her. Summoning this fact, erasing others, lifts her performance.
“I should have…I should have kept him here. Oh my God, it’s all my fault.”
How clever, hiding in plain sight, behind the truth.
The sergeant says, “People often say that. But you mustn’t, you shouldn’t. It’s wrong to go blaming yourself.”
A deep inhalation and sigh. She seems about to speak, stops, sighs again, gathers herself. “I ought to explain. Things weren’t going well between us. He was seeing someone, he moved out. And I started a…His brother moved in with me. John took it badly. That’s why I’m saying…”
She’s got in first with Claude, told them what they were bound to discover. If, in flagrant mood, she were to say now, “I killed him,” she’d be safe.
I hear the rasp of Velcro, the flip of notebook page, the scratch of pencil. She tells them in dulled voice all that she’d rehearsed, returning at the end to her own culpability. She should never have let him drive away in such a state.
The younger man says reverentially, “Mrs. Cairncross. You weren’t to know.”
Then she changes tack, almost sounds cross. “I don’t think I’m taking this in. I’m not even sure I believe you.”
“That’s understandable.” This is the paternal sergeant. With polite coughs, he and his colleague stand, ready to leave. “Is there someone you can call? Someone who can be with you?”
My mother considers her reply. She’s bent over again, face in hands. She speaks through her fingers in a flat voice. “My brother-in-law’s here now. He’s upstairs asleep.”
The guardians of the rule of law might be exchanging a lewd glance. Any token of their scepticism would help me.
“When the time’s right we’d like a word with him as well,” the younger one says.
“This news is going to kill him.”
“I expect you’d like to be alone together now.”
There it is again, the slender lifeline of insinuation to support my cowardly hope that the Force—Leviathan, not I—will take revenge.
I need a moment alone, beyond the reach of voices. I’ve been too absorbed, too impressed by Trudy’s art to peer into the pit of my own grief. And beyond it, the mystery of how love for my mother swells in proportion to my hatred. She’s made herself my only parent. I won’t survive without her, without the enveloping green gaze to smile into, the loving voice pouring sweets in my ear, the cool hands tending my private parts.
The constabulary leave. My mother mounts the stairs with a plodding tread. Hand firmly on the banister. One-two and pause, one-two and pause. She’s making a repeated humming sound on a fading note, a moan of pity or sadness exhaled through her nostrils.
Nnng…nnng
. I know her. Something’s building, a prelude to a reckoning. She devised a plot, pure artifice, a malign fairy tale. Now her fanciful story is deserting her, crossing the border as I did this afternoon, but in reverse, past the watchless guard huts, to rise against her, and side with the socially real, the dull quotidian of the working-day world, of human contacts, appointments, obligations, video cameras, computers with inhuman memories. In short, consequences. The tale has turned tail.
Hammered by drink and lost sleep, bearing me upwards, she continues towards the bedroom.
It was never meant to work
, she’s telling herself.
It was just my foolish spite. I’m only guilty of a mistake.
The next step is close, but she won’t take it yet.
TWELVE
We are advancing on slumbering Claude, a hump, a bell-curve of sound baffled by bedclothes. On the exhalation, a long, constipated groan, its approaching terminus frilled with electric sibilants. Then an extended pause which, if you loved him, might alarm you. Has he breathed his last? If you don’t, there’s hope he has. But finally, a shorter, greedy intake, scarred with the rattle of wind-dried mucus and, at the breezy summit, the soft palate’s triumphant purr. The rising volume
“I should have…I should have kept him here. Oh my God, it’s all my fault.”
How clever, hiding in plain sight, behind the truth.
The sergeant says, “People often say that. But you mustn’t, you shouldn’t. It’s wrong to go blaming yourself.”
A deep inhalation and sigh. She seems about to speak, stops, sighs again, gathers herself. “I ought to explain. Things weren’t going well between us. He was seeing someone, he moved out. And I started a…His brother moved in with me. John took it badly. That’s why I’m saying…”
She’s got in first with Claude, told them what they were bound to discover. If, in flagrant mood, she were to say now, “I killed him,” she’d be safe.
I hear the rasp of Velcro, the flip of notebook page, the scratch of pencil. She tells them in dulled voice all that she’d rehearsed, returning at the end to her own culpability. She should never have let him drive away in such a state.
The younger man says reverentially, “Mrs. Cairncross. You weren’t to know.”
Then she changes tack, almost sounds cross. “I don’t think I’m taking this in. I’m not even sure I believe you.”
“That’s understandable.” This is the paternal sergeant. With polite coughs, he and his colleague stand, ready to leave. “Is there someone you can call? Someone who can be with you?”
My mother considers her reply. She’s bent over again, face in hands. She speaks through her fingers in a flat voice. “My brother-in-law’s here now. He’s upstairs asleep.”
The guardians of the rule of law might be exchanging a lewd glance. Any token of their scepticism would help me.
“When the time’s right we’d like a word with him as well,” the younger one says.
“This news is going to kill him.”
“I expect you’d like to be alone together now.”
There it is again, the slender lifeline of insinuation to support my cowardly hope that the Force—Leviathan, not I—will take revenge.
I need a moment alone, beyond the reach of voices. I’ve been too absorbed, too impressed by Trudy’s art to peer into the pit of my own grief. And beyond it, the mystery of how love for my mother swells in proportion to my hatred. She’s made herself my only parent. I won’t survive without her, without the enveloping green gaze to smile into, the loving voice pouring sweets in my ear, the cool hands tending my private parts.
The constabulary leave. My mother mounts the stairs with a plodding tread. Hand firmly on the banister. One-two and pause, one-two and pause. She’s making a repeated humming sound on a fading note, a moan of pity or sadness exhaled through her nostrils.
Nnng…nnng
. I know her. Something’s building, a prelude to a reckoning. She devised a plot, pure artifice, a malign fairy tale. Now her fanciful story is deserting her, crossing the border as I did this afternoon, but in reverse, past the watchless guard huts, to rise against her, and side with the socially real, the dull quotidian of the working-day world, of human contacts, appointments, obligations, video cameras, computers with inhuman memories. In short, consequences. The tale has turned tail.
Hammered by drink and lost sleep, bearing me upwards, she continues towards the bedroom.
It was never meant to work
, she’s telling herself.
It was just my foolish spite. I’m only guilty of a mistake.
The next step is close, but she won’t take it yet.
TWELVE
We are advancing on slumbering Claude, a hump, a bell-curve of sound baffled by bedclothes. On the exhalation, a long, constipated groan, its approaching terminus frilled with electric sibilants. Then an extended pause which, if you loved him, might alarm you. Has he breathed his last? If you don’t, there’s hope he has. But finally, a shorter, greedy intake, scarred with the rattle of wind-dried mucus and, at the breezy summit, the soft palate’s triumphant purr. The rising volume
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