The One I Was (19 page)

Eventually I slept again. But the devil figure turned into a different monster with a smooth, handsome face like Cathal’s. I could have sworn that he had descended to the basement to mock me, but my head was still resting against the basement door leading into the hallway and I knew he could not have come in without standing on me. Granny came to
me as well, briefly, and told me I shouldn’t have unlocked the door, but I didn’t understand what she meant.

I heard the devil or the monster moving around in the storage room, but as long as I didn’t wake up properly to look at him he couldn’t harm me.

When the putty-coloured dawn finally broke I woke properly, my neck aching. Nobody came to help me. Mum couldn’t have known what was happening. Or if she did, she was somehow powerless to help: I didn’t like to think about what Cathal must have done to her to prevent her from coming down and letting me out. At some point in the morning I thought I heard voices above me in the entrance hall, but couldn’t make out whom they belonged to. Wheels scrunched over the snow-topped gravel in the drive. Not a car, something smaller and lighter, a bicycle? Footsteps ran after it, followed by shouting. A brief silence, then an engine turned over and a car swooshed through the snow. I hoped someone would come for me then, but nobody came near the cellar door.

I found an old bucket in the scullery and peed into it when I couldn’t hold off any longer. The cold crept up the stone floor and into my bones. I put on a pair of boots I found a chest, lined with sheepskin but chewed by mice. Probably Granny’s old flying boots from the war.

A sudden yellow light made me blink. A tall shape stood in the bright rectangle where the closed door had been. I quivered in front of his pale gaze. He smiled at me. I knew I must look small, grubby, defeated.

‘Had time to think, have we?’

I said nothing. My mouth felt dry and my legs hurt as I tried to stand up. I lurched against the wall.

‘Didn’t your mother tell you lying was wrong, Rosie?’ His voice was gentle. ‘Perhaps she doesn’t really know that herself.’

‘Where is my mother?’

He hesitated. ‘Sleeping.’

‘What have you done to her?’

‘She needed to rest.’

‘You’re lying.’ I tried to wriggle away from him as he took me by the shoulders.

‘Your mother’s not really one for discipline, is she? But someone has to take responsibility. Sometimes that means punishing a child. For its own sake.’

‘You’re not my father,’ I said. ‘You’ve got no right to punish me. We don’t want you here.’

He took one hand off my shoulders to open the kitchen door.

I eyed the expanse of hallway leading to the front door, wondering if I had enough strength to sprint there while he was distracted. I pulled away from him. But not quickly enough. He swung round and yanked me by the hair. ‘Don’t make me furious, Rosie. I’m trying so hard to be patient.’

22

I trembled where I stood now, a woman of forty remembering the scared child she’d once been. Forcing self-control on myself, I peered around the storage room again. Surely this was fruitless? Someone would long ago have cleared out all the drawers and cupboards.

I pulled out the top drawer of a tallboy. It squeaked as it opened and I could only see a few inches inside because the chest was so closely placed against a wardrobe. A dark, squashed leather object met my gaze, smelling of old leather. I tugged it out. Some of the leather had perished or been the victim of mice. Letters were embossed onto the surface, worn away now so that I could only make out an O, D and N . An old bag? No, a ball. Nothing else in the drawer. I replaced the ball.

I opened a second, third and subsequent drawers, then turned to the two drawers at the bottom of an oak wardrobe, again finding nothing. Examinations of a bureau and bedside table yielded nothing except a screwed-up piece of lined paper with faded pencil writing on it that I couldn’t read. By now my hands were covered in a film of dust. I shut the bedside table drawer and the handle came off in my fingers, taking precious minutes to replace.

This was insanity. Andrew was right. If Benny had found an envelope addressed to what was obviously a professional firm of some kind he would have passed it on. I already knew him well enough from sitting by his bed to be sure that he wouldn’t have thrown the letter away or left it in the drawer. He’d talked to me of his work as a journalist, of the notebooks he’d kept, of how he’d eagerly welcomed computers as an efficient way to file notes and maintain databases of contacts. He was a meticulous person, Benny.

My patient, Benny. Alone upstairs.

I blew the dust off my hands. I hadn’t needed to come down into this basement at all, but at least I had faced my old fears. Perhaps that was why I’d needed to come back to the house.

