Surface Tension - Chapter 15

Chapter 15

 

I push through the heavy glass library doors. For a moment the residual warmth of the building hangs round me but by the time I’m half way across the paved area between the library and  the main buildings the cold’s got me. It’s a brutish cold, it grips tight, assaults you, but I’ve grown to like it.

I pause in front of the administration building, a low modernist structure, as ugly as my library’s graceful. The other side of the revolving door’s another world sits, one where a sheen of cordial politeness covers the machinations of the movers and shakers, the decision makers. It’ll be warm; a fetid artificial heat that clings. It invites you relax, shed your skin, be comfortable, put your defences down.  At least the cold’s honest; it may invade you, reaching between layered clothes but it never demands more than this.

            I know what’s ahead. Trial by committee with the verdict already determined. Part of me wishes they would administer the below without the vestiges of due process. I’m a big boy. I know things have gone awry and they need a scapegoat and I’d willing be it as long as Liz and Mary are alright in the end. I need someone to quietly take me to one side and I’d happily fall on my sword. But I know that won’t be they way. It wouldn't be ‘right’.  They need their due process even if they’re here to hear me, not to listen.

            After saying goodbye to Bill yesterday I gave in and answered the phone. From that point on I've been on a conveyor built, no getting off.

I check my watch, it's just after 8, I’m early.

First stop’s the Director of Learning and Educational Support Services. His secretary phoned yesterday, warm honeyed words expressing concern and support but he needed to see me. It couldn't be Tuesday, it would have to be early today, if that wasn’t an inconvenience. 

It didn't take much detective work once she’d hung up to find out that the Director was engaged in a series of meetings about what had happened. I didn’t need the local news bulletin to tell me that the judge and jury had met  to decide on the outcome.  But there he was, Colgate smile huffing and puffing in the cold about doing the right thing for students, carrying a a thorough review, making sure that this kind of thing can’t happen. All the right words but I knew the decision had been made.

I was grateful. It gave me the opportunity to plan my defence and I decided to by the captain on the sinking ship. Save the women and children, make sure the crew are safe and then go down with, with what? Honour – only in the eyes of my friends and colleagues and I’d decided that was good enough for me.

Beside I had my life raft.

            I push through the door. On the other side I’m immediately hit by a rush of hot air. By the time I'm knocking on the Director's solid door my face is burning and rivulets of sweat are running down my back. The door’s jerked back and it’s him resplendent in a charcoal grey suit, crisp white shirt and silken tie.  Its fire red is matched by the handkerchief in his jacket breast pocket. He pauses and looks at me. His eyes are dark, no emotion, he’s steeled himself for what he’s about today..

            “Ah, yes, Tony. Come in.” He steps back and allows me into the room. He doesn’t offer me a handshake. He wheels round, soundlessly striding on the thick carpet back to the large desk that dominates the space. It sits in front of a large window which is framed by an Oak and leads your eye to a fine view looking over the town and out to the hills beyond.

He hovers, a moments indecision – should he command from behind the desk? He takes the informal route, perching on the corner of the desk, fidgets and shuffles until he finds a comfortable position. “Tony...” He picks up a large mug emblazoned with the legend 'No.1 Boss', “Tony this is not easy.”

            And so it begins. He doesn’t ask me to sit down or offer me a drink despite the coffee percolator's happily burbling in the corner. We dart through the issues and what’s going to follow today. Time’s a resource he doesn't like wasting, just like coffee, and there’s no point on using either on a lost cause, is there? This is last rites. I wonder if I’ll get the condemned man’s last wish.

“Tony, you understand the seriousness of this situation. I know that you may not have had anything to do with this issue but...”

            But it happened on my watch, I was in charge and therefore... I track a blue car edging its way from town into the hills. A finch settles on a branch that rests on the window pane, it cocks its head and then darts off. The blue car's gone.  I can see the forecourt I crossed. A group of students amble towards the science block mummified against the cold. They’re followed by two men in overalls carrying a large board between them. They slip and slide on the path as they try and manage their load. They disappear out of sight without mishap which I find faintly disappointing. It makes me think of Liz and Mary. Somewhere they’ll be being brought to book. I wonder how they are. I  regret not having tried to speak to them yesterday. In the head long rush of all this, Bill, the money I realise they never even crossed my mind.  There's guilt there. I wish I was cold; maybe it would freeze these emotions.

            “Tony?”

            It takes a moment. I’m back in the room.

