The Book Of Evidence Read online

  I did not sleep. The sheets were clammy and somehow slippery, and I was convinced I was not the first to have tossed and turned between them since their last laundering. I tried to lie, tensed like a spring, in such a way that as little of me as possible came in contact with them. The hours were marked by a distant churchbell with a peculiarly dull note. There was the usual barking of dogs and bellowing of cattle. The sound of my own fretful sighs infuriated me. Now and then a car or a lorry passed by, and a box of lighted geometry slid rapidly over the ceiling and down the walls and poured away in a corner. I had a raging thirst. Waking dreams assailed me with grotesque and bawdy visions. Once, on the point of sleep, I had a sudden, dreadful sense of falling, and I sprang awake with a jerk. Though I tried to put her out of my mind I kept returning to the thought of Anna Behrens. What had happened to her, that she should lock herself away in that drear museum, with only a dying old man for company? But perhaps nothing had happened, perhaps that was it. Perhaps the days just went by, one by one, without a sound, until at last it was too late, and she woke up one morning and found herself stuck fast in the middle of her life. I imagined her there, sad and solitary, bewitched in her magic castle, year after year, and – oh, all sorts of mad notions came into my head, I am too embarrassed to speak of them. And as I was thinking these things, another thought, on another, murkier level, was winding and winding its dark skein. So it was out of a muddled conflation of ideas of knight errantry and rescue and reward that my plan originated. I assure you, your honour, this is no sly attempt at exoneration: I only wish to explain my motives, I mean the deepest ones, if such a thing is possible. As the hours went on, and stars flared in the little window and then slowly faded again, Anna Behrens merged in my mind with the other women who were in some way in my care – Daphne, of course, and even my mother, even the stable-girl, too – but in the end, when the dawn came, it was that Dutch figure in the picture in the garden room who hovered over the bed and gazed at me, sceptical, inquisitive and calm. I got up and dressed, and sat on the chair by the window and watched the ashen light of day descend upon the rooftops and seep into the trees. My mind was racing, my blood fizzled in my veins. I knew now what I would do. I was excited, and at the same time I had a deep sense of dread. There were stirrings downstairs. I wanted to be out, out, being and doing. I started to leave the room, but paused and lay on the bed for a moment to calm myself, and fell at once into a profound and terrible sleep. It was as if I had been struck down. I cannot describe it. It lasted no more than a minute or two. I woke up shaking. It was as if the very heart of things had skipped a beat. So it was that the day began, as it would continue, in the horrors.

  Mrs Reck was tall and thin. No, she was short and fat. I do not remember her clearly. I do not wish to remember her clearly. For God's sake, how many of these grotesques am I expected to invent? I'll call her for a witness, and you can do the job yourselves. At first I thought she was in pain, but it was only a terrible, tongue-tied shyness that was making her duck and flinch. She fed me sausages and rashers and black pudding in the parlour behind the bar (it was the executioner who ate a hearty breakfast). An intricate silence filled the room, I could hear myself swallow. Shadows hung down the walls like fronds of cobweb. There was a picture of Jesus with his dripping heart on show, done in thick shades of crimson and cream, and a photograph of some pope or other blessing the multitudes from a Vatican balcony. A feeling of gloom settled like heartburn in my breast. Reck appeared, in his braces and shirt-sleeves, and asked coyly if everything was all right. Grand, I said stoutly, grand! He stood and gazed at me, smiling tenderly, with a sort of happy pride. I might have been something he had left to propagate overnight. Ah, these poor, simple lives, so many, across which I have dragged my trail of slime. He had not once mentioned the monies I owed him – even on the phone he had apologised for not waiting for me. I rose and edged past him in the doorway. Just popping out for a moment, I said, get a breath of air. I could feel my horrible smile, like something sticky that had dripped on to my face. He nodded, and a little flicker of sadness passed over his brow and down his sheep's muzzle. You knew I was going to do a flit, didn't you? Why did you not stop me? I don't understand these people. I have said it before. I don't understand them.

