Mice

21

I still don’t know how I got through that day.

After Mum left, I sat slumped at the dining-room table like a puppet whose strings have been cut. I must have sat there for nearly two hours, reliving the events of the previous night time after time, from the moment I woke up to the moment Mum shattered the burglar’s skull with the chopping board.

It was as if my mind, unable to take in the enormity of the events while they’d actually been happening, had to go back over them obsessively in a desperate attempt to understand them now. I was powerless to resist and sat like a zombie, staring into space, watching the grisly drama unfolding in my mind’s eye in agonizing close-up, hideous slow motion. And when it ended and the burglar was dead, the whole thing simply began all over again.

A loud knock at the front door jolted me back to the present.

The police! It’s the police! How did they find us so quickly?

I sleepwalked my way slowly across the lounge, my exhausted heart beating a frenetic tattoo in my chest once again.

I mustn’t let them in, even if they’ve got a warrant, I mustn’t let them in!

With a shaking hand I pulled back the curtain and peered out of the window. There were no police cars, no flashing blue lights, no black-uniformed officers with their pocket radios crackling. There was only Roger. Roger holding his battered satchel. Roger whistling to himself. Roger squinting up at the cloudless blue sky.

Roger was in extremely good spirits that morning. I’d never seen him so cheery and talkative, almost as if it were his birthday, not mine. He’d bought me a beautiful hardback edition of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and a birthday card with a cartoon dog in artist’s beret and smock saying, I want to paint something special for your birthday — and inside, SO LET’S PAINT THE TOWN RED!

It took an enormous effort to feign the sort of girlish excitement Roger expected me to show when my mind felt on the point of fragmenting into a thousand tiny pieces. Just that word, birthday, with its terrible new associations (What’s this? It’s my daughter’s birthday present. What is it?) made my face flush red-hot and tears well up in my eyes, so that I had to blink rapidly to dispel them.

I struggled to answer Roger’s stream of cheery questions (What did your mum get you? Are you going anywhere special tonight?), stumbling over my words as if recovering from an anaesthetic or unused to speech, wearing a smile so forced that my face actually hurt with the effort. In case he detected something strained about my enthusiasm, I told him as soon as I could that Mum and I had drunk too much the night before and were both suffering for it this morning.

‘Ye-es, I noticed your eyes were looking rather red, young lady,’ he teased.

We went into the dining room and sat at our usual places, and Roger began to unpack his satchel. I watched him nervously, afraid of what his sharply observant eyes might notice as they glanced around the room. Hugely magnified, they darted this way and that behind his thick lenses like intelligent green fish. Would they notice something that we’d missed? A twist of the ragged rope he’d used to tie us up protruding from beneath the sofa? The white stump where the miniature cottage’s chimney had been? A triangular shard of the broken vase lying next to his chair leg? What was the tiny thread that would unravel everything? I doodled manically in the margin of my notebook, not daring to look up in case something in my expression betrayed my anxiety.

To me, everything in the dining room was tainted, compromised, impregnated by the events of the previous night — the sideboard and the antique writing desk had been ransacked by the burglar just a few hours before; the wooden bowl of potpourri had been knocked to the floor in his frantic search; the ornaments on the sideboard had been scooped into the red sports bag he’d been holding when I’d stabbed him; his knife had been lying on the dining-room table (exactly where Roger now placed his pen case) when I’d snatched it up on my way out into the garden; the very chair Roger sat in, the one with the chipped back, was the one in which Mum had been bound hand and foot, meekly awaiting her fate.

I was convinced Roger would be able to see the traces these events had left behind them standing out as clearly as the vapour trails of jets in an azure sky. I expected him to cry out at any second: What’s happened here, Shelley? Something terrible’s happened in this house!

It seemed impossible to believe that for him the dining room was just as it had always been, that there was nothing different about the writing desk, the ornaments on the sideboard, the chair he was sitting in; that the sinister change that had come over everything was simply the projection of my guilty mind. I was convinced he’d notice something that Mum and I had missed, some tiny incriminating detail we’d been too tired to see. And if he did. . what then? Mum hadn’t told me what to do if Roger discovered our secret.

After a seemingly interminable period getting his notes in order, Roger began on the origins of the First World War, a subject he was fast on his way to becoming a genuine expert in. I nodded and uh-huhed and occasionally wrote something in my notebook while my mind, safe from detection in its impenetrable secret self, carried on obsessively playing back the events of the night before.

‘You have to remember that Germany was tied to the Schlieffen plan, which called for France to be knocked out in a lightning attack so that all Germany’s forces could then be concentrated on Russia — it was an absolute article of faith for them.’

Don’t do anything or you’ll get this!

