The Paperchase (14 page)

I said I preferred to eat outside, and the waiter showed us to a table with a fantastic view of the sea. Mrs Delamitri
pressed me to order whatever I wanted and chose an expensive white Burgundy from the wine list. I had to restrain myself from glugging it down. I told her the flavour reminded me of English strawberries.

‘Life’s too short to drink cheap wine, Damien,’ she said. ‘Now tell me about you.’

I explained as much as I thought was tactful about coming to Ionia and how I felt that, all in all, it would be good to get back to England. I told her I’d been marooned for a while by the burglary.

‘That’s such a shame,’ she said.

She was skilful at turning the conversation away from
herself
, and appeared so genuinely interested in everything I had to say that I started to worry I was talking too much. I
gathered
she visited her friend on Ionia a couple of times a summer. But about herself, and her life in Boston, she wouldn’t be drawn.

We drank that whole bottle of wine and most of a second. She pressed me to have dessert and ordered me a glass of sweet French wine to drink with it. It tasted of nuts and cream and God knows what else, and must have cost roughly what I spent on food in a week. She just seemed pleased that I was enjoying myself. During a pause after the dessert, I had a moment of inspiration. ‘Did you ever come here with Patrick?’ I said.

She looked down at her hand. Her painted nails were
tracing
lines along the tablecloth. She seemed to be struggling with a couple of contradictory impulses.

‘I have a confession to make,’ she said, touching her
sunglasses
nervously. ‘Patrick and I were …’ Her voice dropped as she added, almost in parentheses, ‘There’s no easy way to say this, Damien.’ She made an impatient little gesture with her fingers. ‘… More than good friends.’

‘The thought had crossed my mind.’

‘I’m married, Damien.’

I nodded and tried to look soberly non-judgemental.

She went on. ‘I did something rather silly. I wrote Patrick a number of letters. They were just … letters. Maybe a little bit explicit. Whatever. Within the context of our relationship, it seemed entirely appropriate. It’s just …’ She rolled her glass between her palms. ‘My husband’s a decent man.’

Phrases were coming back to me from the bundle of letters I had found in the drawer, in particular something rather
outlandish
Patrick’s correspondent had suggested doing with a colander.

‘Mrs Delamitri, you’re welcome to have them back. I don’t want your letters. I can’t say I know where they’ll be, but I’ll be happy to return them.’ I had that drunkard’s expansive
confidence
that everyone’s problems are soluble.

‘Actually, that’s not the problem I have. I already got them back. I … panicked slightly. I mean, I had no idea who was going to come and live at the house. I hope you understand. I truly felt I had no alternative.’

I couldn’t tell if she was sweating slightly, or if her make-up was melting in the sunshine.

‘Alternative to what?’

She rummaged in her handbag. I had the feeling that she was going to pull out a gun and shoot me. Instead, she
produced
her handkerchief, which she pressed against her temple. It smelled faintly of cologne. ‘The sun’s awfully strong.’ She took another sip of wine and her rings clinked against the glass. I had the cruel thought that, however young she managed to keep her face, the backs of her hands still looked like the skin on a roast chicken.

‘I had someone break into the house and take them,’ she said. ‘I hope you’re not mad at me.’

‘Mad at you?’ The truth was I didn’t know what I felt about it. ‘Why? If you’d asked, I would have given you your letters.’

‘I know you would’ve. Now that I’ve met you, I’m just so sorry about everything. But you must see that not everybody is as nice as you are. I had a lot to lose.’

‘So Mr Delamitri has no idea about you and my uncle?’

‘Mr O’Brien,’ she said. ‘Delamitri is my maiden name. And no, he doesn’t.’

I said nothing. I was befuddled.

‘I came to apologise,’ said Mrs Delamitri. ‘These things can be very upsetting. Believe me, I know. The last thing in the world I wanted was for you to feel unsafe in your home. I hope this will put your mind at rest.’