  The sun was shining through a thinning haze. It was still impossibly early. I walked down one side of the main street and up the other, twitching with impatience. Few people were about. Where did the notion come from that country folk are early risers? A van passed by, towing a trailer with a pig in it. At the end of the street there was a bridge over a shallow brown stream. I sat on the parapet and watched the water for a while. I needed a shave. I thought of going back to Reek's and borrowing a razor from him, but even I was not ruffian enough for such effrontery. The day was growing hot already. I began to feel light-headed there in the sun, watching the water squiggle and gulp below me. Presently a large, ancient man came along and began to address me earnestly. He wore sandals, and a torn mackintosh slung like a kern's tartan over one shoulder, and carried a thick ash stave. His hair was long, his beard matted. For some reason I found myself picturing his head borne aloft on a platter. He spoke calmly, in a loud, strong voice. I could not understand a word he said – he seemed to have lost the power of articulation – yet I found something oddly affecting in the way he stood there, leaning on his ashplant, with one knee flexed, his eyes fixed on me, speaking out his testament. I watched his mouth working in the thicket of his beard, and nodded my head slowly, seriously. Madmen do not frighten me, or even make me uneasy. Indeed, I find that their ravings soothe me. I think it is because everything, from the explosion of a nova to the fall of dust in a deserted room, is to them of vast and equal significance, and therefore meaningless. He finished, and continued regarding me in silence for a moment. Then he nodded gravely, and, with a last, meaningful stare, turned and strode away, over the bridge.

  Your honour, I know I have spoken of having a plan, but it was a plan only in the broadest sense. I have never been much good at details. In the night, when the egg hatched and the thing first flexed its sticky, brittle wings, I had told myself that when morning came and real life started up again I would laugh at such a preposterous notion. And I did laugh, even if it was in a thoughtful sort of way, and I believe, I really do, that if I had not been stranded in that hole, with nothing to pass the time except my own dark thoughts, none of this would have happened. I would have gone to Charlie French and borrowed some money from him, and returned to the island and paid my debt to Senor Aguirre, and then I would have taken my wife and child and come home, to Coolgrange, to make my peace with my mother, and settle down, and become a squireen like my father, and live, and be happy. Ah -

  What was I saying? My plan, yes. Your lordship, I am no mastermind. The newspapers, which from the start have been quite beside themselves – it was the silly season, after all, and I gave them a glorious, running story – have portrayed me both as a reckless thug and a meticulous, ice-cool, iron-willed blond beast. But I swear, it was all just drift, like everything else. I suppose at first I played with the idea, telling it to myself as a sort of story, as I lay there, the sleepless prince, in Mother Reek's gingerbread house, while the innocent stars crowded silently in the window. In the morning I rose and held it up to the light, and already it had begun to harden, to set. Strangely, it was like the work of someone else, which had been given to me to measure and to test. This process of distancing seems to have been an essential preliminary to action. Perhaps this accounts for the peculiar sensation which came over me there on the bridge above that gurgling river. It's hard to describe. I felt that I was utterly unlike myself. That is to say, I was perfectly familiar with this large, somewhat overweight, fair-haired man in a wrinkled suit sitting here fretfully twiddling his thumbs, yet at the same time it was as if I – the real, thinking, sentient I – had somehow got myself trapped inside a body not my own. But no, that's not it, exactly. For the person that was inside was also strange to me
, stranger by far, indeed, than the familiar, physical creature. This is not clear, I know. I say the one within was strange to me, but which version of me do I mean? No, not clear at all. But it was not a new sensation. I have always felt – what is the word – bifurcate, that's it. Today, however, this feeling was stronger, more pronounced than usual. Bunter was restive, aching to get out. He had been shut up for so long, burbling and grumbling and taunting in there, and I knew that when he burst out at last he would talk and talk and talk. I felt dizzy. Grey nausea made my insides cringe. I wonder if the court appreciates what a state my nerves were in, not just that day, but throughout that period? My wife and child were being held hostage by wicked people, I was practically broke, my quarterly allowance from the pittance left me by my father was not due for another two months, and here I was, after a ghastly night, red-eyed, unshaven, stranded in the middle of nowhere and contemplating desperate actions. How would I not have been dizzy, how would I not have felt sick to my guts?

