The Shades Read online

  His next mission was to go to Hamdean, to relay to Catherine all that he’d seen and heard. Knowing how Rowan’s plans were likely to be received by his mother, he wasn’t relishing the task. For this reason, he opted to take the more circuitous route to the house via Staplehurst. He had read about a church there that carried a rare example of eleventh-century ironwork on the door. With the pressure mounting on him to deliver Rowan’s news to Catherine, there had never seemed a better moment for him to stop and see.

  The South Door was indeed remarkable. It was worth the detour to find something of that antiquity extant: a swirling Norse serpent in conflict with Thor, with the cross of Christianity presiding above. After marveling at the artistry, he entered the church, staring up at the simple tie-beam and kingpost roof, noting in admiration how the pillars along the aisle leaned to compensate for the staggered foundations. He lowered himself into a pew to get a vantage of the nave. Once seated, his thoughts began to settle and he became aware of how roiled and agitated he was. Being alone in this ancient place of worship steadied and calmed his senses. The act of being still quieted him, enabling him to stop looking and turn his gaze inwards.

  He thought of his father, who was devout in his daily observance of a traditional Anglican faith. He had tried to foster in Michael an understanding of the sanctuary of rituals, taking him to matins once a week and to communion on Sunday. Yet, as an adult, Michael had become a more common kind of Christian who stepped into church only for baptisms, marriages, and funerals. Half in the water and half out, Michael had paddled safely in the shallows of agnosticism, keeping his options open whether to retreat back to the shore or wade in deeper. Instead of this giving him the leeway he desired, he had been left stranded on a spit of limbo; events of the last thirteen months had rendered freedom pointless. The last time he had been in church was at Rachel’s funeral, where he had endured the agony of the service, from the gathering at the beginning, to the committal of her body at the end, without the comfort of belief or nonbelief.

  He wondered what his father would have made of his situation with Rowan. They hadn’t known each other; his father had died before the children were born. He reckoned that he and Rowan would have liked each other. They had much in common. His father had given himself to the service of his students. Rowan was kindred in his modesty and selflessness.

  Michael remembered the excitement in the household when one of his father’s ex-students, Dominic Sperry, had sent word to tell him he was coming to visit. This was Dominic’s first time back at St. Christopher’s since leaving ten years before. Michael’s mother went into a flurry of tidying and polishing, unfurling lace runners like bunting. His father’s contribution to the occasion was to stand by the mantelpiece, an enigmatic smile on his face, and reposition a brass carriage clock one centimeter to the left. At the age of twenty-eight Dominic already had his own TV talk show where he discussed current events and quarreled with politicians and prominent members of the arts. Yet, it wasn’t Dominic’s fame or success that had made Michael’s father most proud but that he had overcome difficulties. As far as Michael could make out, most of his difficulties were parental: both had spiraled into a cycle of drug addiction and ill health. For a while it looked as though Dominic might go the same direction. Dominic would have lost his scholarship and been expelled for poor grades and cigarette smoking but for the intervention of Michael’s father, who had advocated for him by guaranteeing to supervise him through his last two years of upper school. This he had done to good effect, operating a study hall in his living room, four days a week. His student graduated top of his class and went on to university. Michael’s father didn’t hold it against him that it had taken so long for him to return: this had not been the point of his service. He had seen need and promise and he had given his time freely.

  Over tea, springy-haired Dom (as he became known) regaled the table with stories about obstreperous interviewees. A writer once punched him in the green room before passing out drunk, only to revive minutes before going on live for a riveting discourse on the subject: “Can Art Soothe the Savage Beast?” “Not in his case.” Dominic grinned charmingly. “The answer was resoundingly no!” Far more interesting to Michael was Claire, Dom’s female companion, a commissioning editor at the BBC. Claire didn’t say much, but she didn’t come off as passive, more that she didn’t need to interpose herself into the conversation, as that hadn’t been the purpose of the visit. When this elegant couple had ducked into the bungalow, he noticed how Dominic had his hand placed in the small of her back, how he looked at her while he was talking to others, which she acknowledged with a subtle curl of her lips to tell him, Yes, I’m listening. I’ll be your witness today. After tea, Michael’s mother went to the kitchen and the two men went out on the patio to laugh and reminisce, huddled over cigarettes—the only time Michael saw his father smoke. Michael was left alone with Claire at the table.

