Edith, page 24
Denis hustles her into the vehicle and fists the back of the driver’s seat. A jolt, and they begin moving.
‘You took your bleedin’ time,’ says the driver. He’s wearing a brown derby on the back of his head.
‘I did the best I could,’ says Denis.
‘I did the best I could,’ mimics the voice in a falsetto.
A Liverpool accent, Edith notices. Its nasal inflection is distinctive. She makes out the back of his neck, two hairy hands on the wheel and one hairy ear.
Denis pushes back his cap and wipes his sleeve across his forehead. He burrows into the corner behind the driver, draws his feet to his chest and curls into a hedgehog.
He’s still wearing Aylmer’s boots. They’ve changed for the worse in his care – unblacked and unacquainted with a boot tree. Big Ben chimes the hour, causing him to uncoil momentarily, lift one of the blinds and look out. They must be somewhere near Westminster. He frowns, tugs away his scarf at last, and settles down to gnaw at bitten fingernails.
She reviews her dwindling options and considers it politic to be pleasant to her kidnapper. ‘You’re a long way from home, Denis.’
A grunt. He’s been practising at the whistler school of charm.
‘How do you like London?’
He shrugs. ‘I’m not here to see the sights.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘To pull the lion’s tail.’
‘Ah, Denis, this won’t end well for you. You should go on back to Ireland while you can.’
Denis rubs the heel of each hand into his eyes.When he drops them, the whites are veined and reddened. He looks utterly exhausted.
Edith says ‘I remember how difficult I found it to sleep at night, the first time I visited. We’re spoiled for silence in Ireland.’
Now his eyes twitch towards her. ‘The noise does never be stopping here. Night and day, there’s no difference betwixt them. And the people everywhere! More people than I thought the world could hold, all bunched up together. Roaring like a pack of heifers. Your head’d be melted by this place.’
Edith leans forward. ‘Denis, I don’t know what you’re up to and I don’t want to know. It’s none of my business. Can’t we leave it at that? Let me out. I’ll forget I ever saw you and you can forget you ever saw me.’
‘No. I’ve to deliver you to somebody.’
‘Who?’
‘That’s for me to know and you to guess.’
‘I was never any good at riddles.’
He shrugs.
‘So, you didn’t cut loose from those friends of yours, after all. All your talking in Castletownshend was only that. Talk.’ She leans her forehead against the window shade, not caring that it’s soiled and smelly.‘It’s not too late, Denis. Let me go.You’re better than them.’
He broods, until all at once he flares up.‘Shut your face! You wrecked months of work.You were seen at the police station.You’re an informer, that’s what you are. Lowest of the low.’
nineteen
The hackney slows, the driver says something about gates.
‘Stay here.’ Denis jumps out.
Edith tries to see where they are but all she catches is a patch of wire fencing.They could be anywhere. Now she feels the vehicle roll forward, taking its time. Voices. Male. Barking instructions. The motor halts, its engine is cut off. Cautiously, Edith lifts a corner of the blind. They seem to be inside a building.
Denis wrenches Edith’s door. ‘Out you get.’
She tries to stand but her bones have stiffened, and her ankles give way – she topples forward. Denis hops onto the running board and catches her. His hands are moist on her body. She wishes she could shove him away, the thankless reptile, but can’t manage without his help. Her body creaks as she descends.
‘My bag,’ she says. ‘It’s still in the motor car.
‘It’s grand there. Nobody’ll touch it,’ says Denis.
‘Thieving’s not in our line,’ says the driver.
The space feels cavernous. Two strangers holding tilly lamps are standing beside Denis. A dense, yeasty odour fills her nostrils. Packing cases line the walls and she realizes she’s inside a warehouse.
HUNTLEY & PALMERS
READING & LONDON
is printed in red and blue ink on the outside of the boxes. ‘Sweet Kinds’ is stamped on some,‘Unsweetened Kinds’ on others.
She shifts her attention back to the men beside Denis. They are dressed like dockers but somehow don’t strike her as labourers. For starters, they aren’t muscled. Men who earn their daily bread by hard labour have a physical presence, which these two lack. Besides, when one of them walks behind the motor car to close the warehouse door, she sees he has a pronounced limp – his knee doesn’t bend. She looks at the shape beneath his trouser leg. Perhaps it’s an artificial limb.
