What the Eye Doesn't See Page 18

  I was shocked by that. Because I’d never told her about Rosa. Of course I hadn’t. And to this day I’ll never know if she actually found out something, or whether it was a good guess. Or whether it was an hysterical delusion. Anyway, the point is, she said it with such certainty, I was caught off my guard. I should have just denied it. But I was drunk, tired, didn’t want to be there. Anyway, I admitted nothing. But neither did I deny it with the necessary force. I tried to calm her down, poured her some whisky. She was asking me again and again about this other woman. I tried to say nothing, poured her more whisky. She was angry, hysterical, drunk. But really there was nothing more than that.

  I’ve seen similar situations before. It seems I attract strong emotions in women. They’re obsessed by what they can’t have. God knows what the psychology of that is, but it’s powerful. She told me all the time that she could understand me, that nobody else could. You always know you’re in trouble when a woman says that. There was a power in me that she wanted to release. A hidden good. Another speech I’d heard before. Why can’t women just leave me alone to be bad? Because I am bad. Undoubtedly. But the irony is that if I finish up in a prison cell, it’ll be because of an affair I refused to have. In truth, I might as well have gone to bed with her a hundred times. Hung for a sheep instead of a lamb.

  I don’t know. What makes me as I am? Nanda would say it’s all to do with Lucía’s death. Sweet of her to give me the benefit of the doubt. But I think I was just born this way. Not everything has a reason. Just explain. Tell the truth. I don’t know. All I can say is that sometimes you strike a match – and you don’t know you’re in a fireworks factory, until it’s too late, and the whole bloody lot has gone up.

  Maggie

  In Seville people speak to me in Spanish because they think I belong.

  Under the furnace heat of the sun, I walk through tightly knotted streets of white houses with red-tiled roofs. Even through my sandals I feel the heat of the stones. Bougainvillea spills down over shuttered windows, green ponds flicker with golden fish and arches are lined with Moorish tiles in a thousand colours. Everywhere there’s a smell of sand and dry dust. Echoes ricochet against walls as thick as battlements, voices are muffled by the heat, and oranges shine with a waxy light behind glittering leaves.

  I go to visit the house where my mother used to live. I’ve only visited it twice before but I know it well. It is part of the backdrop of every day. From a hectic market street I turn down a narrow alleyway, cut off from the sun. The house is shut away behind wooden gates and iron grilles. In the shadowed courtyard, I can hear water trickling from a stone fountain thick with moss. In green shadows, under the arches, there are Moroccan lamps hanging low from chains. The windows are blocked out by filigree screens. Creepers hang from the first-floor galleries. Flowers and leaves have fallen but no one has swept them up.

  I don’t think of this house as belonging to anyone now. I imagine that it was shut up on the day my mother left with Dad to go to England. I imagine the rooms inside draped in white sheets, the chandeliers thick with dust. Waiting for her return. A threadbare green wicker chair under one of the arches is in the place where she left it. She might have left a book on the low table nearby. With one finger I touch the pattern of leaves in the iron grille. The story is that young men used to stand at these gates and watch for their lovers who were shut away inside and they used to bite into the grilles to calm their passion.

  I imagine Dad, standing where I am now, and he’s like the photograph that Nanda’s got of him beside her bed, in the morning mist, wearing a broad-brimmed trilby. He smiles, and squints into the sun, with a handkerchief knotted round his neck, his shirt blowing in the wind. In my mind, he watches my mother’s long skirt trailing behind her as she passes through the shadows under the jewelled Moroccan lamps.

  Silly, of course, to imagine it like that.

  I go back to the hotel where Adam and I are staying. I chose it because it looks rather like my mother’s house. Battered and elegant, it operates to its own rhythm, the guests receiving no more attention than the blue shadows that lengthen and shorten, from dawn to dusk, across the tiled courtyard. Battalions of old ladies, swathed in black, carry clinking pails of water and scold threadbare children playing on the curving stone staircases. A dog slouches through the shadows. Another dog sleeps nearby in the sun, occasionally flicking an ear to remove a fly.

