As soon as he was sure Justine was asleep, Alec went into his study and sat down at the desk, closing his eyes to block out the stale, overfamiliar room. He started to pray, using the Jesus Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner, repeating the words over and over again, pushing all extraneous thoughts gently aside, trying, with every repetition, to sink deeper into the awareness of God. Sometimes – but he had little hope that it would happen today – he was rewarded, after twenty minutes or so, by a sense of unity with all other living things. This brought with it a joy that illuminated the whole day. Now, the most he could hope for was surface calm, and a reminder that what separated him from God and from other human beings was his own sin.
On the phone this morning Stephen had given no details of the attack, saying only that Justine had been injured and was on her way to hospital. Alec’s ignorance was a black hole dragging him in. Rape. Stephen hadn’t said that, but Alec couldn’t get the possibility out of his mind. Images appeared, unsummoned, spawning other images. Rigid with fury, he beat his clenched fist on the steering wheel. No room now for Christian forgiveness. If he’d had the bastard tied up, he’d happily have taken a blowtorch to his balls.
He’d never been a peaceful man, though over the years he’d fought hard to control his anger. And sometimes all that repressed aggression had paid dividends, enabling him to forge bonds with young men newly released from prison, many of them violent. They sensed a hidden kinship, perhaps, where on the surface there was only difference.
Victoria had known. On their second wedding anniversary, she’d bought him a print of one of Edward Hicks’s Peaceable Kingdom series. ‘There,’ she’d said, pointing to a lion in the foreground. ‘That’s you.’
The print hung on the wall of his study now, the only memento of his marriage he had left, apart from Justine. Abandoning the attempt to pray, he went to look at it. The lion is surrounded by lambs, sheep, cows. They aren’t afraid of him – though one or two look wary – and he isn’t attacking them. God’s reign has begun. Only the lion’s eyes are full of anguish, the strain of denying his own nature, reinventing himself, second by second: an act of pure will. And the balance is precarious. He remembers the taste of blood. He’s afraid of himself. The pupils are huge, black, dilated with pain. On the left of the picture, William Penn is concluding his treaty with the Indians, sealed without an oath and never broken, but the struggle against violence has simply moved back into the individual human mind, and those eyes tell you that victory is far from certain.
‘That’s you,’ she’d said, and kissed him.
The fantasies of revenge hadn’t gone. They clung like bats to the inner walls of his skull, and no amount of prayer would dislodge them. His first sight of Justine, slumped in the chair like a broken and abandoned doll, had only reinforced them. He couldn’t bring himself to touch her, afraid that, if she had been raped, any man’s touch, even his, would fill her with disgust.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, knowing the question was idiotic.
‘Yes,’ she said, after a pause. Everything she said had this pause in front of it. It was like dropping stones into a well.
‘Did you see him?’
A blank gaze. ‘Yes.’
‘It wasn’t somebody you knew?’
‘No.’
She sounded surprised and he breathed again. But then she said there’d been two men and she hadn’t seen the second. Then nothing – not the Jesus Prayer, not a lifetime of discipline and faith – had been able to stop him giving the second man a face.
My fault, he’d thought. I brought this into the house. He’d been so sure of himself, of his own righteousness, his power to do good – his, not God’s – when he should have been protecting his daughter. Sometimes, when the attempt to be ‘good’ backfires, you end up being nothing, not even a healthy animal. Any mammal knows to protect its own young, and he’d failed to do even that.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner…
Back at his desk, he closed his eyes, repeating the familiar words until he’d achieved a degree of calm.
When he opened them again, he saw the last thing he expected to see: a white van parked outside the gates with Peter Wingrave getting out, carrying a bunch of flowers.
Justine mustn’t see him. Praying for her not to wake, Alec went to the door and opened it. Peter, who’d been looking down the drive, turned and smiled.
It can’t be true, Alec thought. If Peter had been the second man, he’d never have dared come here carrying roses. They were roses. Now that he was close, Alec could see the red buds clustering inside the cone of white paper.
‘I heard the news,’ Peter said. ‘How is she?’
‘Asleep, at the moment.’
‘Not badly injured?’
‘Broken nose. Bruising. Two cuts to her head.’
A pause. They looked at each other, then, wearily, Alec stepped aside. A bit late now to keep him out. He felt Peter shadowing him down the corridor to the living room, almost treading on his heels. So much power this man had, and yet he seemed to have no identity, clingfilming himself round other people in order to acquire a shape. Anybody who impressed him got the treatment; once, not so many years ago, it had been Alec’s turn. He’d witnessed Peter’s taking on of his mannerisms, his way of speaking, even his religion – though perhaps that was genuine. He had no right to question the reality of another person’s faith – certainly not today, when he was doubting the foundations of his own. ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? Coffee?’
‘No, thanks. I’m all right.’
‘I’ll put those in water.’
In the kitchen Alec ran a bucket of water, dumped the roses into it, still wrapped, and got back to the living room as fast as he could. He didn’t know why he was hurrying – he wasn’t worried about Peter stealing anything, he trusted him absolutely in that respect. No – what worried him was that Justine might wake up and come down.
‘Do they know who did it?’ Peter asked.
