The Ruby Slippers (32 page)

‘At one million dollars . . .’ A murmur takes hold in the room, the audience wondering whether the bid will stand or whether the game is up. James deflects his father’s stare with a defiant smile, and even manufactures a smug little snort.

‘Are there any more bids, then? Going once at one million dollars . . .?’

There follows a cold, empty waiting, while McBride shifts in his chair. Could it be that he is thinking better of it, that he has become suddenly aware of the monstrosity of his actions? Seemingly lost in thought, he lowers his eyes, then raises them again towards James and lazily raises his hand.

‘One million and fifty thousand dollars, then, to the man in front. Do I have another bid? One million and fifty thousand dollars. Can I see another bid? Might you still be in the bidding, sir? Last chance now . . .’

James stares into space. The seconds that follow are vile, decimating – the ruby slippers lost, gone to him who least cares for them or deserves to possess them. The auctioneer sighs prissily. ‘Going once, then . . . going twice . . . going three times . . .’ With undisguised relief, he lifts the hammer to its height to bring it falling down . . .

‘Just a moment!’ says a voice, strong in the silence. A man comes down the centre aisle, like a hawk dropping. The audience clamour for a view, but soon falls quiet. There is something powerful and dramatic about the way in which the man, who is tall and grey-suited, approaches the stand. And there is authority in the firm but polite way in which he calls out, ‘Excuse me, sir,’ and beckons the auctioneer to him, engaging him in hushed, quick-fire conversation. Then, on the heels of suspense, comes sensation. Because the man then turns and raises his arm, and out from the wings come two uniformed officers who, following their captain’s pointing hand, go treading like unwanted children in a room full of adults. All eyes are on them as they head for the end of the front row, where a little old lady rises under their command, like a plump bird on thin legs, and is then led by them, blinking and slow of foot, back into the shadows where they have come from. Then another woman, younger and wirier, goes racing after them shouting, ‘Shame on you, shame!’ The auctioneer, forgetting himself, takes off in the same direction, leaving his assistant, struggling in her shy breathy voice, to keep everyone in their places.

Confusion reigns.

‘What is this? What the hell is going on here?’ snarls McBride, who fires up his chair and surges off in pursuit of the policemen, the auctioneer and his scurrying entourage.

S
HE
saw it all, from the moment her father sprang to life and took up the running, till the moment he fell, a wounded hero, brought down by his enemy, his nemesis – isn’t that the word? She knows, of course, who he is; a part of her knows, although she cannot join the jumbled clues together. She came here to punish him, to force him to see her, yet it pained her to see her father brought low in front of all these people, staring at him round-eyed like sheep. Her instinct had been to run down to him, to shout and scream at the dumb onlookers to make them scatter, to tell him to carry on fighting.

She looks at him still sitting in his seat as the hall empties to a dying murmur. No, she will not go to him and fall weakly in with his emotions; she has done that one time too often already. Can he not see how he has made a fool of himself and a victim of her?
Seven years
. He cannot just slip aside and stick his head in the sand. She will make him deal with this whole thing, once and for all.

■ ♦ ■

James sits in the great blanched emptiness of the hall, the stage lights dying, drawing in their silky magic. Working lights go on, harsh and unforgiving, to bring porters scurrying noisily to sort the lots and bear them away. On the stage, a police officer stands by as a pair of black-suited, white-gloved porters stand on twin stepladders and reach up in choreographed symmetry to bring down the oyster-shell, slowly treading down the steps in time with each other. Each plucks out a single slipper to wrap it in cotton and place it with its partner in a grey metal security box. Items of evidence.

He stands at last, pulling on his coat; but his hands freeze in the middle of fiddling with buttons as zooming towards him comes the contraption containing his unholy father, with his sad Madonna-nurse following. He comes to a halt by his son’s side, turning on a dime to face him. With a voice strong and terrible he makes his harsh pronouncement.

