Warlight(6)

We slipped out of the building promptly at three that afternoon, and The Moth disappeared and I went home alone. Sometimes he returned to the Criterion in the evenings to deal with emergencies, but whatever my guardian did from three p.m. until he returned to Ruvigny Gardens was not to be known. He was a man of many doors. Were there other professions he nestled into, even briefly for an hour or two? An honourable charity or some upheaval of order? A person we met hinted that for two afternoons of the week he worked with the Semitic and radical International Tailors, Machinists and Pressers Union. But that was perhaps a fabrication, such as his activities as a fire watcher with the Home Guard during the war. The roof of the Grosvenor House Hotel, I’ve since discovered, had simply been the best location for clear transmission of radio broadcasts to Allied troops behind enemy lines in Europe. It was where The Moth had first worked with our mother. We had once hung on to these wisps of stories of them in the war, yet after she left, The Moth retreated and kept such anecdotes at a distance from us.



Hell-Fire

At the end of that first winter, while we were living with The Moth, Rachel made me follow her down to the basement, and there, under a tarpaulin and several boxes that she had pulled away, was our mother’s steamer trunk. Not in Singapore at all, but here. It seemed an act of magic, as if the trunk had returned to the house after its journey. I said nothing. I climbed the stairs out of the cellar. I feared, I suppose, we would find her body there, pressed against all those clothes so carefully folded and packed. The door slammed as Rachel left the house.

I was in my room when The Moth returned late at night. He said it had been a crisis evening at the Criterion. Usually he left us alone if we were in our rooms. This time there was a knock on my door and he came in.

“You didn’t eat.”

“I did,” I said.

“You didn’t. There’s no evidence of that. I’ll cook you something.”

“No, thank you.”

“Let me…”

“No, thank you.”

I would not look at him. He stayed where he was and didn’t say anything. Finally, “Nathaniel,” he said quietly. That was all. Then, “Where is Rachel?”

“I don’t know. We found her trunk.”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “It’s here, isn’t it, Nathaniel.” I remember his precise wording, the repetition of my name. There was more silence; my ears may have been deaf to any sound, even if it existed. I remained hunched over. I don’t know how much later it was but he got me downstairs and we went into the basement and The Moth began to open the trunk.

Inside, pressed, as if permanently and forever, were all the clothes and objects we had watched her pack so theatrically, each justified with an explanation of why she would need this specific calf-length dress or that shawl. She had to take the shawl, she had remarked, since we had given it to her for her birthday. And that cannister, she would need it there. And those casual shoes. Everything had a purpose and a usefulness. And everything had been left behind.

“If she’s not there, is he not there too?”

“He is there.”

“Why is he there if she isn’t?”

Silence.

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must know. You worked out the thing with the school.”

“I did that on my own.”

“You are in touch with her. You said.”

“Yes. I said that. But I don’t know where she is right now.”

He held on to my hand in that cold basement until I got free of him and returned upstairs to sit by the gas fire in the unlit living room. I heard his steps come up, ignore the room where I was, then go up to his attic rooms. When I think of my youth, if you asked me to quickly remember just one thing, it would be the dark house that night during the hours after Rachel disappeared. And whenever I come across that strange phrase, “hell-fire,” it is as if I have found a label to attach to that moment, when I remained in the house with The Moth, and barely moved away from that gas fire.

He tried persuading me to eat with him. When I refused he opened up two cans of sardines. Two plates—one for him, one for me. We sat by the fire. He joined me in the darkness, in the small fall of red gaslight. I remember now what we spoke of with confusion, with no chronology. It was as if he were attempting to explain or break open something that I did not know about yet.

“Where is my father?”

“I’ve had no communication with him.”

“But my mother was joining him.”

“No.” He paused a moment, thinking how to proceed. “You must believe me, she isn’t there with him.”

“But she is his wife.”

“I’m aware of that, Nathaniel.”

“Is she dead?”

“No.”

“Is she in danger? Where’s Rachel gone?”

“I’ll find Rachel. Let her be for a moment.”

“I don’t feel safe.”

“I am staying here with you.”

“Till our mother comes back?”

“Yes.”

A silence. I wanted to get up and walk away.

“Do you remember the cat?”

“No.”

“You had a cat once.”