‘No, but they seem to be quite optimistic – she gave a very good description of one of them.’ He steadied his voice. ‘The one who hit her.’
‘Oh, so there were two of them?’
‘Yes. She didn’t really see the other one.’ Alec was looking at Peter’s clothes. He was wearing a suit with a polo shirt underneath. ‘Not working today?’
‘No, I’ve been to London. I had lunch with Stephen Sharkey’s agent. You know Stephen?’
‘I’ve met him.’
‘I thought he and Justine were…?’
‘She’s nineteen. She does what she likes.’ He would have to have caught an early train to be in London for lunch. If he was telling the truth – and he was too clever to tell a lie that could be so easily detected – he couldn’t have been anywhere near the farmhouse this morning. ‘Which train did you catch?’
‘I went down last evening. I can give you the number of the person I stayed with, if you like. Alec.’ The tone was almost caressing. ‘You surely don’t think I had anything to do with it?’
Alec was compulsively honest. ‘It crossed my mind.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘So you bloody should be. What’s going on?’
‘I think perhaps we’d better not talk at the moment.’
‘Alec, I haven’t done anything. All I did was go to London. You were perfectly happy to have me mowing the churchyard a few weeks back. You weren’t worried about Justine then.’ He waited for a response. ‘So why now? I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Justine. You know that. I loved her.’
‘I wish I could believe that.’
‘I went out with her for six months. What did you think it was about?’
‘Making me jump. You were always good at that.’
‘Oh, I see. It was about you? Now why aren’t I surprised?’
‘You should’ve told her. You had a clear moral and legal re
sponsibility –’
‘So why didn’t you report me? Why don’t you?’
Alec touched his forehead. ‘This isn’t doing any good.’
‘It certainly isn’t. You don’t actually believe any of the things you claim to believe. Do you?’
Alec didn’t bother to reply.
Justine woke to the sound of voices. Dad and Angela, she thought. Angela must have come back. But then after a while she realized both voices were male and that the second sounded familiar. She got up and looked out of the window. Just visible between the trees was a white van.
She wrapped her dressing-gown round her and went out on to the landing, thinking it might not be Peter. She could have been mistaken in the voice, and thousands of people have white vans. Whoever it was, they were in the living room. She knelt on the landing, looking down through the banisters, reluctant to go downstairs and face them, but unable to go back to bed. Like a child, she thought, spying on adult life.
The voices went on. She couldn’t catch individual words or even judge the tone. Once she thought she heard her father almost shouting, but mainly it was a low rumble. Then it became louder. The door opened, letting a wedge of light on to the hall floor. She shrank back against the wall, furious with herself for wanting to hide the bruises. Incredibly, she felt ashamed, as if it had been her fault. Ashamed, or vulnerable. Perhaps she simply preferred not to risk a meeting with Peter when she was hurt.
It was Peter. She could see him now.
They were in the hall, walking towards the door. Peter was smartly dressed, suntanned, his hair longer than she remembered. At the door, he turned. ‘Well, give her my love.’
Dad said nothing. They were facing each other. For a moment she thought they were going to shake hands, then Peter leant across and kissed him. Dad neither returned the kiss nor pulled away. He just stood there and took it; it might as well have been a blow. Peter stood back, smiling. She knew that look, amused, mocking, confident of his power to attract. ‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ he said. ‘Congratulations on your engagement. You are engaged, aren’t you?’
Dad opened the door and Peter went out into the night.
After he’d gone, Dad didn’t go back to the living room, but instead pressed his face into the door, hands spread out on either side of his head. He stood there, not moving.
‘Dad?’
He turned. ‘Oh, you’re awake.’ He came to the foot of the stairs, obviously delighted to see her up and about. She might have hallucinated the last few minutes. He didn’t even look like the same man.
‘Yes, I’m feeling a lot better.’ It might be true. She was too bewildered by the scene she’d just witnessed to know.
‘Come and have some supper.’
There was a covered plate of chicken sandwiches on the sideboard in the living room, ready for when she would feel hungry and come down. They ate them over the fire. Chewing wasn’t easy, because the movement of her jaw made her nose hurt, but she forced herself to finish one sandwich before pushing the plate aside.
‘That was Peter.’
‘Oh, I thought I heard voices.’ She didn’t want him to know she’d seen the kiss. ‘What did he want?’
‘He’d heard about the…er…’
‘Burglary.’
‘He just wanted to know how you were.’ He waited for a response. ‘He sends his love.’
She could have done without this.
‘He was upset,’ Dad went on, ‘because what happened to you reminded him of what he did.’
‘You mean why he went to prison?’
‘Yes. He was in a house stealing money and the old lady whose house it was came back unexpectedly and…’
‘He beat her up?’
‘Worse than that. He killed her.’
It should have been a shock, but it wasn’t.
Dad said, ‘He was very young.’
So was the little bastard who hit me, she thought. ‘I’m very young. I don’t go round murdering old ladies.’
‘No, very young. Adam’s age.’
For a moment she couldn’t take it in. ‘Christ.’ She just couldn’t get her head round it. ‘Sorry,’ she said, a second later, knowing her use of the word would offend him.
