long and curving, the shrubbery too thick for the envious gaze of oiks like me to penetrate. So I wait until dusk, then slip into the shadowy driveway and melt into the darkness of the bushes—great, overgrown, welcoming rhododendrons and camellias. The dark indigo is seeping out of the sky, and I’m a dark denim shadow in the shadows. Between dog and wolf. Which am I?

All the lights seem to be on on the ground floor. Upstairs—most of the house—is in darkness. I have to work my way through thick jungle to the back of the house, to where a pair of tall, uncurtained windows spill
light across an unkempt lawn and more of the funereal bushes. Despite its size, it feels like a garden that no one ever goes into or thinks about. Well, I reason with myself, it belongs to someone old and infirm. Someone who both needs a private carer and can afford to pay for it.

I followed Lulu Janko from her house. Waited until she left and drove over here, following her tinny little beige Fiat with its handily broken brake light. She parked on the quiet street among the Volvos and Audis and Range Rovers and let herself into the house with her own key. I didn’t see another thing until I sneaked into the back garden. Then this is what I see:

Lulu pushes a wheelchair in through the door and parks it near the fireplace. From the warm and mobile light, there seems to be a fire going, even though it’s not cold. Inside, it must be boiling. The first surprise is that the man in the wheelchair is quite young. Probably younger than me, and undeniably handsome—he has longish dark hair brushed back off a thin, fine-featured, aquiline face. Aristocratic-looking is what comes to mind, although it could be the surroundings that make me think that. His mouth opens and shuts like hers as they talk. From her body language, they seem comfortable with each other, like they’ve known each other for a long time, which may indeed be the case.

I inch forward through the damp shrubbery so that I can see more of the room. Lulu looks intently toward the window for a moment that makes my heart skip a beat, even though I know I’m completely hidden in the rhododendron thicket. They seem to be discussing whether to draw the curtains or not. After a moment’s hesitation, she doesn’t. Then she goes out, leaving him staring into the fireplace.

Why do I hate this man? He deserves my pity. Although his mouth moves and his head turns from side to side, nothing else does: he is paralyzed from the neck down. He’s helpless.

Lulu comes back in with a tray, which she puts down on a small table. She picks up a kind of baby’s feeding cup and offers it to the wheelchair man. Did she help her brother Tene when he was first in his wheelchair— is that how she got into this line of work?

Then the door opens and a well-groomed, impressive-looking elderly woman looks in. She’s instantly recognizable as the wheelchair man’s mother—they have the same face, down to the thin, pointed nose and arching eyebrows. They speak for a minute—everyone smiling and laughing away—and then she goes out. They all seem as happy as anything—I can’t see why. For a moment I am not concentrating as I try to figure out the elderly woman’s movements. I think I hear the front door close— that makes sense—the paid help is here, so Mummy gets to go out for a well-earned break—sherry, bridge, governing the local school, that sort of thing. I hold my breath in case she decides to come into the garden, but, of course, she doesn’t.

Lulu holds the feeding cup for her charge. She’s smiling—they keep breaking off to say something. I can see only half of his face, as Lulu is between us. Suddenly he jerks his head away from the cup and a trickle of brown liquid runs down his chin. He smiles, obviously embarrassed, and she leans forward to wipe it away. But instead of scuffling for a cloth— for, in fact, the cloth that lies on the tray by her side, as you might expect, she does it with her finger. Just her finger. He smiles again. What expression is on her face, I am unable to say.

Then she lifts the cup to his lips again and tips it up for him to drink. Somehow, annoyingly, the same thing happens again. I find myself holding my breath, anxious for her, thinking, How clumsy: this time he’s going to be impatient with her—angry, even. The trickle of liquid runs down his chin and down his neck, heading toward his shirt collar. He seems to be staring at her, but she doesn’t rush to wipe it off. It’s very odd. Then I’m not even sure what I see; she seems to lean toward him and—it looks like, although I can’t be absolutely sure of this—it looks like she licks the trickle of liquid off his neck and chin. It happens so quickly, I think I must have imagined it. Because how could that be the case?

The next moment she is back in her chair and all seems normal. Then I see why—the sitting-room door opens again, and the elderly woman pops her head around it. She seems to be laughing—perhaps she has forgotten something. Lulu and wheelchair man laugh, too. Happy people,
these three. Hilarious. The mother goes out once more. This time Lulu gets up and goes out through the door, too, leaving him alone. I stare at him—who is this guy? What the hell kind of sick setup is this? Does he have some sort of hold over her that means he can force her to do these things? Demeaning her. Lulu comes back into the room and closes the door, a smile on her face. Saying something. Then she moves the tray and feeding cup and cloth and all onto the table by the door, and moves his chair a little nearer to the fire. She bends down to put on the wheelchair brake, and almost in the same movement, swings her leg over to sit on his lap, facing him. He moves his head back as far as it will go. I stare at the knobs of spine that are visible through her T-shirt, at her red high-heeled shoes: they are the same ones—the ones she wore when she met me. I see the scuff marks on the soles, the glint of nails where she’s had them reheeled. She must really like those shoes. She wriggles herself a little closer to his body—he can do nothing other than sit there, of course— and bends her head to kiss him.

As far as I can tell—from my experience of this sort of thing—he kisses her back. There is nothing wrong with his head, after all.

I find I am breathing hard, mashing a handful of leaves to a slippery, sharp-smelling pulp. I feel sick. Hot. Ashamed. This wasn’t what I came for. This wasn’t supposed to be like this.

