A Ladder to the Sky(102)

‘She probably does,’ he said, and I was surprised that he would contradict me, but perhaps he was right. Wherever she was, there was a good chance that she thought of him a hundred times a day. I know I did.

‘Anyway, it was just Daniel and me all those years,’ I continued. ‘We were a pair, you see. Rarely apart. He didn’t even have his own bedroom until he was three years old because he didn’t want to be separated from me. He never asked about a mother; the absence of a female presence in his life didn’t seem to be an issue for him. We were in New York then, of course. Daniel lived there all his life. You’re aware of Storī?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, I set that up when we first moved to Manhattan and then I edited it for several years. Before my son started school, he used to come into the office with me every day and sit in the corner at his own desk, colouring, reading or playing with his toys. I think people thought it was rather sweet, a father and a little boy so attached to each other, but it rather annoyed me when they did. I wasn’t doing it for appearances’ sake. We just enjoyed each other’s company.’

‘What was he like?’ asked Theo. ‘Personality-wise, I mean.’

‘He was quiet,’ I said, and I felt a deep pain at the pit of my stomach, remembering his good qualities, of which he had many. ‘Bookish, like me. Shy. Very loving. Very warm. A good cook for such a young boy. It’s something that he might have pursued as a career, had he been given a chance. He was interested in photography too and had started talking about taking dance classes, which I encouraged, as I thought he was rather too introverted.’

‘Did he have many friends?’

I shook my head again. ‘Not many. At least, not many that I knew of.’

‘How old was he when he died?’

‘Thirteen.’

‘Too young to have a girlfriend, I suppose.’

I smiled regretfully. Daniel had never introduced me to a girl, nor had he ever spoken about girls he liked, but I knew that he was beginning to get interested because he’d grown very self-conscious around an attractive young woman who was interning at Storī, and once, when she engaged him in a conversation about a movie she’d just seen, he’d turned bright red, startlingly so, and I’d felt embarrassed for him, being unable to control his emotions like that. I thought it rather sad that the boy had surely died with his innocence intact.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He kept that part of his life very quiet from me. I mean, he was thirteen years old, and boys that age don’t like to discuss such things with their fathers, do they?’

‘I certainly didn’t. Do you have a picture of him? Of Daniel?’

‘Not with me,’ I said.

‘So Edith and he weren’t related,’ he said quietly, more to himself than to me. He glanced out of the window for a moment, tapped his finger against his chin, then turned back, scribbled something down and turned his page.

‘There was something else I wanted to ask you about your wife,’ he said.

‘Feel free.’

‘I hope you won’t take it the wrong way. It might seem rather … audacious on my part.’

‘I’m intrigued now.’

He nodded but took a long time to speak. I decided to do nothing to hurry him along. I was rather enjoying his discomfort.

‘As I mentioned,’ he said eventually, ‘I read Fury recently.’

‘And I’m glad you did. It’s actually rather hard to find a copy these days. It’s been out of print for years.’

‘I tracked it down in the British Library. It wasn’t very difficult.’

I took a sip from my pint but avoided his eye.

‘There were a few stylistic points in it that intrigued me.’

‘Oh yes?’ I said.

‘She was very fond of the ellipsis, wasn’t she? Too fond, I would suggest. And she had a habit of introducing new characters by describing their eyes. I was surprised that an editor didn’t ask her to watch out for that. She does it with almost every character.’

‘That’s true,’ I agreed. ‘It was a habit she fell back on time and again. We all have these little quirks, I suppose.’

‘Also, there was her fondness for giving characters alliterative names. Charles Chorley, for example. Elsie Engels. It’s very noticeable. It actually becomes a little annoying at one point.’

‘Did you think so?’ I asked, for I’d always rather enjoyed this conceit of Edith’s. ‘Well? What of it? Dickens did it all the time too. John Jarndyce in Bleak House. Tommy Traddles in David Copperfield. Nicholas Nickleby.’

He rummaged through his notes again, this time pulling a separate folder from his bag and running his finger down the page. ‘It’s just that I noticed you do the same thing in The Tribesman,’ he said. ‘Six out of the eleven main characters are introduced with descriptions of their eyes, while the protagonist’s name is—’

‘William Walters, yes, I remember.’

‘And the woman he loves is—’

‘Sara Salt.’

Theo gave a half-shrug and looked me in the eye. ‘Can I ask you a direct question?’

‘You can.’

‘Did Edith have anything to do with The Tribesman?’ he asked.