Time to return to Benny. It was almost a relief to know that I wasn’t going to look any further for the letter. I’d text James, tell him he’d been right about the futility of my mission. I would concentrate on being the best nurse and companion to Benny I could be.

The telephone rang upstairs. I was locking the cellar door when Sarah came out of the kitchen. I hadn’t heard her footsteps. A quick glance at her told me why: her black cashmere coat was covered in snow; it would have muffled the sound of her feet across the garden.

‘Just checking none of Benny’s washing needed to go into the dryer,’ I told her.

The phone rang again and I followed her into the kitchen.

Another of Benny’s friends. ‘Keep in touch,’ she said to whoever was calling. ‘I’ll tell him to call you on his mobile. He loves hearing from you.’

‘So many calls.’ She replaced the phone on its holder. ‘So many people wanting to know how he is, wanting to send him books or magazines. This weather makes it so hard.’

She looked out of the window. ‘I hope Benny’s friends can get here safely. That snow’s settling now.’

‘It’s certainly cold enough.’

‘I’ll have to find someone to clear the drive and paths.’ She reached for the pad she kept by the telephone and wrote a note to herself. ‘It was like an ice-rink out there last year. If we had an emergency it would be impossible for them to get up here.’

‘I’d better go up to Benny now,’ I said. ‘Get him ready for his guests.’

She finished her note and nodded at me. I thought I could make out traces of curiosity in her well-groomed features. Perhaps she guessed that I’d been nosy, snooping down in the basement.

I opened Benny’s door gently. He was dozing in his chair. I removed the laptop from his lap and placed it on the dressing table. The screen had gone into sleep mode. I covered him with a blanket. Beside him on the floor lay a large album of press cuttings. I put it on the dressing table. He’d been looking at some of the articles he’d written years ago, at what must have been the very beginning of his journalistic career. A short piece on a spate of burglaries in Kingston upon Thames. A longer article on a spaniel that had saved a family in New Malden, Surrey, from burning to death in a house fire. I turned the pages. By the late fifties and early sixties he’d been writing longer pieces for local and regional papers. After that he’d moved to the nationals. I scanned a report on the Six-Day War for
The Times
before closing the album.

I could tell by looking at him that his sleep was troubled, dreams buffeting him. The doctor had changed his drugs. I checked the notes again to make sure I knew exactly what I was to dispense from now on.

He stirred in his sleep. Muttered something. I moved closer to hear.

‘… shouldn’t be on the train. Someone else. Don’t tell Vati.’

Vati was German for Daddy, I remembered. Why wouldn’t he want his father to know he was on a train? I reminded myself that dreams seldom make much sense.

He said something about some little children who seemed to be in the carriage with him. Of course. In his dream it was 1939 and he was trying to leave Germany, but he seemed so worried, so unsure he should be there.

‘Take someone else,’ he muttered again. ‘Hurry up. It’s almost too late. Here are the travel papers. And hide the vase. It was Rudi.’ And with that he opened his eyes and looked
round the room and then at me, appearing to relax as he woke up properly. I watched as he shook away the dreams and the sophisticated persona of Benny Gault slipped back into place.

‘Hello, Benny.’ I poured him some water and handed it to him. His mouth was always dry when he woke. ‘You’ve been dreaming,’ I told him. ‘About travel papers and trains.’ A guarded look came over his face.

‘What did I say?’

‘You told someone to hurry up. Something about a vase? And you mentioned your father. And someone called Rudi.’

At the mention of the name his eyes widened. Who was Rudi? A friend? A brother? I didn’t like to ask. So many of Benny’s close childhood circle must have perished. I remembered what Sarah had told me about Benny’s avoidance of the subject.

‘What nonsense goes through my mind while I’m asleep.’ He grinned. ‘Could you help me get freshened up and dressed?’

When he was ready and I’d tidied his room I went back down to the kitchen. I knew I had aroused suspicions in Sarah’s mind and I was determined to quell them.

She had cleared the kitchen of baking ingredients and trays. We ate at the table, the air fragrant with the scent of Christmas. I felt a faint thrill; it had been years since I’d been excited by the arrival of the feast, but the smell of the mince pies drew me back to an earlier, more innocent age. I remembered Granny making Christmas food for us: boiling up puddings, stirring up cakes. My mother had loved Christmas too and passed on the affection to me. But I would have no child to whom I could transmit the old traditions of baking and decorating. My hand went to my lower abdomen.

