For Rye Page 5

  Maybe she’d never even had any talent to start with. Her career might just have been the law of averages playing out. Sit a monkey in front of a typewriter and let infinity play out, and the thing’ll fart out an airport potboiler eventually. As for all the conversations she’d avoided over the years, all the potential friendships and relationships from which she’d hid, this guy was backdating the whole damn lot. Hell, forty-five and she’d never even been with a man. She’d practically lived the life of a nun.

  A tear rolled down Quentin’s cheek. He had passion, she’d give him that, but there was something missing in those eyes. What was it?

  ‘Detective O’Connell was right,’ she said, fiddling with her sleeve. ‘You’re doing a good thing by staying, even if my father can’t see it.’

  Their eyes met.

  As an ambulance screamed to a halt by the blast site, as the warzone fizzled down to a by the book clean-up operation, two writers sat side by side on a dusty, worn couch, their eyes meeting for a moment that seemed to stretch beyond time. And as the endlessness of that moment reached on, it dawned on Renata what was missing in these eyes.

  No knives.

  5

  The shouting had reached its climax just before midnight. There’d been a crash from downstairs, followed by an unnerving hush, until the clock tower finally did its thing across the fields. Footsteps creaking up the stairs, the slam of a door, and only a couple more hours of pulling the tear-sodden pillow over her face before the night settled into its silent slumber.

  She dare not read. The mere thought of her father spotting the light from her bedroom window upon the grass outside was too grim to bear. What about the curtains? Nah, he might still see it under the door. That brave little choo-choo was decommissioned years ago, now rusting in a junkyard somewhere.

  Stupid kid.

  Once the yelling had yelled itself to sleep, and from the stomping there wasn’t a peep, then the light could go on. Young Renata could finally slip from this world into the pages of a story, except her current novel had run dry during playtime today. She hugs the book to her chest as if it’s a kitten trying to leap from her arms. She considers settling for scribbling in her silk-bound diary, the one Mother gave her when she turned nine last year, but that can’t offer the escape a story can. Tonight she needs escape.

  She hugs the book tighter. The kitten behaves. Instead of just grabbing a new one from the bookcase in the living room, she prefers making a sly exchange. Less attention drawn. She never makes the exchange while her father is still up. The books aren’t even his, but still, less attention drawn.

  More meek.

  She eases open the bedroom door and slips onto the dim landing with all the stealth of one entering a lion enclosure.

  Our Father, who art in heaven…

  The journey downstairs and into the lounge seems like a Himalayan trek, the staircase an Everest descent. She reminds herself that going down a mountain is easy-peasy. You fly like a kid on a sledge. Definitely the easiest bit.

  Or was it the hardest?

  …Hallowed be thy name…

  In her mind a roadmap long committed to memory emerges from the steps. The staircase is a minefield, the map providing safe navigation through its most treacherous points. One wrong move and it wouldn’t be blown limbs flying through the air, but the scream of creaking steps. Then you’d get your blown limbs.

  …Thy kingdom come…

  The ritual was always the same: hold the book under your chin so you can press your hands against the walls on either side of the staircase in an attempt to somehow displace your weight. Just don’t think about dropping the book. Don’t think about it, but also don’t forget to keep pressing that chin. If the book falls, every landmine littering this wooden Everest blows.

  Also, don’t forget to pray.

  …Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…

  She grins as her bare feet touch down silently on the fluffy Persian rug at the foot of the mountain. To the girl, the rug is a field of undisturbed snow, not unlike the kind you’d find at the end of your Himalayan descent. Hers are the first footprints on this winter field, an invisible imperfection imposed upon perfection. She gropes for the living room door, oak and heavy as a bank vault.

  …Give us this day our daily bread…

  Having turned its handle as quietly as a cat burglar, she prepares to pull.

  Change in will.

  She swallows.

  Strength of service.

  What if it creaks? What if it cracks? What if it pops? What if it bashes the wall and wakes Father and…

  She swings the stupid thing open.

  The light’s on.

