Cutting Edge

Thirty

He wanted Ed Silver still to be there, reading his borrowed book with rapt attention and complaining about every paragraph, every other word. It was a night for company, conversation, a little controlled drinking: it was not an evening Resnick wished to spend alone. There were cups and glasses, unwashed, in the sink; upstairs Resnick’s wardrobe door stood open and he wondered which of his clothes would come home next morning stiff with puke and cold. He thought of all the people he might call on the off chance and the list did not amount to much. Graham Millington had said to him, a month or so back, you must come round again and have a meal, the wife was asking. But Millington was parked in some motorway service area, a lorry park off the Al, cold and getting colder, asking himself over and over if all he’d joined the Force for had been this.

By the morning a murder incident room would have been set up, more uniformed officers drafted in, civilians to access all information, checking it via the Holmes computer. The investigation into the hospital attacks would continue side by side; CID resources would be stretched and stretched again. The DCI would be breathing down Skelton’s neck, wanting a result. All of that was tomorrow: tonight Resnick didn’t trust his own company.

Never having removed his coat, he let himself out again and hesitated between his front door and the gate. He sat in his car for fifteen, twenty minutes, letting the blackness thicken around him. Once, he thought he heard the telephone, muted, from inside the house. When it was quiet he got back out of the car and Dizzy ran along the top of the wall towards his hand. Against the black sheen of his coat, Dizzy’s eyes were alive and dangerous. This was his time. Where Resnick wanted to be was somewhere dull and safe. Known. Hands in his pockets, he set off towards the main road, past homes where the plates were being dried and stacked away, something good on the box at half-past eight, be quick, don’t be late.

Please come, Charles, we would all love to see you.

Only a dull light seemed to be burning deep in the hallway, faded orange through the triptych of stained glass beside the heavy wooden door. Resnick tried the bell again and heard another door, within the house, being firmly closed. Footsteps, brighter light, turning of the lock: when Marian Witczak appeared, the first of several clocks began to chime from different rooms, none pitched or set the same.

“Charles.” Surprise and pleasure mixed in her voice.

“The invitation, I know I should have replied …”

“Charles! Really, you are going to come? How nice.” She reached forward and took his hands, leading him into the tiled hall. “I hoped, of course, but never really expected …”

“I know. I’ve not been a good friend.”

“Always, you are so busy.”

Resnick nodded and offered up something of a smile. He was already beginning to wonder if he should have come. Marian had obviously spent time getting ready. She was wearing a tightly waisted orange dress that fell away in loose pleats almost to her ankles; her collar bones stood gaunt below thin straps, a silver brooch like a spider above her breast. Lifted off her face and tightly coiled behind, her hair accentuated the hollowness beneath her cheekbones. Her flat, black shoes had silver buckles, large and square.

“I shall not be the only one pleased to see you,” Marian said. “There is a feeling, perhaps you have deserted us.”

Resnick shook his head. “Don’t make me feel guilty, Marian. Besides, it’s you I’ve come to see, not the whole damned community.” He saw her disapproving face and found a more convincing smile. “You did say it was a party. I remember how you like to dance.”

Marian reached out again and patted his hand. “Please come and wait for me. I shall not be long.”

Holding his arm, she led him along the wide, tiled hall into a room of oak and dried flowers that had scarcely changed since Resnick had first seen it, more than thirty years before. Marian left him for a moment then returned, pressing a small cut glass into his hand. It was sweet plum brandy and he sipped at it as he stood by the French windows, looking out. It wasn’t simply that Marian, more or less his contemporary, made him unusually conscious of his age-stepping across this threshold was like stepping into another country. One which had little place in reality, least of all, perhaps, in Poland itself.

During the strikes, the demonstrations, the celebrations of democracy, Marian and her friends had watched in fascination every television picture, scanned newspaper after newspaper, each of them searching for a face they recognized, a street corner, a cafe. Resnick had never been there, where Marian Witczak still called home. Whenever he said the word, Resnick saw different pictures in his head, heard different voices, St. Ann’s rather than the Stare Miasto, not the Vistula but the Trent.

“See, Charles, I am ready.”

She stood in the doorway, a shawl of rich, black lace around her shoulders; small, white flowers pinned above her waist. She smelt of lilies of the valley. “Of course, Charles,” she said, “I am grateful that you are here. But let us face the truth: I have written you such notes before. What brings you here is less to see me, more whatever it may be you wish to turn your back upon.”

She put Resnick’s glass aside and offered him her gloved hand. “Tonight,” she said, “we will have a fine time. You see,” glancing down at the gleaming buckles, “I have on my dancing shoes.”

At first Resnick sat near the back of the main room, nursing his beer while Marian moved from table to table, table to bar, greeting those she had not seen since last year or last week with grave enthusiasm. The younger men stared at Resnick sullenly, knowing who he was and what he did.

At the head of the main table, the guest of honor drank peppermint vodka on the quarter hour and chainsmoked small dark cigars pressed upon him by his eager sons-in-law, mindful of what might one day soon be theirs. His daughters brought out a cake, festooned with chocolate flakes and candles and icing in red-and-white horizontal stripes: the committee made him a presentation and in the middle of his speech of thanks, the old man lost interest and sat back down to light a fresh cigar.

Resnick and Marian waltzed and polkaed and once essayed a nifty quickstep, until Resnick’s subliminally remembered fishtail came to grief amongst the swirl of small children that jigged about his legs.

