The Only Story(48)

But what you don’t realize – not now, in the heat and dark of it all, only much later – is that, even without hearing you, she will agree. Because what she is leaving unspoken is this reply: ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I want. And I am going to destroy myself, because I am a worthless person. So stop bothering me with your well-intentioned meddling. Just let me get on with the job.’

You are working for a South London practice which specializes in legal aid. You enjoy the range of cases you handle; you enjoy the fact that in the majority of them you can solve things. You can get people the justice they deserve, and thereby make them happy. You are aware of the paradox of this. Also, of another, longer-term paradox: that in order to support Susan, you need to work, and the more you work, the more you are away from her, and the less able to support her.

You have also, as Susan predicted, found yourself a girlfriend. And not one who will run off at the first phone call. Anna is, perhaps inevitably, also a lawyer. You have told her some of Susan’s history. You have not tried to get away with merely saying she is ‘eccentric’. You introduce the two of them, and they seem to get on. Susan says nothing to embarrass you, Anna is brightly practical. She doesn’t think Susan looks after her diet well enough, so once a week takes round a loaf of proper bread, a bag of tomatoes, a pound of French butter. Sometimes the door remains unanswered, so she leaves her offering on the step.

You are home one evening when the phone goes. It is one of the lodgers.

‘I think you’d better come round. We’ve had the police. With guns.’

You repeat the words to Anna, then run for your car. In Henry Road there is an ambulance outside the house, its blue light revolving, its doors open. You park, walk across, and there she is, in a wheelchair facing out towards the street, with a broad bandage around her forehead which has pushed her hair up into a Struwwelpeter shock. Her expression, as often when a sudden crisis has worked itself out, is one of slightly amused calm. She surveys the street, the ambulance men fixing the wheelchair in place, and your own arrival, as if from a throne. The blue light revolves against the steadier sodium orange. It is real and unreal at the same time; filmic, phantasmagoric.

Then the chair slowly rises on its hoist, and as the ambulance doors are about to be closed, she lifts her hand in a pontifical blessing. You ask the ambulance men where they are taking her and follow in your car. When you get to the A&E department, they are already taking preliminary details.

‘I’m her next of kin,’ you say.

‘Son?’ they ask. You nearly agree, for speed, but they might query the difference of surname. So, once again, you are her nephew.

‘He’s not really my nephew,’ she says. ‘I could tell you a thing or two about this young man.’

You look at the doctor, lying to him with a slight frown and a tiny movement of the head. You collude in the notion that Susan is temporarily off among the nutters.

‘Ask him about the tennis club,’ she says.

‘We’ll come to that, Mrs Macleod. ‘But first …’

And so the process continues. They will keep her in overnight, perhaps run a test or two. It may just be shock. They will call you when they are ready to release her. The ambulance men have said it was just a cut, but as it was on the forehead there was a lot of blood. It may need a stitch or two, maybe not.

The next day, they release her, still in full dispossession of her faculties.

‘About time too,’ she says, as you walk her to the car park. ‘It really has all been frightfully interesting.’

You know this mood only too well. Something has been observed, or experienced, or discovered, which has little to do with anything, yet is of extreme, overwhelming interest, and must be reported.

‘Let’s wait until we get you home first.’ You have slipped into the language of the hospital, where everything is done or asked for in the name of ‘us’.

‘All right, Mr Spoilsport.’

At Henry Road, you take her to the kitchen, sit her down, make her a cup of tea with extra sugar and give her a biscuit. She ignores them.

‘Well,’ she begins, ‘it was all so fascinating. Such fun. You see, these two men with guns got into the house last night.’

‘With guns?’

‘That’s what I said. With guns. Do stop interrupting before I’ve barely even started. So yes, two men with guns. And they were going round looking for something. I don’t know what.’

‘Were they robbers?’ You feel you are allowed to ask questions which don’t challenge the essential veracity of her fantasy.

‘Well, that’s what I thought might be the case. So I said to them, “The gold bullion is under the bed.”’

‘Wasn’t that a bit rash?’

‘No, I thought it would put them off the scent. Not that I knew what the scent was, of course. They were both quite polite and well mannered. For gunmen, that is. They didn’t want to bother me, they would just go about their business if I didn’t mind.’

‘But didn’t they shoot at you?’ You indicate her forehead, now decorated with a large gauze patch.

‘Lord, no, they were much too polite for that. But it was rather an interruption to the evening, so I felt obliged to call the police.’

‘Didn’t they try and stop you?’

‘Oh no, they were all in favour. They agreed with me that the police might help them find what they were looking for.’