‘So what did you do? You just looked under “Burglar” in the Yellow Pages and someone broke down my door?’

‘It’s not quite that simple, but if you have money, most things can be arranged.’

‘What if I’d interrupted these guys?’

‘These men are professionals, Damien. They wouldn’t have harmed you in any way.’

‘Well, while they were getting your letters, they also took the opportunity to steal my money, and passports, and my air ticket out of here.’ I was counting out my losses loudly on my fingers and she tried to silence me with a discreet
Shush.
‘Did you pay them to do that or was it freelance work?’

‘That was unavoidable. Tug – one of the …’

‘Thieves?’ I suggested.

‘He said we had to make it look like a random break-in. It took them almost an hour to find anything a random burglar would be interested in.’

‘Well, I’m relieved he’s happy.’

She took my hand. ‘Please don’t be angry with me.’

I wanted to tell her that her simpering little-girl routine might have worked on Patrick, but she was old enough to be my mother. I sulked for a while, enjoying the view and going over the sequence of events in my brain. Mrs Delamitri fiddled with her handbag. ‘Here,’ she said. When I looked over at her, there was a cheque for five thousand dollars folded in half by my wineglass.

‘I can’t accept that,’ I told her.

‘Damien, don’t be proud. I want to make amends. You
have every right to be angry with me. I don’t want anyone else to be the victim of my selfishness.’

As the afternoon had gone on, I noticed Mrs Delamitri’s accent meandering between Boston’s North End and
somewhere
in the Cotswolds. The idea that Mr O’Brien and I were victims of her selfishness seemed part of the same aspirational self-deception: that she was the star-crossed lover of a famous writer.

‘Believe me,’ she added tartly, ‘I spent quite a bit more than that having your house broken into.’

‘You know what’s strange, though,’ I said. ‘I could have sworn those files were on Patrick’s desk when I went to the house after the funeral.’

She looked very sneaky for a moment. ‘How many times in your life have you done something really foolish, Damien?’

‘Probably not as often as I ought to,’ I said.

‘You have to put yourself in my position. I was distraught. I was in a hurting place.’

‘You were composed enough to organise a fairly efficient burglary.’

‘Not the first time.’

‘The first time?’

‘Janine and I came with a ladder. It was her idea. I’m – I’m not blaming her. I’m just saying I’m not proud of what I’ve done.’

‘You burgled the house
twice
?’

‘I had no idea where the letters were. We took the boxes because they were the first thing we could find. Then Janine decided she wanted the skull.’

‘She just took a shine to it?’

‘I told her to leave it behind. It was Patrick’s. All I wanted was what belonged to me. But Janine’s like that. She’s creative.’ Mrs Delamitri made it sound like a medical condition – like
diabetes
. ‘Once she gets an idea in her head, she just runs with it. Well, we argued about it. I told her it would be terrible feng shui – I mean, it’s basically the head of a dead person. Can you
imagine? Then I was sure I heard someone coming. We rushed out. Janine took the skull and sprained her ankle on the way down. I had to carry her to the car. I
warned
her about the skull’

I had a mental image of Janine and Mrs Delamitri struggling up and down the ladder in shoulder pads and high-heel shoes. Or possibly, Mrs Delamitri would have bought a special outfit for cat burglary – a one-piece black number with a matching mask by Donna Karan.

When the waiter brought the bill over, Mrs Delamitri slipped him a credit card made out of some rare metal –
titanium
or zinc or something.

‘But the letters weren’t in the boxes, so you had to hire
professionals
to do the job properly,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry, Damien.’

‘What
had
you stolen, the first time?’

‘I really don’t know. I mean – I have an idea that there’s some bills and stuff. This probably sounds silly after
everything
I said, but I wanted to respect his privacy.’

Far out to sea, a three-masted yacht was under sail and carving a chevron into the deep blue water.

‘What will you do now?’ she asked.

‘Go back and have a swim,’ I said.