  Her heart hurls up her throat as she’s filled with the impending horror of being discovered. Too late to run, too late to hide. The soldier navigated the minefield beautifully, but met her end by accidently shooting herself once home free.

  ‘Rennie?’

  ‘Mother?’

  She squints through the low light and sees the woman perched, pouring over some funny looking machine. The vicar’s wife quickly adjusts her posture so she’s sitting neatly. Every iota of her being is arranged to perfection as assiduously as the house, her clothing impeccable and not a hair out of place. As for that smile, that sweet, rehearsed smile, it never falters. She motions her daughter over. The girl carefully closes the door and tiptoes to the chair in which her mother sits, pregnant belly like a beach ball in her lap.

  ‘Are you trying to wake your father, Rennie?’

  She locks her gaze onto her mother’s flawless hair and then the woman’s tired eyes, trying her best to ignore the bruises. ‘No, Mother. I’m thirsty. Wanted some water from the kitchen.’ She looks at the machine. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘This is a typewriter,’ she says. ‘I write stories with it. Your father doesn’t like them much, so let’s keep this between us, okay?’

  ‘Can I have a shot?’

  The woman pauses. ‘You can type one line. No more.’

  The girl’s fingers poise above the keys, then cautiously begin tapping.

  CHANGE IN WILL STREN

  Her mother stops her, then gently moves her hands from the keyboard. They stare silently at the keys, the grandfather clock by the door ticking away in the silence, always ticking.

  ‘I’m glad we got this time together, Rennie,’ she says. ‘Your father went to the doctor about his shaking hands. It seems he has nothing to worry about for now, but things will get worse in years to come.’ She runs her fingers through the girl’s soft black hair. ‘He might need our help in the future, when his condition worsens.’

  The girl can resist no longer. She looks at the bruises. ‘Like he helps us now, Mother?’

  The fingers stop. The smile wavers. ‘My love, these are just bruises. He would never hurt us, not really.’

  The girl looks down, fiddling with her pyjama sleeves. ‘They don’t hurt?’

  The woman turns her swollen eyelids to the oil painting hanging above the fireplace. Waves lash up like flames at wailing faces. ‘You know what that painting is, Rennie?’

  ‘Yes, Mother. It’s the Great Flood. I learnt all about it in Sunday school.’

  She nods. ‘That’s right, dear. And you know why God sent the flood?’

  The girl flips her Sunday school switch. ‘Yeah. Then the Lord saw that the…uh…wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every in–intent? of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was…uh…’

  ‘Rennie, no,’ she interrupts. ‘That isn’t knowing.’ The girl looks at her. ‘Your grandmother loved art, you know.’

  ‘Your mother or Father’s mother?’

  ‘You know your father doesn’t speak about his family.’ She looks back at the faces screaming skyward. ‘My mother. You never knew her, but she was a clever woman. She told me inside every painting there’s a thousand more; that, like everything in life, there’s lots of ways to see the same thing. That’s what m
akes art such fun, you see?’

  The girl’s eyebrows arch in pained confusion.

  ‘Listen, Rennie, between you and me, it’s a pretty scary painting, isn’t it?’ A smile surfaces on the girl’s face. ‘Not to me, because I see one of the other thousand paintings inside it. Your father wouldn’t like me saying, but I believe the story of the flood was teaching us something less…scary. I believe in God, but whether “the waters prevailed on the Earth one hundred and fifty days”, I can’t say. Some would call me blasphemous, most would call me naïve, but I believe the Bible’s teaching us something different. Maybe the flood’s meant to show us not how to reshape the world with destruction…’ She takes her daughter’s hand. ‘…but with love.’

  The girl’s eyes widen.

  ‘Rennie, precious Rennie, I believe love can reshape a thousand more worlds than some silly flood ever could. A thousand worlds, just like those thousand paintings.’

  Her mother’s arms feel strong around her, her eyes shining with a courage that hypnotises the girl. The bruises seem to dissolve before her.

  ‘Love, Rennie. Like a flood. That’s what gives us real strength. Maybe we all have a little flood in us.’

  The girl stares, transfixed.

  ‘So you see, my darling, they’re just bruises. He’ll never hurt us, not really. Because he can’t.’