‘You know what? I don’t give a shit. Whatever comes out of this, you lose. I would have paid to see that!’ And skewering his son through with a mocking eye, he wheels round again and fizzles away, his worst done. James stands there, lost and pathetic, then he raises his sorrowful eyes to see, descending the stairs grave and ghost-like, Marcinkus the grocer. This man understands what has happened here. He knows what a vengeful father looks like, and a broken son and all the sorrows that can come. But as he reaches the floor, level with James, Michael gives only the barest nod in his direction and continues towards the wings and the corridor beyond, as if something awful awaits him there. James watches until the old man has gone out of sight, and then it rises in him, the anger and the shame. He throws down his programme, along with the redundant bid-marker, and goes hurrying from the place.

■ ♦ ■

Michael had witnessed it, every significant moment, and had from the first sensed Harrison’s hand at work in it all. When the auctioneer looked up and the detective strode out and broke the sale, he knew that this was justice. He had suffered to see them lead his tiny wife away in dishonour, with Jenny scurrying after, furious at such cruel humiliation. But yes, it, too, was justice of a kind.

When the auctioneer had hurried off and confusion had brought the audience to their feet, he had seen Karl and Dan, big, brave men that they were, making for the doors, pushing and scrabbling like children, and running for the hills.

And when he stood to make his way to the front, he had seen the girl walking straight towards him, away from her father, her face pale and fixed. He stood in the aisle, ready to stop and say hello. But on she went, like a sleepwalker, brushing his shoulder as she passed by. Then he had seen the wheelchair man roll up to James and heard the old man’s voice bellow, ugly across the space, and had seen him spin and sail away, the Filipino nurse padding after. It is strange. Without knowing anything about any of them, he has understood everything that has passed.

Now Michael stands in front of the door with the word ‘bureau’ on it, engraved in brass. He swallows hard. God knows what will follow from this.

■ ♦ ■

James is running, haring along Seventh, overtaking the last straggle of people retreating from the sale. He can see it ahead, the ghastly contraption, and so he shoots past, wheeling round into its path to make it stop. And now James stands almost side by side with the nurse as he leans over the man who all his life has eclipsed his sun. ‘Listen to me, you damn old monster. You think you got me? Got me dead in front of the whole world? Well, guess what? You did nothing. Look, I don’t give a damn! So you got the shoes and you thought you got me scared and pathetic, just like you did for forty years. Look at me. I’m shit, right here right in front of you, worthless faggot shit!’

Inez is aghast and elated as she watches James, oblivious to the world, fix his arms rigid to the chair’s rails, the man in it stiff of face and body. ‘So whaddya say, Dad. Wanna hit me? Wouldn’t you just love to hit me right now, in the street, in front of everybody, and I won’t say a word? Here . . .’ James actually takes hold of his father’s hand and pulls it to him, touching it to his fresh white face. Still nothing from the old man, his hand limp in his son’s. James has gone beyond reason ‘C’mon.
C’mon
. Go on, have a pop!’ His voice is loud and urgent now, and people are stopping. It hardly looks good – a healthy young man standing over an old man in a wheelchair, haranguing him.

But James is absolutely lost in a place of hatred and pain: ‘I can’t believe you never actually hit me when I was a kid; God knows I deserved it.’ He stays there stock-still, holding his father’s eye with his own. ‘Well, say something, old man! Maybe it woulda knocked sense into my head and I woulda been something, a regular guy just like you, and never woulda turned into what I am, a hopeless queer!’ Seeing his father so unresponsive, James actually kicks the wheelchair, kicks it full against the footplate so that it skids sideways and McBride’s lifeless foot jumps up in the air. Shocked into action, Inez steps forward and gently puts her hand on James’s, which seems to bring him back to himself and he watches now, his anger replaced by fascination as she stands between him and his father, obedient to his command. The old man sits there, unmoved and unmoving, eating up time, until at last his twisted hand creeps along the rail and crabs itself around the lever. As the chair nudges forward, Inez turns to offer James a look of regret and sympathy, but then seeing the chair gathering momentum, she turns away again and scuttles off after her patient.

