Get on with it, Ingels urged, and saw that there had been impatience in the court too:
Mr. Radcliffe’s narrative was rudely interrupted by Wareing, who accused him of having let a room in his theatre to the accused four. This privilege having been summarily withdrawn, Wareing alleged, the four had entered the building in a bid to reclaim such possessions as were rightfully theirs. He pursued:
“Mr. Radcliffe is aware of this. He has been one of our number for years, and still would be, if he had the courage.”
Mr. Radcliffe replied: “That is a wicked untruth. However, I am not surprised by the depths of your iniquity. I have evidence of it here.”
So saying, he produced for the Court’s inspection a notebook containing, as he said, matter of a blasphemous and sacrilegious nature. This which he had found beneath a seat in his theatre, he indicated to be the prize sought by the unsuccessful robbers. The book, which Mr. Radcliffe described as “the journal of a cult dedicated to preparing themselves for a blasphemous travesty of the Second Coming,” was handed to Mr. Poole, the magistrate, who swiftly pronounced it to conform to this description.
Mr. Kirby adduced as evidence of the corruption which this cult wrought, its bringing of four respectable tradesmen to the state of common robbers. Had they not felt the shame of the beliefs they professed, he continued, they had but to petition Mr. Radcliffe for the return of their mislaid property.
But what beliefs? Ingels demanded. He riffled onward, crumbling yellow fragments from the pages. The tube buzzed like a bright trapped insect. He almost missed the page.
FOILED ROBBERS AT “THE VARIETY”.
FIFTH MAN YIELDS HIMSELF TO JUSTICE.
What fifth man? Ingels searched:
Mr. Poole condemned the cult of which the accused were adherents as conclusive proof of the iniquity of those religions which presume to rival Christianity. He described the cult as “unworthy of the lowest breed of mulatto.”
At this juncture a commotion ensued, as a man entered precipitately and begged leave to address the Court. Some few minutes later Mr. Radcliffe also entered, wearing a resolute expression. When he saw the latecomer, however, he appeared to relinquish his purpose, and took a place in the gallery. The man, meanwhile, sought to throw himself on the Court’s mercy, declaring himself to be the fifth of the robbers. He had been prompted to confess, he affirmed, by a sense of his injustice in allowing his friends to take full blame. His name, he said, was Joseph Ingels
Who had received a lighter sentence in acknowledgement of his gesture, Ingels saw in a blur at the foot of the column. He hardly noticed. He was still staring at his grandfather’s name.
“Nice of you to come,” his father said ambiguously. They’d finished decorating, Ingels saw; the flowers on the hall wallpaper had grown and turned bright orange. But the light was still dim, and the walls settled about his eyes like night around a feeble lamp. Next to the coat rack he saw the mirror in which he’d made sure of himself before teenage dates, the crack in one corner where he’d driven his fist, caged by fury and by their incomprehension of his adolescent restlessness. An ugly socket of plaster gaped through the wallpaper next to the supporting nail’s less treacherous home. “I could have hung the mirror for you,” Ingels said, not meaning to disparage his father, who frowned and said “No need.”
They went into the dining-room, where his mother was setting out the best tablecloth and cutlery. “Wash hands,” she said. “Tea’s nearly ready.”
They ate and talked. Ingels watched the conversation as if it were a pocket maze into which he had to slip a ball when the opening tilted towards him. “How’s your girlfriend?” his mother said.
Don’t you know her name? Ingels didn’t say. “Fine,” he said. They didn’t mention Hilary again. His mother produced infant photographs of him they’d discovered in the sideboard drawer. “You were a lovely little boy,” she said. “Speaking of memories,” Ingels said, “do you remember the old Variety theatre?”
His father was moving his shirt along the fireguard to give himself a glimpse of the fire, his back to Ingels. “The old Variety,” his mother said. “We wanted to take you to a pantomime there once. But,” she glanced at her husband’s back, “when your father got there all the tickets were sold. Then there was the Gaiety,” and she produced a list of theatres and anecdotes.
Ingels sat opposite his father, whose pipe smoke was pouring up the chimney. “I was looking through our old newspapers,” he said. “I came across a case that involved the Variety.”
“Don’t you ever work at that paper?” his father said.
“This was research. It seems there was a robbery at the theatre. Before you were born, it was, but I wonder if you remember hearing about it.”
“Now, we aren’t all as clever as you,” his mother said. “We don’t remember what we heard in our cradle.”
Ingels laughed, tightening inside; the opening was turning away from him. “You might have heard about it when you were older,” he told his father. “Your father was involved.”
“No,” his father said. “He was not.”
“He was in the paper.”
“His name was,” his father said, facing Ingels with a blank stare in his eyes. “It was another man. Your grandfather took years to live that down. The newspapers wouldn’t publish an apology or say it wasn’t him. And you wonder why we didn’t want you to work for a paper. You wouldn’t be a decent shopkeeper, you let our shop go out of the family, and now here you are, raking up old dirt and lies. That’s what you chose for yourself.”
“I didn’t mean to be offensive,” Ingels said, holding himself down. “But it was an interesting case, that’s all. I’m going to follow it up tomorrow, at the theatre.”
“If you go there you’ll be rubbing our name in the dirt. Don’t bother coming here again.”
“Now hold on,” Ingels said. “If your father wasn’t involved you can’t very well mean that. My God,” he cried, flooded with a memory, “you do know something! You told me about it once, when I was a child! I’d just started dreaming and you told it to me so I wouldn’t be frightened, to show me you had these dreams too. You were in a room with a telescope, waiting to see something. You told me because I’d dreamed it too! That’s the second time I’ve had that dream! It’s the room at the Variety, it has to be!”
“I don’t know what you mean,” his father said. “I never dreamed that.”
“You told me you had.”
“I must have told you that to calm you down. Go on, say I shouldn’t have lied to you. It must have been for your own good.”
He’d blanked out his eyes with an unblinking stare. Ingels gazed at him and knew at once there was more behind the blank than the lie about his childhood. “You’ve been dreaming again,” he said. “You’ve been having the dream I had last night, I know you have. And I think you know what it means.”
The stare shifted almost imperceptibly, then returned strengthened. “What do you know?” his father said. “You live in the same town as us and visit us once a week, if that. Yet you know I’ve been dreaming? Sometimes we wonder if you even know we’re here!”
“I know. I’m sorry,” Ingels said. “But these dreams—you used to have them. The ones we used to share, remember?”
“We shared everything when you were a little boy. But that’s over,” his father said. “Dreams and all.”
“That’s nothing to do with it!” Ingels shouted. “You still have the ability! I know you must have been having these dreams! It’s been in your eyes for months!” He trailed off, trying to remember whether that was true. He turned to his mother, pleading. “Hasn’t he been dreaming?”