‘No, of course not.’ Quite emphatically Cynthia shook her head, appearing wholly to agree. ‘They were degenerate, awful creatures. They must have been.’
‘No one’s saying that, my dear.’
‘Their story should have ended there, he in the docklands of Belfast, she recording bets. Their complicated childhood love should just have dissipated, as such love often does. But somehow nothing was as neat as that.’
Dekko, in an effort to lighten the conversation, mentioned a boy called Gollsol who’d been at school with Strafe and himself, who’d formed a romantic attachment for the daughter of one of the groundsmen and had later actually married her. There was a silence for a moment, then Cynthia, without emotion, said:
‘You none of you care. You sit there not caring that two people are dead.’
‘Two people, Cynthia?’ I said.
‘For God’s sake, I’m telling you!’ she cried. ‘That girl was murdered in a room in Maida Vale.’
Although there is something between Strafe and myself, I do try my best to be at peace about it. I go to church and take communion, and I know Strafe occasionally does too, though not as often as perhaps he might. Cynthia has no interest in that side of life, and it rankled with me now to hear her blaspheming so casually, and so casually speaking about death in Maida Vale on top of all this stuff about history and children. Strafe was shaking his head, clearly believing that Cynthia didn’t know what she was talking about.
‘Cynthia dear,’ I began, ‘are you sure you’re not muddling something up here? You’ve been upset, you’ve had a nightmare: don’t you think your imagination, or something you’ve been reading –’
‘Bombs don’t go off on their own. Death doesn’t just happen to occur in Deny and Belfast, in London and Amsterdam and Dublin, in Berlin and Jerusalem. There are people who are murderers: that is what this children’s story is about.’
A silence fell, no one knowing what to say. It didn’t matter of course because without any prompting Cynthia continued.
‘We drink our gin with Angostura bitters, there’s lamb or chicken Kiev. Old Kitty’s kind to us in the dining-room and old Arthur in the hall. Flowers are everywhere, we have our special table.’
‘Please let us take you to your room now,’ Strafe begged, and as he spoke I reached out a hand in friendship and placed it on her arm. ‘Come on, old thing,’ Dekko said.
‘The limbless are left on the streets, blood spatters the car-parks. Brits Out it says on a rockface, but we know it doesn’t mean us.’
I spoke quietly then, measuring my words, measuring the pause between each so that its effect might be registered. I felt the statement had to be made, whether it was my place to make it or not. I said:
‘You are very confused, Cynthia.’
The French family left the tea-lounge. The two Dalmatians, Charger and Snooze, ambled in and sniffed and went away again. Kitty came to clear the French family’s tea. things. I could hear her speaking to the honeymoon couple, saying the weather forecast was good.
‘Cynthia,’ Strafe said, standing up, ‘we’ve been very patient with you but this is now becoming silly.’
I nodded just a little. ‘I really think,’ I softly said, but Cynthia didn’t permit me to go on.
‘Someone told him about her. Someone mentioned her name, and he couldn’t believe it. She sat alone in Maida Vale, putting together the mechanisms of her bombs: this girl who had laughed on the seashore, whom he had loved.’
‘Cynthia,’ Strafe began, but he wasn’t permitted to continue either. Hopelessly, he just sat down again.
‘Whenever he heard of bombs exploding he thought of her, and couldn’t understand. He wept when he said that; her violence haunted him, he said. He couldn’t work, he couldn’t sleep at night. His mind filled up with images of her, their awkward childhood kisses, her fingers working neatly now. He saw her with a carrier-bag, hurrying it through a crowd, leaving it where it could cause most death. In front of the mouldering old house that had once been Glencorn Lodge they’d made a fire and cooked their food. They’d lain for ages on the grass. They’d cycled home to their city streets.’
It suddenly dawned on me that Cynthia was knitting this whole fantasy out of nothing. It all worked backwards from the moment when she’d had the misfortune to witness the man’s death in the sea. A few minutes before he’d been chatting quite normally to her, he’d probably even mentioned a holiday in his childhood and some girl there’d been: all of it would have been natural in the circumstances, possibly even the holiday had taken place at Glencorn. He’d said goodbye and then unfortunately he’d had his accident. Watching from the cliff edge, something had cracked in poor Cynthia’s brain, she having always been a prey to melancholy. I suppose it must be hard having two sons who don’t think much of you, and a marriage not offering you a great deal, bridge and holidays probably the best part of it. For some odd reason of her own she’d created her fantasy about a child turning into a terrorist. The violence of the man’s death had clearly filled her imagination with Irish violence, so regularly seen on television. If we’d been on holiday in Suffolk I wondered how it would have seemed to the poor creature.
I could feel Strafe and Dekko beginning to put all that together also, beginning to realize that the whole story of the red-haired man and the girl was clearly Cynthia’s invention. ‘Poor creature,’ I wanted to say, but did not do so.
‘For months he searched for her, pushing his way among the people of London, the people who were her victims. When he found her she just looked at him, as if the past hadn’t even existed. She didn’t smile, as if incapable of smiling. He wanted to take her away, back to where they came from, but she didn’t reply when he suggested that. Bitterness was like a disease in her, and when he left her he felt the bitterness in himself.’
Again Strafe and Dekko nodded, and I could feel Strafe thinking that there really was no point in protesting further. All we could hope for was that the end of the saga was in sight.
‘He remained in London, working on the railways. But in the same way as before he was haunted by the person she’d become, and the haunting was more awful now. He bought a gun from a man he’d been told about and kept it hidden in a shoe-box in his rented room. Now and again he took it out and looked at it, then put it back. He hated the violence that possessed her, yet he was full of it himself: he knew he couldn’t betray her with anything but death. Humanity had left both of them when he visited her again in Maida Vale.’
To my enormous relief and, I could feel, to Strafe’s and Dekko’s too, Mr and Mrs Malseed appeared beside us. Like his wife, Mr Malseed had considerably recovered. He spoke in an even voice, clearly wishing to dispose of the matter. It was just the diversion we needed.
‘I must apologize, Mrs Strafe,’ he said. ‘I cannot say how sorry we are that you were bothered by that man.’
‘My wife is still a little dicky,’ Strafe explained, ‘but after a decent night’s rest I think we can say she’ll be as right as rain again.’
‘I only wish, Mrs Strafe, you had made contact with my wife or myself when he first approached you.’ There was a spark of irritation in Mr Malseed’s eyes, but his voice was still controlled. ‘I mean, the unpleasantness you suffered might just have been averted.’
‘Nothing would have been averted, Mr Malseed, and Certainly not the horror we are left with. Can you see her as the girl she became, seated at a chipped white table, her wires and fuses spread around her? What were, her thoughts in that room, Mr Malseed? What happens in the mind of anyone who wishes to destroy? In a back street he bought his gun for too much money. When did it first occur to him to kill her?’
‘We really are a bit at sea,’ Mr Malseed replied without the slightest hesitation. He humoured Cynthia by displaying no surprise, by speaking very quietly.