■ ♦ ■

In all the splendour of the place, it must be the plainest, shabbiest room they could find for the purpose. A cheap table and four hard chairs, looking all the more dowdy against faded walls. The lieutenant of police sits judge-straight on one side of the table, reading out loud the deposition so far taken. On the other side, Grace and Jenny sit side by side, the mother hunched and the daughter stiff and defiant on the edge of her seat. Jenny’s lips are pursed and her eyes dagger-sharp, although below the table, her two hands cradle Grace’s own tiny paw to provide comfort. The detective spells out each sentence with painful precision. Grace’s head nods, unceasing, seemingly hanging on every word. Inside, she is in a whirl of agitation born of her own shame and of the fear that cramps every breath and muddles her mind so that hardly a word makes sense.

As soon as the lieutenant has finished reading, he lays it on the line: ‘Listen, Mrs Marcinkus. It doesn’t matter whose name the sale was in, or whether your husband was in agreement with you or not. I am here to investigate a felony, which is the taking of a thing from a place where it belongs to another place where it does not belong. And I am not satisfied that you are telling me the whole truth here, about how these shoes came into your possession. Especially since you have told me two different versions of the same story in the past half-hour. On the one hand the old lady, Rosa, gives them to you and your husband years ago, and on the other she gives them to you only weeks ago – only at a time when she is lying in the hospital, in a coma, incapable of speech, as she is to this day.’ He pauses to allow Grace the full effect of his all-seeing eye. Jenny can no longer keep a lid on her indignation: ‘Leave her alone!’ she cries out pluckily. ‘In case you didn’t notice, my mother ain’t so young neither, and now you got her all confused. Don’t say no more, Momma. He only wants to tie you up in knots!’

But Grace is less quick to hand out brickbats. ‘Please, Jenny,’ she murmurs. ‘The man is only doing his job.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Marcinkus. That’s right, and you would do well to remember, Mrs . . .?’

‘Chainey.’

‘Mrs Chainey – to keep your peace, unless you want me maybe going into your part in all of this.’ He waits until Jenny sits back, well and truly put in her place, although her scowl has not budged, then raises his voice a notch: ‘Now, listen, you wanna be left alone? I can leave you alone any time you like – alone down at the precinct, alone in a night cell, until the prosecutor decides where to go with this. Believe me, this here is the easiest way, but we’re already outta time. So please, just tell me how it is. Tell me a story to make me happy; allow me to believe that everything here is good and above board. And then we can check it out and tear up these pieces of paper and all go home to our beds.’ He looks hard and long at her again. She looks sideways and sees that Jenny is out of all resistance. Delivering herself of a deep sigh, Grace opens her mouth to speak. Then the door opens and her face falls lifeless again. A police officer walks in and leans over to whisper in the lieutenant’s ear. ‘Sure, sure,’ he says and looks up, smiling unaccountably at Grace, who throws a startled look at Jenny, who simply sits there, glaring beneath her brows.

The officer goes back out of the door, and a few seconds later it opens again and in walks Michael, all dishevelled-looking and wringing his hands in front of him as if holding an invisible hat. ‘Come in, please, and sit down,’ says the lieutenant. Michael takes one look at Grace, sitting there terrified under the detective’s all-seeing eye, and rushes over and throws his arms around her. She flips her shoulders, quaking, with sobs coming loud. Jenny gets to her feet and embraces them both, yammering, ‘Momma, Momma, Momma . . .’

‘This is awful, horrible,’ mutters Michael, fighting back his own tears. The lieutenant stands and stretches, as if this is an everyday kind of scene, and then wanders outside to speak to his two officers. When he comes back in, the storm has subsided, and he waits again until the two women are back in their seats and three pairs of eyes are on him. ‘OK, everybody, so who wants to go first?’ he asks breezily, not really expecting a sane answer. ‘I do,’ says Michael. ‘Then please sit down,’ says the lieutenant civilly.

‘Am I under arrest?’

‘Not yet, you’re not.’

‘Then I will stand.’

So Michael stands and unburdens himself of the truth that has troubled him all this time. He explains, calmly, as though it had happened to somebody else, how the ruby slippers came into their possession, how they found them amid filth, how they took them to the deli, how decisions had been made that eventually brought the ruby slippers to auction. As he unloads himself of all this, Michael can see Jenny and Grace sinking into their seats, their faces ghastly white.

‘If all this is true,’ says the detective, ‘then a crime has been committed.’

‘Not necessarily,’ says Michael.