After Rain

Gilbert's Mother

On November 20th 1989, a Monday, in an area of South London not previously notable for acts of violence, Carol Dickson, a nineteen-year-old shop assistant, was bludgeoned to death between the hours of ten-fifteen and midnight. At approximately nine-fifty she had said goodnight to her friend Lindsayanne Trotter, with whom she had been watching Coronation Street, Brookside and Boon. She set out to walk the seven hundred yards to her parents’ house on the Ralelands estate, but did not arrive. Her parents, imagining that she and Lindsayanne had gone to a disco — notwithstanding that the night was Monday — went to bed at eleven o’clock, their normal practice whether their daughter had returned to the house or not. Carol Dickson’s body was discovered by a window-cleaner the following morning, lying on fallen leaves and woody straggles of cotoneaster, more than a mile and a half away, in Old Engine Way. Not wishing to become involved in what he described as ‘obviously something tacky’, the window-cleaner remounted his bicycle and rode on; an hour later schoolchildren reported a dead body in the bushes in Old Engine Way. Since the window-cleaner - Ronald Craig Thomas — was known to take this route along Old Engine Way every weekday morning, he was later interrupted in his work and questioned by the police. At midday on that same day, in broadcasting news of the tragedy, a radio announcer drew attention to this fact, stating that a man was helping the police with their enquiries. He also stated that Carol Dickson had been raped before her death, which was either a misinterpretation of information passed on to him or speculation on his part. It was not true.

Rosalie Mannion, fifty a month ago, peeled potatoes at the sink in her kitchen, listening to The Archers. Middle age suited her features; her round, pretty face had taken charge of what wrinkles had come, by chance distributing them favourably. Still a slight figure, she had in no way run to fat; the grey in her hair lent it a distinction that had not been there before. Her brown eyes had lost only a little of the luminosity that had been distinctive in Rosalie’s childhood.

‘Hullo,’ she called out, hearing her son’s footsteps on the stairs. She didn’t catch Gilbert’s reply because of the chatter of voices on the radio, but she knew he would have made one because he always did. The Archers’ music came on, and then there was talk about irradiated food.

At the time of her divorce it was decided that Rosalie should have the house. That was sixteen years ago, in 1973. There hadn’t been a quarrel about the house, nor even an argument. It was Gilbert’s home; it was only fair that Gilbert’s life should be disrupted as slightly as possible. So 21 Blenheim Avenue, SW15, was made over to her, while the man she’d been married to joined another woman in a Tudor-style property near Virginia Water. Rosalie returned to the botanical research she’d been engaged in before her marriage but after three years she found herself so affected by tiredness that she gave it up. She worked part-time now, in a shop that sold furniture fabrics.

At the back of Rosalie’s mind was the comforting feeling that 21 Blenheim Avenue would one day become Gilbert’s livelihood. She planned to convert the attics and the first floor, making them into self-contained flats. She and Gilbert would easily find room to spread themselves on the ground floor, which would of course retain the garden, and after her death that pattern would continue, and there would be an income from what Gilbert’s father had invested on his behalf. Gilbert, she knew, would never marry. At present he worked in an architect’s office — filing drawings, having photocopies made, taking the correspondence to be franked at the post office, delivering packages or collecting them, making tea and coffee, tidying. In the evenings Rosalie heard about the inspirations Gilbert had had about rearranging the contents of the drawings’ cabinets or heard that Kall Kwik were cheaper than Instant Action by twopence a sheet. ‘Oh, great,’ was all anyone at the office ever said apparently; but his mother listened to the details.

‘Was everything all right today?’ she asked when he came downstairs again on the evening of November 21st. He rooted in the kitchen drawers for knives and forks and table-mats.

‘Mega,’ he said, telling her about his day while he made the mustard.

He assembled the cutlery and the table-mats with the galleons on them, and took a tray into the dining-room, where he set the table and turned the television on. They always ate watching the television, but not with plates on their knees, which both of them disliked. They sat side by side at the table and when they’d finished Gilbert helped to wash up and then usually went out, walking to the Arab Boy or the Devonshire Arms, sometimes driving over to the Bull or the Market Gardener. Rosalie had often listened while he explained that he liked to relax in this way after his day’s work; that he liked having people around him, while being alone himself; that he liked the sound of voices, and music if someone played the juke-box. He didn’t drink much; cider because he didn’t care for beer, a couple of half pints in the course of an evening. He often told her that also. He told her everything, Gilbert said, looking at her steadily, his tone of voice indicating that this was not true.