  Adam has not arrived yet. He will come from London later tonight. I came from Brussels this morning. It’s three weeks since I last saw him and I can’t wait. At the reception I ask for the key. ‘Buenas tardes, señora Magdalena.’

  I love the way they say my name. Magdalena. It’s a much better name than Maggie – as in saggy and baggy, or Mags – as in hags and rags. Here they say it just the way my neighbour Javier says it. Magdalena – a short and muscular word, with a hiccough in the middle. Perhaps I should call myself Magdalena more often. I suggested that to Adam but he says he prefers Maggie.

  Javier remains in my mind. This city is his home. Just before I came away I saw him, which doesn’t happen often, although I always hear his music. I was coming back from a party and he arrived back at the same moment, with his friend Pedro. I got into the lift and they insisted on cramming themselves in as well although it’s a lift that can only fit two at the most. I didn’t know where to look, their bodies were too close to me. The lift shuddered, sending vibrations up our legs, and rattled upwards pulled by metal ropes and weights.

  But then when it got to their floor, Javier leaned over and pressed the button so that the lift went down again before the door opened. They both howled with laughter and I smiled although I thought them pretty childish. At the bottom they pressed the up button. We rose again, me peering at the walls and their shoulders, feeling them too close to me, smelling wine. But at the top again they pushed the down button and as we descended they began to sing. A melodious duet – Spanish words, a strange plaintive song, full of yearning. Despite feeling pretty annoyed, I couldn’t help but love the way they sang, and the language. Somehow Spanish has a meaning before you understand it.

  Again the lift went up and then down again. Still they sang, their heads raised, their voices echoing up and down the lift shaft. I felt like a stiff Brit, trying not to be a spoilsport, trying to join in the joke but not really managing it. Finally, as we reached the top one more time, I reached over and stopped Javier’s hand before it pushed the down button again. His fingers felt small and soft as they touched mine. Laughing, and still singing, he stepped aside and pushed the lift door open. Both of them stood on the landing, bowing in mock courtesy, sweeping off imaginary hats, before they got in the lift and pushed the down button again.

  ‘Good night, Magdalena,’ Javier called. I went into my flat but even as I got undressed for bed I could hear the lift still clanking up and down. And as I lay in bed I could hear them still singing and laughing. Mad, totally mad.

  I wait for Adam in the hotel room.

  It is eleven thirty when he arrives.

  Straightaway I know something is wrong. He does not hug me as he usually does but kisses me as though I’m made of paper. I look around the hotel room – tiled floor, long French windows, cupboard of ancient twisted wood. The bed – rather like the bed my mother left me. At the window the floodlit cathedral rising up into the night. The full moon has a red blush to it. Yes, of course, it is too perfect. I should have known that.

  He sits down on the bed and pulls me down beside him. A fan creaks and whirs above us. A grey mosquito net is knotted to one side of the bed. He runs his hands through my hair and looks at me with his unblinking eyes. ‘Maggie, listen. There’s some news I should tell you. Tiffany’s family are going to start a private prosecution against your father.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s no announcement but I heard.’

  Blood tingles in my hands. I shake my head. The pattern of roses on the bedspread breaks up before my eyes. My stomach has dropped down a li
ft shaft. I’m suddenly cold. I feel my head moving from side to side. A window opens into the future. Cameras click, Dad is pushing through crowds of journalists and police, a hundred flashlights smack him in the face. Don’t let this be true.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘They can’t.’

  ‘It seems they are.’

  The judge’s gavel thumps and thumps in the back of my throat. Jury, witnesses, police – all are assembled. Dad and I are caught in a net of staring eyes. There will be pictures of me in the paper. Rich-bitch politician’s daughter, and she’s not even attractive, and she’s wearing the wrong clothes. Geoffrey crumples broken orchids in his hands. Tiffany turns away from us, her face hidden. I alight from a bus, outside a prison, with a queue of other people. I’m going to visit Dad.