            “Yes?”

            “Tony, you do appreciate the magnitude of what’s happened, don’t you?  There will be consequences and...”

Fill in the blanks.

            “Yes.” I try and invest the one word with all the contrition, understanding and insight I can muster. I bow my head for added effect.

            “Good. Sorry, I don't mean good, good. I mean I am glad you appreciate the gravity of the situation..,” he blusters, and for the first time I appreciate that he’s fine dealing with the concept of getting rid of me but the personal side leaves him cold “...and understand the implications.” He can't look at me, though he does manage a long hard stare at his watch. “Right, downstairs I think.”

            He guides me to the door which he opens for me.

            “Tony,” the door closes.

            “Yes?”

            “You do know that this er, chat, was informal, off the record. I really do respect all that you've done. And I felt you needed a heads up but...”

            “I understand.”

            I'm in free fall.

 

My inquisitors sit at the far end of the room, a suitable distance from me so that there is no risk of contamination, suited and booted officials more on transmit than receive.

 They’re smartly dressed, just like the Director and equally impervious to the insidious heat.  Me, I could melt.    

At their end of the room are flasks of coffee, a plate of biscuits and the jugs of water are refilled whenever one commands it. I've got a jug of stale water, the detritus of previous meetings floating scummily on top.

            “Can you describe what was found?”

            “How long had there been students lodging in the library?”

            “Did you know about it?”

            “How can two members of your staff have successfully perpetrated this without your knowledge?”

            “Why did this happen?”

            I'm complicit, a fool or incompetent and possibly, probably all three in their eyes.

            “Did I understand the impact?”

            “The reputation”

            “The concern of investors”

            “The damage done to potential partners”

            It goes on, a litany of questions and condemnations.

            I’m falling, falling, falling, but I’m not scrabbling, pleading and I can see that baffles them..

            Lunch’s a welcome respite, though I know my fate will be decided, as the condemned man I ought to have a hearty last meal. The trouble is the canteen isn't doing hearty. With a sigh I ladle some soup into a bowl, pay and turn to find a seat.

            The room's crowded, but way back in the corner I can see a bob of white curly hair bowed. I walk towards it. For the first time ever Liz looks frail. She's smartly dressed, a navy business suit which rivals that of the inquisitors, but she doesn't fit it, it as if she's shrunk.

            She doesn't see me. As I weave my way through the jigsaw of orange plastic backed chairs and white topped tables I can see that she’s reluctantly picking at a micro-waved baked potato.

            “Liz, can I join you?”

            She starts. She's pale even though her makeup has been applied slightly thicker than usual.  Her eyes are red and worn.

            “Oh Tony, Tony.” She's out of her chair and I'm enveloped in a hug. I have to fight to make sure I don't lose my soup. “Oh Tony, I’m sorry Tony, so, so sorry Tony.  This is my entire fault.  I should've told you, I should've trusted you.  I’m sorry.”  She slumps back into her seat. The tears begin to well.  She pulls a handkerchief from her sleeve and gently covers her face.

I sit. I take an internal temperature check, there's no anger, bitterness or resentment welling up.  The ‘what on earth were you doing’, ‘why didn’t you tell me?’ and ‘I trusted you, why did you let me down?’ speeches that I’d played over in my mind don't surface. I want to comfort her instead and tell her it's all right, though I know it isn't. I reach over the table and squeeze her hand.

            We don't talk.  I take a scoop of soup. It's so hot it burns and my mouth can't make out a taste.  I blanch and feel my eyes beginning to water.  I tear the roll the soup came with apart and stuff it my mouth.

            “You OK Tony?”

            I nod a yes as my tongue tracks round my mouth determining the damage. “Where’s Mary?” through a mouth of cotton wool bread.

            “I think she’s gone to find James.  I’ve only seen her briefly this morning” she replies quietly.

            Silence but for the clatter of everything around us.

            “You here?” Liz cautiously asks

            “Yes, I've been before the Inquisition.”

            “Oh, Tony.” She's going to cry again, this time though she refuses to succumb. She straightens, pushing away the potato with its orange crust of cheese bonded on, instead she reaches for the tea pot that's been resting by her elbow.  She refills the cup in front of her, which browns as she pours because of the dregs already present. 

Tea, a uniquely English response to a crisis.