‘If the Russians completed their mobilization, they would be able to bring six million men under arms, and in spite of their defeat by Japan, there was still great fear in Germany of “the Russian steamroller”.’

I gotta tie you up. . That’s why I brought the rope.

‘Austria — Hungary’s ultimatum to Serbia was so harsh it was nigh on impossible to comply with, although the Serbs did their very best — enough to satisfy Kaiser Wilhelm that the cause of war had evaporated. .’

I shouldn’t have had them eggs. Them eggs was off.

‘There is evidence to suggest that Berchtold used a fabricated report of Serbian aggression on the Danube to force the emperor to sign the declaration of war. .’

I know what I want, lady! I know what I want!

‘Britain’s reason for going to war was Germany’s violation of Belgian neutrality, but Britain itself had plans to send troops into Belgium should that prove necessary. A truly neutral Belgium would have ruined Britain’s plans to starve Germany via a naval blockade. .’

He’s going to kill us, Mum. I know it for sure.

‘If France announced neutrality, Germany was going to ask for the fortresses of Verdun and Toul. .’

Fancy a snog?

‘France was to be forced into war whether she liked it or not. .’

Mum, this rope’s beginning to give. I think I can get my hands free. .

When we’d finished the origins of the First World War and Roger had outlined the revision essay he wanted me to write (The alliance system made the Great War inevitable. Discuss), we moved on to an English comprehension exercise: a long passage from Moby Dick entitled ‘Stubb kills a whale’ that had been set for the exam the previous year.

As usual, I had half an hour to answer the ten questions on my own and then we’d work through the answers together.

I’d never read Moby Dick and I found the passage almost incomprehensible, full of nautical words I didn’t know and strange names — Queequeg, Pequod, Daggoo, Tashtego. The questions on the text (What literary role does Stubb’s pipe play in this passage?) seemed much harder than usual. Whole sentences seemed to make no sense to me at all. Waves of tiredness washed over me and I had to struggle to keep my eyelids from closing. I felt unbearably hot, the scarf around my neck suffocating, my mouth dry. I found it impossible to concentrate on the page of black ants that marched and swirled and span before my eyes.

I dimly understood that a crew of sailors in a rowing boat led by a man called Stubb were hunting down a whale, and that it was Stubb who actually killed the whale with his harpoon, but my ability to grasp the fine details was shattered every few minutes by powerful flashbacks triggered by the text. When Stubb sent his ‘crooked lance’ into the whale ‘again and again’ I saw myself chasing the burglar round and round the kitchen table, stabbing him over and over. (We’re playing musical chairs now! We’re playing musical chairs now!) When ‘the red tide poured from all sides’ of the dying whale, I saw that enormous lake of blood that had come trickling across the terracotta tiles towards me where I’d sat hunched and exhausted against the washing machine. When the whale sent up ‘gush after gush of clotted red gore’ from its spout hole, I saw the red jet that had spewed out of the burglar’s neck when I’d nicked it with the tip of the knife. When Stubb ‘stood thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made’, I remembered that stillness, that silence in the kitchen after Mum’s crushing blow, when the fact, the unbelievable fact that we’d killed someone, slowly began to sink in.

I became aware of Roger’s voice, far, far away, barely audible. He was saying something for the second or third time.

‘Sorry — did you say something?’ I asked.

‘You are out of it, aren’t you?’ He laughed. ‘I was saying you’ve run out of time. It’s over.’

It’s over. Is that what the police would say if they came to the house today? You’ve run out of time. . I finished the word I was writing and put my pen down. I’d only answered half the questions.

‘Before we go through this,’ Roger said, ‘don’t you think we should have a little tea break? We’ve normally had two or three cups by now. .’

I hadn’t offered him any tea because he had a habit of following me into the kitchen and chatting while the kettle boiled, and I was mindful of Mum’s warning: keep people out of the kitchen whatever you do.

‘I suppose because it’s your birthday you want me to make it, is that right?’ Roger joked. ‘Well, as it’s your special day — just this once—’ And he started to get up.

‘No!’ I cried, jumping to my feet. ‘I’ll do it, Roger. I just forgot, that’s all. Like I said, I had way too much wine yesterday. I’m still asleep, really.’

Roger sat back down, but as I went to pass behind him on my way to the kitchen, he leaned back in his chair and blocked my way.

‘Is there any chance of a slice of your mum’s lemon cake while you’re out there, Shelley? I’m absolutely starving.’

‘Yes, of course.’ I smiled, and grinning cheekily, he let me pass. I felt sure he was going to follow me, and I desperately tried to think of some way to keep him in the dining room.

‘Do you want to start looking through my answers now?’ I said. ‘I didn’t get very far, I’m afraid.’

‘Sure,’ Roger said, reaching for my notebook. ‘Sure.’

