Nutshell(42)

‘I’ve got them. And the cash?’

‘In my case.’

But they don’t move and the asymmetry of the exchange – Trudy’s evasive reply – doesn’t provoke my uncle. He’s well into his third as Trudy’s first reaches me. Hardly sensual, but it speaks or sinks to the occasion, to a sense of an ending with no beginning in sight. I conjure an old military road through a cold glen, a whiff of wet stone and peat, the sound of steel and patient trudging on loose rock, and the weight of bitter injustice. So far from the south-facing slopes, the dusty bloom on swelling purple clusters framing receding hills and their overlapping shades of ever paler indigo. I’d rather be there. But I’m conceding – the Scotch, my first, sets something free. A harsh liberation – the open gate leads to struggle and fear of what the mind might devise. It’s happening now to me. I’m asked, I’m asking myself, what it is that I most want now. Anything I want. Realism not a limiting factor. Cut the ropes, set the mind free. I can answer without thinking – I’m going through the open gate.

Footsteps on the stairs. Trudy and Claude look up, startled. Has the inspector found a way into the house? Has a burglar chosen the worst of all nights? This is a slow, heavy descent. They see black leather shoes, then a belted waist, a shirt stained with vomit, then a terrible expression, both blank and purposeful. My father wears the clothes he died in. His face is bloodless, the already rotting lips are greenish-black, the eyes, tiny and penetrating. Now he stands at the foot of the stairs, taller than we remember him. He’s come from the mortuary to find us and knows exactly what he wants. I’m shaking because my mother is. There’s no shimmer, nothing ghostly. It’s not an hallucination. This is my corporeal father, John Cairncross, exactly as he is. My mother’s moan of fear acts as an enticement, for he’s walking towards us.

‘John,’ Claude says warily, on a rising note, as if he could wake this figure into proper non-existence. ‘John, it’s us.’

This seems well understood. He stands close before us, exuding a sweet miasma of glycol and maggot-friendly flesh. It’s my mother he stares at with small, hard, black eyes made of imperishable stone. His disgusting lips move but he makes no sound. The tongue is blacker than the lips. Fixing his gaze on her all the while, he stretches out an arm. His fleshless hand fastens on my uncle’s throat. My mother can’t even scream. Still, the illiquid eyes remain on her. This is for her, his gift. The remorseless, one-handed grip tightens. Claude drops to his knees, his eyes are bulging, his hands beat and pull uselessly at his brother’s arm. Only a distant squeaking, the piteous sound of a mouse, tells us that he’s still alive. Then he isn’t. My father, who hasn’t glanced at him once, lets him drop, and now draws his wife to him, enfolds her in arms that are thin and strong, like steel rods. He pulls her face towards his and kisses her long and hard with icy, putrefying lips. Terror and disgust and shame overwhelm her. The moment will torment her until she dies. Indifferently, he releases her, and walks back the way he came. Even as he climbs the stairs he begins to fade.

Well, I was asked. I asked myself. And that’s what I wanted. A childish Halloween fantasy. How else to commission a spirit revenge in a secular age? The Gothic has been reasonably banished, the witches have fled the heath, and materialism, so troubling to the soul, is all I have left. A voice on the radio once told me that when we fully understand what matter is we’ll feel better. I doubt that. I’ll never get what I want.

*

I emerge from reveries to find us in the bedroom. I’ve no memory of the ascent. The hollow sound of the wardrobe door, a clank of coat hangers, a suitcase lifted onto the bed, and another, then a brisk snap of locks opening. They should have packed in readiness. The inspector might even come tonight. Are they calling this a plan? I hear curses and muttering.

‘Where is it? I had it here. In my hand!’

They criss-cross the bedroom, open drawers, move in and out of the bathroom. Trudy drops a glass that shatters on the floor. She hardly cares. For some reason, the radio is on. Claude sits with his laptop and mumbles, ‘Train’s at nine. Taxi’s on its way.’

I’d prefer Paris to Brussels. Better onward connections. Trudy, still in the bathroom, mutters to herself, ‘Dollars … euros.’

Everything they say, even the sounds they make, have an air of valediction, like a sadly resolving chord, a sung farewell. This is the end; we aren’t coming back. The house, my grandfather’s house I should have grown up in, is about to fade. I won’t remember it. I’d like to summon a list of countries without extradition treaties. Most are uncomfortable, unruly, hot. I’ve heard that Beijing is a pleasant spot for runaways. A thriving village of English-speaking villains buried deep in the populated vastness of a world city. A fine place to end up.

‘Sleeping pills, painkillers,’ Claude calls out.

His voice, its tone, prompts me. Time to decide. He’s closing up the cases, fastening leather straps. So quick. They must have been half-packed already. These are old-fashioned two-wheeled items, not four. Claude lifts them to the floor.

Trudy says, ‘Which?’

I think she’s holding up two scarves. Claude grunts his choice. This is only a pretence of normality. When they board the train, when they cross the border, their guilt will declare itself. They only have an hour and they should hurry. Trudy says there’s a coat she wants and can’t find. Claude insists she won’t need it.