The One I Was (22 page)

‘Put the medical form on the plate when you bring it back tomorrow morning,’ Rudi hissed, already making for the house, probably scared stiff his father was going to notice the missing vase.

‘
Danke,
’ Benny called after him, softly.

Rudi’s father hadn’t always made his son so scared of him, Benny remembered as he climbed over the wall. Benny had a distant memory of Herr Lange taking the two of them on a train, onto the engine itself, so they could help the engineer shovel coal. Benny had pulled the whistle and everyone had laughed. Herr Lange had ruffled his hair.

It had become a habit to tuck good memories away. Benny folded this one up with those he had stored of his own father.

The walk back to his house took longer than normal. Not just because there were more youths in uniform out on the street this afternoon: Benny knew how to dodge
them
, knew the alleyways and back streets, the dark corners where you could wait until they’d passed. No, it was the pain in his throat that slowed him. It felt as though someone had replaced the lining with an old leather sole. He couldn’t easily draw a breath. He stopped outside a shop to rest, doubling over to breathe. He must have looked dreadful because an old woman stopped and asked him if he was all right.

That kind of thing didn’t happen very often now.

25

Present day

Rosamond

‘What was I talking about?’ Benny asked. ‘In my dreams? I need to know.’

‘About someone called Rudi and how he helped you.’

Benny shifted in the bed. I went to rearrange his pillows.

‘They’re fine.’ He put a hand out to stop me. ‘Rudi tried to help, yes. But he couldn’t have understood what was going on, not really. Nobody who wasn’t Jewish could have. But he did his best.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If you were sick, badly sick, you weren’t allowed on the train to England. You had to be healthy. That’s what Rudi did, went to the medical instead of …’

‘You,’ I prompted.

‘Rudi went to the doctor’s,’ Benny said. ‘And the doctor didn’t notice that he wasn’t Jewish.’

I had to think about it for a moment. ‘Rudi wasn’t circumcised, you mean?’

‘No. But the doctor apparently just saw a fine, healthy boy and didn’t feel he had to examine him in detail. Rudi was quite pleased with himself. He’d done something good for his friend.’

Benny had a dispassionate way of talking about Rudi, I noticed. ‘He must have been sorry when you went to England?’

He reflected on the question. Perhaps because Benny Gault had once been the interviewer he had a way of analyzing everything I asked him as though looking for the catch.

‘He liked playing football with me. But boys that age don’t reflect on relationships much, it’s all about doing things together.’ Benny nodded to himself. ‘Say what you like about the Nazis, they were quite good about providing healthy boys with opportunities for male bonding. If you didn’t mind uniforms and obnoxious marching songs.’

‘Ghastly. At least you left Rudi the football as a souvenir to thank him for helping you out with the medical. What happened to him? Did you ever look him up after the war?’

‘No.’ He said it very quietly.

‘Benny, may I ask you something?’

He looked surprised.

‘Do you feel guilty about Rudi taking your place at the doctor’s?’ His eyes flashed. I bit my tongue.

‘Guilty?’

‘You sound as though the swap was bothering you?’ Perhaps he felt that he’d been allowed into the country under false pretences. ‘You must have been well enough by the time you arrived in England, or they wouldn’t have let you in. So no harm was done really, was it?’

‘No harm done,’ he repeated, sounding weary.

‘We’ve talked too much,’ I said.

‘No.’ The word came out with force. ‘I want to tell you what happened. There’s more.’

‘Why me?’ I asked, startled.

‘I think I know who you are, Rose.’

His eyes were those of the interviewer, shrewd and piercing.

26

I’d dreaded this moment, rehearsed my lines. But now they deserted me. I was flailing on the end of a line, knowing I couldn’t escape.

‘It’s been thirty years,’ Benny said. ‘Why come back here now, Rose?’ We’d switched so abruptly between the roles of interrogator and interrogated. ‘You could have returned before now. I’d have let you see the house, with pleasure. I would have been delighted to meet you.’

I couldn’t say anything at first.

‘The job came up. I knew I shouldn’t take it, but I couldn’t resist Fairfleet. It seemed like it was meant to be.’ Again, my hand went to my lower abdomen. ‘That it was the right time to return.’

I expected him to look shocked or angry or just sad. He looked none of these things, still the interviewer he’d once been: interested, alert.