‘Is he in the back?’ Denis asks.
‘In the office. Been askin’ after her for the best part of an hour.’ A Cockney accent. But that long chin is Irish. He hands his lamp to Denis.
Denis catches at Edith’s arm to hustle her along. Feeling her unwillingness, he says quietly, ‘We’d best not keep him waiting.’
She allows herself to be led through the warehouse. This person waiting for her must have heard their arrival but he’s sitting tight. It’s a way of emphasizing his authority – Cameron told her they were taught that in officer school.
Her body is leaden but her mind races. Denis called her an informer. Informers are murdered. Is she a lamb to the slaughter? Imagine never seeing Drishane again. She’d be reunited with Martin, of course. But her skidding heartbeat tells her she’s not yet ready to die.
Perhaps they only want to warn her off. There’s no need to drag her to a biscuit warehouse to kill her. Denis could have done it in the fog – left her in a crumpled heap in a doorway and no one the wiser for hours. By now they have reached the back corner, where temporary walls and a door create a room. It’s lying ajar.
Denis knocks. ‘She’s here now, Camel. I have her with me.’
‘Send her in.’ A Scottish voice. Educated. ‘Then shut the door and clear the fuck off.’
By the lamp’s flare, Denis’s moss-green eyes are troubled. Beside his mouth, a tic has shoved up through the skin. She realizes he’s frightened. Her heartbeat trips.
The room is windowless, the lighting shadowy. Its occupant is in profile. He sits side-on at a desk, legs outstretched, a cigar smouldering between his fingers. A handsome man in his late twenties, clean-shaven, with slicked-back hair as black as a sweep’s face. He’s like one of those actors from American cinema she saw in a magazine in Pinker’s office. Valentine? Valentino? On the desk are an ashtray, a mug and a novelty Huntley & Palmers tin shaped like a milkmaid. Across the top of the biscuit tin lies a foot-long knife in a sheath. Edith’s eyes glide over it, refusing to look directly at the object. He must have placed it there deliberately.
The occupant of the office does not acknowledge her presence. He turns the tip of his cigar towards him to examine the burning ash, and takes another draw. A blue spiral of smoke drifts towards her, pricking her throat. The silence stretches. Her right leg throbs. Her glance darts about for a chair but there is nowhere else to sit. She thinks with longing of her walking stick. Even something to lean on would ease the misery. She must have left it in the hackney or maybe the Underground station. Can’t be helped. Edith shifts her weight onto the left leg and plaits her fingers together, keeping him in her line of vision without staring.
At last he moves, knocking some ash from his cigar onto the ashtray. Still without looking at her, he speaks. ‘You’ve been sticking that overbred nose of yours into places it doesn’t belong.’
He waits. As does she.
‘Going to the peelers.’ He sighs, twitches a trouser leg, brushes off a fleck of ash.‘That wasn’t nice.’ A rummage in the desk drawer produces a pencil and box of matches.‘You’re a risk.’
His voice is chiselled, thinks Edith. No mercy in it.
He tosses aside the pencil, strikes a match and watches its flame. ‘And in my line of business, we eliminate risks.’ A puff of air and the flame is extinguished.
Edith understands he’s trying to menace her. She must exert will- power and block him. But her body refuses to be schooled by her mind. Dread shivers through her. In an effort to keep it dammed inside, she wraps her arms about herself. Her mouth dries out. She licks her lips.
He turns his head a little and reads the worm of her fear.The longer he observes her, the more insubstantial Edith begins to feel. Even if she speaks now, no one will hear her. If Denis or any of the others came in, they might step right through her. If she tries to open the door, her hand won’t be able to grasp the knob. Her sense of humiliation intensifies.This is what he wants, she tells herself. Don’t surrender to him. She pits her willpower against his.
I am Edith Somerville of Drishane House, Castletownshend. I will not be bullied.
‘Have you ever …’ he halts, reflects, picks up the thread again.‘Eaten potatoes boiled in seawater?’