The window-cleaner, Ron, had been reprimanded by the police inspector in charge of the case, and later by a sergeant and by a woman constable. The body in the cotoneaster could have been still alive, he was told; it hadn’t been, but it easily could have. It was the duty of any citizen to report something of that nature, instead of which he’d callously ridden off.

Ron, who happened to be the same age as Gilbert Mannion — twenty-five — replied that he had a contract: the shop windows in Disraeli Street and Lower Street had to be washed by nine o’clock; if he delayed, either in the work itself or on his journey to it, that deadline would not be met. As well as which, he had been unnerved by the sight of a half-dressed girl lying all twisted up like that, her two eyes staring at him; no one like that could be alive, he maintained.

For five hours the police had worried about Ron Thomas. He had previous convictions, for petty larceny and damage to property. But there was still nothing to connect him with the crime that had been committed, beyond the fact that he’d failed to report it. In reprimanding him on that count, the inspector, the sergeant and the woman constable managed to assuage their impatience and frustration. The night before, between the hours of ten-fifteen and midnight, Ron Thomas’s whereabouts were firmly accounted for. ‘You appear to be a brute, Thomas,’ the inspector pronounced in a take-it-or-leave-it voice, and turned his attention to a silver-coloured Vauxhall that had been noticed in the vicinity.

A woman called Mathers had seen it, as had a couple who’d been kissing in a doorway. The car drove down Old Engine Way earlier in the evening, nine or so it would have been, then turned into a cul-de-sac - Stables Lane — where it remained parked for half an hour, although no one had emerged. Mrs. Mathers, who lived in Stables Lane, heard the engine of a car and went to the window to look. The headlights had been switched off; Mrs. Mathers had the feeling that whoever was in the vehicle was up to no good and remarked as much to her sister. The couple in the doorway said that when the headlights came on again the car turned very slowly in the cul-de-sac; as it emerged into Old Engine Way, they were dazzled by its lights for a moment; they couldn’t see its occupant.

‘Occupants more like,’ the inspector wearily corrected when the couple had left. ‘Some slag on the game.’

Even so, a description of the Vauxhall was put together, its bodywork scraped and rusty, its radio aerial twisted into a knot: within minutes, calls came in from all over London, of silver-coloured Vauxhalls with such distinguishing features. Some of the calls were malicious — the opportunity seized to settle old scores against the owners of such vehicles; others led nowhere. But a woman, phoning from a call-box, said that a friend of hers had been driven to Stables Lane the night before, at the time in question. The woman gave neither her name nor her profession, only adding that her friend had been driven to Stables Lane because there was a family matter to be discussed in the car and Stables Lane was quiet. It was assumed that this was the prostitute or part-time prostitute suggested by the inspector; as with Ron Thomas, interest in the silver-coloured Vauxhall was abandoned.

Gilbert was dark-haired, five foot eight tall, sparely made. His features were neat, a neat mouth and nose, brown eyes very like his mother’s, high cheekbones. Everything about Gilbert went together; even his voice — soft and unemphatic — belonged to a whole. The most distinctive thing about him was that — for no apparent reason, and even when he was not being loquacious — his presence in a room could not be overlooked; and often his presence lingered after he had left.

When Gilbert was two there had been an intensity in his gaze that Rosalie considered strange. Staring at the leg of a chair or at his own foot, he managed not to blink for minutes on end. He made no sound, and it was this she found unnerving. He took to examining, very closely, the palms of his hands. He splayed his fingers the way an old man might, and still in silence appeared to search the skin for flaws. Then, as abruptly as it all began, the staring ceased. But when he was five certain small objects from the kitchen disappeared — teaspoons, egg-cups, a potato-peeler. They were never found.

