The Invisible Cord Page 28

  She closed the door once again, but this time she didn’t stand with her back to it but ran into the kitchen and, laying her head on her arms on the table, began to cry. She cried for her mother; she cried for Rance; and then she cried for herself and the deep inner loneliness inside her. She cried for how she looked, how she appeared to other people; she cried for the course her life would take from now on.

  Meanwhile Rance was speeding erratically down Fowler Street which was fortunately bare of traffic. He did not turn the car into King Street but took a side road into Keppel Street where the police station was, and his headlights immediately picked out Annie’s car parked on the opposite side to the station and about thirty feet along the kerb from the main door.

  He drew the car to a screeching halt in the centre of the road as his eyes took in a small group of people outside the station door. There were three officers and a woman. When the group broke up, two of the officers went along the pavement towards a parked car. The third man spoke to the woman and, as she turned away, he remained standing watching her crossing the road to her car.

  She had her head deep down on her chest when his headlights fell on her, then her head jerking she lifted her arm to shield her eyes, but not before he saw the look in them and it told him what she had done…His Mam had given him away. But no, she couldn’t. She wouldn’t, not her, she loved him. She had always loved him. He’d had her love as her husband never had. In fact he knew he was her husband, her lover, everything to her. All he’d had to do was to touch her and her eyes told him what he needed to know, that she was his. That he had a power over her none of the others knew anything about, and because of it she was the one person who would always stand by him. Even a short while ago when they had struggled together he had known her fury would pass as it always had done. He had even been making plans in his mind to send for her once he got settled abroad, for he’d really be in the money then…But here she was, backing away from him, her face full of terror.

  He wasn’t aware of starting the car, but he was aware of plunging his foot down on the accelerator and of the hard bump as the front wheels mounted the pavement.

  She hadn’t her arm over her eyes when he hit her, her hands were outstretched towards him. When she fell forward over the bonnet he reversed just the slightest then rammed the gears forward again. She had slipped down now and on the second impact he could not see her.

  He was attempting to repeat the operation when they got the door open and dragged him out onto the road.

  Tishy hadn’t moved until she heard the doorbell ring and she didn’t get up until it had rung for the second time. Then, like someone dazed, she went through the hall and opened the door, and there stood a policeman and behind him on the pavement near a car was another.

  ‘Miss McCabe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve…I’ve some sad news for you.’

  She stared at him, then from him to the other officer, then back to him again.

  ‘Your…your mother has met with an accident.’

  ‘My…my mother?’ Her voice was high in her head, then she repeated, ‘My mother?’

  When she gripped the door with both hands the policeman said, ‘Can I come in a moment?’ Then he looked back towards his companion before stepping over the threshold.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said.

  It was the second time a policeman had said that to her within the last few hours, but she didn’t sit down. ‘Where…where’s my mother?’ she said.

  His gaze flicked from her for a moment and he repeated, ‘You’d better sit down.’

  ‘My mother, what’s happened to her? What’s happened to my mother?’

  ‘She…she had an accident.’

  ‘You’ve said that.’

  ‘She…she was run down by a car.’

  ‘My mother was run down by a car in the middle of the night? She was going to you, she was going to the police station.’

  ‘She had been to the station, she was coming out. I mean she had come out, she was walking across the road to her car, when this car comes at her…full tilt.’

  There was something final about the words, full tilt; it was as if he had no need to explain any further. There was a deep blackness coming towards her. It was thick, shrouding the policeman and dimming his voice as he went on, ‘It…it was your brother’s car. I’m very sorry to have to tell you this but…but it wasn’t really an accident, he…he rammed her. There were witnesses. The Inspector had come to the door with her and…and…a…patrol…car…was…coming…in…from…the…other…end…of…the…street…It…is…a…dreadful…thing…not…really…understandable.’

  Not really understandable. Not really understandable. Not really understandable. Not really understandable.

  Three

  They came into the house one after the other, Tishy first, then Kathy, then Bill. They walked like people in a dream and they all wore similar expressions on their faces, it was like a family resemblance. But once the door was closed on them they began, as it were, to unfreeze. Kathy started to cry slowly and painfully. Her head buried in her arms and her arms against the wing of a chair, she gave herself ease. Bill, too, began to cry. Hiding his tears, he went straight upstairs.

  Only Tishy didn’t cry now. When she came out of the faint last night—or was it this morning? Anyway, it was some time long ago—a strange thought persisted in her mind saying, She cannot be dead that way; she was going to be married and go to America. She knew that if her mother had married Alan she would have died to her, but now she had died in a different way. She had told herself she would have preferred that she had died in the first way and not like the policeman had said. She hadn’t really believed the policeman until she had entered the mortuary. Even then she couldn’t associate that bandaged face and broken body with her mam. They had said he hadn’t been satisfied with crushing her against the wall, but when she fell he had backed and done it again before they had overpowered him.

