My local bookshop has sold quite a few copies according to Geoff, and a few have gone in Catherine Ravenscroft’s too. Not as many, but a few. It gives me a small thrill to know there are strangers out there who dislike her, that I am gathering my forces and widening the net. Softly, softly we creep up behind her. More and more of us.
36. SUMMER 2013
Even without looking at the numbers Catherine guesses which house is his. It’s the house you’d love to walk right past without stopping, but this house meets Catherine’s eye and calls to her, like the phlegmy growl of a homeless drunk on the Charing Cross Road.
This house is blind, its windows thick with dirt. The paintwork, so new and pleasing on the houses on either side, is scabby and peeling. The garden is being strangled by bindweed, but there’s one valiant rosebush, blushing pink, rebellious, which Catherine can smell as she walks up the path — its sweet scent defying the savagery around it. Her knock echoes down the street. There’s no answer and there’s no bell so she bangs again, harder this time. She crouches down and pushes the letter box. Its flap stays open, no metal basket on the other side to catch letters, just a straight view through to the house. She sees a pair of shoes near the door, scuffed and dirty, and a coat hanging over the back of a chair.
“Hello. Mr. Brigstocke. Please open the door. It’s Catherine Ravenscroft.”
She is determined and yet she hears a tremor in her voice. She tries again.
“Please. I know you’re there. Open the door. We must talk about what happened.” The house stays exactly where it is and so does Catherine, watching for the slightest movement. He has poisoned Robert against her — driven her from her home. The least he can do is look her in the eye and listen to what she has to tell him.
“Mr. Brigstocke. Please open the door. Nothing you do to me is going to bring Jonathan back. Please. I have a right to be heard.”
But the door stays closed. She calls the number Kim had given her. She hears the phone ring inside. A voice answers. “Hello, we’re sorry we’re not here…” A woman’s voice. Nancy Brigstocke. She can’t leave a message with a dead woman. She needs to see him, needs to make him listen, needs to make him stop. She is sure he is in there. She crouches down, pushing her arm through the letter box as far as it can go. It is slender, so up to her elbow. She twists it, trying to reach the latch, but she can’t and withdraws it. She puts her face to the letter box again:
“I know you have my number. Call me — speak this time. I want to talk about Jonathan. I deserve to be heard, Mr. Brigstocke.” She stays on all fours, her forehead resting against the door. She hears the tinny distortion of a radio coming from further up the street and glances round to see a parked van, windows wound down, two builders sitting eating their lunch. She turns back to the door and decides that perhaps he isn’t in after all, so dials the number again, and this time leaves a message.
37. SUMMER 2013
It was as if she’d sent a sightless serpent through our letter box. We watched its blind head sniffing the air, trying to smell us out, then stretching to reach the latch — trying to break in. I should have taken an axe to her. But I’m mixing my daemons here. She is more siren than Medusa. We heard the evil in her voice trying to lure us to the door then singing through the telephone. She wants us to listen, does she? She wants to talk, does she? She has something to say. Well, it’s too late for that now. We haven’t got the stomach to witness her bleeding heart or her husband’s, for that matter.
He’s become quite a pest, leaving messages on the site for The Perfect Stranger, desperate to make up for lost time, desperate to meet us. He believed we were still “us,” still Mr. and Mrs., until I emailed him back and broke the news that my wife had died some years ago; Jonathan was our only son; she never recovered from his loss. It’s pitiful, poor man. I think he is well aware that he is an incidental character in this story. I have no interest in meeting him but I am happy to answer his questions when I can. “Why now?” was simple. The truth was enough. The discovery of my wife’s writings and the photographs and realising that for years she had protected me from knowing that the little boy Jonathan lost his life for was not a stranger, that my son had been intimate with his mother. Our emails have been gratifying. His reveal evidence of his disgust for his wife and the pains he is taking now to distance himself from her, “unforgiveable,” “shameful cruelty”; he is grateful for finally “knowing the truth” and he is “hoping for some kind of reconciliation.” His language is that of a committee member addressing the wrong-doings of an evil dictatorship.
I expressed my sorrow at the hurt and shock I must have caused him by sending him the book and photographs, and too, my regret that I had left a copy for his son at work. “I was out of my mind,” I said, “… as if I was reliving the loss of Jonathan and Nancy all over again.” I hoped he could at least try and understand my grief. And I believe he has, never questioning me over Nancy’s portrayal of his wife as a sexual predator. He has joined ranks with us against her.
Nancy comes up behind me and whispers in my ear. She finds his entreaties tedious and is impatient to see Jonathan again, so I pop him back up on the screen. He is still a work in progress, but he is almost complete. We’ve enjoyed picking out photographs: Jonathan on his eighteenth birthday, the camera we gave him hanging around his neck; Jonathan with his new backpack just before he set off for Europe; Jonathan smiling, handsome, on a beach somewhere in England — it could be anywhere, so we’ll say it’s France, the first leg of his journey. His favourite books — we still have them on our bookshelves — up they go. And music, that’s important, that’s a must. His taste is a bit last century, but that’s “cool” these days — shows he has depth, knows his stuff. We have kept him a teenager — we haven’t allowed him to sink into middle age. He is forever young, forever on his gap year, about to start at university. He still hasn’t decided where. Bristol? Manchester? All he needs now are a few friends and he must have a best friend, we must give him that. Friends will make him appear more solid, more bona fide.
Geoff has been a great help in our project. We met up again a few weeks back. He accompanied me to a small event at our local bookshop where I had been invited to do a reading from my book. They are very keen, as Geoff said, to promote local authors. It was, I’m sorry to say, a rather pitiful affair. Me, standing by a small display of books, with only a handful of people turning up to listen to an old man who had published his first novel. The wine was cheap, the crisps were stale, and I couldn’t wait for it to be over. It was an ordeal. My voice cracked and I found it hard to get the words out; they lodged in my throat and tripped me up and, even though I knew I should try and make eye contact with my audience, I found myself incapable of looking up from the page. I was uncomfortable being looked at. No, I didn’t like being in the spotlight.
Geoff and I escaped to the pub as soon as we could. He felt guilty for putting me through it. It was his idea, after all. I think he had underestimated how hard it was for an elderly man who had become unused to socialising to be on display like that.