The emphasis, the heavy significance, of this was unmistakable. But though some part of me seemed to understand it, my muddled brain couldn’t find the meaning, or didn’t want to. However, I was to be given no choice in the matter; I was to be forced to understand, whether I liked it or not. I felt I was being driven into a trap but could only resign myself to the insistence of my companion’s will by asking, ‘What else has happened?’
‘He was not alone.’
No doubt this was kindly meant, an attempt to break it gently. But in my bewildered state I was completely baffled by the words ‘not alone’, which conveyed nothing to me. Perhaps my slowness roused Mr Spector’s impatience, or perhaps he decided it would be kinder to tell me the worst at once. At all events, he went on, ‘Your mother was with him. She complained of having been left alone in the country for so many years and said she wanted a little gaiety for a change. So your father took rooms at a hotel for a few days. They must have been on their way to a theatre …’
The low flat voice, a sign, though I didn’t know it, of the speaker’s profound emotion, ceased rather abruptly. I took no notice of it, still half dazed and surprised by this last item of news. Had she, too, been hurt? I asked, not realizing the absurdity of the question, though something unnatural about his muted assent began to sound the alarm. ‘Not …?’
Those younger than ourselves must find it hard to understand, with their direct approach to death, the taboos with which we hedged it round, not yet able to accept it as a commonplace of our lives. It wasn’t emotion that inhibited me from speaking the word ‘killed’ but the feeling that it sounded melodramatic, sensational, incompatible with everyday matters, almost in bad taste. But Mr Spector, whose intellectual equipment was far in advance of mine, felt no such inhibition and said with a direct simplicity that ought to have braced me, ‘They both died instantaneously.’
I tried in vain to assimilate this, revolving the words in my mind. No, it was no good. I couldn’t take it in. Silently, with the distant vagueness of a patient coming out of an anaesthetic, I watched him switch on a small light in front of us, producing from somewhere a paper parcel, which he proceeded to unwrap, saying as he did so, ‘I’m sorry about this, Mark. I hate to distress you. But no one else can give the identification the authorities need.’
Without in the least understanding what he meant, I felt a far-off tremor of warning, gazing blankly at the oddly shaped object he held out for my inspection. The queer-looking incomplete thing, with its charred irregular edges and tapered projection, seemed faintly reminiscent of something I couldn’t recall. I told him I didn’t know what it was, wishing he’d put it away. As the seconds passed, I was developing an unreasonable aversion towards the nameless fragment, more particularly to its smell; for it gave off a peculiar odour I’d never before encountered — an acrid chemical smell, mixed with the smell of old burnt material and something bitter, heavy, oppressive, which I couldn’t place and which yet seemed familiar. This composite odour was strangely penetrating, clinging and disagreeable, pervading the whole interior of the car; I felt it would hang about me for days if I touched the thing. Nevertheless, I was obliged to overcome my reluctance and take it into my hand, since it was held out inescapably. Still I could make nothing of it. I noticed the charring wasn’t new; it seemed unnatural for the smell to cling so persistently. Vaguely turning it over, I discovered some rubbed gilt lettering, blackened and blurred at one end to illegibility but with the initial F still visible and guessed rather than saw an R and a G, puzzling over some lost association.
Then suddenly it came back. The shoes, neatly paired in their boxes, were strewn around us, prettily cuddled up side by side in their tissue beds. My mother’s foot on the stool looked naked and unprotected in the thin stocking, till the assistant fitted on the soft elegant suede, smoothing it tenderly around the ankle. ‘Ferragamo. I always wanted a pair. But they’re so expensive. Do you think I’m terribly extravagant, Marko?’
The shoe shop faded. I was left with a sinking premonition of similar visions to come, remembered incidents of no importance, trifles, perhaps irritating at the time but, in retrospect, of an unbearable pathos. Still I could think of no appropriate words but, as I had to say something, said stupidly, ‘They were her best shoes’, and, to my own astonishment, burst into tears as if I’d been six years old.
I suppose Mr Spector took the remains of the shoe away from me then, for I remember hiding my face in my hands and being unable to find my handkerchief; he was very patient and kind, pushing his own into my fingers and letting me cry on his shoulder. And I remember how, momentarily, I seemed to recapture the heavenly peace of some remote childish occasion when I’d rested against him in this same way and lost it again at once, like a face seen from a fast-moving car.
I didn’t feel anything much about my parents. I didn’t even know why I was crying and felt ashamed of my tears, but I couldn’t control them — they simply went on and on, for no reason. When they finally stopped, and I sat up, blowing my nose, I couldn’t look at the man beside me, who said kindly, ‘I’m afraid I have to go back now. Is there anything you want to ask me first?’
I felt I ought to ask questions about how my parents had died. But the only thing I wanted to know was whether this fragment of shoe was all they’d found of my mother — as he’d suggested by his words about identification — and this I couldn’t bring myself to ask. I wondered if he’d be shocked by my selfishness when I said, ‘Shall I have to leave now?’ After all, I had to know what was going to happen to me.
The question seemed to surprise him. He told me that I must, of course, stay on and take the final examination, and we would see then what was to be done. ‘And now I really must get back to my work.’ After this broad hint, I said a hurried goodbye and got out of the car quickly, for something in his voice pierced my self-absorption, conveying an impression of the quite extraordinary importance of this work, the exact nature of which had never been revealed to me.
It had become quite dark. There was a moon, but only dim, intermittent gleams penetrated the heavy cloud. When the headlights came on I stepped back quickly out of their searchlight beams, surprised to see one of the soldiers getting into the back seat — had he been watching us all the time? The car swung slowly around and swayed out of the yard, bumping over the hollows, and I followed it but then turned the opposite way, not wanting to meet anyone, not wanting to go indoors. And I remember stumbling about aimlessly for a while, feeling sorry for myself, till I walked into a bush, which scratched my face and hands viciously.
The thorny scratch coming as a sharp reminder, I suddenly realized how I’d taken it for granted that Mr Spector would look after me, though he was under no sort of obligation to do so and obviously overloaded already with heavy responsibilities. It had seemed to me such a matter of course that I hadn’t even thanked him. All my feelings of inferiority revived at this instance of my own graceless behaviour. No wonder people disliked and distrusted me; how could I ever have believed anything different? Even the death of my parents meant nothing to me, I thought, trying to evoke the scene before my imagination but defeated at the start by not knowing how they had looked. True, I knew my mother had been wearing her best shoes, but I couldn’t remember her dresses well enough to know which she would wear to the theatre — most likely she’d bought a new one for the occasion, and this I couldn’t possibly imagine. As for my father, I didn’t get as far as trying to picture him, before the moon escaped abruptly through a ragged hole in the clouds, as though it had gnawed its way out.