  Eventually I sensed the village behind me coming sluggishly to life, and I walked back along the main street, keeping an eye out in case I should encounter an importunate Reck or, worse, Reek's mother. The morning was sunny and still, dew-laden, and a little dazed, as if drunk on its own newness. There were patches of damp on the pavements. It would be a glorious day. Oh yes, glorious.

  I did not know until I found it that I was looking for the hardware shop where Reck had stopped the taxi the night before. My arm reached out and pushed open the door, a bell pinged, my legs walked me inside.

  Gloom, a smell of paraffin and linseed oil, and clusters of things pendent overhead. A short, stout, elderly, balding man was sweeping the floor. He wore carpet slippers, and a cinnamon-coloured shopcoat such as I had not seen since I was a child. He smiled and nodded at me, and put aside his brush. He would not speak, however – professional etiquette, no doubt – until he had taken up position behind the counter, leaning forward on his arms with his head cocked to one side. Wire-rimmed glasses, I thought, would have completed the effect. I liked him straight away. Good day to you, sir, he said, in a cheery, hand-rubbing sort of voice. I felt better already. He was polite to just the correct degree, without undue subservience, or any hint of nosiness. I bought a ball of twine and a roll of brown wrapping-paper. Also a hank of rope – coiled, I recall, in a tight cylinder, very like a hangman's knot – good hard smooth hemp, not that modern plastic stuff. I had little notion of what I intended to do with these things. The rope, for instance, was pure indulgence. I didn't care. It was years – decades! – since I had experienced such simple, greedy pleasure. The shopman placed my purchases lovingly before me on the counter, crooning a little under his breath, smiling, pursing his lips approvingly. It was playtime. In this pretend-world I could have anything I wanted. A tenon-saw, for instance, with rosewood stock. A set of brass fire-irons, their handles made in the shape of crouching monkeys. That white enamelled bucket, with a delicate, flesh-blue shadow down one side. Oh, anything! Then I spotted the hammer. One moulded, polished piece of stainless steel, like a bone from the thigh of some swift animal, with a velvety, black rubber grip and a blued head and claw. I am utterly unhandy, I do not think I could drive a nail straight, but I confess I had always harboured a secret desire to have a hammer like that. More laughter in court, of course, more ribald guffaws from the wiseacres in the gallery. But I insist, your honour, gentle handymen of the jury, I insist it was an innocent desire, a wish, an ache, on the part of the deprived child inside me – not Bunter, not him, but the true, lost ghost of my boyhood – to possess this marvellous toy. For the first time my fairy-godfather hesitated. There are other models, he ventured, less – a hurried, breathy whisper – less expensive, sir. But no, no, I could not resist it. I must have it. That one. Yes, that one, there, with the tag on it. Exhibit A, in other words.

  I stumbled out of the shop with my parcel under my arm, bleared and grinning, happy as a drunken schoolboy. The shopkeeper came to the door to watch me go. He had shaken hands with me in an odd, cryptic manner. Perhaps he was a mason, and was testing to see if I too might be a member of the brotherhood? – but no, I prefer to think he was merely a decent, kindly, well-meaning man. There are not many such, in this testimony.

  I felt by now that I knew the village. I felt in fact that I had been here before, and even that I had done all these things before, walked about aimlessly in the early morning, and sat on the bridge, and gone into a shop and purchased things. I have no explanation: I only felt it. It was as if I had dreamed a prophetic dream and then forgotten it, and this was the prophecy coming true. But then, something of that sense of inevitability infected everything I did that day – inevitable, mind you, does not mean excusable, in my vocabulary. No indeed, a strong mixture of Catholic and Calvinist blood courses in my veins.

  It came to me suddenly, with happy inconsequentiality, that it was midsummer day.

