know where I am. If he doesn’t want to tell you, he won’t. Gervase tried to burn some information out of him once, and didn’t succeed. He still has the scars …’ he turned to me ‘… don’t you?’
‘Malcolm!’ I protested.
Malcolm said to Yale, ‘I gave Gervase a beating he’ll never forget.’
‘And he’s never forgiven me,’ I said.
‘Forgiven you? For what? You didn’t snitch to me. Serena did. She was so young she didn’t really understand what she’d been seeing. Gervase could be a proper bully.’
‘Come on,’ I said, ‘we’re wasting time.’
Superintendent Yale followed us out of his office and detailed a driver to take Malcolm.
‘I’ll come in the car, once I can move it,’ I said to him. ‘Don’t go shopping, I’ll buy us some things later. Do be sensible, I beg you.’
‘I promise,’ he said; but promises with Malcolm weren’t necessarily binding. He went out with the driver and I stood on the police station steps watching his departure and making sure none of the family had seen him or could follow.
Yale made no comment but waved me back to his office. Here he gave me a short list of reputable building contractors and the use of his telephone. I chose one of the firms at random and explained what was needed, and Yale took the receiver himself and insisted that they were to do minimum weather-proofing only, and were to move none of the rubble until the police gave clearance.
‘When the driver returns from taking your father,’ he said to me, disconnecting, ‘we can spare him to ferry you back to your car.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’m trusting you, you know, to maintain communications between me and your father.’
‘I’ll telephone here every morning, if you like.’
‘I’d much rather know where he is.’
I shook my head. ‘The fewer people know, the safer.’
He couldn’t exactly accuse me of taking unreasonable precautions, so he left it, and asked instead, ‘What did your half-brother burn you with?’
‘A cigarette. Nothing fancy.’
‘And what information did he want?’
‘Where I’d hidden my new cricket bat,’ I answered: but it hadn’t been about cricket bats, it had been about illegitimacy, which I hadn’t known at the time but had come to understand since.
‘How old were you both?’
‘I was eleven. Gervase must have been thirteen.’
‘Why didn’t you give him the bat?’ Yale asked.
‘It wasn’t the bat I wouldn’t give him. It was the satisfaction. Is this part of your enquiries?’
‘Everything is,’ he said laconically.
The hired car was movable when I got back to it and as it was pointing in that direction I drove it along to Quantum. There were still amazing numbers of people there, and I couldn’t get past the now more substantial barrier across the drive until the policeman guarding it had checked with Superintendent Yale by radio
‘Sorry, sir,’ one of them said, finally letting me in. ‘The superintendent’s orders.’
I nodded and drove on, parking in front of thf .bease beside two police cars which had presumably returned from taking the many family members to their various cars.
I had already grown accustomed to the sight of the house; it still looked as horrific but held no more shocks. Another policeman walked purposefully towards me as I got out of the car and asked what I wanted. To look through the downstairs windows, I said.
He checked by radio. The superintendent replied that I could look through the windows as long as the constable remained at my side, and as long as 1 would point out to him anything I thought looked wrong. I readily agreed to that. With the constable beside me, I walked towards the place where the hall could still be discerned,skirting the heavy front door, which had been blown outwards, frame and all, when the brickwork on either side of it had given way.
QUANTUM IN ME FUIT lay face downwards on the gravel. I did the best I could. Someone’s best, I thought, grateful to be alive, hadn’t quite been good enough.
‘Don’t go in, sir,’ the young constable said warningly. ‘There’s more could come down.’
I didn’t try to go in. The hall was full of ceilings and floors and walls from upstairs, though one could see daylight over the top of the heap, the daylight from the back garden. Somewhere in the heap were all of Malcolm’s clothes except the ones he’d worn to Cheltenham, all his vicuna coats and handmade shoes, all of the gold-and-silver brushes he’d packed on his flight to Cambridge, and somewhere, too, the portrait of Moira.