Chapter 22
What Daniel Said
They played the tapes in the relatives' room at the end of the corridor, on Wednesday afternoon, with the door shut and the blind drawn and a tray of tea going cold on the low table between them.
It was a small bare room with a gas fire that had not been lit since the winter before, a rubber plant, and a framed print of a boat. Dera sat on the arm of the sofa with her feet drawn up under her. Kit sat on the floor with his back against the wall and his knees to his chin, and the cassette recorder, which Dera had borrowed from the ward sister's office, in his lap. Ngozi was in the chair by the window with her rosary. She had not been asked. She had come in without a word and sat down, as a woman sits down at a graveside, and nobody had had the courage to send her away.
Amara sat in the middle of the sofa with her bandaged hands in her lap and a blanket over her knees.
"We don't have to," said Dera.
"Yes, we do."
"It's three hours."
"He said I'd want tea," said Amara. "Somebody pour me some tea."
Kit put in the first of the little cassettes. He pressed the button. The machine whirred. There was a long soft hiss, like rain on a far roof, and a click, and the faint hollow noise of a small room, a radiator knocking, a clock, the creak of a chair. And then a throat cleared, close to the microphone, and a voice that she would have known in the dark of a coal cellar said, "Right. Is that, no. Yes. It's going."
Her mother's rosary stopped moving.
"Mara. It's Tuesday night, the third of October. I'm sitting in a rented room in Dunmarrow with a cup of tea I won't drink and a machine the size of a cigarette packet, and I'm going to talk for a long time. I'm sorry. You'll want to interrupt. You always did, you always do, you'd say, 'Daniel, get to the point,' and I'd say there isn't one, it's a story. Well, there is a point. It's at the end. I'll try to get there.
"Let me begin with the plainest thing. My name is Daniel Hale. I was born on the eleventh of April, 1962, in a flat over a bakery in Bristol, and I have never in my life been anyone else. I want you to hear that first. In the weeks after I'm gone you will go through everything I own, and I know you, you'll go through it twice, and you'll find a good many things that look like lies. Some of them are. But the name isn't. And the one true thing I ever gave you wasn't either."
A pause. The clock ticked in the room on the tape.
"My father drank. He died when I was twenty, in a car, which is as you know true. My mother died the year before, in a hospital, of nothing very much, of being tired. I left Bristol on a coach with forty pounds. I went to Dunmarrow because it was the farthest place that had work. I got a job on the docks. I'd never lifted anything in my life. I was a thin boy with glasses, and by the end of the first week the other men were calling me the Professor. I met a woman in a pub on the quay in the spring of 'eighty-six. Her name was Rosalind Lyle."
Kit did not move. His arms were tight round his knees.
"I was twenty-four. She was thirty-one, and a nurse, and funny, and she wanted a drink more than she wanted anything, and I thought I could help. I couldn't. But I stayed, and we had a boy. Christopher. I was there when he was born. They put him in my arms, and he was the size of a loaf, and I was so frightened that I couldn't feel my hands. I remember thinking: oh. This is it. This is the whole of it. And in that moment I swore that I'd never leave him.
"I left them in the autumn of 'eighty-nine."
She did not know that she had moved. She found that she had put out her hand, and that it was resting on the dictaphone, on its cold silver edge, and that Kit's was beside it.
"I'll tell you why, and you'll not like it, and I won't ask you to. Rosalind and I had agreed. It was the best thing for the boy, we said. A man who couldn't keep a job and a woman who couldn't keep off the gin. We'd drag him down between us. She said, 'Go. Be somebody. Come on Saturdays.' And I went. I thought it was the bravest thing I'd ever done.
"It was the most cowardly. I know that now. I walked out of that flat in the pouring rain with a suitcase and I felt, God forgive me, I felt light. And I got on a train to Wexcombe because a man I knew from a lodging house had a friend who needed a clerk. And in the summer of 1989, at a dinner party, a woman in a green dress, with the wrong shoes, asked me what sort of paper I liked."
Dera made a small sound, and put her hand over her mouth.
"I fell in love with you at the first sentence. I hadn't meant to. I'd had every intention of being, what's the word, sober about it. I told myself I'd tell you about Kit. I told myself every day for two years. And then you said, on a bridge, in the mist, that you'd always wanted a family and thought you'd never have one, and I thought, I'll tell her when she's safe. When she's sure of me. And then it was the wedding. And then it was the house. And it's astonishing, Mara, how fast a lie goes cold. It's likea stone. You pick it up warm. By the time you've carried it a year it's the temperature of your hand, and you can't feel it any more."
Amara closed her eyes.
She did not say anything. Beside her, her mother had begun to murmur, low, in Igbo, a prayer or a lament, she could not tell which. And somewhere deep in the machine, on the tape, in a rented room, a man took a breath that shook.
