Banishing Verona Read online

  He climbed down the ladder and they stood side by side, surveying the room. Just before the silence grew awkward, she asked if they could make a fire and volunteered to see what there was for supper. Once again she searched the Barrows’ supplies and found a bunch of carrots in the bottom of the fridge—a little limp, but sautéed they would be fine—some tinned spinach, and, best of all, a frozen lasagna from a good delicatessen. When Zeke came in, she saw him look askance at her foaming glass but a stubborn part of her refused to tell him that it was nonalcoholic beer. Who are you to pass judgment, she thought. And then, suddenly, disaster. The carrots, ignored, were burning.

  “Christ.” She seized the frying pan and brought it down against the stove. All her anger—at herself, at Henry, at the men—was focused on this convenient juxtaposition of metal on metal. She banged and banged.

  When she stopped, she was alone in the kitchen. For one appalled moment she thought she might be alone in the house. Very carefully she set down the frying pan, tiptoed into the living room and there, thank God, he was, kneeling before the fire, holding a pair of tongs toward the still hesitant flames. She apologized. The last of the firelighter flared and died. She apologized some more. “What makes you angry?” she asked. He moved a knob of coal, and another. If only she could stroke his hair, or caress the vertebrae at the top of his spine, two of which were revealed as he bent forward. At last she walked away, trying to demonstrate, with each softly taken step, what a good pacifist she would be.

  In the kitchen, she transferred the remaining carrots to a new pan and hid the burned one in the dishwasher, a welcome-home present for the Barrows. She stirred the spinach and found plates and silverware. All the while various factions warred within her. One voice urged her to go back and beg forgiveness. Another suggested she return not to beg but to reason, to lay out the syllogisms that made his staying inevitable. A third wanted to grab the saucepan out of the dishwasher and keep banging until the stove lay in fragments at her feet. A fourth, barely audible, counseled patience.

  She was peering at the lasagna, the hot air of the oven gusting against her cheeks, when she heard footsteps in the hall. The steps grew louder. He was in the room, just behind her. Was he here to announce his departure? She remained motionless. Then came the delightful sounds of chair legs scraping on linoleum, followed by others, even more pleasing, of a human body settling onto a chair. She asked some stupid question about why so many lightbulbs were missing—did she actually use the phrase Stygian gloom?—and he explained the extraordinary fatality rate of the last few days.

  They ate, they talked, he followed her upstairs. They did things together which both of them had done with others, perhaps with many others, and for a while Verona thought of nothing else. Only after Zeke left, slipping from the bed and dressing in the dark, did she recall the phone call of a few hours earlier. Perhaps it had been not the phone but a fax. She had discovered the machine yesterday evening and, relieved at not having to explain herself in conversation, sent Toby a note. Now she got up, pulled on her coat—her hasty packing had failed to include a dressing gown—and made her way to the study. She flicked the light switch and was rewarded with a brief flash. Four steps carried her to the little red glow of the machine; a sheet of paper glimmered in the in-tray. The chances of its being for her were minuscule. Still she stood there, hands pressed into the pockets of her coat, refusing to pick it up. Why should Henry intrude even now? She went back to the spare room, flung her coat on a chair, climbed between the sheets, and, picturing that moment when Zeke had helped her out of the coveralls and run his hands over every inch of her belly, fell asleep.

  An hour later her eyes opened again. Something had woken her but what? She lay, listening intently to the city silence, trying not to think about Nigel and George. Just as she had decided that the culprit was a passing car or motorbike, a piercing wail erupted from the garden. She couldn’t tell if the cats were fighting or mating.

  “Knock it off,” cried a man’s voice.

  The only answer was a low, fierce moan eerily like the sound of human lovemaking. Verona climbed out of bed again and walked back across the landing. The red light still glowed. The sheet of paper still lay there. Worse, she supposed, if it hadn’t. She picked it up and returned to the bedroom. Sitting up in bed, the duvet snug around her belly, she at last turned it over.