‘Meant to be? My dying was the chance you needed?’ he said humorously.

‘No! Not that. Something else.’ I prayed he wouldn’t push me.

‘I know that your mother died in a fire and afterwards you and your brother went off to live with your father. There was another man in the house at the time of your mother’s death, wasn’t there?’

‘Cathal Pearse.’ Even saying the name made my body feel tense.

‘I remember hearing that name. He had a reputation for preying on women, didn’t he?’

‘He’d had relationships with several rich women. He moved from one to another, waiting for them to get tired of him, or growing tired of them himself.’ Dad had uncovered more about Cathal after the fire.

‘Poor Clarissa.’ Benny said it softly to himself. ‘I never met her, only saw her once.’

‘At the lake, one summer afternoon.’

‘Just after your grandmother died. I had this urge to see the house again. To say goodbye to her at her beloved Fairfleet.’ His eyes were closed now, as though he was seeing the summer afternoon again. ‘I should have gone over and said something. I saw the three of you there and you looked so complete, so untouchable. I felt almost shy, like an intruder. So I dithered. I hung around for a while, but when I took another look across the lake there was someone else coming towards you. I thought you had a visitor, so I left.’

‘That wasn’t a visitor,’ I said. ‘That was him, Cathal.’ I spat out the name.

Cathal the interloper. But it was still my fault, what happened to Mum. ‘I still blame myself,’ I whispered. ‘I told her to give him a job and then he came to live with us. But that wasn’t the end of it. The fire was my fault, too.’

‘Tell me, Rose.’

*

Cathal had released me from the basement after my night spent alone down there in the cold. And now he was dragging me across the floor towards the kitchen. I could smell something on him, some kind of alcohol.

‘Rose!’ Andrew came out to meet us, his face a white, anxious mask. ‘We thought you’d … He told us he’d looked everywhere for you. Where were you?’

‘Locked in the basement.’

‘You said you’d looked in there,’ Andrew glared at Cathal.

‘I need to make her understand a few things.’ Cathal’s words were slurred.

‘Leave my sister alone. Leave us all alone. I’ve already called the police from the phone box.’

Cathal straightened his back, like an animal preparing for a fight.

‘I crept out while you were still snoring like a pig.’ Andrew sounded triumphant.

‘What are the police going to do, sonny? This is a family matter.’

‘You’re not family.’ I wriggled in his grip. ‘This is our home, not yours. Mum wants you out.’

Cathal twisted my wrist so that it hurt. ‘I’m going nowhere, Rosie. This is my home now, too. Your mother and I are partners. With a legal agreement. When we start the new tutorial college in the new year there’ll be changes around here.’

‘She won’t start a college with you.’ I looked up the stairs. ‘Where is she?’

‘Sleeping.’

‘He probably made her take more sleeping tablets,’ Andrew said.

I shook my head. ‘You can’t make her unknow what she knows about you, Cathal.’

He gave my wrist another twist before releasing me. ‘Your mother’s fine. Go up and see her, why don’t you?’

I rubbed my sore wrist and ran upstairs, legs still numb and slow. The bedroom door opened to my touch. Mum was sitting on the bed. She turned, blinking, to me as I came in. Astonishment and relief flashed across her face. ‘Rose. Thank God you’re all right.’

I told her where I’d been.

‘He said he’d looked down there and you weren’t there. He made Andrew search the gardens, walk round the lake. I thought …’ She put a hand to her throat.

That I had fallen through the ice.

‘I went outside to look for you, but I didn’t get far.’ She looked down at her foot. I saw a fresh bandage round it. ‘I slipped and I couldn’t get up.’ I pictured my mother trying to scrabble to her feet using her uninjured hand, wincing as she finally stood up on the damaged ankle.

She brushed her eyes with a hand. ‘I’ve been so pathetic. Forgive me, Rose. It’s all going to change.’ She dropped her voice. ‘Did you hide the letter?’

‘It’s in a drawer in the storage room,’ I whispered.

I sat beside her. She drew me into her warmth. I knew it was going to be all right, that we would rid ourselves of Cathal now.

‘Smithy came to the house,’ she said, ‘while Andrew and I were outside. Cathal must have sent her away, told her we were all out shopping. Andrew saw Smithy cycling away from the house and he ran after her, calling to her, but she didn’t hear.’

