Cold Light

Eight

For Christmas, Resnick had bought himself The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve, a new edition of Dizzy Gillespie’s autobiography, and The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, LP and Cassette. What he still had to acquire was a CD player.

But there he’d been, not so many days before, sauntering down from Canning Circus into town, sunshine, one of those clear blue winter skies, and glancing into the window of Arcade Records he had seen it. Among the Eric Clapton and the Elton John, a black box with the faintest picture of Billie on its front; ten CDs and a two-hundred-and-twenty-page book, seven hundred minutes of music, a numbered, limited edition, only sixteen thousand pressed worldwide.

Worldwide, Resnick had thought; only sixteen thousand worldwide. That didn’t seem an awful lot of copies. And here was one, staring up at him, and a bargain offer to boot. He had his check book but not his check card. “It’s okay,” the owner had said, “I think we can trust you.” And knocked another five pounds off the price.

Resnick had spent much of the morning, between readying the duck for the oven, peeling the potatoes, and cleaning round the bath, looking at it. Holding it in his hand. Billie Holiday on Verve. There is a photograph of her in the booklet, New York City, 1956: a woman early to middle-age, no glamour, one hand on her hip, none too patiently waiting, a working woman, c’mon now, let’s get this done. He closes his eyes and imagines her singing-“Cheek to Cheek” with Ben Webster, wasn’t that fifty-six? “Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me.” “We’ll Be Together Again.” The number stamped on the back of Resnick’s set is 10961.

So much easier to look again and again at the booklet, slide those disks from their brown card covers, admire the reproductions of album sleeves in their special envelope, easier to do all of this than take the few steps to the mantelpiece and the card that waits in its envelope, unopened. A post mark, smudged, that might say Devon; the unmistakable spikiness of his ex-wife’s hand.

The duck was delicious, strongly flavored, fatty yet not too fat. Certainly Dizzy had thought so, up on to the table with a spring before Resnick had noticed, enjoying his share of breast, a little leg, happy finally to be chased off down the garden, jaws tight around a wing.

Resnick sliced away the meat from where the black cat had eaten and shared it amongst the others, Miles rearing up on his hind legs, Bud pushing his head against Resnick’s shins, Pepper patient by his bowl.

As well as those he had set to roast around the bird, Resnick had cooked potatoes separately and mashed them with some swede, sprinkled that with paprika, poured on sour cream. Sprouts he had blanched in boiling water before finishing in the frying pan with slices of salami, cut small. Polish sausage he had simmered in beer until it was swollen and done.

He had not long finished foraging for his second helping when Marian Witczak called him on the phone. “Charles, how are you? I have been meaning all day to wish you a merry Christmas, but, I don’t know, somehow it has all been so busy.”

Resnick pictured her, alone in the extravagant Victoriana of her house across the city, drinking Christmas toasts to long-departed Polish heroes, pale sherry in fragile crystal glasses; sitting down, perhaps, to play a little Chopin at the piano before taking some general’s memoir or some book of old photographs down from the shelf.

“So, Charles, you must tell me, my presents, what did you think?”

They were still on the hall chest, neat in their snowy paper, white and red ribbon tied with bows.

“Marian, I’m sorry, thank you. Thank you very much.”

“You really like them?”

“Of course.”

“If only you knew how much time I spent deciding, well, I think you might be surprised. But the colors, the design, it had to be just right.”

Socks? Resnick thought. A tie?

“Even so, I have kept the receipt. Should you decide to take it back and exchange …”

“Marian, no. It’s lovely.” A tie.

“And the other gift, Charles, what did you think of that?”

The other? He pictured a second package, square and flat, he had taken it for a card. But, no, Marian’s card was in the living room, a starry night over Wenceslas Square.

“It was not too presumptuous, I trust.”

“We’re old friends, Marian …”

“Exactly. This is what I tell myself.”

“You know me well enough …”

“So you will come?”

Come? Resnick swallowed most of a sigh. Come where?

“We will both wear, Charles, what would you say? Our dancing shoes.”

The conversation over, Resnick went through to the hall. Faced with the broad expanse of the chest’s wooden lid, Bud had chosen Marian’s presents to curl up on. The tie was silk, a swirl of soft color, blue on blue. Inside the second package was his ticket to the Polish Club’s New Year’s Eve Dinner and Dance. What was it, this sudden desire of everyone to get him out on to the floor?

The same films were on the television, immovable as the Queen’s Christmas Address. What he wanted was a good old-fashioned first division encounter, Southend and Grimsby, one of those. Where the long ball hoofed out of defense was deemed creative play and tackles thudded in so hard the TV set seemed to shake with the impact. What he got were daring prisoners-of-war, straw men, a sweep of hills on which, if only people would stop singing, you might hear edelweiss grow. Was it Exeter, the name smudged almost out of recognition? Exmoor? Exmouth? Resnick held up the envelope, angled against the light. Through it he saw, in veiled outline, something that might have been a coach with horses, reindeer with a sledge. Let me tell them about the letters, Charlie. All the letters I sent you, the ones you never answered. All the times I rang up in pain and you hung up without a word. With care, he set it back upon the shelf. Tell them all about that, Charlie. How you helped me with everything I’ve been going through.

He had not heard from Elaine for years, not since the divorce. And then they had started arriving, envelopes on which it was sometimes difficult to read his own address. Afraid of their contents he had shredded them into fragments, turned them to ash, pushed them deep to the back of the kitchen drawer. He had not wanted to know and it had taken Elaine to tell him, face to face, her voice strident and off-key, puncturing his seeming indifference with its accusations and its pain; later, in this house, this room, she had outlined with disturbing calmness her journey from miscarriage and desertion to the hospital ward, the treatments, the analyst’s chair.

Resnick had felt sympathy for her then, love even, not the same but a different kind. Almost, he could have crossed the floor and held her in his arms. But guilt had numbed him. That and a sense of self-preservation too.

She had walked out of the house and he had not heard from her again.

Till now.

From the upstairs window he mourned the slow fading of the light.

Coffee, he ground fine and made strong, drank with a tumbler of whisky at its side. Sliding an Ellington album from its buckled sleeve, he set it to play. The notes on the incident at the Housing Office and Gary James’ interview he had brought with him and he scanned them now, wondering again if it had been right to release him, let him return home. Injuries to a small boy consistent with what? Running smack into a door. Smack into his father’s fist. One of the cats jumped into Resnick’s lap, nudged his fingers with its nose, turned twice and settled, lay a paw across its eyes, and fell asleep. Jimmy Blanton’s bass was rocking the whole band. Exmouth or Exeter? A coach or a sledge? Miles stared up at Resnick resentfully as he was set down on the floor. So easy, the act of sliding a finger behind the envelope’s flap, tearing it open, shaking the contents down into your hand. It was a stagecoach, holly at its windows, snowflakes round its wheels; someone akin to Mr. Pickwick beamed from the driver’s seat and lifted his hat. Forgive me, Charlie? it said inside, and then, below, the words close to falling off the bottom of the card, Merry Christmas, Elaine.

No love, no kiss.

Forgive me.

He heard Alice Skelton’s harsh whispers. How much proof d’you need? Catching them doing it, there in your bed?

It had been someone else’s bed, an empty house, the duvet carefully replaced, pillows slightly overlapping, not quite so. When he had lifted the duvet aside and brought his face close to the center of the sheet, there had been no denying it, the lingering warmth, the tang of recent, hurried sex. The smile upon Elaine’s face when he had seen her leaving, minutes before. That smile. When Resnick brought his hand to his face, as he did now, and closed his eyes, he could taste, deep in the cracks between his fingers, that memory, salt like the sea.