  She had moaned, ‘Oh Mam! Mam!’ while at the same time feeling that her mother had knowingly brought this terrible end on herself. She should have known that Rance wouldn’t stand for it. Anybody else could have given him away but not her, not the one who had shielded him since he could breathe, not the one he had been capable of convincing, hoodwinking, and bamboozling; not the woman he had loved—the only woman he had loved, for she hadn’t just been a mother to him, she had been everything, if only in his mind she had been everything, and she must have been aware of this. She herself had been aware of it, and this had been the cause of her deep jealousy.

  She couldn’t analyse her feelings against Rance at this moment, nor measure the depths of sorrow for her mother, but what was to the forefront of her mind was a rising feeling of resentment against Alan Partridge. If it hadn’t been for him her mother would have been here on Friday, and although that wouldn’t have stopped Mr Wilkins coming and exposing Rance, things would never have reached this pass, for her mother would have done something, managed something—she always had—but instead of being here he’d had her in bed.

  She made tea automatically and called Bill downstairs and the three of them sat round the kitchen table drinking it; nobody wanted to eat, individually they felt they never wanted to eat again. They sat in silence for almost five minutes before Kathy said, ‘What’ll happen to him?’

  A space of time passed again before Bill answered, ‘He’ll likely get life for one or the other, although Mr Wilkins might pull through. But then there’s the other thing.’ Bill couldn’t bring himself to voice the word, drugs. It was too dirty, much viler than murder; murder was often the outcome of passion, but drug-running was something else.

  He now ran his hands through his hair and, looking at Tishy, said, ‘What’s going to happen to the business?’

  ‘The business?’ She spoke as if coming out of sleep. ‘I…I haven’t thought.’

  ‘That Jimmy Lake seems a good fellow.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ She nodded.
Jimmy Lake was a good fellow. She had thought often that if it wasn’t for Jimmy Lake there would have been very little business done in the garage. But what did it matter about the garage, or Jimmy Lake, or anything else? Why was Bill talking about the garage? He had just come back from the mortuary. She looked at his face. It was pale; he looked sick. She looked at Kathy’s face. Kathy wasn’t the same person she had seen last night in the green velvet dress; the years had mounted on Kathy since last night.

  After a while Kathy said, ‘I’d better get home,’ and when Bill, rising from the table, said, ‘I’ll run you back,’ Kathy looked at Tishy. ‘Come back and stay with us,’ she said, ‘both of you.’

  ‘No, no, thanks all the same. I’d rather stay put.’

  ‘We’ve got to get used to it,’ said Bill.

  ‘Just for the time being. Percy’s mother seeing to things, she would…’

  ‘We’ll be all right.’ Bill took her arm. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘Gran McCabe’ll have to be told.’

  They turned and looked at Tishy and Bill said, ‘I’ll slip over later. I won’t be long. Go and lie down.’

  She didn’t answer, but turned her head away and stared at the kitchen cabinet on the wall opposite.

  The day passed somehow. There were tentative knocks on the door by a few neighbours offering their sympathy. Mrs Wilkins wasn’t among them; she had her own set of visitors. The phone rang innumerable times. After Bill had banged the door in the face of three separate reporters he phoned the police, and shortly a patrol car came to a stop a little way down the road, and stayed there.

  Tishy was passing through the hall when the phone rang yet again. Wearily she picked it up. It was someone phoning from a call box. She heard the coins drop, then as the voice spoke she took the phone away from her ear and looked at it as if confronting the speaker.

  The voice came again. ‘Hello. Who’s there?’

  Still she didn’t answer.

  ‘Hello. Who’s there?…This is Alan Partridge. I…I want to speak with Mrs…Mrs McCabe. Hello. Hello.’

  Slowly she brought the mouthpiece nearer and, her voice low and harsh, she spoke into it. ‘You can’t speak to Mrs McCabe. Mrs McCabe is dead.’ And with that she banged the receiver down.

  She shouldn’t have done it, not like that. How other should she have broken it to him then? Gently, easing his hurt, when he was to blame for most of what had happened?

  Don’t. Don’t. She bent her body forward and gripped her head with her hands. Recriminations, blame. Where did they get you? She was gone, dead. Nothing could bring her back. She had been a lovely mother, a lovely woman, young looking, like a girl. But she had called her old, and filthy. Recriminations. She should be heaping them on her own head. She was. She was. She would never forget the things she had said to her mother in the cottage.

  After a moment she mounted the stairs and as she reached the top the phone rang again, and Bill, coming from the bathroom, said, ‘I’ll take it.’

  A few minutes later he knocked on her door and when she said, ‘Come in,’ he stood within the opening. ‘It was Alan Partridge,’ he said; ‘he…he seemed shocked. He wanted to know if he had heard aright, what you had said. He must have met mother lately. He talked oddly. He seemed very shocked.’

  She did not say as she might have, ‘He would be, seeing that the last time she slept was with him.’ No, that was something only she knew, and it wouldn’t go any further, they wouldn’t understand, Kathy less than Bill. Yet she understood. Oh yes, she understood how her mother had fallen for him. He was the easiest person in the world to fall for; he had everything going for him, had Mr Alan Partridge.

  When she turned her head away Bill went out and closed the door, a vague memory stirring in his mind. He recalled that after his dad had died their Tishy had taken up with Alan Partridge, and then it had come to an abrupt end. He never knew why.