"Every first Saturday of the month I took the train to Dunmarrow. I told you I was seeing a client. I sat in Rosalind's front room with a boy on my knee and told him about rivers. And then in 'ninety-nine she said, 'He's starting to ask. Stop.' And I did. I stopped. I put four hundred pounds in her account every month, and I told myself that it was the same thing."
The second half of the first tape was the money.
It was told differently. It was told in the flat dry voice of a man giving evidence, with dates, and sums, and names, and she found that she could follow it as she followed a catalogue, with a part of her mind that went on turning pages while the rest of her lay stunned.
"In the autumn of 'ninety-eight the firm was dying. You remember the box. I'd put everything I had into two lorries and a lease, and a haulier in Hull went bankrupt owing me ninety thousand pounds, and I couldn't make the rent. I was in a pub on Gaunt's Wharf, thinking of ways to tell you. And a man I didn't know sat down opposite me, a old man in a camel coat, and said, 'You look like someone who needs a friend.'
"I want to say something about Victor Crane that you won't want to hear. He was kind to me. He was kind in a way nobody had ever been kind. He listened. He said, 'I'll lend you two hundred and sixty thousand pounds, at a rate I'll tell you, and I'll never ask you where you got it.' And I said yes, because I had no idea what I was saying yes to. I thought it was a loan. It was a lease on my soul."
"The first favour was a form. A customs form for a container of cigarettes. I signed it. I thought, what harm. They pay duty on cigarettes and I'd be saving a man some tax. It was nothing. Then it was a lorry. Then forty lorries a year. Then a night in 2001 in the rain on Berth Nine, when the crane driver was drunk and a docker called Dennis Kerr, who was forty-one and had two girls, went up on a stack of containers to guide it down. He fell. Sixty feet. He died on the quay while I held his head."
The room was still. Even the clock on the tape seemed to stop.
"Victor paid the widow five thousand pounds and a pension. It was done so quietly that the inquest never knew there had been a night shift. And I went along with it. I stood in a coroner's court and said that I had no knowledge. I have lived with that for five years. I have never told anyone, Mara. Not you, not Martin, not the priest. I think I've been waiting to say it to someone who couldn't forgive me."
"I'm saying it to you. I hope you will."
They had tea, in the middle. Dera made it. It was brewed in a pot with a chipped lid by a hand that shook so badly she spilled most of it on the tray, and they drank it without a word, in the stuffy little room with the blind drawn, and Kit put in the second cassette.
There was a long hiss. And then a different sound, a door closing, a chair scraped back, a pause, and the voice of her husband, low and careful, speaking not to the machine but to somebody in the room.
"Thank you for seeing me, Martin."
She did not breathe.
"It's all right, Dan. Sit down, sit. I've, I'll put the kettle on. Is it, you look dreadful. Have you been sleeping? You've got a face like a, God, I've never seen you like this."
It was Martin. It was Martin's voice, warm and hoarse and slightly out of breath, the voice of a thousand Christmas lunches and borrowed ladders, coming out of a plastic grille the size of a postage stamp in a hospital room in the middle of the afternoon. She felt Dera's hand come down on her shoulder and grip. She did not turn. She looked at the little silver machine on Kit's knee, and the tiny red light, and the two reels turning, slow, patient, turning.
"I've been to see a lawyer."
"A lawyer."
"A woman called Anselm. At Harcourt Square. I've been going for six weeks. I'm going to give evidence, Martin, against Crane. I've the whole thing in a book. I've written down every pound I've handed over since 'ninety-eight. And I did the sum last month, with a pencil. And the sum came out wrong."
A pause. A long one. In it, faintly, a clock ticked.
"Wrong how?"
"I owe him twelve thousand pounds, Martin. I've paid him four hundred and eleven thousand. But the figure he thinks I've paid is one hundred and eighty-four. And I've been trying to understand the difference for three weeks, and the only thing that makes sense is that someone has been carrying the envelopes."
The silence went on. On the tape it was a soft crackle, a nothing, the sound of two men in a room. Then, quite slowly, there came a laugh.
It was quiet. It was almost a sob. It was the sound that Martin Ashby had made on the floor of her kitchen with his blood on the tiles, and she knew it, and her whole body turned to ice.
"Oh, Dan," said Martin. "Oh, Dan. I'm so sorry."
"Don't be sorry. I'm not angry."
"You should be."
"I was. For about a day. And then I thought of Jo, and Ben, and the hip, and your mother. I thought, he's not a bad man. He's a frightened one. And I've been one, God knows, for eight years. I know how it goes." Her husband's voice was infinitely gentle. "I want you to come with me, Martin. To the police. I'll say I never knew. I'll say it was me. They'll take it easier if you walk in, if you turn over the money, I've found a way, there'll be a deal. You'll get three years, maybe less. Jo will wait. We'll make sure of it."
"You'd do that."
"You'd do it for me."
"Yes," said Martin. There was a catch in the voice. "I would. That's the, that's the awful thing. I would."
There was a rustle, a movement. A dim scuff of leather on a carpet, as of one man putting a hand on another man's shoulder.