  “How’s school?” she asked warily.

  “All right. Maths is difficult.”

  “Don’t worry. Work hard and it all adds up in the end,” she said, more reassuringly. By way of encouragement she broke a shortbread finger in half, handing one part to him and eating the other. This was pure conspiracy, as Claire had already heard his mother tell him that he had eaten his prescribed limit of three. To Michael this was as good as sex, with their lips and tongues sharing something delicious—even if it was separate halves of a sweet butter biscuit. She added simply, “Your father is a good man. He may have saved Dom’s life.” This was impossible to conceive: cocksure Dom being rescued by a dull old man?

  When it was time for the couple to leave, Claire prodded Dom to promise that he wouldn’t let so much time elapse before his next visit. (He never honored this pledge: he never returned). Michael and his parents walked Dom and Claire outside to an MG convertible. Dom swung into the driver’s seat. Claire eased herself next to him. With one last farewell and a rev of the engine, Dom and Claire sped nimbly away. For weeks on end, Michael’s father spoke about little other than the visit as he basked in the afterglow of Dominic’s return. He chuckled approvingly while quoting the reason Dom had given for switching from English literature to PPE at university: “I was going to read all those books in my spare time anyway.” He recounted some hilarious episode involving missing strawberries that Dominic had remembered. Michael couldn’t stand to listen. He couldn’t bear to see his father be so happy to be left behind when he, Michael, had wanted to go with them. Michael didn’t understand why his father hadn’t wanted more for himself. If he had saved Dom’s life, surely he should have demanded and received more acknowledgment and thanks? Then recognition would have flowed in a continuous river of gratitude and Dom’s attention would not have been allowed to divert away. When his father had waved Dom goodbye for a second and last time, Michael hadn’t appreciated that his lack of expectation was humility and his acceptance was strength. These same qualities were in evidence when Michael had left home to go to university at the age of eighteen. Now that Michael was looking at having to do something similar with his own son, he wondered whether it was possible to have even a portion of his father’s grace.

  Over the years he had constructed an idea of himself of having achieved everything he had yearned for that day: marriage to a clever and beautiful woman, a life more interesting than his father’s. Underpinning this notion was a fundamental miscalculation: a serious underestimation of the love and contentment that had been the bedrock of his parents’ union, the quiet heartbeat that had motored them through most of their adult lives. He couldn’t claim contentment was a defining quality of his own marriage—or likely to be one. Whatever it was and would be, it was what he had signed up for with Catherine.

  Having more appreciation for his father was to understand more about the nature of faith. His father’s humility had been inseparably allied to his conviction in a mysterious and divine order. Without sanctimony or self-regard, certitude had ballasted him, giving his life more heft
and meaning than Michael had known. Appreciating the consistency of his father’s beliefs made Michael conscious of having vacillated with his own. Even when he had most been in need, he had feared to make a choice that would put him on the wrong side of truth. He had failed to commit. This attitude struck him as cowardly. Nor was it sustainable. He needed the conviction of knowing, saying, doing. The latter was important to him. In his view, it wasn’t God or priests that made churches and temples holy but the people who went to places of devotion, got down on their knees, and asked for help. Before continuing on his journey, he kneeled down and prayed for Rachel. He prayed for Rowan and Catherine, and then he asked God for wisdom and courage for himself.

  He hadn’t been gone from Hamdean long. It had only been a matter of weeks. He had been gone long enough to notice small deteriorations around the house: leaves and debris on the doorstep, a film of dust on the windows. Catherine had allowed the mail to accumulate again; a pile of unopened letters sat on the drum table in the hall. He was aware that his relationship to the old place was changing. Whereas before, one glance at the warm brickwork and cool lime mortar that had married in the façade for several hundred years would have uplifted and inspired him, but his fascination with history, the urge to pore over architectural details, cornices, and floorboards, had diminished and all but disappeared.