Could she have misheard him? Inconsequentially, her mind fastens on that Scottish accent. The Somervilles have Scottish blood.
‘Have you?’ he repeats.
She clears her throat.‘No, I don’t believe I have.’
‘No taste to match it. Lends a certain je ne sais quoi to the dish.’ He ruminates, toying with the matchbox. ‘Maybe you don’t bother with potatoes? See it as peasant food?’
‘I eat potatoes.’
‘Grown on your own land?’
‘Where possible.’
‘Been in your family long, the land?’
‘Since the seventeen-hundreds.’
‘Sir Walter Raleigh brought the potato over from Virginia. Quite the adventurer. Came to a sticky end, mind you. Lost his head on the block. Didn’t he have an estate in Ireland? Somewhere near Youghal, I believe.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Yes, quite an unpleasant end. A fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi.’1
Show-off. Edith doesn’t know what it means. But she knows he’s trying to browbeat her with this talk of execution. Somehow, she injects a sliver of ice into her voice.‘Really, MrWhoever-you-are, I’m dog-tired. I’ve been dragged here against my will. Perhaps you’d kindly tell me what you require from me and allow me to be on my way.’
He turns his head fully. Edith sees him face-on for the first time and forgets herself. She gapes. The left side of his face is a reddened mass of scar tissue. The lash-less eyelid is closed. The ear is a stump. The mouth is twisted downwards.
A flick of the eyebrow on the unspoiled side of his face. To blazes with you and your shock, it says.
‘Oh, I don’t know if we can allow that. The truth is, we’re disappointed in you, Edith. Going to the peelers like that. Unwise. Most unwise.’ He shakes his head. ‘A sensible person would have chosen not to notice.’
She bites down hard on her lip. Perhaps it was ill-advised. In fact, standing here, terror drumming at her temples, she has to agree it was extremely reckless.
‘We understand you met Wilson,’ he continues. ‘The field marshal?’
‘None other. Sir Highly Decorated himself.’
Her antennae quiver. These people have Sir Henry Wilson in their sights. ‘Yes, we met.’
‘What did you talk about?’
She’s afraid of saying anything that might put him in jeopardy. ‘Nothing memorable.’
‘Nothing? Come now, Edith, you can do better than that. I have it on the best authority the pair of you were deep in conversation.’
The servants, she thinks. She pinches the bridge of her nose, concentrating.‘People we knew in common.The weather, I suppose. Kipling came up.’
‘Ireland?’
‘Yes, in passing.’
‘Flog the savages, and so on and so forth?’ She nods.‘Anything else?’
‘Not that I recall.’
‘Did he mention any plans while he’s in London?’
She remembers him saying their names were left at the Lyric in case of cancellations. The Lyric. Where the whistler was working. Her heartbeat is a gigantic metronome.‘Not to me.’
‘Any travel plans? Belfast, maybe?’
‘No, nothing.We just talked about … gardening.’
A finger against the crimped wreckage of his mouth, he weighs her answer.
Pinpricks of perspiration break out and Edith is desperate to leave. The longer he detains her, the more she fears she’ll say anything to get away.
Hesitant, she risks a question of her own. ‘Is that all … are you finished with me?’
‘Finished? That’s a good question. Are we finished with you?’ That single eye glares at her, every drop of his rage and misery visible in it.
Edith’s courage falters, folds and deserts her. He’s ready to rain down fire and brimstone on her head and there’s nothing she can do to stop him.‘Please. I just … want to … go home.’
He stubs out his cigar. ‘We don’t care tuppence for what you want. It’s less than nothing to us.’ Purposeful, he pushes against his chair so that it clatters to the ground and reaches for the knife, which he pulls from its holder. When he begins to walk towards her, she sees his left hand is twisted into a claw.
This is the end, she thinks. Her heartbeat accelerates even as time slows down. She listens for some comfort from Martin – I’m waiting for you, dear Edith, we’ll spend eternity together – but hears nothing. Apart from the rush of her own blood, this scarred stranger’s voice is the only sound in her ears.
‘Your wishes don’t weigh one feather with us,’ he hisses.
