Still, recent events may have changed all that. It’s time to check on Albertine. Although she may not know it yet, I can read all her entries. No restrictions apply to me; public or private, it’s all the same. Of course, she doesn’t know this. Hidden away in her cocoon, she has no idea how closely I’ve been watching her. Looks so innocent, doesn’t she, with her red coat and her basket? But as my brother Nigel found out, sometimes the bad guys don’t wear black, and sometimes a little girl lost in the woods is more than a match for the big, bad wolf ...
Part Two
black
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You are viewing the webjournal of Albertine.
Posted at: 20.54 on Saturday, February 2
Status: restricted
Mood: black
I’ve always hated funerals. The noise of the crematorium. The people talking all at once. The clatter of feet on the polished floor. The sickly scent of flowers. Funeral flowers are different from any other kind. They hardly smell like flowers at all, but like some kind of disinfectant for death, somewhere halfway between chlorine and pine. Of course, the colours are pretty, they say. But all I can think of as the coffin goes into the oven at last is the sprig of parsley you get on fish in restaurants: that tasteless, springy garnish that no one ever wants to eat. Something to make the dish look nice; to distract us from the taste of death.
So far, I hardly miss him. I know it’s a terrible thing to say. We were friends as well as lovers, and in spite of everything — his black moods, his restlessness, his ceaseless tapping and fidgeting — I cared for him. I know I did. And yet I really don’t feel much as his coffin slides into the furnace. Does that make me a bad person?
I think that maybe, yes, it does.
It was an accident, they said. Nigel was an appalling driver. Always over the speed limit; always losing his temper, always tapping, rapping, gesturing. As if by his own movements he could somehow compensate for the stolid inactivity of others. And there was always his silent rage: rage at the person in front of him; rage at always being left behind; rage at the slow drivers; rage at the fast drivers, the clunkers, the kids, the SUVs.
No matter how fast you drive, he said — fingers tapping the dashboard in that way that drove me crazy — there’s always someone ahead of you, some idiot shoving his back bumper into your face like a randy dog showing its arse.
Well, Nigel. You’ve done it now. Right at the junction of Mill Road and Northgate, sprawled across two lanes of traffic, overturned like a Tonka toy. A patch of ice, they said. A truck. No one really knew for sure. A relative identified you. Probably your mother, although I have no way of knowing, of course. But it feels like the truth. She always wins. And now she’s here, all dressed up, weeping into the arms of her son — her one surviving son, that is — while I stand dry-eyed, at the back of the hall.
There wasn’t much left of the car, or of you. Dog food in a battered tin. You see, I am trying to be brutal here. To make myself feel something — anything — but this eerie calm at the heart of me.
I can still hear the machinery working behind the curtain; the swish of cheap velvet (asbestos-lined) as the little performance ended. I didn’t cry a single tear. Not even when the music began.
Nigel didn’t really like classical music. He’d always known what he wanted them to play at his funeral, and they obliged with the Rolling Stones’
‘Paint It Black’ and Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’, songs that, whilst dark enough in this context, have no power over me.
Afterwards I followed the crowd blindly to the reception room, where I found a chair and sat down away from the mill of people. His mother did not speak to me. I wouldn’t have expected her to; but I could sense her presence near by, baleful as a wasps’ nest. I do believe she blames me; although it seems hard to imagine how I could have been responsible.
But the death of her son is less of a bereavement to her than an opportunity to parade her grief. I heard her talking to her friends — her voice staccato with outrage:
‘I can’t believe she’s here,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe she had the nerve—’
‘Come on, lovey,’ said Eleanor Vine. I recognized her colourless voice. ‘Calm down, it isn’t good for you.’
Eleanor is Gloria’s friend as well as her ex-employer. The other two in her entourage are Adèle Roberts, another ex-employer of Mother’s, who used to teach at Sunnybank Park, and who everyone assumes is French (because of the accent in her name), and Maureen Pike, the bluff and somewhat aggressive woman who runs the local Neighbourhood Watch. Her voice carries most of all; I could hear her rallying the troops.
‘That’s right. Settle down. Have another piece of cake.’
‘If you think I could eat a thing—’
‘Cup of tea, then. Do you good. Keep your strength up, Gloria, love.’
Once more I thought of the coffin, the flowers. By now they would be blackening. So many people have left me this way. When will I start caring?
It all began seven days ago. Seven days ago, with the letter. Until then, we — that is, Nigel and I — existed in a soft cocoon of small daily pleasures and harmless routines; two people pretending to themselves that things are normal — whatever that means — and that neither of them is damaged, flawed, possibly beyond repair.
And what about love? That too, of course. But love is a passing ship at best, and Nigel and I were castaways, clinging together for comfort and warmth. He was an angry poet, gazing from the gutter at the stars. I was always something else.
I was born here in Malbry. On the outskirts of this unfashionable Northern town. It’s safe here. No one notices me. No one questions my right to be here. No one plays the piano any more, or the records Daddy left behind, or the Berlioz, the terrible Symphonie fantastique that still haunts me so. No one talks about Emily White, the scandal and the tragedy. Almost no one, anyway. And all that was so long ago — over twenty years, in fact — that if they think of it at all, it is simply as a coincidence. That one such as I should move into this house — Emily’s house — notorious by association, or, indeed, that of all the men in Malbry it should be Gloria Winter’s son who found himself a place in my heart.
I met him almost by accident, one Saturday night at the Zebra. Till then I had been almost content, and the house, which had been in need of repair, was finally clear of workmen. Daddy had been dead three years. I’d gone back to my old name. I had my computer; my online friends. I went to the Zebra for company. And if I still sometimes felt lonely, the piano was still there in the back room, now hopelessly out of tune, but achingly familiar, like the scent of Daddy’s tobacco, caught in passing down a street, like a kiss from a stranger’s mouth —
Then, Nigel Winter came along. Nigel, like a force of Nature, who came and disrupted everything. Nigel, who came looking for trouble, and somehow found me there instead.
There’s rarely any unpleasantness at the Pink Zebra. Even on a Saturday, when bikers and Goths sometimes come through on their way to a concert in Sheffield or Leeds, it’s nearly always a friendly crowd, and the fact that the place shuts early means that they’re usually still sober.