  Dearest Verona,

  I still don’t know what’s going on with H. I phoned his office today and the receptionist now says he’s convalescing in Normandy for a week. But I did get a visit and this time it was like yours: no warning, the two of them at my kitchen table when I came home. Nothing terrible happened but I was terrified.

  They asked where you were and I told them I didn’t know. I think they believed me but they are convinced that you’re the way to H. and that I’m the way to you.

  I’m going to stay with my friends Doug and Simon. They have a burglar alarm, a dog, and a lodger who practices tai chi. If you’ve heard anything, let me know. Otherwise I’ll phone the police tomorrow.

  Coward, she thought, crybaby, telltale. With each childish epithet she hurled in Toby’s direction, another burst of wailing rose from the garden. Then came a series of oaths followed by the thud of something—a brick, a book—hitting a wall. In the abrupt silence her anger vanished. She remembered how she had felt when she caught sight of the men on her sofa. Terrified didn’t begin to describe it.

  She let the fax fall to the floor and turned out the light. Again she thought about going to the police. But as she pictured herself talking to some well-meaning sergeant and Henry behind bars, her heart began to race. What could the police do for her and Toby, besides urge them to phone the moment the men reappeared? Round-the-clock bodyguards seemed unlikely.

  She thought back to her last meeting with Henry. He had suggested an expensive restaurant overlooking the Thames. At the time she’d assumed he was trying to make amends for their previous encounter, shortly before Christmas, when her refusal, yet again, to name the baby’s father had driven him to bribery, increasingly wild guesses, and finally anger. Verona, he’d exhorted, you’re my only living family member and you’re about to produce my second living family member. I think I have a right to know who I’m going to be related to. He had stalked out of the pub and driven off, gunning the engine by way of rebuke.

  She had arrived at the restaurant first and been shown to a table by the window. She had sat, watching the barges and boats come and go, until someone hugged her and she smelled Henry’s current cologne. Once, during those early years when she and Toby used to talk endlessly about relationships, he had remarked that Henry was beautiful. Beautiful, she had said. You are besotted. But some facts about her brother were indisputable. He was tall but not awkward about his height like she was, and he chose his clothes with care and wore them well. His ears lay neatly against his close-cropped brown hair. His nose was smaller than hers, though only slightly, and, after he broke it—a car accident, he said on one occasion, a tennis ball on another—a little askew. His eyes were darker than hers, the color of roasted almonds, and only in full sunlight were the green flecks they shared apparent. His most striking feature, as Toby had pointed out, was the groove that ran from his nostrils to his upper lip. Like that pre-Raphaelite model, Toby had said. You know, the one with the mass of hair and a permanent pout. How typical of Henry, Verona had thought, that his best feature has no name.

  He had enacted the little drama of arrival, for her, the maitre d’, and the customers at nearby tables; he made a teasing comment about how radiant she looked, apologized for being late, complained about the traffic, and took his seat. Then there was the turning off of the pager and the mobile phone, a ritual which, even now that these accessories were commonplace, Henry performed in a way that simultaneously feigned modesty and signaled importance. See how I neglect even the most urgent summons for your company. Sometimes Verona found this fuss infuriating, but that evening she had watched with amused tolera
nce as he pressed various buttons and slipped the machines into the pockets of his jacket, one in each, so as not to spoil the cut. A significant pleasure of pregnancy was that, week by week, she grew less vulnerable to Henry’s machinations.

  But now, as a car rattled by in the street outside, she remembered herself saying, What’s wrong? Is something the matter?

  Bad day, he had said. I had one bolshie client after another.

  His hands, however, had belied his casual words. Like his ears, they were small and neat; if in some party game they had been the only visible part of him one would have guessed them to belong to a man of much shorter stature, or possibly a woman. They were also the only part of himself that he seemed to forget about. He had sat back in his chair, the picture of good-humored, relaxed attention, and all the while his fingers were testing the blade of the knife, raking the tablecloth with his fork, twitching from plate to napkin to salt dish. He didn’t mention the baby except, obliquely, when instead of ordering a bottle of wine he said he’d just have a glass. They had talked about a friend who had finally got a part in a West End play and Henry’s new espresso machine, which had arrived from Perugia.