When he was nine Gilbert underwent psychiatric attention. The immediate reason for this was because one day he did not return from school. He should have returned on the bus, travelling with a handful of other children who lived in the same neighbourhood. Later that afternoon the police were informed, but Gilbert wasn’t found and there were no reports of his having been seen anywhere. At half-past seven the next morning he rang the bell of 21 Blenheim Avenue, having spent the night in the basement of a block of flats. He gave his mother no explanation. Silence replaced his normal eagerness to communicate, as it had when he had first begun to examine his hands and when the kitchen objects disappeared.

Soon after that Gilbert refused to do the homework he was set and took to sitting, silent and still, in the classroom, refusing to open his books or even to take them out of his satchel. When asked, he again offered no explanation. The doggedness that was to characterize Gilbert in adult life began then: a psychiatrist declared that the child believed he was being deprived of certain rights, and a psychoanalyst — some time later — read the trouble similarly, while presenting it with his own professional variation and an adjustment of jargon. Gilbert, fourteen in 1978, spent that year in a centre devoted to the observation of erratic behavioural tendencies. ‘Gilbert’ll be encouraged to share his difficulties with us,’ a man with a beard told Rosalie, adding vaguely: ‘And of course there’ll be regular counselling.’ But when Gilbert returned to 21 Blenheim Avenue he was the same as he’d been before except that he’d grown almost two inches and possessed a noticeable fuzz of down on his upper lip and chin. Since the time he’d refused to co-operate in school he had successfully taught himself mathematics, Latin, geography, French and rudimentary German. He read voraciously, mainly history and historical biographies; in correctly spelt, grammatical prose he wrote long essays and talked to Rosalie about Cavour and Charlemagne and various treaties and land settlements. In 1984, when he was twenty, he disappeared for a week. At the end of the following year he disappeared for longer, but sent Rosalie picture postcards from a number of South Coast seaside resorts, saying he was OK, working in hotels. Later he didn’t elaborate on that, and the next time he disappeared there were cards from the same area; when he returned he had acquired a Skoda. His mother never discovered when and where he had learnt to drive, or in what manner he had obtained the licence she discovered in one of his dressing-table drawers. He worked for a while in the potting department of a jam factory before moving to the architect’s office, which he said was a more interesting place to be. A social worker — a conscientious woman who had known Gilbert during his time in the behavioural centre - still occasionally visited him, coming to the house on Saturday mornings, when he didn’t have to go to work. Talks excessively about photocopying, she noted once, and felt it was too harsh to add that Gilbert’s loquaciousness was very boring to listen to. In the end, remarking to Rosalie that her son did not appear to be benefiting from her counselling and had settled well into his employment, she ceased her Saturday-morning visits. Seems satisfactory, she noted. Gives no trouble.

Rosalie did not share that sanguine view. She did not believe her son was satisfactory. She had not believed it for a long time, and was aware that the afternoon he had failed to return from school was a single bead in the chain of unease that was beginning to form. When he had been taken into the behavioural centre her hope was that he would remain there indefinitely. ‘Now, let’s try to discover why you wish that, Mrs. Mannion,’ one of the staff had pressed her, his manner loftily clinical. But when she said it was simply something she felt, she was brought up sharply. It was pointed out to her that the centre was for observation and study, and the accumulation of case histories: in that respect it was doing well by Gilbert, but it stood to reason he could not remain there. Her son was fortunate to have her, she was informed. She had a role, that same lofty manner insisted, without words. She was, after all, the mother.

On the evening of Tuesday, November 21st Gilbert helped with the washing-up as usual, and then said he intended to drive over to the Bull public house. He reminded his mother where it was, as he often did: at the corner of Upper Richmond Road and Sheen Lane.

‘I’ll not stay long,’ he said.

On the nine o’clock television News a picture was shown of the straggling cotoneaster and the dead leaves where Carol Dickson’s body had lain. Carol’s mother, appealing for witnesses to come forward, broke down in the middle of what she was saying; the camera lingered on her distress.

