She said, ‘That would be nice.’ Then he turned his eyes back to the child. He heard the clock ticking, and his own breathing. Her eyes looked deep into his with a disconcerting penetration and then they dropped a little and she nodded, almost imperceptibly.
It was a day full of promise, the sun pale and round in the vast blueness of the sky above the city. The air was crisp and nippy and your eyes watered in it if you ran.
Bannerman, Sally and the child walked briskly to keep warm, wrapped in heavy coats and scarves, down the Rue de Commerce, turning into the Rue Belliard. They crossed the Boulevard du Regent where the road shone wet and black with the salt, and the traffic threw out a spray of dirty black slush. Down Lambermont and into the Parc de Bruxelles. The seeds of happiness lay in them all, but there was, too, a restraint, so that the happiness was locked inside them.
Sally suggested they build a snowman, but the snow was too crisp and dry. It was Bannerman who threw the first snowball, gathering a handful of snow where the sun had been for some hours. Sally was still trying in vain to build her snowman while Tania watched uncertainly. The child saw the snow that Bannerman had scooped up and he put his fingers to his lips before he threw it and caught Sally on the shoulder. The snow burst in a spray over her face and she wheeled around, anger in her eyes. Then she saw that Bannerman was grinning, and that Tania was pulling in her mouth to stop from smiling. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘If that’s the way you want it. Come on, Tania, we’re not going to let him get away with that, are we?’
She stooped quickly to grab a handful of snow that broke into a white cloud in the air as she threw it. Bannerman laughed. ‘You need to get it where the sun’s been on it.’ He threw another and Sally ducked so that it flew over her head. She grabbed Tania’s hand and they ran to where the sun slanted down through the trees across the virgin snow.
‘Like this,’ she said, showing Tania how to cup it between her hands and compress it into a ball. Then she yelled as another burst on her knee. She stood up quickly and hurled her snowball at Bannerman. He side-stepped easily, slipped and fell heavily on his side. He felt the snow in his shoes and burning the side of his face. He saw the black railings of the park and the outline of grey and biscuit-coloured buildings against the sky. Trees overhead and the sound of laughter. Sally’s fine clear voice, and another. He rolled over and saw Tania, her face reddened by the cold and bright with the laughter that came from her like music. He was not sure if he had ever heard anything so good. The child’s laughter was joyous and unrestrained, honest and simple, and in that moment, almost painful in its sweetness.
A snowball burst on his forehead, stinging his skin and bringing tears to his eyes. He heard footsteps crunching across the snow and Tania was there, standing over him, her laughter coming in short bursts of pleasure. She raised a hand and threw her snowball. It broke on his chest and he yelled and she dropped on her knees, her arms around his neck, life and laughter pulsing through her small, clumsy body. He hugged her and got to his feet, lifting her clear of the ground and spinning her round and round until the world swam and he had to stop. They both fell into the snow and Tania lay on her back breathing hard and laughing at the sky. Bannerman saw Sally crouched a few yards away in the snow. She grinned at him and tilted her head to one side.
He scrambled to his feet, brushing snow from his coat and trousers. ‘I’m soaked. What do you say we eat?’ Tania had stopped laughing and he saw that she was gazing up at him with a clear, bright light in her eyes. And his own happiness muddied a little as he wondered if it was in him to condemn her to a life in an institution.
Two hundred metres away, across the snow and the gravel paths, beyond the trees, the figure of Kale in a dark coat stood watching. The skin on his face was smooth and shiny in the cold, touched with yellow. Thin lips were pressed together in a hard line. It was a face without expression, apart from the eyes. They were the same dark eyes that had watched life pass by them, as you watch the rain and wind sweep down your street from the safety of your room, through glass. It did not touch you. Inside you were safe. But mostly these were eyes that revealed more than they took in. Eyes that betrayed the bitterness behind them, the bitterness that life had nourished so cruelly. Eyes that filtered out all the good things, like darkly tinted glass, so that all things seemed without light or colour.
At first Kale’s mind had shrunk painfully from his new reality, as your eyes do when you come out of a dark place into the light. In the dazzle he had been temporarily blinded. A kind of madness had seized upon him. But gradually his awareness had returned, slowly, and not without hurt. Now all things were clear, and the bitterness that had once shone in those black eyes were replaced with an emptiness. They say a man cannot change, but that is not true. There are many things that can change a man. It can be a gradual thing, or it can come in a blinking of the eyes, a blinding light in which God is revealed.
With Kale the change had begun with three words on a scrap of paper, but the change itself, the core of it, had come from within. Whatever it is that makes us what we are, it is not an external thing. It is inside. And it is from there that the light comes, when our eyes are opened. The glass is tinted on the inside and it is we who tint it.
And so Kale stood watching, through the trees, three figures in the snow. He heard them laughing, their voices in the stillness of the winter morning. He felt drawn to them, wanted to share their laughter. But he had long since passed out of their world into his own dark place. He could look back, but never return. A small, silent tear ran from the corner of his eye. He would not, could not, kill the child.
V
Platt battered out the final page of his copy, checked it, sorted out the blacks and called for a copy boy. A spotty youngster with a shock of red hair snatched it from his tray and headed for the news desk. Had there been a hint of contempt in the boy’s cold, green eyes?
The news room was buzzing with activity in the last minutes before the copy deadlines for the final edition.
Platt lit a cigarette and puffed on it nervously. He was through for the day and he felt badly in need of a drink. But there were still things to be done. He was both excited and a little edgy. It worried him that Bannerman should simply have disappeared like that for two days. Then last night there had been the phone call from Mademoiselle Ricain. Bannerman would phone him today. The call had not come. It had crossed his mind more than once that Bannerman would not keep his word, that when it came to the bit he would not share the story. Why should he? After all, Platt had contributed little or nothing so far, and Platt knew that his fears about Bannerman’s intentions derived from the hatching of his own shabby plots. He smiled a little at the thought of putting one over on him.
Bannerman had asked him for background on Jansen and Lapointe. But he had gone further than that. The hours he had spent searching through the records at the Tribunal de Commerce had repaid him handsomely. At last he had something to trade with Bannerman. He had bargaining power. He felt the first mutterings of his ulcer. With fumbling fingers he opened the bottle of lozenges he used when his stomach gave him trouble. He crunched one quickly until it was a powder and let it mix with his saliva before swallowing it. In a gesture that had become second nature to him he took a grubby red handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopped his brow. Hesitantly he reached for the phone and dialled.