  She pauses, then pulls the girl closer before continuing.

  ‘He wasn’t always like this, not when we first married, and he won’t be like this forever. He’s just like the painting: scary, but the good bits are still in there. Rennie, promise you’ll be there for him if anything happens to me. When you grow up you’ll leave this town, have your own family, your own life, but he still might need you one day.’

  Her mother squeezes her hand. Always at the right times she squeezes her hand.

  ‘The flood, Rennie,’ she says. ‘Remember the flood, remember the love. Promise you’ll be there for him if anything happens to me.’

  ‘Yes, Mother,’ the girl says. ‘I promise.’

  6

  She stopped cutting and listened again. The chattering was distant, but unmistakably there.

  The clean-up operation had rid the blast site of the shrapnel sprayed from the back of the articulated lorry. Although being treated for third-degree burns at Millbury Peak Community Hospital, the truck’s driver and passenger were both in a stable condition. A slightly blackened crater on the road was all that was left of the incident, a reminder of the madness gripping the placid town in weeks past. Thomas’s babbling had continued deep into the night following the explosion. This was, his mutterings declared, the end of times. As for Renata, the memory of the blast was putting her even more on edge than usual. Every time that old familiar pain shot through her head she expected her world to erupt in light once again, but it never did. No more trucks, no more explosions.

  Now, the following evening, the chaos of sirens and reporters and clattering stretchers was replaced by this far-off chit-chat. Renata set down the fabric scissors beside her needle and thread, planning to resume this tedious repair job on her father’s moth-ravaged trousers later, and looked at the snoring man in the armchair.

  She’d set aside Thomas’s outburst from her second night at the house. Not that it hadn’t upset her, but time was limited; find Noah, pass on this damned responsibility to him or his wife or his husband or whoever the hell filled her stranger-brother’s life, and get out – of everywhere.

  She didn’t consider herself ‘depressed’, and she didn’t hate life. The thought of suicide had materialised in her mind in much the same way Millbury Peak had emerged in the mist: first an indistinguishable shape in the fog, then total clarity. It was a tactical escape route, she’d told herself. Find her oh-so-busy brother, (Of course, Noah. It was just a small service anyway. Oh, I know, you can’t abandon your commitments. I completely understand.) dump her father, (By the way, here’s Dad.) and get out. Leave the debts, leave the dad, leave the knife-eyes. Leave it all. And every extra day that she hung onto, that coiled hemp snake continued its incessant whisperings:

  …it would have held it would have held it would have

  Laughter broke up the chattering. She stepped over the unconscious Samson to peer through the grimy window and saw two men sitting by the charred crater. After a quick glance at the snoring skeleton in the armchair, she made for the front door.

  Detective O’Connell took a swig, then noticed Renata. He quickly handed Quentin the hipflask. ‘Miss Wakefield, good evening. We’re just—’

  ‘I was just telling the detective the secret of what the C in my name stands for,’ Quentin interjected. ‘Nothing! Totally random. Just thought it sounded good.’ He nudged Hector. ‘Bet my ex-wife could think of something though, right?’ He held out the hipflask. ‘Evening tipple, Ren?’

  She eased the door shut. ‘How’s the investigation coming?’ she asked Hector, unsurprised at his return to drink. People were fickle, disappointing. She knew this.

  ‘Well this is just a celebratory drink, actually,’ he rumbled, thick fingers pawing an unshaved cheek. ‘A one-off. Today was my last day on the force. I’m officially retired.’ He jerked forward as a grinning Quentin thumped him on the back and passed the scotch.

  ‘I had no idea. Congratulations, Detective,’ said Renata. ‘Or is it just Mr O’Connell now?’

  His smile faded. He cleared his throat. ‘Actually, with your permission, I intend to continue my investigation. You see, I’m afraid I wasn’t so…popular within the force.’

  ‘They thought the drink got to him,’ Quentin hiccupped.