The odours of tobacco and coffee are rank on his breath. Involuntarily, she shrinks back, stumbles and bangs the back of her head against the door. She leans against it, tremors coursing through her body. The knife is aimed at her throat. Her heart lurches. She can’t take her eyes off the blade. Pointed. Sharp. Close. Closer. Her scalp lifts away from her skull. Death is concrete a presence – a third person in this room.
His voice is pitched barely above a whisper.That web of skin with its puckered mouth is a few inches from her face. A guttering light gleams in his one, beautiful eye. ‘You’ve caused us a great deal of trouble, Edith, and I can’t think of a single reason to excuse you.’
The air crackles. The room holds its breath. A spurt of defiance drives Edith to cross her arms and raise them chin high, warding him off. He thrusts aside her arms and strokes the edge of the blade against her cheek before laying it in the hollow at the base of her throat. Inside its cage, her heart skids to a halt. She knows death is brushing up against her.
A tiny flick of the hand and her skin is nicked. A thread of blood dribbles out. Her eyes well with tears.
He smiles.Waits. Studies her.
In no hurry, he withdraws the blade. ‘Chin up, only the good die young.’ Mouth pursed, he studies the blood on the tip of his knife, leans forward and wipes it on the front of her coat. ‘But if I have to speak to you again, I’ll make mincemeat of you and enjoy doing it.’ His voice slows down, its tone becoming apocryphal.‘I am. An instrument. Of vengeance. If you ever. Go.To the peelers.Again. About anything. Even a runaway dog. I’ll track you down. Personally. Whether in Buckingham Palace. Or that fancy Irish house of yours. And slit your throat. From ear to ear. Leaving you. To bleed. To death. And when I’ve done that. I’ll work my way. Through your family. Bairns included. Do we. Understand one another?’
She is incapable of speech.
‘I’m waiting. And I’m not a patient man. Do we fucking well understand one another?’
The ghost of a nod.
‘Is that a yes?’
‘Yes,’ she whispers.
‘I CAN’T HEAR YOU!’
‘Yes.’
‘Excellent.’ He returns to the desk, sets down the knife, picks up the chair. With his back to her, he says, ‘Now, sod off back to Ireland on the next boat. And keep your trap shut.’
She’s too petrified to move.
‘Fucksake, do I have to do everything myself?’ He strides back, sweeps her away from the door, opens it and calls to the men in the warehouse.‘We’re done here.’
Denis runs up and hovers in the door jamb.
‘Get rid of her.’
Edith hears a humming in her ears.
‘Where?’ Denis asks.
The buzzing intensifies.
‘… Cross.’
He’s changed his mind about letting her go. He intends to have her crucified! Edith moans. The room blurs. She staggers. The man with scars catches her by the shoulders.
‘Careful there.’
He passes her over to Denis, as casually as a pound of sausages. Tottering, she leans on Denis, who half-carries her into the warehouse.
‘Are you going to kill me?’ she manages to gasp.
‘Saints preserve us, no, Miss Somerville. I’m to see you as far as King’s Cross.’
She manages to turn her head and look at him. Is he telling the truth? What if he isn’t? She should make a run for it. But she’s floppy. He guides her to the motor car and bundles her in. Slumped down, her hammering heartbeat is the only thing in the world she’s conscious of – it feels as if that organ might tunnel through her chest.
‘There, there, Miss Somerville, we’re finished now. Fog’s lifting. You’ll soon be safe home,’ Denis murmurs.
The motor car has started up and Edith’s stomach begins to react against its swaying. She groans. The colour drains from her face and the contents of her stomach corkscrew and curdle.The vehicle takes a sharp corner, and the manoeuvre unravels her self-control. She clamps her hand against her mouth, scrabbling for the window catch.
‘Jaysus, not in here!’ Denis springs to his feet, pulls up the blind and forces open the window.
A slimy mass of semi-digested food erupts into her mouth. Somehow, she manages to push her head through the gap and evacuate down the car’s outer flank. After she has finished heaving, she hangs over the side, breathing in the air. Dimly, she becomes conscious of the driver cursing and Denis telling him to mind his own effin’ business.