Rosalie turned the television off, not moving from where she sat, using the remote control. For the moment she couldn’t even remember if Gilbert had gone out last night, then she remembered that he had and had come back earlier than usual. It was always the News, on the radio or the television, that prompted her dread. When a fire was said to have been started deliberately, or a child enticed, or broken glass discovered in baby-food jars in a supermarket, the dread began at once — the hasty calculations, the relief if time and geography ruled out involvement. More than once, before she became used to it, she had gone to lie trembling on her bed, struggling to control the frenzy that threatened. The second time he sent his picture postcards, her mocking little screen had shown a burnt-out dance hall, fourteen fatalities obscured by blankets in a Brighton car park. There had been a fire — deliberately started also, so the News suspected — on a cross-channel ferry four days after Gilbert had announced, ‘I’ll just take the Skoda here and there.’ He had been away when a branch of the Halifax Building Society was held up by a gunman who left his weapon on the counter, a water-pistol as it was afterwards discovered. He had been away when an old woman was tied to a chair in her council flat and only an alarm clock stolen from her, which reminded Rosalie of the teaspoons and egg-cups and the potato-peeler. She was certain a kind of daring came into it, even if the chances he took were loaded in his favour: he did not place himself in danger, he had a right to survive his chosen acts of recklessness, he had a right to silence. He would not be caught.

Last night he had come back earlier than usual: again, unable to help herself, she established that. But the recollection hardly made a difference. As soon as she’d seen the place where the body had been and noted the tired bewilderment in the police inspector’s eyes, she knew there was a mystery; that weeks, or months, would pass without progress, that the chances were the crime would remain unsolved. She knew, as well, that if she went to Gilbert’s room she’d find not a single leaf of cotoneaster, no titbit taken from the girl’s clothing. There wouldn’t be a scratch anywhere on Gilbert, nor a tear in his clothes, nor a speck of blood in his Skoda.

It had never been said that Rosalie’s marriage failed because of Gilbert, but often during the sixteen years that had passed since the divorce she wondered if somehow this could be so. Had she, even then — when Gilbert was only nine — been half destroyed by the nagging of her fears, made unattractive, made limp, wrung out by an obsession that spread insidiously? None of that was said: the other woman was the reason and the cause. An irresistible love was what was spoken of.

Rosalie had often since considered that the irresistible love had picked up the fragments that were already there. Hidden at the time — like something beneath a familiar stone, something that had arrived without being noticed as a danger — was the reason and the cause. This view was strengthened by subsequent events. Since the divorce there had been kindness from men who liked her, theatre visits and tête-à-tête dinners, hints of romance. But there had always been a fizzling-out, caution creeping in. She tried on all such occasions not to talk about her son, but she knew that he was somehow there anyway, and dread is hard to hide. It intensified her solitude, spread nerviness and was exhausting. In the fabrics shop, when voices all around her were saying what a terrible thing, it wasn’t easy to keep her hands from shaking.

‘I’ve brought you back the Evening Standard,’ Gilbert said, smiling at her. It was a habit of his to pick up newspapers in public houses. He played a game sometimes, watching the people who were reading them, trying to guess which one would be left behind. He never bought a newspaper himself.

‘Thank you, dear,’ she said, returning his smile. I believe Gilbert has stolen a car, she had written to his father, who phoned as soon as he received the letter, listening without interrupting to everything she said. But he’d pointed out, quite gently, that she was merely guessing, that it was suspicion, nothing more.

‘Cake?’ Gilbert said. ‘A Mr. Kipling’s, have we?’

She said there was a cake in the kitchen, in the Quality Street tin.

‘Tea?’ he offered.

She shook her head. ‘No, not tonight, dear.’

He didn’t leave the room, telling her instead about his visit to the public house. He had drunk half a pint of cider and watched the other drinkers. Two girls were crawling all over a man with a moustache, a man who was much older than they were. The girls were drunk, shrill when they laughed or spoke. The red, white-spotted skirt of one of them had ridden up so far that Gilbert could see her panties. Blue the panties were.

‘Funny, that,’ Gilbert said. ‘The way she didn’t mind.’

On the front of the Evening Standard she could see a half-page photograph of Carol Dickson, not a particularly pretty girl, her mouth clenched tight in a grin, bright blonde hair. She might have guessed he’d bring in the Evening Standard; she would have if she’d thought about it. ‘You’re an imaginative woman,’ one of the experts she’d pleaded with had stated, fingering papers on his desk. ’Better, really, to be down to earth in a case like this.’

