Black rain begins to fall. It explodes on the paving stones of Cranham Village, the wheelie bins, the slate rooftops and the van. Slowly Jim moves forward. Anything, he thinks, anything would be better than what lies ahead.
15
The Burning of the Past
‘IT WAS A terrible mistake.’
When Byron confessed the truth, James’s face lost the little colour it had. He listened to the story of how the girl had run towards the road at the exact moment the seconds were added and a knot emerged between his eyebrows, so deep it looked cut with a knife. He twisted his fringe until it made a loop when Byron described how he had tried to keep the secret and failed. For a long time James sat with his head in his hands. Byron began to fear it was a mistake to ask his help.
‘But, Byron, what were you doing in Digby Road?’ James said at last. ‘Doesn’t your mother know it’s dangerous? Once a person had their knees shot off. And some of the houses have no lavatories.’
‘I don’t think my mother was thinking about things like that. She told us she had been there before.’
‘I don’t understand how this could happen. She drives very carefully. I have watched. Some of the other mothers are not good drivers. Mrs Watkins, for instance. She is actually dangerous. But your mother is not like that. Is she all right?’
‘She isn’t saying anything. She washed the car twice yesterday. If my father finds out, there will be trouble. I don’t know what will happen at the weekend.’
‘But it isn’t her fault. The accident only happened because of the two seconds.’
Byron said it was lucky James had read about the addition of time. It was such a relief to have him on board.
‘You are sure you saw the little girl?’ said James.
‘Yes.’
‘You can say correct if you like.’
‘Correct, James.’
‘And your mother did not?’
‘Correct. Yes.’
‘We do not want her to go to prison.’
(Even though this was correct as well, Byron’s throat constricted and the word got stuck.)
‘If the little girl was dead, we would have heard. It would have been in my newspaper. So we must rule that out. And if she was in hospital, I would have heard that too. My mother does not read The Times but she knows all sorts of information like that because she talks to the volunteers at the Conservative Party shop. Also, even though your mother drove off, she didn’t know what she had done. That is important.’
‘But I don’t think she’s very good at lying. She’s bound to tell in the end. She won’t be able to help it.’
‘So we have to think what to do.’ James slid his brass beetle from his blazer pocket and clenched it tight. He closed his eyes and began to murmur. Byron waited patiently, knowing his friend was forming an idea. They had to think in a scientific way, James said slowly. They must be very logical and precise. ‘In order to save your mother,’ he said, ‘we must form a plan of action.’
Byron could have hugged him, apart from the fact they were boys from Winston House. He knew everything would be all right, now his friend was involved.
‘Why are you doing that funny face?’ said James.
‘I am smiling at you,’ said Byron.
As it turned out, Byron had no need to worry about his father. That weekend his mother was in bed with a headache. She only came downstairs to cook and do the laundry. She was too ill to join them in the dining room. The Jaguar remained in the garage and Seymour remained in his study. Byron and Lucy played quietly in the garden.
On Monday their mother drove the car to school but Byron had to remind her twice to check her wing mirror and keep in the left lane. She had changed her clothing several times, even before they left the house. It was as if, now that she had this new piece of information about herself, she was trying to work out who she was and what she looked like. She wore her sunglasses too even though the sky that morning was pleated with cloud. They took a different route to school across the hills in order to avoid the turning to Digby Road. Byron told Lucy it was because the new route was scenic. Their mother liked the moor.
‘But I don’t,’ said Lucy. ‘It has nothing for me to look at.’
James’s plan of action was extensive. He had spent all weekend working on it. It involved checking the newspapers for further news of Digby Road, and also any other accidents that were related to the two seconds. He had found none. He had made a list of Diana’s attributes in case they were needed as a point of reference, along with a duplicate copy for Byron. The handwriting was precise. There were separate lines for each point.
Numéro un: The accident was not her fault.
Numéro deux: DH is a good mother.
Numéro trois: DH does not look or think like a criminal.
Numéro quatre: When her son, Byron, started school, DH was the ONLY parent who visited the classroom.
Numéro cinq: DH has a driving licence and fully paid tax disc.
Numéro six: When her son’s friend (James Lowe Esq) was stung by a wasp, DH removed the wasp to another part of the garden but refused to kill it on humanitarian grounds.
Numéro sept: DH is beautiful. (This last was crossed out.)
‘But what are we going to do about the evidence?’ said Byron.
James had thought this through too. The boys would raise funds to replace the hubcap, but until they had enough money, Byron must hide it with silver Airfix paint. James had a good supply, he said: ‘My parents keep giving me models for Christmas and the glue gives me a headache.’ He produced from his blazer pocket a small pot of paint, along with a special brush. He instructed Byron how to dip the point of the brush in the paint, how to wipe off the residue on the lip of the pot, and apply the colour in light strokes, without rushing. He wished he could do it himself but there was no opportunity for him to visit Cranham House. ‘You must do it when no one is watching,’ he said.