‘Just in time to sample this.’ Sarah took a freshly baked mince pie off a cooler and placed one on a plate for me. Her face was as friendly as ever as she added a dollop of double cream. The pastry dissolved on my tongue and the fruit filling was rich and moist. I praised
it. ‘Not long till Christmas now,’ she said. ‘I just hope he can hang on. On the other hand, I don’t want him to feel that he has to be here for Christmas. Not if it’s too …’ She turned her back for a moment. ‘Sorry. I’ve known him a long time. I was with them when his wife Lisa grew ill and died, and now this.’

My self-pity dissolved.

‘He might make Christmas,’ I said. ‘Let’s tempt him with one of your pies later, get him into the festive spirit.’ Perhaps he wouldn’t manage a whole one, but a little bit of the melting pastry and luscious filling might be irresistible, even to a man as sick as Benny.

Hope flickered in her eyes.

‘And you should try and rest during the day,’ I said gently. ‘The nights will start to become more demanding.’ Last night Sarah and I had operated a rota: one of us on until midnight, the other taking over until six in the morning, sitting in the armchair beside Benny’s bed, dozing while he slept, waking when he woke.

I looked around this expensively furnished kitchen, with its stainless-steel appliances and the oak unit doors. I remembered the mismatched pieces of furniture in here in Granny’s time. Mismatched, but beautiful and kept spotless by Smithy. Granny hadn’t had to cook as a young woman. Even Smithy wouldn’t have been expected to cook when she’d started working here in the pre-war years: it hadn’t been her job. They’d both had to learn how to exist in the new world.

Thinking of old family history made me think of Benny and his bad dreams. Not surprising, given had happened in Germany just before his departure. Kristallnacht, when the Nazis had set synagogues on fire and smashed the windows of Jewish businesses, must have been only a month or so earlier.

‘The last weeks in Germany must have been a time of great panic,’ I said. ‘He dreams about it, doesn’t he?’

‘It might be the drugs,’ Sarah said. ‘But God knows, he had plenty to be panicked about in Germany. He rarely talks about that time.’ She picked up an orange from the bowl on the worktop and started grating its zest onto a plate.

I made a note to myself to talk to the doctor about the morphine.

‘Who’s Rudi?’ I asked. ‘Did Benny have brothers and sisters? It must have been awful for him to leave people behind.’

She looked surprised. ‘He was an only child. He’s never mentioned a Rudi.’

Sarah yawned. ‘I might lie down with my book for half an hour when Benny’s guests have arrived. I love the preparations for Christmas, but they take it out of me.’

‘You’ve been working hard,’ I said. ‘And not getting as much sleep as you should.’

‘I like to make a bit of a splash. And there’s not long to go now.’ For a moment she looked like a small, excited girl. The doubt I’d seen in her expression when she’d caught me coming up from the basement had gone now.

I wondered who would come to Fairfleet to share Christmas Day with them. I’d probably be here. James was spending the holiday with his daughter, Catherine. So he’d be fine. The thought made me feel lonely. Not for the first time I promised myself that when I’d finished this job, I’d devote more time to him. While Sarah busied herself with weighing out ingredients I checked messages on my phone.

As I’d expected, there was one from James, asking if things were still going well. I texted a quick affirmative reply.

We’d met at a charity event in London nearly two years ago, before I’d gone to Singapore. James was a widowed English and Drama teacher at secondary school in southeast London. Neither of us particularly enjoyed white-wine-and-canapé events and it had been a relief to start chatting to him and find that we shared the same sense of humour and a love of Victorian novels. Endless school plays kept him busy during term-time and he
liked spending time in second-hand bookshops during holidays. We seemed perfectly matched, enjoying time together, but relishing days spent apart. All the same, I hadn’t expected the relationship to last my two months in the Far East.

When I’d returned from Singapore we’d picked up the relationship again. He’d rented out his old marital home and moved into my apartment, so convenient for the new teaching post in east London he’d recently taken on. We had almost become a proper unit, a little household, a family. Almost.