In the public house an old man had bothered him, he said. ‘Busy tonight, ‘ the old man had remarked.

Gilbert had agreed, moving slightly so that he could watch the girls, but the old man was still in his way.

‘Fag, dear?’ the old man offered, holding out a packet of Benson & Hedges.

She could always guess, Rosalie sometimes thought: what would happen next, how he wouldn’t refer to the girl on the front of the Evening Standard, how the panic would softly gather inside her and harden without warning into a knot, how the dryness in her mouth would make speech difficult.

‘Afterwards I flagged down a police car,’ Gilbert said. ‘ “That old poufta’s out again tonight,” I told them. Well, I had to.’

He’d noticed the police car crawling along, he said, so he drew in in front of it and made a hand signal. ‘I told them he’d still be there if they went along immediately. They wrote down what he’d said to me, tone of voice and everything. When I put it to them they agreed an obscene way of talking is against the law. Quite nice they were. I thought I’d better report it, I explained to them, in case the next time it was some young boy. They said quite right. They’ll have him on their books now. Even if they decide not to take him in tonight they’ll have him on their books. They can give a man like that a warning or they can take him in if there are charges preferred. I’d always be ready to prefer charges because of the harm that could be done to an innocent boy. I said that. I said this was the eighth or ninth time he’d addressed me in that tone of voice. They quite agreed that people should be allowed to have a drink in peace.’

‘You didn’t go out again last night, did you, dear?’

‘Last night? It was tonight the poufta -’

‘No, I meant last night. You were back quite early, weren’t you?’

Headachy for no particular reason, she’d gone to bed after supper. But she’d heard him coming in, no later than a quarter-past nine, certainly no later than half-past. She’d fallen asleep about ten; she thought she remembered the sound of the television just before she dropped off.

‘The Big Sleep last night,’ he said. ‘But you can’t re-set a thing like that in England. It doesn’t make sense. A girl in the Kall Kwik was saying it was great, but I said I thought it was pathetic. I said it didn’t make any sense, interfering with an original like that. Silly of them to go interfering, I said.’

‘Yes.’

‘West Indian the girl was.’

Rosalie smiled and nodded.

‘Funny, saying it was great. Funny kind of view.’

‘Perhaps she didn’t know there’d been an original.’

‘I said. I explained about it. But she just kept saying it was great. They’re like that, the West Indian girls.’

Sometimes, when he went on talking, she felt like the shadow of a person who was not there. Ordinary-sounding statements he made exhausted her. Was it a deliberate act, that tonight he’d had a conversation with the police? Was it all part of being daring, of challenging the world that would take his rights from him? Often it seemed to her that his purposeless life was full of purpose.

‘I’ll make us tea,’ he said. ‘Really cold it is tonight.’

‘Not tea for me, dear.’

‘Chap in the Kall Kwik was saying the anti-freeze on his windscreen froze. If you can believe him, of course. Whopper Toms they call him. Says he likes the taste of paper. Eats paper bags, cardboard, anything like that. If you can believe him. Means no harm, though.’

‘No, I’m sure he doesn’t.’

‘Congenital. Pity, really. I mean, I’ve seen him chewing, always chewing he is. It’s just that it could be gum. Could be a toffee, come to that.’

Impassive she sat, staring at the grey empty screen of the television set when he went to make his tea. His father had found it impossible to love him, long before the marriage had collapsed. That had not been said either, but she knew it was true. For some reason he did not inspire love, even in a father. Yet it had broken her heart to say he should be retained in the centre where they’d studied him. It had broken her heart each time she’d begged that he should be put somewhere else, when they’d said the centre wasn’t suitable. Vigilance was his due, a vigilance she was herself unable, adequately, to supply. All she could do was listen to his rigmaroles, and care that he couldn’t bear wool next to his skin. The policemen he’d flagged down would have said he had a screw loose. In the Kall Kwik they would say the same.

‘You saw it to the end?’ she asked when he returned with a tray. ‘You saw that film to the end even though it was so silly?’

‘What film’s that?’

‘The Big Sleep.’