  On his way inside, he leafed through the post. There was a baffling note addressed to him from Judith, asking him not to do building work after midnight, as it interfered with her circadian rhythms. As Catherine had already complained of being harassed by Judith, he supposed that Judith had finally lost her marbles and needed to take something stronger than her own herbal medicine.

  Catherine had known something was up even before he’d had a chance to speak. She was standing in the kitchen wearing baggy sweatpants. Her computer lay open behind her, the screensaver dancing psychedelic swirls. “I wasn’t expecting . . .” she said, not entirely welcoming, then added, “What’s happened?” more urgently before he’d had the chance to reply.

  He told her about Rowan’s letter, his trip to Canterbury Downs, then braced himself for her reaction. Catherine alternated between astonishment and fury. She couldn’t believe that he had sneaked off and excluded her from an important conversation. She accused him of botching the situation. If she had been there, perhaps the two of them could have made the difference? “We will never know.” She would try to talk to Rowan, but since Michael had caved in, he had weakened her position. She blamed him for not supporting her when she’d known it was best not to let Rowan go away to school. Why had they put so much faith in people they didn’t know? The fucking shrinks. While Michael knew that his own intentions had been honorable—Rowan had written to him directly and he had followed his lead—Michael’s only motivation had been to spare Catherine more angst; but even so, he saw that going to Rowan’s school alone had been a mistake. He didn’t understand what had made him do it. All he could do was apologize to Catherine—and then apologize again. Once his regret had been made clear, she became calmer and less confrontational. Seeing a window for constructive dialogue, he reasoned with her in support of their son’s decision. “Isn’t this what his education has been about? We wanted him to learn to think for himself.”

  Catherine shook her head. “How can he know anything? He’s sixteen.”

  He tried to convey how sincere and serious Rowan had been. “Being with Rowan was like being with a priest.”

  She was acid. “I’m sorry I haven’t had the benefit of that particular experience.”

  They tried to salvage the remainder of the evening with a semblance of normalcy. They cooked supper together: spaghetti carbonara, minus the bacon, as the fridge was empty apart from eggs that Judith had been nice enough to deliver. The mood was somber and the conversation was strained. When he asked how it had been going at the gallery, she was oblique. Never a dull moment was all she would say, making him think that she was withholding details as a retribution for his actions. He had no appetite for food or conflict and was the first to give up eating. While watching Catherine twirl spaghetti around on her fork—on every second rotation the pasta unraveled, she’d catch the strands and begin twirling again—he asked about Judith’s note.

  “I don’t know what that woman is on about,” she said dismissively. “I wish she would leave me alone.”

  It was Catherine’s turn to abandon the meal. She took their plates and clattered them down in the sink.

  Michael had been waiting for the right moment to show her their son’s verse. As dinner was over and Catherine had returned to the table, this seemed to be as good a time as any.

  As soon as she started to read Rowan’s poem, she became anguished.

  “Why didn’t I make her come home?” She began to weep. “None of this would be happening if I had made her come home.”

  He understood her heartbreak. He wanted so badly to comfort her, to spare her more pain. “Darling . . . please . . . I am coming to see that what is happening is greater than any one of our actions. That she got into that car—had her life taken away—”

  “Don’t.” She was savage. “I can’t listen to any of this spiritual crap. If there’s any reason she’s dead, it’s because of me.”

  “I don’t think you can fairly—”

  “I didn’t answer her text,” she snapped. “You asked her to text me, yet you have never asked me why I never replied.”

  In all the awfulness, it had never occurred to him to make this into an issue. He had assumed that Catherine had never received her message; that is, if Rachel had texted her at all. They had both held themselves culpable for not having made her come home, but they had never dissected the timeline of phone messages. He didn’t like where the conversation was going: it was obvious, someplace dark. He tried to steer her away. “All I know is that we must be good to each other, here and now.”

  But she was launched on her course. “If you won’t blame me, I blame you,” she cried. “Why didn’t you take responsibility when she asked to stay out? Why didn’t you step up and be her father instead of pretending a decision about your daughter’s safety was beneath your concern?”

  Her words winded him. As soon as he could speak, he tried again. “We must be good to each other . . .”

