The Invisible Ones (37 page)

“Good. Yeah. I wondered if we could meet?”

A pause.

“For what?”

“For what? Well, I, um, there are some more questions I’d like to ask you.” “Oh.”

Is she disappointed? She doesn’t say anything else.

“I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Ivo?”

“No.”

“And Christo? Any news about him?”

She sighs, unmistakeably this time.

“It’s complicated. I mean, he’s all right . . . He’s fine. Just, well. I can tell you when we meet.”

“Okay.”

My heart, afterward, is beating like a sprinter’s. I have to make an effort not to pour myself a drink. Don’t fall apart, I admonish myself. Not now.

Those boats, the rowing boats at the lake, they’ve stuck in my mind ever since. I so wanted to get in one and row away. The color of the varnish, the sound and suck of water. And the names: amy—to carry two. isobel—to carry four. So capable. So generous.

Ray—to carry one. And barely, at that.

. . .

Since I still can’t drive, she comes to the pub at the end of my road. From the window—I am early, of course—you can see the trains trundling over the bridge with their work-worn cargo. The light has started to fail again; even as summer has finally, tardily, arrived, the light is fading.

Lulu arrives silently and slips into the chair beside me.

“I have some news for you,” I say.

Her eyes widen in alarm.

“It’s good news. We’ve found Rose.”

“Oh my God . . . ! And she’s—all right . . . ? Really?”

“Right as rain.”

“Oh!” Lulu digests this. “So the body, at the Black Patch . . . That was nothing to do with Ivo?”

There is a great ebbing of tension from her body.

“Well, whoever it is, it isn’t Rose Wood.”

“A happy ending . . .” She raises her glass with a smile. “Shouldn’t we be drinking a toast?”

“Not yet.”

Her face falters. “No. It’s not the end, is it? Because of what happened to you—and Ivo’s still gone.”

“Yes. There’s that.”

“Do you still think he hurt you on purpose? Why—if he had nothing to cover up? If he didn’t have anything to do with Rose?”

She lights a cigarette and takes a sip of her Bacardi and Coke. She seems nervous again; she knocks the glass against her teeth, spills a little, dabs her fingers to her lips while looking at the table.

“But it could be anybody. Someone completely unrelated. Don’t they know who?”

“Not yet. Ivo was scared. If it was unrelated, why poison me?”

“You’re . . . assuming he did it on purpose.”

“If he didn’t, why disappear? Why abandon Christo?”

She stares out the window and shakes her head; she looks worried.

“What did you want to ask me?”

Her voice is very low.

“Ivo stayed with you the night we had dinner, didn’t he?”

Lulu looks down but says nothing.

“I just wondered . . .”

“But you told him, anyway, didn’t you? You promised you would. That’s what you said . . . ?”

So she did tell him.

She goes on without looking up. “I was so angry. With him—and with you. It just came out. I’m sorry. I knew I shouldn’t have told him. I was so worried. I thought it was my fault—your being ill . . .”

The hand that holds her glass is shaking. I want to put my arms around her. I imagine putting my arms around her.

“None of it was your fault. I shouldn’t have put you in that position.”

Ivo knew. I have proof.

“How did he react when you told him?”

“Oh, well, he . . .” She lets out a deep breath. “Didn’t really. Didn’t look at me. I had to say, ‘Did you hear me?’ and he just went ‘Yeah, so?’ In that tone of voice he has. You know. But . . . why does it matter? She’s all right.”

“The body at the Black Patch belongs to somebody.”

“Yes, but . . .”

“Could it be Christina?”

“Christina?” She almost smiles, looking at me in disbelief. “She died years ago. You’re not suggesting it’s her! That’s ridiculous.”

“No one has told me when she died, exactly.”

Lulu sighs and purses her lips. The frown is back between her eyebrows.

“It was years ago. She was seventeen, so . . . twelve years ago. Twelve years! Besides, she died in France. It couldn’t possibly be her in the Black Patch.”

“Where in France?”

“I don’t know exactly. It was when they went to Lourdes.”

“Did you go to the funeral?”

“There wasn’t one.”

“There wasn’t one? That’s a bit . . . odd, isn’t it?”

“It was . . . abroad, wasn’t it?”

She swallows. Shifts uneasily in her seat.