The smile vanished from my face as soon as I was on my own in the kitchen. I had to hurry. I knew he’d follow me in if I wasn’t quick. I got the lemon cake out of the cake tin and dropped it on the table. I quickly filled the kettle, put two teabags in the pot, and snatched a plate from the cupboard. I took a fork from the cutlery drawer and then looked for a knife to cut the wretched lemon cake. I found the long sharp knife with the black plastic handle. As soon as I held it in my hand the flashbacks started again. Thumping the knife into the gap between his shoulder blades. Slashing at him as he ran bent double towards the house. Nicking the side of his neck as I pursued him around the kitchen. ‘We’re playing musical chairs now! We’re playing musical chairs now!’

‘You’re finding it very difficult, aren’t you, Shelley?’ said a voice behind me.

I spun around, the knife in my hand.

Roger was in the kitchen, walking nonchalantly towards the back door.

What did he mean? What was I finding difficult? Did he mean pretending that nothing had happened in the house last night? Did he mean covering up the murder of the burglar?

‘It’s not easy,’ he said, ‘especially when there’s so much blood.’

He knew! He knew! Somehow Roger knew!

I gripped the knife tightly in my hand, unsure what I should do next. Should I stab him? Was that what Mum would have wanted me to do?

‘It was a savage business, wasn’t it?’

‘What are you talking about?’ I croaked hoarsely, barely able to give the words enough weight to reach him.

Roger looked surprised. ‘The passage — the passage from Moby Dick. It’s not only difficult technically, but also emotionally. Whaling was a savage, bloody business in those days. I’m surprised they set it for the exam last year. It upset a lot of students, there were lots of complaints. Why, what did you think I meant?’

I took the cake out of its greaseproof paper and tried to cut it with a trembling hand. My nerves were raw and jangling. I had a strange feeling in my head: a whirling vertigo, a craziness, and the sickening sensation that I was no longer in control of my own actions. I quite simply didn’t know what I was going to do next, what I was capable of doing next. I had to get him out of the kitchen! This was the epicentre. This was where the killing had taken place. This was where all the blood had been. The knife wouldn’t stop shaking, and I had to use two hands to steady it.

‘It looks different in here,’ Roger said.

I pretended not to hear, but his words made my heart race even faster.

‘Where have the curtains gone?’

‘Um — Mum’s washing them,’ I said, trying to make my voice sound breezy and unconcerned.

‘And the doormat’s gone, too.’

‘Yes — uh, Mum hated it. She’s thrown it out.’

Roger was leaning against the back door with his arms folded. His enormous green eyes panned this way and that around the kitchen like security cameras.

‘There’s something else. .’ he said, as though thinking aloud. ‘Something else that’s different. .’

I could have told him: the heavy Italian marble chopping board that hung by the cooker was missing from its hook. It was upstairs in one of the bin bags, sticky with the burglar’s blood and brain matter.

‘What is it?’ he pondered. ‘What is it?’

I’d somehow managed to cut his slice of cake and put it on a plate. I held it up and smiled brightly but Roger was still scrutinizing the kitchen, tugging at the ends of his blond moustache.

And that’s when I saw it. Mum had missed it. I’d missed it. Exactly level with the point of Roger’s right elbow. Just above the handle on the door’s sea-blue frame. A kidney shape with four vertical stripes hovering above it. Now more brown than red, but still unmistakable.

It was a handprint.

(He tried to close the back door against me but I shoulder-barged my way inside.)

It was a bloody handprint.

Roger only had to turn his head a fraction of an inch and he couldn’t help but see it.

I didn’t lose my nerve, much to my own amazement. I fixed Roger’s eyes with my own, held them so that those darting green fish were stilled, and began to talk non-stop, blurting out the first thing that came into my head.

‘I thought the passage was impossible — the hardest comprehension exercise I’ve ever done and I didn’t get number five at all, Roger, I didn’t get it at all — “What’s the literary role of Stubb’s pipe?” What does “literary role” mean, for God’s sake? I mean, it’s just a pipe, isn’t it? Maybe it’s his trademark, maybe it’s something that marks him out as a character, but I can’t see that it’s got any literary role. .’

All the time I talked, I moved across the kitchen towards the dining room, holding the cake out in front of me. As Roger’s gaze followed me, so his head turned slowly, slowly away from the bloodstain on the back door…

‘No, that’s very true, Shelley — the question isn’t very well phrased at all, but I think what they’re driving at is that the pipe isn’t just a pipe, it’s a symbol—’

‘Come on,’ I interrupted him, standing at the door to the dining room, ‘let’s sit down in here and you can have your cake.’

Obediently, like a dog whose master has taken down his lead ready for a walk, Roger smiled, pushed himself off the door without unfolding his arms, and followed me out of the kitchen.