‘I meant more generally.’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said, and for the first time, my uncertainty seemed like a virtue. I knew that I would leave the island as soon as the cheque cleared. I wanted to go somewhere where I could have a life of my own, but where or what that might be, I couldn’t say.

She talked about Patrick on the drive back. ‘I saw him last year about this time.’

‘Did you stay at the house?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t spend the night with him. Not in the same bed. He had terrible dreams. I used to hear him crying out and I’d want to go to him. But I always stopped myself.’

‘Was he on medication?’

‘Two or three kinds. For the depression and the mood swings. He could just about keep it together living the way he did.’

‘Yeah, seeing people in homoeopathically small doses.’

‘I loved him, you know,’ she said. ‘But there was always this feeling that he’d done something awful. I kind of felt bad for thinking it about him …’

We talked about funny things Patrick had said or done. I recounted Patrick’s description of the fungus on the saucepan of soup that had been sitting on Edgar Huvas’s stove for three days. ‘It looked like an echidna!’ ‘What’s an echidna?’ I had asked. ‘It’s a species of anteater. Green, and hairy, and, I might add, inedible.’

Mrs Delamitri pressed a button and the top of the car folded up in a slow, creaky way like an old woman settling into a chair. I closed my eyes against the sudden sunlight and drifted off into a pleasant alcoholic reverie.

The clocks in the house were striking five in a dishevelled chorus of bongs and plinks. Nathan had gone home and left a note inside the front door saying he would be back to finish off in the morning.

I grabbed a couple of towels and we went down to the beach. I swam lazily in the cold water, while Mrs Delamitri took off her shoes and paddled along the shoreline.

Afterwards, we sat on the towels and I smoked one of her cigarettes.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘For what?’

‘For lunch, for the money. For bothering to tell me the truth.’

‘Oh … Don’t mention it.’ She smiled, but I thought she looked a little sad.

‘You can see the Vineyard sometimes from here on a clear day,’ I said. ‘Look.’

She dusted the sand off her hands and stood up. The sky to the west was beginning to turn a lobster pink. ‘Where?’

I came up behind her and put my hands on her shoulders; she softened slightly into my touch. ‘Over there, I don’t think you can see it today.’

I put my arms round her waist and pressed my face into her crispy, dry hair.

‘Patrick hated this beach,’ she said, in a whisper. ‘He
complained
about the flies and the stones.’

Her back arched slightly towards me, her hip pressed into my crotch. She stayed there for a moment and then gently
disengaged
herself.

‘Miranda,’ I said.

‘I’d love to, Damien,’ she said, ‘but I think it would be a little weird.’

MRS
DELAMITRI
KISSED ME
on the mouth when she left. She honked her horn as she backed out of the driveway, and I waved at her as Patrick must have done many times from the bank of lawn beside the road. Then I went back to the house and had another drink.

I hadn’t been drunk since coming to the island. I think I had some idea that it would set a dangerous precedent for someone living alone. It had been part of Patrick’s weird
stability
that he rarely drank – although I had a distant recollection of him drinking whisky and listening to opera on a rainy afternoon while following the libretto.

But I was already drunk – and I was already leaving – so I poured myself a whisky, leavened it with a couple of drops of water from the tap, and turned on the jukebox in the summer kitchen.

The sunset was fading out of the sky, and the evening that drew on seemed to hum with possibility. It was the wine, but it wasn’t just the wine. All I wanted was to be back among the living – anywhere – in Vientiane, Cardiff or Cuzco. And I didn’t care what I did. Even going back to work in London held no terrors; at least it was a life.

Now that I was able to leave the house behind, I realised that the solitude had been a purgative. My old life had died with Patrick. And the dusty, isolated, frugal legacy he had left me actually affirmed its opposite. I felt grateful to Patrick. I was Scrooge, waking up on Christmas morning after the third visitation, having finally grasped the message that the dead bring to all the living – that there’s still time. Patrick was my Ghost of Christmas Future. I felt grateful to him for being my unwitting angel.