After that they ate pieroqi, and when the treasurer tapped Resnick on the shoulder, he reached for his checkbook without delay.

“You see, Charles, you should join us more often. Then you would not look, always, so sad.” She touched the backs of her fingers lightly to his face. “Here it is a haven; here you may forget.”

The accordion player did a passable job on Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B Goode” and then led the band into an old Polish dance that had the men dropping alternately to right knee and left, lifting their partners off the ground and whirling them round.

Marian clapped along until her hands glowed.

Someone came and whispered in her ear and she blushed and agreed, excusing herself from Resnick to climb on to the stage and stand well behind the microphone. In a small, strong voice, to a lilting tune, she sang about a young girl who has been abandoned by her lover and still waits for him at the field edge, before a bank of tree.

When my hair turns white

Will you remember

that I was once young here?

I’ll keep faith forever

till only death overtake me.

There was a pause and then applause, those at the rear slapping the tables, stamping their feet. The band began a waltz and she stepped off the stage towards Resnick, hands outstretched. What else could he do? They made two circuits of the small floor to more applause, before others joined them and when the dance at last ended there was scarcely room to move.

“I sang that once when I was twelve,” Marian said. “We were all here, my family, your family. My father lifted me upon to a chair to sing and when it was over, your mother pushed you forwards to give thanks. Do you remember?”

“Yes,” Resnick said, remembering nothing. Surely it had been another boy, not him at all?

As they walked back towards their table, Resnick was aware of people looking at them, weighing their futures in the balance.

“At least,” Marian smiled, seeing his embarrassment, “they’re not saying what a lovely couple we make.”

“Oh, but you do!”

The exclamation came from close behind and as both Resnick and Marian turned, a woman lurched towards them, dark hair and wild eyes.

“You do, you really do.”

Startled moments before Resnick recognized his former wife, before he recognized Elaine: sunken cheeks and patched skin, fiercely hacked hair, eyes that glowed back at him as if from the center of another face.

“Well,” Elaine said. “Old times. Me and you and Marian. This place.” She was standing unsteadily, never quite still. If she stops waving her arms, Resnick thought, she might fall down. “Pretty wonderful out there, the two of you, prancing about. The light fantastic. Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.”

She smiled lopsidedly, slipped, and when Resnick reached out a hand to steady her, she flapped him away.

“Got to hand it to you, Marian,” she said. “The way you’ve prized him out of his shell. More than I could usually manage.”

Marian’s eyes focused on Resnick, distressed, appealing. Around them people were ceasing to drink or talk, no longer pretending not to be watching.

“One quick turn round the floor at the end of the evening,” Elaine was saying. “If I was lucky.” She smiled conspiratorially at Marian. “It gets like that towards the end. They lose interest. All of them. You’ll see.”

Marian looked away but it didn’t matter: the words weren’t really for her, and Resnick and Elaine both knew it.

“Elaine,” Resnick said. “Please.”

“Please, Charlie? Is that pretty-please, or is it the other kind?”

Resnick sighed and looked towards the floor.

“Don’t look so hangdog, Charlie. It’s just girl talk. Marian and I having a nice little chat …”

“Elaine,” Resnick said.

“Yes?”

“This isn’t the place.”

“Oh, but it is. You’re here. She’s here …”

“No.”

“Charlie, you’re not embarrassed? Don’t tell me you’re embarrassed? Not after watching Marian singing about a late lamented lover. Some people might have thought that was a bit of a spectacle, Marian pretending to be a sweet little virgin, but there you were, Charlie, clapping along with the rest of them.”

Tears of shame in her eyes, Marian pushed her way towards the exit. Resnick started after her, stopped, turned back.

“Difficult, isn’t it?” Elaine said. “Which way for that famous bleeding heart to jump? Your lover or your wife?”

“She’s not …”

“Your lover? I daresay. And I’m not your wife.”

The band had stopped playing. There were hardly any other voices to be heard.

“But you know all about that,” Elaine said, backing towards the dance floor, looking all around. “Charlie’s tragic divorce. You were at the wedding, some of you. Remember? Whom no man shall put asunder. Except you, Charlie. Not so much put asunder as shut out. And you know the reason? I expect you all know the reason, but just in case …”

“Elaine …”

“Just in case you don’t …”

“Elaine …”

“The reason was I didn’t want to have babies …”

“Elaine, for God’s sake!”

“Pretty little babies to make him tall and proud …”

Resnick slid his face slowly down into his hands.

“… and call him Da-da.”

Resnick didn’t move. Blood was pumping fiercely inside his head, against his ears and he didn’t move.

“What’s the matter, Charlie?” Elaine said. “Too near the truth?”

He lowered his hands, opened his eyes and looked at her, anger thick in his face.

“You’d rather everyone thought you chucked me out because you caught me on the mattress of someone else’s bed, fucking another man. They’d understand that, not, but not … No, Charlie, let me finish. Don’t pull me! Don’t touch me! Let me finish telling them what kind of a caring, compassionate man you really are. 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.”

He wanted to strike her, hit her, wanted to smother her mouth, shelter from the taunt of her words and eyes. Her words broke over him as he turned and walked away.

“Stay and tell them about all that, Charlie. How you helped me with everything I’ve been going through. How you fucking helped …”

The sudden rush of cold air rocked him on his feet; a lorry climbing the hill missed a gear and he jumped. A black and white cab turned up from the city with its roof light shining and Resnick flagged it down, bundling himself into the warm upholstery of the back.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

“Anywhere,” Resnick said. “Just drive.”