Byron produced from his pocket the map he had drawn of Digby Road and James nodded approvingly. But when Byron asked if it was time to get the police involved, James’s eyes stretched so wide, Byron had to turn and check there was no one behind him. James whispered violently, ‘We must definitely not tell the police. We must never betray your mother. Besides, she saved our skins at the pond, remember? She pulled you out and she said I was not to blame. She was kind to us. In future we need a secret code whenever we are discussing the case. Il faut que le mot est quelque chose au sujet de ta mère. So that we remember.’
‘Please could it not be in French?’ said Byron.
James chose ‘Perfect’.
The next day James invented a clever reason to walk past the Jaguar. At the point where it was parked, he stopped and knelt on the pavement, apparently tying his shoelace. Afterwards he reported to Byron that he had done a good job. You really couldn’t see, he said, unless you knew to look.
There were times that week when Diana appeared to forget about Digby Road. She played Snakes and Ladders with the children, or made fairy cakes, but then she suddenly stopped shaking the dice, or sieving flour, and walked away. Minutes later she was filling a bucket with soapy water. She sponged the bodywork of the Jaguar all over and then she rinsed it with further buckets of cold. She polished it with a chamois leather, in slow deliberate circles, exactly as Seymour liked her to. Only when it came to the hubcap did she falter. She approached it with her head slightly drawn back, her arm outstretched. From the look of things, she could barely touch it.
In the school playground, Diana said little. When a mother asked on Thursday how she was, she simply shrugged and looked away and Byron realized she was doing everything she could to hide her real feelings. The mother didn’t seem to understand. She said, ‘I bet you worry about that new Jaguar. I’d be terrified of driving it.’ She was only being polite.
But Diana’s face turned hollow. ‘I wish I’d never set eyes on the thing,’ she said. Byron had only glimpsed that expression once before, when she had received
the news of her mother’s death. The woman was evidently surprised by the sharpness of the reply and she tried to laugh and make light of it, but Diana turned on her heels and walked away. He knew his mother wasn’t being rude. He knew she was going to cry. He was so appalled and concerned that instead of following, he remained with the woman, making small talk and waiting for his mother to come back. He mentioned the weather several times and the fact the Jaguar was in perfect working order. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it, he added. His mother was such a careful driver. They never had accidents. He wished his mouth would stop.
‘Goodness,’ said the woman, glancing about. Diana was nowhere to be seen. In the end the mother gave a tight smile and said it was lovely talking to him but she had a thousand things to do and she must hurry.
That night a strange, cracking noise woke Byron and brought him to his bedroom window. Looking out, he saw the garden was dark apart from an orange light flickering at the corner, just inside the picket gate. Fetching his dressing gown and torch, he went to his mother’s room and found it empty. He checked the bathroom and Lucy’s room, but there was no sign of her. Beginning to grow anxious, he went downstairs, but none of the lamps was lit. Byron put on his outdoor shoes and set off to find her.
There was a shade of afterglow on the moor’s upper slopes while in the lower foothills the darkness was broken only by sheep, and they were pale as stones. The flowers stood tall and still; the evening primrose flowers like yellow lamps. He passed the top lawn, the rose pagoda, the fruit trees, the vegetable garden, all the time following the snapping of the fire and the orange halo of its light. Even though the fruit was not yet fully ripe, the air was sweetly heavy with the promise of it. A pink moon hung low, so slight it was no more than a smile, nestling on the cheeks of the moor.
It did not surprise him to discover his mother warming her hands over the flames. After all she often made a bonfire. What surprised him was to find she had both a drink and a cigarette. He had never seen her smoke, though from the way she pressed it to her mouth and tugged hard, it looked as if she liked it. Deep shadows were carved into her face, and her hair and skin glowed. She stooped to pull something out of a bag at her feet. Then she seemed to pause a moment, smoking and drinking, before tossing whatever it was into the fire. Briefly the flames cowered under the weight, and then spat out a tongue of heat.
Again his mother lifted the glass to her mouth. She drank in an efficient way, suggesting the glass wanted her to empty it, as opposed to the other way round. Finishing her cigarette, she threw it down and wriggled over it with the pointed toe of her shoe as if it were a mistake.
‘What are you doing out here?’ he said.
Her face shot towards his. She looked terrified.
‘It’s only me.’ Byron laughed and shone his torch on himself to show he meant no harm. He was blinded by a sharp cone of light. Suddenly everything had a blue hole burnt through it, even his mother. He had to keep peering at her in case he had gone blind. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said, because he didn’t want her to think he was spying. The blue holes began to fade.
‘Do you often come outside when you can’t sleep?’ she said.
‘Not really.’
She smiled sadly and he felt that if he had replied differently, if he had said yes, I am out here all the time, she too would have said something else and that whatever that was, it would have led the conversation in a different direction and somehow explained things.
His mother tugged another item out of her bag. It looked like a shoe with a pointed toe and a pin heel. This too she threw at the fire. The air cracked as the fingers of flame flew up to snatch it.
‘Are you burning your clothes?’ he said with alarm. He wasn’t sure how he would explain this development to James.
His mother couldn’t seem to find a reply.
He said, ‘Are they the ones you wore that day?’