  The waiter brought their starters. While she ate her mushroom soup, Henry picked and chose among his whitebait as if some of the small fish were more worthy of being eaten than others. When the plate contained only a few rejects, he excused himself. This too was traditional. After ostentatiously turning off his phone, Henry could seldom get through an hour without looking for messages. Once again she watched the river. Just as she was about to send a waiter to check on him, he reappeared.

  Sorry, he said. I’ve got a lot going on right now.

  For years Henry had talked in terms of property deals, each larger and more profitable than its predecessor. Even in the best of circumstances she might not have listened closely to his account of the current one, but just as the waiter brought their entrées and Henry began to speak, a boat rigged with hundreds of tiny white lights sailed into view. All her attention was momentarily captured by this enchanting spectacle. When she turned back to the table, Henry was finishing his explanation.

  Everything was in place, he said, taking a mouthful of lamb, the financing, the owners, the buyers. The only problem was we hadn’t done our homework.

  Looking at his glittering eyes, his ears, which had turned scarlet, she wondered if he had used his trip to the bathroom for other activities besides checking messages. But before she could say anything, he had asked a question of his own.

  What’s the first thing you remember?

  At the time she hadn’t thought twice about the abrupt change of topic. The two of them shared a taste for sweeping questions: who’s the most interesting person you’ve met in the last year? What was the worst advertising slogan? I remember, she said, being stuck up a tree. I remember a dress I loved with blue bows. I remember peeling the pebbles off our pebble-dashed house. I remember holding you for the first time and Mum telling me to be careful of your brains. What about you?

  The first thing I remember, the very first, is a pillow against my face.

  You mean you were sleeping the wrong way?

  No, Mum was holding a pillow over my face. It happened more than once. He ate the last mouthful of lamb and mopped his plate.

  That’s … A black hole had opened in her vocabulary. She set down her knife and fork and clenched her fists. Mum would never have done that. Besides, you can’t possibly remember that far back.

  Wouldn’t she? He gave a small, bitter smile. Come on, Verona. You know how my crying drove her mad.

  You’re saying she tried to kill you?

  Well, she probably didn’t think of it like that. It would have been a crib death, one of those unfortunate accidents. Coffee, please, he added to the waiter who was clearing their plates. Black.

  Now Verona pulled the duvet higher and remembered how, unable to look at Henry, she had stared at the snowy tablecloth. The idea of her mother trying to squeeze the life out of Henry, of Henry waving his puny limbs, was horrifying. Have you ever told me this before? she asked.

  No, I’m telling you now. But I’ve always wondered if you knew. Sometimes you would look after me. I used to think you did it to protect me. And the woman who baby-sat, I’m pretty sure she knew that Mum was off her trolley.

  The waiter set down the coffee and Henry asked for a brandy. Here, he said when it came. Have a sip. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.

  He had given her a lift as far as the underground at Green Park. Their good-byes had been hurried by the traffic, an awkward kiss, a promise to talk soon. She had climbed out of the car, and a moment later she could no longer be sure which among the many rear lights were his. The next day she had discussed the conversation with Lyndsay, who, before Tom, had once gone out with Henry for six weeks and who still regarded herself as an expert on him. Of course he can’t remember that far back, she had insisted. He probably saw a TV program about crib deaths and decided it would make a nice addition to his autobiography. At the time Verona had agreed: Henry was dramatizing, as usual.

  But gazing at the shadowy ceiling, the conviction swept over her that he had been telling the truth: their mother, nervous, shrill, alternating between periods of furious activity and profound lethargy, had at least once, perhaps often, tried to kill him. Maybe, she thought, that was when it all started: the belief that his ends justified almost any means.