"Give me till Friday," said Martin. "A few days. I've got to talk to Jo. I've got to, it's a lot. Let me say it to her first. I'll ring you. Where are you staying?"
"I'll tell you. Not yet."
"Dan."
"I've a place."
"Of course. Of course. You'd not tell anyone. You never could." The voice was warm and tired and grateful. "You're the best friend a man ever had. I'll never be able to thank you."
The tape hissed. A door opened and shut. Then, close to the microphone, softly, her husband's voice came back, alone, and she knew he had taken the machine from the pocket of his coat.
"Mara. I recorded that without telling him. I don't know why. It's a rotten thing to do to a friend. But I've had a feeling in my stomach all day like a cold hand, and I thought, if I'm wrong, I'll wipe it. And if I'm not, you ought to hear it. I'm going to see him again on Friday, if he'll come. I think he's a good man in a hole. I don't think he'd hurt a fly.
"I hope I'm right."
It was dark when the third tape began.
Somebody had switched on the lamp. It cast a small yellow circle on the low table, on the cold cups and the plate of untouched biscuits, and beyond it the room had turned the shade of old brown paper. Nobody had spoken for twenty minutes. Kit had not moved from his place against the wall. Dera had cried herself out and was lying on the sofa with her head on her mother's lap, and Ngozi's hand moved slowly over her braids. And Amara sat quite still with her eyes on the little red light.
"Mara," said Daniel.
It was a different voice. It was soft, close, unhurried, like a man speaking into the dark after the lamp is out.
"I've left this one for last. It's the only one I wanted to say. The others are evidence. This is just me.
"I've been thinking all night about what I'd like you to know. And I find it's very little. I find that after twenty years of rehearsing the great confession, the thing I want to tell you is that I was happy. That there is not one day of the fifteen years I had with you that I would change, not even the bad ones, not the winter in the freezer or the hospital in 'ninety-nine. I want you to know that when I came home, every night, to that dreadful hall with its wonky picture and its stupid red light, I was a man who had been given a thing he did not deserve. And that I knew it. And that I was grateful every single night."
Her mother's hand, on Dera's hair, had stopped.
"I'm not asking you to forgive me. I'm asking you to remember that I didn't lie about you. It was the only thing I got right. You were the only true thing in the whole of my life, and I carried you through the worst of it like a lamp.
"Now. The practical thing.
"I have put what you'll need in a place where you will find it, and nobody else would. It isn't in the flat, and it isn't in the unit, and it isn't in any bank. It's with the dead. It's in a place where, if any of the people I owe came to look for it, they'd stand in the doorway and say, 'But it's only paper.' It's in the place that you love most in the world, and that I never once understood why. I put it there on a wet Tuesday three years ago, after the last time we lost, when you were so low that you couldn't speak. You said, 'Take me somewhere.' And I took you, and you stood in the stacks at the top of the building and put your hand on a box, and you said, 'This is the only place where nothing is ever lost.'
"I remember I said, 'It's a lovely thought.' And I put my own box on the shelf beside yours, in the dark, and I walked out. I never told you. I'm sorry for that too.
"You filed it yourself, Mara. You wrote the label. You'll know."
The machine hissed. A thin faint hiss, like the sea.
"That's all. I think that's all. I've left the rest in the notebook, in the numbers, you'll understand the numbers; I made them for you. If you can't, if it's too much, go to Anselm. Go to Kit. Tell him he's welcome in the house. Tell him he can have the blue mug."
There was a pause. A long one. And then, quietly, with a small dry catch, as if somebody had smiled in the dark:
"You're just where I left you."
"Goodnight, love."
A click. The tape ran on. Nothing came out of the machine but a soft, even, empty hiss, for eleven seconds, twelve, thirteen, and then a small sound that might have been a chair, or a footfall, or the sound of a man's breath leaving him; and then nothing at all.
Nobody moved.
The lamp hummed. Outside the door a trolley went by, and was gone. Amara sat with her hand resting on the cold silver case, and her eyes fixed on a place that was not in the room, and her whole body light, as though she had been emptied.
In the stacks at the top of the building.
You stood and put your hand on a box.
You filed it yourself.
"Mara?" said Kit, very low.
She did not answer. She could hear it: a wet gray Tuesday, three years ago, the long iron stair, the green-shaded lamp, the smell of dust and paper. She could feel the cold of the box under her palm, and the soft gray weight of it. She could see a man in an overcoat standing behind her on the landing, with his hands in his pockets, saying nothing, and could not for the life of her remember what had been in his face.
It's only paper.
"Mara," said Dera. "Mara, you've gone white."
"I'm all right."
"You're not."
"I'm all right," said Amara. She lifted her head. She looked at the three of them, at her sister and her mother and the thin brown boy who had her husband's eyes, and a very slow, very strange expression came over her face, like the first light on a window. "I think I know where it is."
She paused.
"I think I've always known."