I lay down on the grass and looked at the sky, and by a strange reversal, it seemed to be below me, like an ocean of stars, fading away in its depths to blackness. Around me, the island seemed to be breathing in time with the sea. Then I realised it was my own breath, respiring as the waves broke and withdrew.

Going back into the house to refill my glass for the second or third time, I remembered the box files. They were stacked where we had left them in the library. I carried four of them up to my bedroom to open them.

The first one contained letters, but there were fewer than I had expected. I threw them into the air – a sheaf of yellow pages covered with round, childish handwriting spilled over the floor.

Because I’d seen his handwriting so recently, I got it into my head that the author of the letters was Nathan Fernshaw, and I wondered why he had written to Patrick in such detail. I picked up a couple of leaves from the floor. The first lines I read had the felicitous spelling mistakes of a young child: ‘my friend raymond was unconshase’; a second page was written by a self-conscious adolescent wiseacre: ‘Dear Patrick, I just
wanted to write a letter that doesn’t begin, “How are you?” – oops – it managed to sneak in anyway …’ A third page was somewhere in between:

‘it is the end of my holiday and it is halloween. we are going for a midnight walk with dad and we will bring our scooters and vivian’s go cart we hope we are thought to be ghosts and suspicions are arosed about ghosts walking across the common but we will no who they were but if real ghosts did walk across the common brrr.’

And now there was a flash of recognition – or flashes that froze instants of the distant past. My widowed father pushing Vivian along a path on Wandsworth Common. The great orange lights of Trinity Road pushing back the blackness. A ‘midnight’ walk that took place at 8 p.m. The first anniversary of my mother’s death. I knew instantly what would be at the foot of this page, and the previous page, and every other page in the box.
Love
Damien.

I opened the other box files, thinking I might find more of my own letters, or Vivian’s, or letters from my father. One box contained yellowing royalty statements for
Peanut
Gatherers.
The others held a miscellany of unconnected papers: receipts, invoices for some gardening work, an old copy of
Boston
magazine
with an article about Patrick’s writing classes for the prisoners, and a coffee-stained manual for the computer in the dining room.

I gathered my own letters into a thin sheaf and lay in bed poring over them. They were embarrassing reading, as only your own letters can be. I had sent my uncle an exhaustive explanation of the rules of conkers with diagrams; various thank-you letters; two pieces of correspondence written from boarding school in consecutive late Octobers full of nostalgia for summer barbecues and Bolder than Mandingo. By a weird symmetry, the mild Ionian night that I said I missed in my
letters
hung thickly over the window of my bedroom, where I lay, more than twenty years later, reading my own
handwriting
. I felt able to recognise, at that moment, what my teenage
self, cooped up in the oppressive male atmosphere of a boys’ boarding school, couldn’t or wouldn’t remember: that those summers had been full of
longueurs,
that we had had no friends, that there was a loneliness intrinsic to time spent with my family. And I remembered too that each holiday contained a moment of recognition when I realised I ached with boredom and solitude, and that Stevo was having a better time working in his dad’s sportswear shop in Kentish Town.

I had to go back downstairs to get the other boxes. It was past midnight. It had begun to rain and clouds had
extinguished
the starlight. Inside the house, the darkness was so deep it seemed to have a texture – the restless, electric quality you find on the inside of your eyelids.

The first box was empty, and my disappointment deepened when I found the second also contained nothing. I wondered if Mrs Delamitri had been telling the truth when she said she had respected Patrick’s privacy. The third held a collection of auction catalogues. But in the fourth, concealed under several sheets of blank paper, was a typescript with the same quirky lettering as the inventory.

I pulled back the wire trap that held the typescript flat in the bottom of the box. There were close to a hundred pages, loosely fastened through a hole in the top left-hand corner by a piece of cord with a metal stay at each end. The first page was blank, the second was a title page. A single row of capital letters across the middle of it read: