5 The Cartridge Burns
Simon closes his front door softly. All the downstairs lights are off. Upstairs, the dim landing light still burns, in case Bridgie wakes.
He's tired, but keyed-up. If the water tank weren't so noisy he would run a bath to relax. He wants to wash off the hospital, Giles's flat, that man padding about in Giles's bedroom. He goes into the kitchen, lights the gas and puts on the kettle, then takes it off again. He wanders into the dining room. Lily has laid the table ready for breakfast, as she always does. Bridgie dropped her rabbit plate, but he mended it: you can hardly see the join.
There's a bottle of cider on the dresser, back in the kitchen. Lily must have opened it, as a treat while she listened to the play. Her frugality frustrates him sometimes, but more often it moves him to tenderness. She is absurdly careful. If there's a glut of plums at the market, she makes jam. Their own apples, potatoes, carrots and turnips are carefully stored in the garden shed, well protected from frost. He takes the stopper from the cider bottle and pours himself a glass.
The mortgage is heavy. His parents gave them nothing, and Lily's mother had nothing to give. Her father, the mysterious father in Morocco whom Simon has never met, sent a cheque for a hundred pounds when Paul was born. A huge sum. Lily frowned at the cheque, scrutinising it as if it might be a forgery.
'What a piece of luck,' said Simon.
'Let's see if it clears.'
It did, and she bought the pram, the twin-tub and the sitting-room carpet. Simon's career – if you could call it that – was not exactly progressing. Now, years later, he's begun to understand that it never will. He'll plod on while the high-flyers flap their wings above his head. Already, some of them are a good bit younger than he is. Let them get on with it. He'd rather leave on the dot to do a tricky bit of soldering with Paul. His salary is solid, and Lily has her part-time teaching job. Her job paid for the stair carpet and the scarlet leather sofa and armchairs.
It's calming to think of money. It worries Lily, though. She makes lists, draws up budgets, calculates whether or not they'll be able to rent a holiday cottage next summer. But after an hour's frowning concentration she gets cross with herself, throws down pencil and paper and exclaims, 'We forget how lucky we are. Look at the garden! Look at this house!' as if she'd never expected to be allowed such things. And, probably, she hadn't.
Lily looks so solemn when she's doing her sums. She must have looked like that when she was a little girl. Serious. Trying to be good. But then, suddenly, everything changes. He's always loved those summer days of cloud and light. When he's on a train he likes to watch the shadows fly over the landscape, chased by the sun. Lily throws down her pencil, shakes back her hair and smiles at him. You can't make Lily smile. He used to try, but it never worked. Her smile comes when you don't expect it, changing her face utterly.
He pours a second glass of cider, cuts a chunk off the loaf and fossicks about in the larder for the cheese. There's no pickle. Paul eats everything. He'll eat pickle out of a jar, with a spoon. Lily says it's his age and the rate at which he's growing. Simon tries to think back to himself at that age, but cannot. Doesn't want to. Touching on his childhood is like pressing a bruise.
He was never much of a Callington. His brothers called him 'Milkman' because he was small and dark, and Callington men were big-boned, fair, blue-eyed. He told Lily that once, expecting her to laugh, but she drew her brows together. She's never thought much of the Callingtons, and in his heart he's glad of it.
The briefcase squats on the kitchen tiles. He'll have to put it away, or Lily will want to know whose it is. That damned file.
He opens the briefcase, watching his hands as if they are someone else's. The file is as it was. Top Secret. It ought to have been locked away. It certainly ought never to have left the office in Giles's briefcase.
But it did. Simon's hands hesitate, move, are still. His fingers want to open the file again, and read it. No, he tells himself. It's absolutely off to go poking about. Giles trusted him to collect the file and take it back to the office. To Brenda. Easy-peasy. Obviously Giles hasn't stopped to think about how bloody odd it might look if Simon were to parade into Julian Clowde's office and hand his secretary a file like this. No, Giles wouldn't think of that. Simon can almost hear him: Surely you can employ a touch of discretion, dear boy?
With sudden decision, he plunges the file back. As he does so, his fingers catch on a side-pocket he hadn't noticed before. There's something in there. The briefcase wasn't empty, as he'd thought. There's something in it, right at the bottom.
He draws it out, frowns, focuses. Again, his face takes on that look of extreme concentration. He turns the cartridge over. There's a serial number on the left-hand spool, and on the right it says: '36 EXP'.
Very rapidly, face shuttered, he turns to the stove. The good old coke stove that he riddles night and morning. He bends down, picks up the forked-end tool and unhooks the plate. Inside, the coke burns sleepy red. He weighs the cartridge in his palm, then quickly drops it into the fire and replaces the plate. He hesitates again, and then takes the file from the briefcase and opens it. Very quickly, he flicks through its pages and then back to the first page, where three names are typed. By each name there is space for a set of initials. None of the names is Giles. The last of the three names is Julian Clowde's, and his initials show that he has read and returned the file. But he hadn't returned it. The file is in Giles's possession.
There could be any number of perfectly good reasons for that.
Simon takes the file between his hands, and attempts to tear it, but cannot. He glances at the door, then pushes the file back into the briefcase, takes it into the hall and shoves it to the back of the coats in the hall cupboard, behind the row of wellington boots.
That won't do. He pulls out the briefcase and rearranges the wellingtons. He'll take the case to a left-luggage office. He should have thought of that before. Much better than having it at home. He can leave the case in left luggage until he's decided what to do with it.
His heart is beating fast, as if he's run a race with Paul. He can still run faster than his son. 'That's torn it,' he says aloud as thick, noisy heartbeats push their way up into his throat. Already, he knows that he won't be handing the file to Brenda.
He must think. Giles will be in hospital for several days at least. How soon will the file be missed? Clowde's on leave, but… As for the cartridge… No, he's not going to think about that now. And why hasn't he burned the file? Deep in himself, shamefully, he knows that he needs it. It is evidence.
He's in a state, as Lily would say to the children. He glances up at the clock. Ten to twelve. Only a few hours since Giles rang. None of it has taken long at all, but it seems to Simon as if his whole life is rushing away from him like a train disappearing down the line. But of course that's nonsense. Here he is, in his own house, with Lily and the children asleep upstairs. Husband and father, breadwinner. Those words are true and safe but at the same time they don't sound real. He sees himself: a tiny figure set down in a life he doesn't really understand, like one of the models who wait for the trains on the platform of Paul's railway set.
Simon Callington. Look where he is now. All this has come about through his own fault, through not seeing what he ought to have seen, not asking the questions he ought to have asked, refusing to recognise what was right in front of him. That Giles, his old friend Giles – But now, at ten to midnight, with the cartridge melting to nothing in the stove, he might as well call a spade a spade. Giles has been batting for the other side in more ways than one. There may be a good reason for taking such a highly restricted file out of the office, but try as he may, he can't find one that explains away the film cartridge. How could he, knowing Giles so well, knowing him for so long, have failed to see what was going on?
Failed… Or chosen to fail. It's the old story he's been hearing since he was eight years old. 'Simon is a boy who could go far, but is hampered by his own sheer mental laziness.' Simon will never climb past the middle of any ladder, let alone to the top. Simon is a reasonably competent civil servant. He quite likes his work. The sense that not too much is expected of him is a relief rather than a goad. Simon is a good chap. One of us. If a copy of the Railway Magazine strays from Simon's briefcase at lunchtime, it does him no harm.
He ought to have stayed at Cambridge. He might have written a book.
Idiotic. He didn't get his First. He'd always known he wasn't going to. He hadn't a first-class mind.
He must put the briefcase in the shed in the back garden for now, and leave the side gate unbolted. In the morning, he'll nip up the path and fetch it, after he's said goodbye to Lily and the children. Then he'll go straight down to King's Cross, to the left-luggage office. After that the bloody thing will be out of the way and he won't have to think of it again.
He listens. Sometimes, even now, Lily gets up to check that the children are all right. But tonight everything is still. They are all fast asleep and they know nothing. Simon looks around the room. There is Lily's pile of marking, all done. After that she would have laid the table for breakfast. She doesn't like a mad rush in the mornings…
There are a few twigs of winter-flowering cherry in a blue jug by the toast-rack. She must have gone out in the dark to pick them.
He thinks that he can still smell the cartridge burning.