“You know. They couldn’t bring her home themselves. And arranging for something like that . . . Maybe the expense . . . I don’t know. It didn’t seem odd. It wasn’t odd.”

“So she died twelve years ago.”

“Yes!”

“When did you last see her?”

“God . . .” She looks down. “A couple of years before it happened.”

“It must have been terrible when she died—on top of everything else.” “Yeah.”

“Do you know who was there when she died?”

“Tene, I suppose. And Ivo must have been there. That was after Marta died. Are you accusing them of killing her, now?”

“No. Just . . . trying to get things clear.”

I sip my beer, left-handed. Lulu falls silent; she lights another cigarette, angry. A train rattles over the bridge, half empty now: diehards who have stayed late at work.

Tene and Ivo. Ivo and Tene. The two of them, the only witnesses to a number of strange and tragic events. Any number of deaths, the specter trailing after them like a black dog, a wolf in the shadows. But Ivo was just a sickly boy . . . Cursed, perhaps, as Tene said.

“How’s your hand now?”

Lulu is looking at my—still—nearly useless right hand, tucked beside me. I lift it and waggle it in front of her.

“It’s okay. It’s getting better.”

I flex the fingers with difficulty. They move slowly, like the limbs of some languid underwater creature.

“Can you feel anything with it?”

“Not very much.”

“You have to be careful not to burn it.”

“Yeah. They kept on about that at the hospital.”

“That’s because it’s easy to forget.”

Of course, she’s a pro at this. I think of David. How much can he feel? She’s the one who has to be careful of him. She looks at my hand but doesn’t touch it. I wonder if she’s thinking of him, too.

I find myself telling her about my former ward mate, Mike, and his gangrenous feet. Wondering how he’s getting on now. Almost as though we’d finished with the messy family business of the Jankos, and could talk about normal things, like normal people. Except, as she said herself, it isn’t the end.

“There’s something else I have to tell you.” I clear my throat, awkward. “When we talked to Rose, it . . . um, it turns out that Rose isn’t Christo’s mother.”

Lulu stares at me.

“What?”

“She isn’t his mother.”

“Of course she is!”

Lulu smiles, trying to see the joke. Then she stops smiling.

“What do you mean? That’s crazy.”

“Rose said her marriage to Ivo was unconsummated. Rose had no child, either then or later.”

Lulu stares at me accusingly. For holding this back. For making her feel sympathy for me first.

“Is that what she told you?”

“Yes.”

“She’s lying!”

I shake my head.

“How do you know she’s not?”

I take a deep breath.

“We didn’t. So we checked. Rose remarried less than a year after her marriage to Ivo. She left him in February of ’79.”

“No! It was 1980. In the winter . . .”

“She married her current husband on August the thirtieth of the same year—1979. Christo was born seven weeks later.”

Lulu’s eyes are huge; the skin seems to be cracking around them. Her lips are dry.

“That can’t be right! No.”

“That’s what I thought, so I checked and double-checked. It is right. Christo was born in October of ’79, right?”

Unwillingly, she nods.

“I’ve spoken to people who were at the wedding, in August ’79. I’ve seen wedding photos. There is no doubt. She can’t be Christo’s mother.”

She looks so lost that I wish I was wrong. I wish I could take it back. But I can’t.

“I’m sorry, but I have to ask: do you know who is Christo’s mother?”

She turns her eyes to me. Anger, disbelief, betrayal.

“I’m so sorry about all this, Lulu. I wish . . .”

Her head shakes slightly, more a tremor than an act of negation. An explosion of air escapes her throat. She puts her drink carefully down and puts her face in her hands.

“I’ll get you another drink.”

“No! I have to go.”

The savagery in her voice makes me look away. When I look back, she is looking out over her fingers. She pulls her spine straight again with an effort.

“When Tene had his accident, and I saw them again, in December ’79, Ivo said she was long gone—I thought he meant weeks.”

“It didn’t occur to me, either. It should have—that there was a whole year missing.”

“So who was it, then? You think whoever it is . . . is in the Black Patch?” She whispers it.

“I don’t know.”

Lulu excuses herself to go to the ladies’ room, taking her sack of secrets with her. I stare at the low table in front of us, the ashtray half full of
lipstick-stained fag ends, the ring-marked beer mats. Her black jacket is still crumpled over the back of her chair, its cheap satin lining creased and warm from her body. I can’t bear it. Every time I see her, we are hijacked by the drama of the Jankos. I have to tell her things that cause her pain. But there is something, some thing—thin, delicate, stretched almost to the breaking point—between us. I am almost sure of it. But what can I do?