When she tried to examine her feelings, she found only turmoil. Not even compassion for the old lady, if she was honest, just a shrinking away from a horror she couldn’t bear to imagine. ‘Why are you telling me this now?’
‘Because I should have told you before.’
‘Yeah, I think you should have.’
‘I begged him to tell you.’
‘He finished with me instead.’
‘I’m afraid I was rather pleased.’
‘Yeah, me too. Eventually.’
‘Would it have made a difference?’
‘I don’t know. It’s easy to say no, isn’t it? But I don’t know. It might.’ A short silence. ‘Still doesn’t answer the question, though. Why tell me now?’
‘Because of… Today. The man who did that.’ He risked a glance at her face. ‘I know it doesn’t make sense, but… There is a connection. I keep having these terrible thoughts, but they’re not just thoughts, they’re more like waking nightmares. No, I shouldn’t burden you –’
‘No, go on.’
‘I imagine I’ve got him tied up and I…’
Unexpectedly she giggled. ‘Break his nose?’
He tried to laugh. ‘That sort of thing. I didn’t think I had this much hatred in me.’
Justine started to speak, stopped and tried again. ‘I’m going to get over this, Dad. I’ve no intention of wallowing in it. And neither should you.’
‘No, well, I’ll try.’
He seemed surprised. Perhaps she’d sounded tougher than he gave her credit for, or perhaps he’d sensed her resentment. Because he had burdened her. The onus was on her to get better quickly, so he wouldn’t have to go on feeling bad about himself. Was it fair to say that? Perhaps not. She was too tired to work it out.
‘Peter brought you some roses. They’re out there. I’ve put them in water. Shall I bring them in?’
‘No, let’s leave them, shall we?’
And why choose today to tell her about Peter? Now, when it was too late to do any good? It simply focused her attention back on to him and his relationship with Peter. What kind of tropism for the limelight was going on here? And yet he meant well. He loved her. She made herself get up, go to the sofa and sit beside him. He put his arm round her shoulders and she snuggled into his side. It wouldn’t hurt to go on being his little girl for a few more hours. One last time. The world would catch up with them soon enough.
Twenty-seven
They were going to the Farnes. Justine couldn’t wait to leave, sitting forward in her seat, waiting impatiently for Stephen to start the car.
She was like a kid on the first day of the holidays, he thought, eager for the first glimpse of the sea.
‘Are you sure you feel up to it?’
‘Yes.’ Dad had been asking her that ever since she got out of bed. She felt fine. Only when she looked in the mirror did she understand the reason for the question. Overnight, the bruises had developed. She looked much worse now than she had immediately after the attack. But she felt better. ‘I’m all right.’
Almost at once the mist closed in, becoming thicker the closer they got to the coast. Once they were on the way, Justine forgot the burglary, the shouting and banging, the fetid smell of fear. All her childhood she’d gone to the Farnes at Easter, and to be setting out like this made her feel young again. She knew if she said this to Stephen he’d laugh, but age wasn’t a simple matter of chronology. In the hospital watching the cut-off part of her self pace round the walls she’d felt ancient.
Stephen nodded at the mist. ‘Are you sure they’ll take a boat out in this?’
‘It mightn’t be like this when we get there. It clears very quickly.’
He switched the radio on, found some acceptable music and concentrated on his d
riving. They were inching forward, the headlights revealing nothing but a wall of mist. Even on the higher ground, where it thinned and became wraith-like, skeins drifting across the road, it was not possible to pick up speed, because the road dipped almost immediately into the next hollow, and there the dense, damp whiteness became impenetrable again. Justine wondered once or twice whether they should turn back, but she couldn’t bear the idea. Talking was impossible. Stephen crouched over the wheel, peering into the blankness ahead. She opened her window and there was the sound of the wheels hissing on the wet road, less disturbing to her than the music. Any loud noise felt like a threat. She looked at the rear window, where drops of rain or distilled mist were trapped, pulsing round the edges of the glass. She was aware of Stephen, the bulk of him, but she didn’t look in his direction. The atmosphere in the car was tense, and she hoped the tension came from the driving rather than from something she’d done or said. Everything today felt fragile.
At last they turned on to the motorway, and she felt him relax, settle back in his seat, because at least the road was flat, there were no sudden white-outs in the hollows, though the hazard warning-lights were flashing and the traffic crawling along.
‘We’ll be lucky to get there at this rate,’ he said.
But then, as quickly as the mist had closed in, it began to clear, and Stephen found himself driving through a landscape that reminded him of Ben’s photographs. Border country. That’s why Ben had loved it and photographed it so obsessively, Stephen thought, because he came back from whatever war he’d been covering to a place where every blade of grass had been fought over, time and time again, for centuries, and now the shouts and cries, the clash of swords on shields had faded into silence, leaving only sunlight heaving on acres of grass, and a curlew crying. He thought now that he understood Ben’s ties to this place; he was beginning to fall in love with it himself. On impulse he reached out and squeezed Justine’s hand.
‘Not long now,’ she said.
Kate put her eye to the spy-hole in the front door and there was Angela, gaping like a fish in a small bowl.