‘Really grotty it was.’

He turned the television on. Politicians discussed Romania. His features, coloured by the highlights from the screen, displayed no emotion, neither elation nor melancholy. He was meticulous about taking the drugs prescribed. ‘There is nothing to fear,’ she had been assured, ‘if the medication is taken. Nothing whatsoever.’

The time of the dance-hall fire she’d thought she’d never see him again. She’d thought he wouldn’t come back and that eventually there’d be questions, two and two put together. She had imagined waiting, and nothing happening, day after day; and then, in some unexpected place, his apprehension. Instead he returned.

‘Mr. Kipling’s Fancies,’ he said, offering her the iced cakes, still in their cardboard carton. When she shook her head he poured his tea.

‘Bet you it’s gum he chews,’ he said. ‘Bet you.’

If he’d gone out again last night she’d have heard the car starting. The car would have woken her. She’d have sat up, worrying. She’d have turned her bedside light on and waited to hear the car returning. Even if he’d left the house again almost as soon as he’d entered it he would have to have driven very fast to reach that part of London by five to ten, which was the time they gave; five to ten at the latest, since the girl had said goodnight to her friend at nine-fifty and only had seven hundred yards to walk. There was nothing unusual about his bringing back the Evening Standard. He’d mentioned the old homosexual who bothered him before: it just happened that tonight there was a police car prowling.

‘This is lousy stuff,’ he said, and changed the television channel. His hands were thin — delicate hands, not much larger than her own. He was not given to violence. ‘No! No!’ he used to cry, still sometimes did, when she swatted a fly. In all his acts of bravado there had never been violence — when he refused to open his schoolbooks, when he spent a night in a basement, when he acquired a motor-car without money. No one would deny his cleverness, cunningly concealed beneath his tedious chatter. No one would deny being baffled by him, but there was never violence.

‘Hey, look at that,’ he suddenly exclaimed, drawing her attention to overweight people at a holiday camp for the obese. He laughed, and she remembered his infant’s face when first they showed it to her. People didn’t want him. His father and a whole army of medical people, the social worker, people he tried to make friends with: all of them deserted him too soon. He was on sufferance in the architect’s office; wherever he went he was on sufferance.

‘Awful,’ he said, ‘as fat as that.’

Then the News was on again, on Channel 3, and he sat silent - that awful silence that closed him down. On the screen the face of Carol Dickson was just as it was in the newspaper. Her mother broke down, the police inspector gave out his facts: all of it was repetition.

She watched him staring at the screen intently, as if mesmerized. He listened carefully. When the News was over he crossed the room and picked up the Evening Standard. He read it, his tea and cakes forgotten. She turned the television off.

‘Goodnight, Gilbert,’ she said when he rose to go to bed. He did not answer.

The newspaper was on the floor beside his chair, the face of Carol Dickson spread out for her, the right way up. She remembered how he’d stood when he’d come back after his first disappearance, how he leaned against the kitchen door-frame, following her with his eyes, silent. When he’d come back with the Skoda she’d thought of going to the police. She’d thought of trying to explain to some kindly older man in a uniform, asking for help. But of course she hadn’t.

She might dial 999 now. Or she might go tomorrow to a police station, apologizing even before she began, hoping for reassurance. But even as these thoughts occurred she knew they were pretence. Before his birth she had possessed him. She had felt the tug of his lips on her breasts, a helpless creature then, growing into the one who controlled her now, who made her isolation total. Her fear made him a person, enriching him with power. He had sensed it when he had first idly examined the palms of his hands, and felt her mother’s instinct disturbed. He had sensed it when he had hidden the kitchen objects where they could not be found, when he had not come back from school, when he had talked to the social worker about photocopying. He knew about the jaded thoughts recurring, the worry coursing round and round at its slow, familiar pace. The Skoda had been stolen; parked outside the house, it was always a reminder.

All night, she knew, she would sit there, the muzzy image of Carol Dickson where he had left it, a yard away. She did not want to sleep because sleeping meant waking up and there would be the moment when reality began to haunt again. Her role was only to accept: he had a screw loose, she had willed him to be born. No one would ever understand the mystery of his existence, or the unshed tears they shared.