She looks me in the eye:  “It wasn't meant to be like that Tony. It was a stop gap, a necessary action but it lasted longer than we thought.”  Her face is lined and there are bags under the eyes. “We'd been using the basement for a month or so, we had to Tony. Mary and I. You see they'd got nowhere to stay.”

            She talks, a river in spate as the winter ice melts.

It had been Liz's idea but she'd needed someone else and Mary was the ideal. (“You and Mary, bit of an unholy alliance Liz.” “Yes I know Tony but sometimes that's what makes it work.”). They'd both been activity helping the foreign students. One of them had a torrid time with their digs, mistreated, and misused, (“Tony, you should see the digs. To say the house was a hovel was an insult to hovels,”) and she'd let him stay.

But that was the tip of the ice berg. 

It was a mess, way out on one of the old council estates on the edge of town.  The house was one of a job lot that had been sold off as virtually uninhabitable. They'd been bought by some development company who'd covered them with a fresh coat of paint and, low and behold, they were fit for the influx of foreign students. They knew nothing different, needed somewhere to stay, (even feared being kicked off their courses if they couldn’t find somewhere to live) and so they went where they were told.

            “Look Tony, the University is on this. They offer some kind of inclusive package. They can ‘offer’ accommodation without any problem makes it easier for students to come. And that means money. But they didn't care Tony, they didn't care. The landlord began to demand more in rent. Windows got broken, people threatened, nothing too overt but just enough to make life uncomfortable.  It got raised but it was always brushed under the carpet.

            “You've got to understand Tony, these students are vulnerable, they're a long way from home, conscious that families have made huge sacrifices to send them here, they're the great family hope. Failure, giving up is not an option.”

            It was just a question of joining the dots. Liz had realised something was wrong.  She’d noticed that on more than one occasion some of the students were in the library very early. She began to get suspicious. She'd scouted the library and caught four of them, getting washed, shaving, cleaning teeth and so on.  The bags they hulked around contained everything they needed, tightly rolled sleeping bags, the lot, all hidden by a discrete pile of books and papers.  They slept under the tables, performing a neat dodging act each night to avoid being found.  Liz pressed them and finally they confessed that they owed money; the amount seemed to grow week on week.  What little they could put towards the spiralling debt did nothing, more and more was always demanded.  Threats had followed which had got more and more personal until finally they had fled taking refuge in the sanctuary of the library.

            From here it was a small step to Basement Hotel.

            “So you tried to catch the deluge in a paper cup?” I take a slurp of my soup. It’s bearable. It tastes of reconstituted cardboard.

            “Tony, I would use my hands to catch the torrent if it made one ounce of a difference.” Her colour is coming back to her face. “Believe me this did more than that Tony, it did more than that.  I’m sorry that it was done behind your back.  Mary and I knew that you’d be sympathetic but if we’d involved you it would have placed you in an impossible position and we couldn’t do that to you or to them.”

            “But I might have had a solution.”

            “Would you Tony?” Her penetrating eyes read my face and thoughts.  “You’d have tried, but no Tony, you’d have got no further.” 

            It makes me smart but I know it's true.

            “Look, Tony I’m not expecting you to be the martyr here, Mary and I know what we have done and are prepared to take the consequences because what we did was right.”

            “What will be will be Liz.”

            She glances at her watch. “I know,” she smiles. She reaches across the table and takes hold of both my hands wrapping them in hers.  She squeezes hard.  “Thank you.  I’m glad I’ve told you everything.  I’m sorry it’s taken so long. I need to go now, my turn before, what did you call them? The inquisitors?”  She stands. “Thank you Tony, ” she looks stronger, “Talking’s helped.” She bends and kisses me on the forehead.  “One favour, whatever happens could you check to see if everything's OK here.” She hands me a piece of folded paper. She pauses will I open it. It’s an address, “You will go won't you?”

            I pocket it with a nod.

“Thank you Tony.” She reaches forward and squeezes my hand, sets herself and then turns. She works her way through the tables. Not once does she look back.

 

It's early evening.  In the yellowing half light of the street lamp I can just about make out that my watch says twenty past six.  The day's seamlessly merged into night, as if someone has rapidly turned a dimmer switch.  It's still pervasively cold. I’m outside the library sheltering behind one of the red bricked buttresses.  I could go inside and wait, but somehow the natural icy tentacles that wrap round are preferable.

And I don't want to answer any more questions.