‘They were old-fashioned. I never liked them.’
‘Father liked them. He bought you those.’
She gave a shrug and drank some more. ‘Yes, well,’ she said. ‘It’s too late now.’ She lifted the whole bag and stretched it open over the flames like a yawn. Two stockings snaked out, along with her other shoe, and her lambswool cardigan. Once again the flames reached up and he watched the clothes turn black and disintegrate. A halo of heat melted the dark. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ she said.
It was as if she was talking to someone else, not him, and he watched, afraid of what would come next.
But she said no more. Instead she began to tremble. She hunched her shoulders to stop but still it came, like a movement all through her body, a no, no, no; even into her clothes. Slipping off his dressing gown, he arranged it carefully over her shoulders. He couldn’t say how but he felt in that moment that he was actually taller, that he had grown in the time they were standing beside the fire. She caught his hand in hers.
‘You need sleep, love,’ she said. ‘There’s school tomorrow.’
As they walked back to the house, through the meadow and then the garden, its square profile stood against the blacker shoulder of the moor. The windows shone like glass jewels, spilling into the dark. They passed the pond where the geese waited, dim against the water’s edge. His mother slipped over on her heel, as if there was something unhooked inside her ankle joints, and he held out his arm to steady her.
Byron thought of his friend. He thought of James’s lucky beetle and his plan of action. He thought of the fund for the hubcap. Together he and James would be like the dressing gown that covered her shoulders. They would protect her. He said, ‘Everything will be all right. You don’t need to be afraid.’ He guided her into the house and up the stairs.
When Byron checked the next morning, her clothes were nothing but a pool of ash.
PART TWO
Outside
1
A Very Good Idea
‘I THINK WE need to do something,’ said Byron.
Diana glanced up from the counter where she was chopping apple and failed to speak. Emptying her glass, she placed it alongside all her other empty glasses, and gave him a distant look as if she was so lost in thought she could not trace her way back to the present. Then she gave a small smile and returned to her chopping.
It was early July. Twenty-nine days had passed since the accident, and twelve since the discovery of evidence on the hubcap. All over the kitchen units, there were precariously balanced stacks of dirty plates and bowls. If Lucy wanted a clean spoon, Byron had to find one and rinse it. There was also such a fusty smell lodged in the utility room that he kept closing the door. Diana no longer parked in the tree-lined street with all the other mothers. She left the car where no one would spot it and they walked the rest of the way. Lucy’s school shoes were scuffed at the toe. Byron had popped through another button on his school shirt. His mother’s cardigans kept slipping from her shoulders. It was as if everything had begun to forget what it was.
When Byron had reported this development to James, he said they must come up with a new plan of action.
‘But what?’ Byron had asked.
‘I’m still thinking about it,’ said James.
There was also his mother’s behaviour at the weekend to consider. Diana couldn’t seem to get things right. She had been so frightened of being late for Seymour they had waited nearly an hour on the station platform. She painted her mouth over and over until it began to look like someone else’s. Byron tried to distract Lucy with a game of I-Spy but had only upset her by failing to guess what began with ‘Ch’. (‘Chrees,’ she sobbed. She was still crying when the train drew in.) Afterwards his mother had dashed to the car, talking nervously about things that didn’t connect, the heat, Seymour’s week, something nice for supper. She might as well have been shouting, Hubcap, hubcap, hubcap. On the way back she kept stalling the car.
It had been no better at home. Over Saturday dinner Byron had tried to lighten the tension by asking his father his vi
ews on the European Economic Community but his father merely wiped his mouth. Was there no salt, please, he had asked?
‘Salt?’ his mother had replied.
‘Yes,’ he’d said. ‘Salt.’
‘What about salt?’
‘You seem preoccupied, Diana.’
‘Not at all, Seymour. You were saying something. About salt.’
‘I was saying I don’t taste any. On my dinner.’
‘Salt is all I can taste.’ She pushed her plate to one side. ‘I actually can’t eat this food.’
It was as if the words had meant something else, something that was not to do with salt, please, but another thing entirely. Byron had listened out for his parents afterwards and they remained in different rooms. Whenever his father walked in, his mother seemed to fly out. Once again, Seymour had left early Sunday morning.
‘It sounds as if she is worrying,’ James had concluded.
‘What can we do?’
‘We have to help her. We have to prove there is no reason for concern.’
‘But there is,’ said Byron. ‘There are actually lots of them.’
‘You have to keep looking at the facts.’ James had slid something from the inside pocket of his school blazer and unfolded it twice; he had clearly made another of his lists over the weekend. ‘Operation Perfect,’ he had read out. ‘One: we do not think the little girl was seriously hurt. Two: the police have not come to arrest your mother. Three: it was not her fault because of the extra seconds. Four.’ Here he paused.
‘What is four?’ Byron had asked.
‘Four is what we must do next,’ said James. And he had explained his plan in detail.
The morning light at the glass doors showed up the smudges and stains as if the sun preferred not to come inside any more. It gathered in secret, dust-filled pockets and showed up the dirty trail of Lucy’s footprints from the French windows.