  “Why don’t you blame me when you know she texted me that night? I opened her text—it was marked read the next day—and I didn’t reply. I don’t remember reading it.”

  He didn’t know how to answer. This made no sense.

  “Are you hearing me? I opened her text, but I don’t remember reading it.”

  He couldn’t stand it anymore. “I blame myself,” he said loudly. From the way her eyes suddenly widened, he realized that he was shouting.

  “Tell me why. Take a goddamn position.”

  He was yelling before he realized what he was saying. “For trusting you to make the right decision.”

  She let out a cry of satisfaction, but it was a wail, an animal cry, like nothing he had ever heard. He had wounded her, yet she seemed glad to have extracted an accusation.

  “Are you satisfied now?” he implored. “Will you please stop?”

  With a gulp, she composed herself. “You are right. You should never have trusted me.”

  “You know, I didn’t mean . . . sometimes, you push me . . . Don’t you see that it’s a delusion to think that we have any control over what happens to our children? To treat them like a project with a prize for the ones with the best design? This is our hubris. All we can ever do is hope is for the best. Instead of hurting each other, we should have some humility about the limits of our capabilities, and admit that we are powerless before—”

  “Please—”

  “—God,” he said firmly.

  She stared at him as if she had been betrayed. “I do hope for the best. For all our sakes. I only want what’s best for you and for Rowan. I’m sorry that I spoke so harshly to you.” With that, she withdrew from the argument.
/>   They stayed in the kitchen until it was time to go to bed. She sat there stiffly while he held her in his arms. He wanted to be close to her. He needed to be sure that they were both all right. What had passed between them had devastated them all over again. He hoped that now she had provoked him to say the worst and voiced so much guilt and rage of her own, there was a chance that finally she would be able to heal.

  In the middle of the night, he woke up and he was hard. He was on his back and Catherine had already mounted him. By the time he was awake and fully conscious that he was not dreaming, he had climaxed. He felt dirty afterward, as if he had taken advantage of Catherine when she was vulnerable. Only in the morning, when he woke, uneasy in their damp bed, was he able to separate his automatic guilt from the memory of what actually had happened. He realized that during sex, which was crudely mechanical, even punishing, she had been the one taking advantage of him.

  As soon as his father was on the road and safely out of sight, Rowan sprinted to the tennis court located at the end of the playing fields, where the land dropped away to meet the brim of the north woods. Stepped into a grassy slope, the area was set away from the main campus and sheltered out of sight of teachers, houseparents, and staff. Except for a small contingent that liked soccer, most of the students at Canterbury Downs were proudly unathletic. Unless stoned or tripping on acid, no self-respecting pupil would chase a ball with a racket. Rowan rightly assumed that he would have the place to himself.

  He lay down along the old net line and let his legs fall wide and his arms flop from his sides. His outspread limbs made him think of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, whose iconic figure was pinned on the wall of his art classroom. This impossibly perfect man stood at the center of the universe, with all its energy and knowledge flowing through his fingertips, but he could only ever represent an ideal. The humanists had got it wrong when they put so much stock in man’s capacity for reason: men and women were not rational. There was no point trying to resolve any of the world’s problems without addressing this reality. In less than an hour he would be Skyping with Justice1. Justice1 had liked Rowan’s theory that environmental behaviors were a primitive throwback. In a series of posts, Rowan had written that the instinct to cling to the status quo regardless of impact was a holdover from fight or flight modes, honed for over two thousand years into obnoxious habits, the breaking of which required a fundamental shift in the structures of everything. Justice1 responded to the thread, calling him evolutionary smart. Since then they had been messaging each other. They planned to convene at a sandwich bar in Paddington Station, although they hadn’t worked out the exact details. Today he was going to meet Justice1 face-to-face via Skype—an awesome prospect. He knew nothing about Justice1 beyond a mutual commitment to activism, giving him license to imagine his new connection as alternately male and female; sometimes an interesting combo of both. There was also a chance that J1 (Justice’s other signature) was gender neutral or possibly a group, as J1 only used the pronoun we. Whatever Justice1’s identity, Rowan keenly anticipated the exchange. As soon as he received a message from J1, his metabolism surged and his blood pumped that little bit faster.