            I’m waiting for Bill.  I got a text halfway through my interrogation. It came when some official was in full flow, accusations thinly veiled as questions.  I’d forgotten the phone was with me until it gave its electronic  chirrup.  I fumbled in my jacket, quickly reading the message as I apologetically turned the wretched thing off, to universal scowls.  (Yet more evidence of my inappropriateness).

            The message was brief; meet you around six and so here I am.

            “Come on Bill, come on,” I mutter to myself, hunching myself up to try and prevent the pervasive ice reach further inside. A car swings past, for a moment I think it's going to stop but it drives on. Another set of lights cut the darkness, this time they slow and flash three times. I bolt down the steps.

“What?”  Bill’s scrunched up under the steering wheel, leaning forward to be as close to the heaters that are blowing hot air ferociously.

            “I said what kept you?”

            “No you didn’t, you said something like ‘Wudd flept shoe.”

            “Yeah, well it's cold out there,” I rub my face to restore some kind of life to it. 

            “You could've waited in the library,” Bill says tartly.

            “Well you could've been on time and then I wouldn’t be a block of ice.” I'm conscious that I've a vague sense of something in what I think anatomically I would call my feet, however I've not felt them for so long I’m not sure.

            Bill weaves through the evening traffic. The odd car is heading back into the town centre but most are working their way out to wherever home is.  It's stop start through traffic lights and roundabouts.  Glimpses of people on the pavement wrapped tight against the cold, running errands, picking up tea, getting home.  The rows of shops interspersed with houses metamorphose  into terraced house after terraced house, some with curtains already drawn, a slit of golden light just visible, some illuminated with the cold hard silver flicker of a TV, others darkly waiting for the owner; everything compartmentalised, so ordered and precise: cold is used to preserve.

            I'm lost in the frozen world outside that it takes me a couple of moments to realise that Bill is speaking to me.

            “So what do you think about this weekend thing?” she repeats, flicking a glance at me.

            The question makes no sense to me.  She reads my blank look.

            “You know, the letter, the invite from Josie and Richard?”

            It takes a moment; I can feel the cogs of my mind working. Of all the places to start, this one wasn't on my agenda.

            “The invite, the one you'd been ignoring.”

            “I think I’ve had other things on my mind Bill.”

            “I know it’s not exactly first choice but we’d be away from here and we have a chance to think and talk, maybe to plan. From what I can gather they’ve got this huge rambling farm bought with the ill gotten gains from Richard’s time in the city.   There’s bound to be a group there, 20 plus I’d reckon so we’d be able to hide from most of their attention.  And the food will be good.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Tony,” the car slowed to a stop at a traffic light. “The best you'll have got from today is...”

            “I'm suspended, pending further...”

            “See.” The car jerks back into motion.

            Suddenly the prospect of a weekend anywhere but this place, with all its shadows, ghosts and premonitions, was very attractive, particularly one that came with free food and lodging. And Bill.

            “You’ve got me, on one condition.”

            “What’s that?”

            “We go together.  I don’t want to get there and find you’ve decided to cry off, got called away etc.”

            “Stand you up, you mean?”

            “Yes, stand me up.”

            “Not a chance, Tony, not a chance,”

 I’m warmly reassured by her response because she looks at me and smiles and suddenly I don’t care that she’s not asked about my day, it feels right.

            “What was it all like then Bill?”

            “The funeral?” Bill lets a car in from the left.  “Big affair, very smart, very swish.  Lot of people from the university, businessmen and women,   Jonah’s senior partners was there too.”

            “No Jonah?” I blurt.

            “No,” she says dismissively, but she deliberately looks away from me.

            “Find out anything?”

            “Not really.  All the stuff you would expect, loving husband, caring father, good businessman.  A hard task master but once you knew him and so on, heart of gold, pillar of the community, philanthropist. Stuff for the Uni

            “What about that?”

            “Not 100% sure but I think it is to do with property, student expansion and so on.”

            “Interesting.” I fill Bill in on what I have learnt from Liz. “So where are we going?”

            “Back to McClelland’s place.”

            “Sorry?”

            “We’ve been invited back for the wake.”
            “What, personally?”

            “Not exactly, but...” Bill slows the car. “Mrs McClelland invited everyone at the church back. And I thought it was an opportunity, yeah? And it would be churlish to turn down the request of the recently bereaved, don’t you think?  And it seems only appropriate to extend our thanks to Mr McClelland as we are a beneficiary of the estate…” Bill catches my look and adds “… potentially.”

            “Yeah but…”

            “We’re here so there are no buts about it.”