Tuesday's Gone

Thirty-eight

Josef was painting Mary Orton’s skirting-boards white. As he drew the brush along the wood, he tried not to think about his children. His chest burned when he pictured them at home without him, or when he remembered the last time he had seen them. He had tried to hold them too tightly and they had shrunk away from him, from the smell on his breath and the wildness in his eyes. So he concentrated on the smoothness of the paint. He looked up from his work to find Mary Orton standing behind him, her hands clutching a dishcloth and her face anxious.

‘I can help?’

‘I want to show you something.’

Josef laid the brush on the lid of the tin and scrambled to his feet. ‘Of course, show me,’ he said reassuringly.

‘This way.’

‘She led him upstairs to her bedroom, the one room of the house he hadn’t been into. It had high ceilings, patterned wallpaper, and its large window looked out on to the garden where spring bulbs were at last pushing their way through the cold soil. She went to a small bureau, opened it and fumbled in the small drawer for something. He could see she was agitated. Her fingers were clumsy and her breath laboured.

‘Here.’

She turned and put a folded piece of paper into his hands and he stared down at the lines of blue ink, the frail, old-fashioned handwriting, all the letters looped and crossed.

‘This is what?’ he asked. ‘Really, my English not good, Mrs Orton.’

‘I did make a will,’ she whispered. There were tears in her eyes as she stared at him. ‘I was going to give a third of it to him. We drew it up together and we got a neighbour down the road to witness it. Look. Here is their signature and mine.’

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I am wrong person here.’

‘Because they never come to see me. They don’t care – and he cared.’

‘He?’

‘Robert. He spent time with me, like you have. To them I’m just a burden. I suppose I should just burn this. Or is that wrong?’

Josef stood and held the piece of paper in his paint-smeared hand. He shook his head.

‘What shall I do?’

‘I don’t know. I give it to Frieda.’

Frieda walked home across Waterloo Bridge. They’d seen a film and then gone for a late meal at a Moroccan restaurant, where the air had smelt of cinnamon and roasting meat. Afterwards, she had felt a sudden need to be alone. He was obviously disappointed, but something was holding her back. He had kissed her on the cheek and gone.

She walked slowly, and when she was halfway across the bridge, she stopped as she always did. Usually it was to look upriver at Parliament and the Eye and downriver at St Paul’s, but this time she just leaned on the railing and stared down into the water. The Thames never seemed to flow as a river should. It moved more like a vast tide, and with the tide there were eddies and whirlpools and clashing currents. After a few minutes, she didn’t even see the water. She thought of the film she had just watched and of Robert Poole, whoever he really was. She thought of the traditional child’s fantasy that you are the only real person in the world and everybody else is an actor. Poole had been a sort of actor, taking on a different character for everyone he met, giving them the person they needed, the person who would seduce them. Then she allowed herself to think about Harry, in his light grey suit with his grey-blue eyes and his crisp white shirt, the way he bent towards her when she spoke and took the crook of her elbow when they crossed the road. The way he watched her and seemed to be trying to hear the things she would not say. It had been such a long time since she had let anyone come near her.

Gradually her thoughts stopped being specific, stopped being about anything at all but swirling and dark, like the river beneath her. Out of that darkness came a face and a name: Janet Ferris.

Frieda shivered. It was cold and exposed on the bridge. As she turned towards home, she looked at her watch. It was a quarter to midnight. Too late to phone Karlsson. She walked home quickly, got into bed and lay in the dark, agitated, her eyes burning. She wanted it to be day again, but day took a long time to come.