I remembered the noises I’d heard: Smithy’s bike, slipping and sliding on the icy gravel. And the car following her.

‘Why didn’t you look for me in the basement?’

‘By the time I got back to the house Cathal had the key in his hand and said nobody needed to go down there again. Andrew tried to find the key for the garden door, but Cathal had taken that too.’

My mother’s voice shook. I realized that it wasn’t with fear. It was fury.

‘Smithy will know something’s wrong.’ Mum squeezed my shoulder reassuringly. ‘I know her, she’ll have rung the police. She’ll get her niece’s husband to drive her back over here this morning to see what’s going on.’

Mum was right. Smithy wouldn’t have been convinced by whatever lies Cathal had told her. She’d persist in finding out what was happening here.

‘It won’t be long now, Rose. We just have to hold on for a bit longer and someone will come to help. Let’s get Andrew up here with us and I’ll lock the door. Cathal’s still drunk. He must have finished off the whisky and the brandy, God knows how much he’s had.’

‘Andrew rang the police too.’

‘If they get two calls they’ll take it seriously.’ She gave my shoulder another squeeze.

Someone knocked on the door. ‘Will you come out or shall I come in and say what I have to say in front of the child, Clarissa?’ Cathal sounded calm, reasonable. ‘Let’s just talk first. If you want me to go, naturally I shall go. No need to involve the police.’

We looked at one another. ‘Don’t believe him,’ I whispered. She was standing now, grimacing as the ankle took her weight.

‘Let’s see if we can’t come to some agreement,’ Cathal called.

‘Lock the door,’ she whispered to me. I did as she asked.

‘Andrew is with me now, Clarissa,’ said Cathal. ‘Shall I tell him that you’re not going to come downstairs?’

Mum turned even paler. I knew she’d be worrying that Cathal would hurt Andrew again. She looked at me.

‘It’s fine,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll just wait up here until help comes. Go downstairs.’

‘I don’t like to leave you.’

‘Go,’ I hissed.

She hobbled to unlock the door.

I lay back on the pillow. A slight scent of Cathal remained on the pillowcase. It made me feel sick. I threw the pillow at the wardrobe. It hit the door, releasing the lock. The door swung open. I could see Mum’s clothes hanging there, the wedding dress a long white presence at the side.

I needed to feel that silky material between my fingers again. I pulled it out of the plastic covering and held it up in front of me at the mirror, feeling like a ghost from a happier past. The December light showed me my pale face and the dark rings around my eyes. I thought of the candles, I should light them to see if I could cast a spell to evict Cathal from Fairfleet.

The matchbox still sat beside the candles. I put down the dress on the bed and struck a match. The five candles were quickly lit. Immediately my reflection looked warmer, brighter. When I again held up the white silk against myself it no longer leached my pale features of colour. I closed my eyes.

‘Make him go away. Today. Let it just be us again.’

I wished hard, so hard I could almost feel the wish push its way out of my heart and diffuse into the air around me. I pictured my prayer, for that’s what it was, drifting downstairs, enveloping Cathal so that he was forced to gather up his few possessions and walk out. I saw him trudging down the snowy drive, never looking back, leaving us alone for ever.

‘I will give you anything if you get rid of him for us,’ I said aloud, not even sure whom exactly I was begging or what I was promising. ‘Anything.’ Even if Mum and Dad never got back together again, it was a price worth paying.

I let out the breath I’d been holding. I needed to put the dress away in the wardrobe. I turned from the dressing table. As I did, the right sleeve brushed a candle. I felt only a mild sensation of warmth, almost pleasant on such a cold day. I dropped the dress. But when I looked down there was an orange flower already bursting open on the sleeve of my woollen jumper. I felt the heat on my skin.

I screamed for my mother. God knows how she managed to get upstairs so quickly on that ankle, but she was in the room, crouching beside me, pushing me to the floor, grabbing at
the folded quilt on the end of the bed with her left hand to put out the fire. But the quilt was heavy and her left hand too weak to manage it alone. She gave a grunt of frustration and pulled harder.

The quilt fell to the side of the bed, just out of reach, behind me. She moved forward to grab it and as she did, her own sleeve brushed the flames on the discarded wedding dress. Fire ran up her arm.