What was it supposed to be like, Ray?

When two people are sitting in the same wheelchair, everyone else should leave. And so I do.

I don’t wait to find out when she leaves the house in Richmond. I drive away with a petulant squeal of tires. The squealing says, I don’t give a fuck. I don’t know why I came. I’m not interested. I’m just trying to fool myself into thinking I’m getting over Jen. I even go and pick someone who looks a little like her, for Christ’s sake. Stupid. I wasn’t even thinking. Stupid.

Back at home, I sit in the front room in the dark, rocking in my chair, vodka and tonic in my hand, clinging to the edge of the abyss, staring through the ash leaves at the railway tracks that run along and over the
main road. Toylike trains bundle slowly over the bridge, hypnotizing me: brakes hissing and clanking, wheels rattling over the points, the train windows like frames of a film running sideways, snapshots of humans being carried home to their loved and loving ones, not caring that I’m out there in the dark as they rattle past.

Maybe some of them are going home to dark houses where no one waits. Some of those people doing the crossword or staring sightlessly at the night might also be imperceptibly desperate; bored faces concealing a tangle of hopeless wreckage. After all, what could be more common than a failed marriage? What could be more mundane?

Is ten years the most you can ever hope for?

Happy birthday, Ray.

20.

JJ

I’ve got to go and see the headmaster. Mr. Stewart didn’t say what it was about, but I’ve got a fair idea. All the teachers have been banging on about O levels recently, and I had this feeling I’d be hauled in before too long.

Mr. McDonagh—our headmaster—isn’t too bad. He looks up and smiles at me when I slip in through the door.

“Well, James, come in. Sit down.”

It always feels weird when anyone calls me James. I wonder who the hell they’re talking to.

“It has been brought to my attention that your attendance has been rather patchy this year.”

Oh.

“James, have you had any problems at home recently?”

“No.”

“It’s just that you’ve always done so well with coming to school.”

. . . for a Gypsy, he doesn’t say, but I know that’s what he’s thinking.

“So I wondered if anything has changed with your circumstances?”

I shrug. I don’t want Mum to get into trouble. She probably already is in trouble.

“No. It’s just . . . sometimes, when Mum’s working . . . I can’t get a lift in. It’s miles to the bus stop.”

That sounded all wrong. Like I’m blaming her, and it’s not her fault.

“Right. Where are you living now?”

The question I always dread. I think he thinks we’re on the council site near the new supermarket. As far as I can remember. Somewhere that has its own bus stop. But we haven’t been there for months and months.

“Backs Lane.” I mumble the lie eventually. But McDonagh doesn’t look suspicious or even very interested.

“It’s not that I want to pry, James. You have a very reasonable chance of getting some qualifications, and I don’t want anything to take that chance away from you. I want to help.”

How is he going to help me? By giving me a lift to school every morning? Don’t think so.

“I’ll make sure I get a lift,” I say, which sounds a bit stupid.

“Yes? Because we can arrange help with that sort of thing, you know, if there’s a . . . problem.”

“Thanks. It’s okay.”

“And what about homework? Do you have somewhere quiet where you can study?”

I nod vigorously.

“Because you know you’re always welcome to stay behind after classes and work in the library if you need some peace and quiet.”

“No, it’s fine . . . It’s . . .”

Since it’s just Mum and me, quiet is not a problem. Much better where we are now than on the council site, where you look out the window and you’re practically in the bedroom of the trailer next door. And you can hear everything that goes on. I mean everything.

“If there’s anything else you need, you know you can always come to me, or one of your teachers. We have high hopes for you, James.”

He smiles in a sincere but slightly sickly way. I hope this is nearly over.

“Thanks, Mr. McDonagh,” I mumble.

“So do you think you can improve on your attendance?”

“Yeah.”

“You have a lot of promise, you know. Mrs. Casanada has spoken very highly of your English. If all goes well, we could be talking A levels.”

He says “A levels” like it’s the punch line to a really good joke.
Ta-dah.

I nod like an idiot, not knowing what else to say.

“Well, all right. Thank you for coming to see me, James.”

He always says thank you, like he didn’t just order you to come and see him. (Does this make him a nicer person? I don’t know.) I say thank you, too. We have a big reputation for good manners in our school. It’s the main reason Mum was so pleased I got in.

Somehow it’s already half past four, and the last lesson finished some time ago. It’s raining. It seems to have rained nonstop since the beginning of spring, and now it’s June. The papers keep going on about how it’s a record or something. Gran is supposed to come and get me today, but there’s no sign of any of our cars. I sit on the wall outside the school gate. There’s a tiny bit of shelter from the trees on the edge of the playing field, so I try to get under that, but it doesn’t make much difference—the wind seems to blow the rain under the leaves and straight at me. I close my eyes and pretend that it’s not raining, and when that doesn’t work, I try to imagine the rain is warm, like the showers at the swimming pool, which keep running as long as you keep hitting the button. Brilliant. When I live in France I’ll have one of those showers. And it’ll always be warmer than this, anyway. Even though it’s June, the rain is bloody cold. My hair is wet, and water keeps running down my neck, which is not a nice feeling. Then I remember what some people at school have been talking about: that rain is killer rain. That it’s full of poison because of that explosion in Russia, and it will give you cancer. If that’s true, it’s probably too late for me already. It doesn’t seem any different from normal rain, though. It tastes the same—of nothing. I start to imagine getting cancer and dying. Would Stella come to my funeral? Would she cry?