On impulse, before she comes back, I pick up her glass, with its delicate red wax print, and drain it of the sweet ice melt. The scent of rum vanishingly faint. Just so that I can press my mouth to the ghost of hers.

49.

Ray

Tene Janko is greatly changed. He seems small, his skin grayer, thinner, as though he hasn’t seen the sun since my last visit. I can’t believe my first impression was of a large man.

“I have come because I owe you an apology,” I start.

Tene looks up at me and waves for me to sit down.

“How are you? Are you all right, Mr. Janko?”

He shrugs. “I’m well enough.”

“I have to tell you something. I would like to tell your son as well, but, well . . . We have found Rose Wood.”

“I told you,” he says, quietly.

“Yes . . . you did. And so my—implying that Ivo had something to do with her disappearance was wrong. I apologize, to you and to him. I’m very sorry for the distress I’ve caused you.”

Tene seems to be staring down at the table. I wonder if he has taken in what I said. Why there isn’t more of a reaction—more self-righteousness, more anger . . . more something. Then he says, “Have you seen her?”

“Yes. We saw her and talked to her. She told us how she had run away from . . . her marriage to Ivo. She said that you helped her. She was grateful for that.”

I watch him. His face reveals nothing, staring down at the floor.

“Well, then. It’s over.”

“Not quite. Finding her poses more questions than it answers, as you must know.”

“What do you mean?”

His voice is neutral.

“She said that she never had a child.”

Tene nods eventually—a minute movement, slow.

“It’s as I thought. She could not accept what had happened. It was too much for her.”

“No. She can’t have children. Never could. She is not Christo’s mother.”

I tell him about the dates. The wedding photograph. The witnesses. His eyes are downcast—I can’t see his expression.

“Your accident took place in December 1979. Rose didn’t leave Ivo weeks after Christo was born but many months before. A whole year had passed. She is not his mother.”

He makes no movement. There is no sign, even of comprehension.

“So who is?”

No reply.

“Why did you and Ivo tell people that it was Rose?”

“Because she is his mother. I do not understand why you say these things.”

I ride a surge of impatience.

“Mr. Janko, I know that that is impossible! Are you listening to me? What happened in that year? Did Ivo have a girlfriend? What happened to her? Where is she now?”

I am failing to keep my voice calm. I am leaning toward him, my face aggressively close to his.

“Why are you keeping his secrets?”

Tene lifts his head a little, but his gaze travels past mine, out through the window and beyond.

“She is the boy’s mother.”

I count to ten. My fist is balled on my thigh.

“Mr. Janko, I know you know! And in case you’ve forgotten, the police are investigating the body that they have found at the Black Patch. They will identify it. They know that Ivo has disappeared, and they know what happened to me. If you are hiding something . . . If you are protecting him—”

“Mr. Lovell, I am not protecting my son. He’s beyond my protection. I can only tell you what I remember . . .”

He drifts off; his eyes stare at atoms of air in front of him. My leg flickers with irritation.

“I can’t force you to talk, but the police may not be so accommodating.”

He never says what he remembers. Not only does he not speak, he does not move. Even his breathing is imperceptible. He seems to have receded from here, to far within himself. The hyperactive tick-tock of the gilt clock fills the trailer. It’s maddening, hastening to remind me of all the time that is wasted, gone. That we are hurtling toward the end. I begin to get alarmed.

“Mr. Janko . . . Mr. Janko? Are you all right? Mr. Janko . . .”

Tentatively, my anger draining away, I put my hand on his shoulder. I shake him.

“Tene . . . Can you hear me? Tene! Please . . . Can you hear me!”

I don’t know that he’s not using some desperate ploy to avoid answering, but he is like a statue.

I am on my feet, rush outside and hammer on the doors of the other trailers. And soon Sandra, JJ, and Kath are in Tene’s trailer with him, and I am squeezed out, like toothpaste from a tube, out into the sunshine. I stride from one end of the site to the other. I don’t know whether to be angrier with Tene or with myself. That he is a good actor I don’t doubt, but I was clumsy. Bad timing. Not a mistake, in this profession, that you can go back and rectify. Or am I guilty of worse than that?