  During the evening she went to the hospital with Kathy to visit Percy. Percy was conscious now, but still dazed, not able to take in what had happened to him. She left Kathy with him and his father, and returned home to find Alice, Bill’s controversial choice of a future wife, in the house together with her mother and father.

  The grizzled-haired, ebony-skinned big Negro, whose colour made that of his daughter appear as merely a deep sunburn, showed his sympathy in a most genuine fashion, as did his wife, a faded and much painted blonde about half his size.

  It was Tishy’s first meeting with Alice’s parents, and some part of her was touched that these people should openly show that they were connected in any way with such a family as the McCabes had now become, having in it a man who was not only a drug-pusher but a murderer.

  When the visitors were leaving, Bill, taking Tishy aside, whispered, ‘Do you mind if I walk Alice home? I won’t be half an hour.’

  ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘I’m all right. Don’t worry about me.’

  ‘Nobody will trouble you; there’s still somebody on the watch, though the car went a short while ago.’

  So she was in the house alone when the doorbell rang, and she paused before she opened the door. Then she heard someone say, ‘What is your business?’ and when she opened the door the policeman and Alan turned together towards her.

  ‘Do you know this man, miss?’

  She looked through the gathering dusk at the white face. Did she know this man? Oh yes, she knew this man. In a way she had been expecting him, but not so soon; she thought he would arrive tomorrow morning.

  ‘Yes, constable, thank you.’ She stood back, and Alan went past her into the hall, and she purposely took a long time in closing the door, for she didn’t want to look at him again. His face looked bleached, and there was a look in his eyes that as yet she couldn’t put a name to. Her head down, she moved past him into the sitting room, and he followed. As she pointed to a chair she didn’t speak, nor did he, not even after he had sat down.

  From the apparently small fact that she was standing and he was sitting she gauged the extent of his distress. He had almost been as meticulous about this point of etiquette as Percy, only his manner of doing it was more easy, more relaxed. She put her hand onto the mantelpiece to support herself while she looked at him; and now he said, ‘I can’t take it in. No matter how often I tell myself, I can’t take it in.’ He now put his hand into his macintosh pocket and pulled out a newspaper and, unfolding it until it was half its width showing big black headlines, he said, ‘Why? Why should he do it when he loved her? She…she had told me about him, the tie that was between them, how…how difficult it was going to be to break. It was the only real tie, she said; but she would break it.’

  When she slowly lowered her head, he put in on a slightly higher note, ‘Oh…oh, I’m not inferring that she meant it would be easy to leave you, or the others, but she reckoned on your understanding. It was only him she thought might not understand, and he didn’t, did he?’

  She looked into his eyes now and recognised the look that was deep in them as remorse and guilt. He imagined that in some way he was responsible for this crime.

  It would be rough justice to let him stew in his own juice, but she couldn’t do that. She said flatly, ‘He knew nothing about you.’

  He got to his feet now but didn’t come towards her, just stared at her, one hand held in front of him opening and closing as if trying to grasp at something that evaded him.

  ‘You mean she…she hadn’t told him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I in no way contributed to…?’

  ‘No.’ Her voice was high now. ‘You can go away with a clear conscience on that point anyway. What he did wasn’t because he thought she was leaving him for you. But I’m going to tell you this: if it hadn’t been for you she’d have been home on Friday, and in her usual way she would have tackled this business and straightened it out. And she would have been alive now.’

  A moment ago she had eased his personal agony, now she had added to it tenfold. When his lips began to
tremble and he hunched his shoulders and his head drooped she cried at herself, ‘Why had you to say that?’ Now he turned from her, one hand covering his face, and he began to cry audibly, like a woman might.

  Bill had cried, but it had been a silent crying. She had never heard a man cry like this before. It didn’t seem right that a big man like him should give way to grief in such a fashion.

  When he continued to cry she stood behind him and said, ‘Sit down. I’ll get you a cup of tea. I’m…I’m sorry. I’m sorry I went at you like that, I shouldn’t have.’

  Obeying her, he groped at the head of the couch. His elbows on his knees, his face buried in his hands, he continued to cry, and it was impossible to bear the sight and not to touch him.

  She went into the kitchen, the kettle was already spluttering on the low ring. Hastily she mashed the tea, and when she took the tray into the room a few minutes later he was lying back on the couch, his hands hanging limply at his sides.

  He was still crying, but silently now; his eyes were blurred with his tears and his face awash with them.

  ‘Drink this,’ she said.

  It seemed an effort for him to pull himself forward. He took the cup from her, then put it down on the table again and, taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped his face a number of times before getting abruptly to his feet, turned the collar of his raincoat high up around his ears and without looking at her he walked towards the door.

  She felt completely at a loss. She didn’t know what to say now. He hadn’t spoken since she had thrown the accusation at him. It seemed as if he were going without uttering a word when, at the front door, he asked under his breath, while still not looking at her, ‘When…when is the funeral?’

  ‘Wednesday,’ she murmured; ‘two o’clock.’

  He said no more, but opened the door and went out, his head down, his face half-buried in his coat collar.