  Adam is talking but I don’t hear. Something has broken inside me. I realise what this means. I’m going to have to stand in a witness box and say that when I arrived home that night Dad was there. Ms Priestley, do you think that on the night of second October at Hyde Cottage in the hamlet of Brickley … Not just a sin of omission, not just a matter of signing a form. I think of the full glass of whisky, the newly lit cigarette.

  I turn to Adam, wait for him to take me in his arms and comfort me.

  ‘I might have to testify,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, perhaps.’

  ‘I can’t bear that,’ I say. ‘But I would have to …’

  ‘Maybe. Yes.’

  Adam is using new words – perhaps, maybe. The circle of lamplight doesn’t reach his eyes. I take hold of his hand. Underneath it the bedspread roses are jagged and blurred. I don’t understand why he isn’t looking at me. ‘It’s what you said. He’s just being harassed … Don’t you think so?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Adam gets up from the bed, takes his jacket off and hangs it over the back of a chair. Then he turns and looks at me too directly. ‘Are you sure that Tiffany’s brothers don’t know something more?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, think. Why would they be doing this if they don’t have new evidence?’

  I stand up and walk around the bed. I’m clenched tight inside and my face feels swollen. ‘Adam, what are you talking about? Of course they don’t have any new evidence because there isn’t any new evidence …’

  ‘Isn’t there?’

  My anchor is slipping. Breath is trapped in my throat. This was meant to be our perfect weekend – time together in my favourite city, walking in the gardens of the Alcázar, siestas in the afternoon. I should have known I wouldn’t be allowed so much. Adam and I are standing on the tiled floor, either side of the foot of the bed.

  ‘Adam, I don’t believe I’m having this conversation with you. You know what the situation is. My father has an alibi. Gus phoned him at ten o’clock. The police have traced that call. They know Dad answered the phone at Brickley Grange. Then I arrived back home, and he was still there. So what else is there to know?’

  Adam shakes his head. ‘No, Maggie. No. Let’s be honest. Your father doesn’t really have an alibi. You know that. The whole point is that there’s a gap, isn’t there? A gap of two whole hours. That’s what the police were interested in, that’s why your father was arrested, that’s what this trial will be about. The gap.’

  ‘And so you think he should be in prison?’

  ‘No, I’m just saying he doesn’t actually have an alibi.’

  ‘Well, absence of proof isn’t proof of absence.’

  Adam sits down on the bed and raises his arm to wipe at his eyes. He seems less solid now, and uncertain. A light inside him has dimmed – something more than tiredness or the long journey.

  ‘What is it?’ I ask. ‘Something happened. What?’

  He turns to look at me. ‘Nothing. Well – I’m not sure. It’s just I don’t know what to think any more – about your dad.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I realise I don’t really know anything about him. All these conversations I’ve had with him. When one mask comes off there’s another one behind it …’

  ‘What don’t you know about him?’

  ‘Well, take one question, as an example. I wanted to know about your father’s father. Nothing much. Just filling in background. But he doesn’t talk about him. So I asked a few people, and some said your father was the illegitimate son of an aristocrat, and some people told me he was the son of some big army man. Then I asked your father and he said that his father was killed in the war. So in the end I went to check his birth certificate, and there’s no name on it. Just his mother’s name. That’s all.’

  ‘Well, sometimes a father’s name isn’t put on a birth certificate.’

  ‘I know. But when I asked Geoffrey he said that your father has no idea who his father was.’

  ‘Well, Geoffrey really shouldn’t go around saying that kind of thing.’

  Nevertheless, I’m relieved to find that Geoffrey has a little spite after all.

  ‘The point is – your father lied to me.’

  ‘Well, Adam, for God’s sake, he’s a politician. What did you expect?’