  This is a wonderful country, a man with a decent accent can do almost anything. I thought I was heading for the bus-stop, to see if there was a bus to the city, but instead – more inevitability – I found myself outside a tumbledown garage in the village square. A boy in filthy overalls a number of sizes too small for him was heaving tyres and whistling tunelessly out of the side of his face. A rusty tin sign nailed to the wall above his head proclaimed: Melmoth's ar Hire. The boy paused and looked at me blankly. He had stopped whistling, but kept his lips puckered. Car? I said, pointing to the sign, for hire, yes? I jiggled an invisible steering wheel. He said nothing, only frowned in deep puzzlement, as if I had asked for something utterly outlandish. Then a stout, big-bosomed woman came out of the cash office and spoke to him sharply. She wore a crimson blouse and tight black trousers and high-heeled, toeless sandals. Her hair, black as a crow's wing, was piled up in a brioche shape, with ringlets trailing down at the sides. She reminded me of someone, I could not think who. She led me into the office, where with a lurch I spied, among a cluster of gaudy postcards tacked to the wall behind her desk, a view of the island, and the harbour, and the very bar where I had first encountered Randolph the American. It was unnerving, an omen, even a warning, perhaps. The woman was studying me up and down with a sort of smouldering surmise. With another shock I realised who it was she reminded me of: the mother of the squalling baby in Senor Aguirre's apartment.

  The car was a Humber, a great, heavy, high model, not old enough to be what they call vintage, just hopelessly out of fashion. It seemed to have been built for a simpler, more innocent age than this, one peopled by a species of big children. The upholstery had a vaguely fecal smell. I drove sedately through the village in third gear, perched high above the road as if I were being borne along on a palanquin. The engine made a noise like muffled cheering. I had paid a deposit of five pounds, and signed a document in the name of Smyth (I thought the y a fiendishly clever touch). The woman had not even asked to see a driving licence. As I say, this is a wonderful country. I felt extraordinarily light-hearted.

  Speaking of jaunts: I went to my mother's funeral today. Three plain-clothes men took me in a closed car, I was very impressed. We sped through the city with the siren hee-hawing, it was like my arrest all over again, but in reverse. A lovely, sunny, crisp morning, pale smoke in the air, a few leaves down already on the pavements. I felt such a strange mingling of emotions – a certain rawness, of course, a certain pain, but elation, too, and something like grief that yet was not without sweetness. I was grieving not for my mother only, perhaps not for her at all, but for things in general. Maybe it was just the usual September melancholy, made unfamiliar by the circumstances. We drove by the river under a sky piled high with bundles of luminous Dutch clouds, then south through leafy suburbs. The sea surprised me, as it always does, a bowl of blue, moving metal, light rising in flakes off the surface. All three detectives were chain-smokers, they worked at it grimly, as if it were a part of their duties. One of them offered me a cigarette. Not one of my vices, I said, and they laughed politely. They see
med embarrassed, and kept glancing warily out the windows, as if they had been forced to come on an outing with a famous and disreputable relative and were afraid of being spotted by someone they knew. Now we were in the country, and there was mist on the fields still, and the hedges were drenched. She was buried in the family plot in the old cemetery at Coolgrange. I was not allowed to leave the car, or even to open a window. I was secretly glad, for somehow I could not conceive of myself stepping out suddenly like this, into the world. The driver parked as near as possible to the graveside, and I sat in a fug of cigarette smoke and watched the brief, hackneyed little drama unfold beyond the fogged glass, among the leaning headstones. There were few mourners: an aunt or two, and an old man who had worked years ago for my father in the stables. The girl Joanne was there, of course, red-eyed, her poor face blotched and swollen, dressed in a lumpy pullover and a crooked skirt. Charlie French stood a little apart from the rest, with his hands awkwardly clasped. I was surprised to see him. Decent of him to come, courageous, too. Neither he nor the girl looked in my direction, though they must have felt the pressure of my humid gaze. The coffin seemed to me surprisingly small, they got it down into the hole with room to spare. Poor Ma. I can't believe that she's gone, I mean the fact of it has not sunk in yet. It is somehow as if she had been bundled away to make room for something more important. Of course, the irony of the situation does not escape me: if I had only waited a few months there would have been no need to – but no, enough of that. They'll read the will without me, which is only right. The last time I saw her I fought with her. That was the day I left for Whitewater. She did not visit me in jail. I don't blame her. I never even brought the child for her to see. She was not as tough as I imagined. Did I destroy her life, too? All these dead women.