  She struggled to recall whether he had said anything else. She pictured his hands motionless on the table, his ears still flushed, the fairy-tale boat disappearing down the river toward Gravesend, but no more words came to mind. What if those ambiguous taillights were the last she saw of him? Don’t be absurd, she told herself. Just because he had gone away without telling her or Toby, there was no reason to presume disaster. She couldn’t count the number of times she had left a phone message, only to have him ring back three or four days later with the news that he had been, or sometimes still was, abroad. Why shouldn’t he be in Normandy, as the receptionist claimed? Several friends had houses there. All I need to do, she thought, is find out where he is and tell him that two men are threatening Toby and me, and life can return to normal. On that optimistic note, sleep once more overtook her.

  She was awoken, this time unmistakably, by the ringing of the phone. She reached the study as the fax machine disgorged its sheet of paper.

  Verona,

  For reasons I can’t explain now I’ve made you a reservation at the Heathrow Hilton. Go there asap and I’ll join you. Sorry to be so cloak-and-dagger.

  XXO Toby

  In the midst of her confusion one clear thought surfaced: she must leave before Zeke returned. He must not be implicated in this mess. She bathed, dressed, carried her suitcases downstairs, and, standing in the kitchen, forced herself to eat a slice of toast and drink a cup of tea. The minicab company promised to have a car there in fifteen minutes.

  At the kitchen table she tried to compose a letter to Zeke, but everything that came to mind seemed either too much or too little. Finally she wrote Thursday, 7 A.M. Thanks for everything. I’ll be in touch soon. She glared at the paltry words, thought to amend them, thought to score them out. Instead she seized a hammer and nails from the toolbox in the living room. Upstairs, she rolled up the rug at the foot of the bed. Then she spread out the coveralls she had worn the day before and and nailed them at the collar, the sleeves, the ankles. No way he could think that this gesture was an accident, part of her careless housekeeping. And perhaps he would understand what she was trying to tell him: that what had happened here was as important as the events at any crime scene.

  Zeke

  10

  This account of my life is for my granddaughter, Verona MacIntyre.

  I was born in the town of Kendal in the Lake District in 1898. After several pregnancies that ended badly—one small stone in the churchyard, others too brief even for that—my mother was threatened with dire repercussions for any further attempt. She p
ersisted, for which, I suppose, I ought to be grateful. In the heat of argument she would sometimes remind me of the act of heroism to which I owed my existence; of course it might equally be attributed to another kind of act on my father’s part. I was christened Edmund Alfred MacIntyre and, for reasons that remain obscure, known as Jigger.

  My father, Henry, was the first incumbent of a small parish a few miles north of Kendal. Until his marriage, he had been the bishop’s golden boy, destined to rise to dizzy heights in the diocese. But the day before he was due to walk down the aisle, a deacon took him aside and intimated that advancement was now unlikely. As my mother, Susannah, said, “Those prigs.” She had wanted to be an actress, and well into middle age she retained the appearance and mannerisms associated with such ambition. She chain-smoked, she wore a swirling blue velvet cloak, and she was seldom seen without her hairpiece, a hank of vivid orange hair that clipped on behind her own fringe to form an unconvincing bun. Sometimes, when I was poorly, she let me play with it.

  Almost every day, hail or shine, my mother went out visiting in the parish and talked to whoever she met, old and young, well-to-do and hard up, asking after them and their families and making extravagant claims and promises. I will die if we do not go to Blackpool this Easter. Nothing could be better than haddock for lunch. I detest Jane Austen. Everyone in the parish made fun of her, and everyone adored her. My father stood happily in her shadow, the pergola to her honeysuckle; marriage was his one great adventure. He was a scholarly man, who read both Greek and Latin for pleasure, and he supplemented the meagre living by preparing boys for school or university. In conversation he was witty and droll, but his sermons were uniformly dull. As I got older, I would urge him to liven things up. On the few occasions when he tried, the congregation coughed and fidgeted, vexed at the unexpected interruption of their Sunday nap.