  ‘Yes, and they were right.’ He looked at the crater. ‘But they weren’t getting the job done and they were holding me back. I’ll make better progress without them – or the drink.’ He took a long look at the hipflask then passed it to Quentin.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Renata, fingering her sleeve, ‘but did you retire just to further this investigation?’

  He looked up, the man’s weathered face as solid as a mountain. He sighed. ‘Like I said, your mother deserves justice.’

  The fog thickened around the small assembly. The early evening light was soon replaced with the glow of a full moon. The blackened crater stood out before them.

  Quentin stretched, then glanced at his watch. ‘Well, Ren, I promised Hector I’d give you folks some alone time to go over the details of what happened yesterday.’ His tone dropped as he looked back at the crater. ‘I better be going.’ He took one last swig before tossing Hector the hipflask. ‘Happy retirement, Detective.’

  Renata and Hector’s efforts to slip into the house unnoticed were in vain. Thomas awoke with a gargled demand for his dead wife.

  ‘Sylvia,’ he barked, saliva swinging from his underbite, ‘I need my pills. Sylvia, my pills.’

  ‘Sorry, Father. It’s just me,’ said Renata, picking her palm. ‘Hector’s come to visit. He was hoping to ask us some questions about the explosion outside the house yesterday.’

  ‘Good evening, Thomas. You’re looking well,’ Hector lied.

  ‘I don’t have time for this,’ the old man spat. ‘Go before the altar where my wife burnt, the same wife whose killer you people are too incompetent to find, and ask your questions to the good Lord.’

  Further mutterings snapped from his withered lips, increasingly unintelligible in tone, until his eyelids slowly drooped over their vacant interiors.

  ‘Sorry, don’t take it personally,’ whispered Renata. ‘We’ll talk in the kitchen.’

  They left Thomas’s agonal snoring. Any evening the old man was able to sleep as much as this was a good evening. ‘I know it’s getting late, so I won’t keep you long,’ Hector said, heaving his bulky body into a rickety chair by the larder door. He rubbed his hairless head, then straightened. ‘Could you start by telling me exactly what you saw yesterday?’

  ‘Well, it was early,’ she began, steam rising from the sink as she gave her hands a hurried wash. ‘I’d just
woken up. I heard a rumbling outside my bedroom window and—’

  ‘Your bedroom,’ he interrupted, ‘the same room you had as a child? Looking out the front of the house over the road?’

  ‘Yes, I had a clear view of the trucks,’ said Renata. She took a seat opposite the man. He watched her yanking at a loose strand of wool from her Aran knit. ‘I saw it all, but I’m not sure I can tell you much you don’t already know. The largest lorry, it just…well…’ She paused, twirling the beige strand around a trembling finger. ‘…it blew up. I’ve never seen anything like it. The light, the blast. It came out of nowhere. And the trapped men…’ Silence. ‘I can still hear their screams,’ she breathed.

  ‘Alright,’ Hector grumbled, ‘I think that’s enough.’ He leant close enough for Renata to smell his breath. No scotch. ‘I’m going to be straight with you,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t take a genius to see the connection between your mother’s death and the truck explosion.’ He paused. ‘Rye.’

  ‘The flask,’ she said. ‘You didn’t really drink from it, did you?’

  ‘He’s been nothing but cooperative, but I had to be sure.’ The man sat back, toothpick sticking from his mouth. ‘Criminals have been the bread and butter of my career, Miss Wakefield. You come to realise they’re all the same, really. You grow antennae, develop a sense for them. I knew Mr Rye was genuine from the get-go but, like I said, I had to be sure. I needed him to drop his defences.’

  She got up to close the kitchen door. ‘So if Quentin has nothing to do with it, what about this connection?’

  Hector frowned, stopped chewing for a moment, then recommenced his gnawing of the pick in his mouth. ‘That’s where it gets tricky. Of course, there is another connection: you.’

  Renata blinked.

  ‘Or rather, your family. Sylvia wasn’t a random victim and your house wasn’t a random blast site. The fact that your mother…’ He took a breath. ‘…met her end on the altar of the church where your father served his whole life, the church a short walk from your family home, suggests both incidents were statements of some kind. I believe this was, as they say, personal.’