Bright Air - Barry Maitland [38]
‘Forgiveness?’ I said sharply. ‘Forgiveness for what?’
‘What?’
‘You said you wanted to ask her forgiveness. What for?’
‘Oh …’ He became a mass of confusion. ‘I felt responsible. She was my student …’ Then he turned on me. His frown might have been puzzlement, or concern, or perhaps no more than a struggle to concentrate. He repeated my name a couple of times, ‘Josh … Josh,’ then his face cleared and he said, ‘I understand—you’re suffering, right? Shit, you feel guilt … despair, right?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘I felt exactly the same, until I discovered the truth.’
‘The truth? You know the truth, about how she died?’
‘Ha!’ Now a beatific smile lit his face. ‘But that’s the point, Josh, that is the point.’
‘What is?’
‘She isn’t dead.’
We left soon after, exchanging promises to catch up again another time. As we made for the front door Marcus, returned now to a more prosaic spiritual plane, said to Anna, ‘On morphine, was he?’
‘What?’
‘Owen, when you saw him.’
‘I suppose so, something like that.’
Marcus nodded, as if he knew all about morphine. ‘Messes with your brain, Anna. People believe all kinds of stuff.’
We stepped carefully through the obstacles on the living room floor, and I recognised a Lloyd Rees print on the wall that Luce and I had admired on one of our visits. The memory brought back just how much energy and life there had been in this house then, and how neglected it now seemed. I felt sorry for Marcus. He’d been an intriguing and generous man to know, and he’d made our student lives more interesting, more vivid. Now he seemed utterly lost.
When we reached the front door, Anna led the way up the path between the rocks, but Marcus put a hand on my shoulder and stopped me. He was uncomfortably close, his breath foul on my cheek. ‘Josh,’ he murmured, ‘you don’t want to get into all this. Really. I understand how fond of her you were, but believe me, there’s no conspiracy here.’
I nodded, embarrassed to see what looked like a tear in his eye. He was so close I couldn’t avoid noticing the unhealthy colour of his skin, the tufts of bristle he’d missed shaving beneath his chin.
‘Anna’s got it all wrong, you see. You should put her straight. Don’t let her make trouble. Bad for everyone.’
I didn’t mention this to Anna as we drove back to Central, where she wanted to catch a train. On the way she said, ‘Poor Marcus. I can’t believe how much he’s altered. This thing has really done him in, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes, pretty much. He’s a changed man all right. Did you believe what he said, about the accident?’
‘Yes, I did, though he wasn’t there of course, when Luce fell.’
I had believed it too, until that last little exchange at the door. Now I wasn’t so sure.
We agreed we’d have a think about things and talk again soon.
9
I wanted to think about something else, and Mary helped by giving me a new list of jobs that needed doing around the place. I got stuck into them, and was rewarded later with a lobster dinner and a bottle of wine. After the meal I lay on my bed with a crime novel one of the guests had left with us. She’d recommended it highly, and the reviews quoted on the back cover were all ecstatic, but it annoyed me. It wasn’t that it was unrealistic, at least concerning the technical aspects of murder—DNA profiling, gunshot trauma, the action of bacteria in buried corpses, autopsy procedures and all the rest—in these things it was grossly realistic. But I just couldn’t relate to the characters. They were so incredibly resourceful and resilient; the more they were beaten up and shot and misled, the more determinedly they returned to the fight and the more brilliantly their brains worked. Real people aren’t like that—they’re very easily frightened and confused, their motives are boring and selfish, and when trouble comes they have a tendency to curl up into a little ball until it all goes away. I know, because I’m one. But of course that doesn’t make for a very interesting read.
I had been confused by our visit to Marcus all right, and unsettled in ways I couldn’t quite define. The house had been part of