  Adam turns to me and his face is grey, as though there are bruises hidden far below the skin. I should never have dragged him into the world of perhaps and maybe. I take his hand in mine. He thinks I don’t understand but I do. You put your faith in someone and they’re not what they seemed – you’re wrong about them, you’re wrong about yourself. Why do we need to believe in other people? This book he’s been writing – for him it wasn’t just about money or career. He looks at me, shakes his head again. ‘Perhaps you’re right. No doubt it was stupid of me …’

  ‘No, I don’t think so …’

  Still I’m holding his hand but something has broken. I’m looking at him now as though I won’t see him again, recording every detail – the profile of his downturned face, the shadows under his eyes, the hair that looks bristly but feels soft. I lay his hand down on the leg of his jeans, and press it there for a moment, as though to make sure it will stay. Because I must go now, I’ve got to go.

  I turn and begin to gather together my clothes. I find my shoes by the bed and put them on. Then I go into the bathroom and push make-up, shampoo, toothpaste into my sponge bag. I avoid my face in the mirror. But strangely, deep down, I feel relief. I’ve spent months dreading this moment. Now that it has arrived I feel that strength which comes when all else has gone. Yes, so here it is. At least I don’t have to dread it any more. I’m about to know just how bad it will be.

  In the bedroom I pick up my nightdress and T-shirt from a chair and push them into my rucksack. Everything is stained by him – the T-shirt he bought for me, the rucksack which has spent weekends on his bedroom floor, the frumpy lace nightdress which he laughed at, and liked.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Adam says.

  ‘I’m going.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘Please don’t argue with me about it. It’s better for me to go. I don’t want to talk about it. It’s just – I can’t do this any more.’ I kneel down on the floor packing books from the bedside table and a dress from the wardrobe. The book I had been going to lend to him. The dress like moth’s wings which I wore that first night.

  ‘Maggie – I don’t understand …’

  I take care not to listen. My hands stumble through clothes, tickets, maps. When I get to Brussels everything will be better. When I get to Seville everything will be better … but nowhere in the world is far enough.

  ‘Maggie. Stop it. Wait.’ He leans down beside me and catches hold of my arm. The leg of his jeans is beside me, those competent hands grip my rucksack. I mustn’t look at him. We wrestle with the rucksack. His hand grips my arm. ‘Listen. Listen. I don’t know what you’re doing but you’ve got to stop. All these things – your father, the court case. None of this matters. Only one thing matters – I love you. You know that.’

  I watch our hands wrestling with the rucksack. My ears are tightly shut.

  ‘Maggie, I thought you loved me.
But perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps you just wanted a man who believed in your father?’

  ‘No. It isn’t that.’

  ‘Then stay.’

  He is pulling at the zips of my rucksack, trying to unpack it. The inside of me goes slack. I want so much to put my arms around him. I want our perfect week in Seville. I want him to stroke my hair and laugh at my jokes. Just let the lies last a little longer. I look up at him and open my mouth to say that I love him but that look of trust on his face stops me. I pick up my rucksack and go to the door. My legs are numb. I can’t trust myself to turn around. Everything is swollen and blurred at the edges. I turn the door knob and feel the tongue pull out from its metal groove.

  ‘You lied for him, didn’t you?’

  I hold on to the door handle.

  ‘He was there that night – you lied for him, didn’t you?’

  The shock is like a stabbing. My hand grips a place under my ribcage. I turn around. Strangely, the room is all just as it was. The carved wood of the bed, the circle of lamplight, the full moon at the window. And he stands there at the centre of it, upright, calm, watching me with those delving eyes.

  ‘So it’s true,’ he says.

  I am cornered. Nowhere left to run. I put my rucksack down. I need two hands to manage it and the floor tips towards me as I bend down. There’s a hole under my ribcage. The muscles in the back of my neck tighten. A pulse thumps above my eye. I stare at the unstable floor. In the courtyard below, people laugh, calling good night to each other. The air around us is as brittle as cut glass. Adam looks as though he’s been hit in the face.

  ‘How did you know?’ I ask.

  ‘Just a guess. It wasn’t so very difficult.’

  I wonder how long he’s known. I wonder what else he knows. All along he’s been walking in chambers of my mind that I thought were closed. In bed, his tongue has been searching my mouth, feeling out the trapped truths. He’s been pressing himself inside me to dig out everything that is secret.