The Extinction of Snow Read online

  He stands as I stand. “Good luck,” he says. “Look, if you’re up to it, let me take you to dinner, tonight. If you want to share what was said then I’ll listen, if not we’ll just talk.”

  “I don’t know,” I respond vaguely.

  “I’ll knock on your door at seven and if you’re ready then we’ll do it, and if you’re not we won’t, without any need for an apology. Don’t decide now.” I shrug and nod, but say nothing. I make to leave. He calls: “I really do hope it goes well.” I nod again, but still say nothing.

  Chapter Ten

  I am taken into an office by Jason, who doesn’t supply any other name and who seems a very junior figure to me. He has a pleasant but bored face, clean and smooth, unmarked by experience. His hair is longer than I would have expected of someone in an official position. In fact, I don’t know what his position is and don’t think he said. He could be anyone, but he has access to me, to the things that concern me. The office is old, surviving from a former era, with glass fronted bookcases and a large wooden desk. Jason is brisk and buoyant, ushering me to sit whilst he takes his own place. It suggests to me that he doesn’t expect this to take long. He gives a cursory look to the file in front of him, spreads his arms wide across the desk and smiles at me genially, as if that is the right thing to do, then asks what he can do for me.

  I smile in return, bemused by the question and bemused by him. I am disappointed by the age of Jason and his evident lack of seniority. Of course I am judging him, but already he has betrayed an absence of protocol in dealing with the bereaved. His voice is at a pitch that it would be for any interview, his interest and manner the same. He has no idea about grief. So far he must have been spared; lucky, I suppose.

  “My son, my son died in France.”

  “Some months ago, I believe.”

  “Yes, some months ago.”

  “I am sorry for your loss, of course.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “I don’t think I can supply you with any information that you won’t already have.”

  “But I don’t have any information,” I say without undue emotion. I want to add his name – I don’t have any information Jason – but it seems slightly absurd. Strange how absurdity interferes with solemnity.

  “Well, let me see.”

  “He was run over.”

  “Yes, a road traffic accident.”

  “Three times.”

  “Yes, I believe his body was unfortunately not seen in the dark.”

  “How is that possible?”

  He tries not to smile, but doesn’t quite succeed. “The dark is the dark Mrs Tennant.”

  “But how would a driver not be aware of going over a body. I don’t believe that is possible.”

  Jason purses his lips, seemingly concerned on my behalf, clearly working out a line of least resistance. “The police have thoroughly investigated the incident and have no reason to believe anything other than that it was a tragic accident.”

  “Three times, Jason, he was run over three times, and the police did not conduct a thorough investigation, they said there was nothing to investigate.”

  “It was a terrible accident.”

  “You don’t believe it, do you? Tell me the truth, Jason.”

  “I believe there was an accident.”

  “You think I’m mad.”

  “A mother.”

  “You think he was out for kicks.”

  “I think he was young.”

  “My son.”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to believe something. I want to believe something good.”

  Jason looks perturbed, out of his depth, but doesn’t flounder. He smiles at me. ‘I don’t know Mrs Tennant, I can only describe to you and explain what official reports say. I wasn’t there and you weren’t there.”

  “But you will have formed an opinion of him, a judgement.”

  “No, I assure you I haven’t. Why should I?”

  “The report isn’t true.” He looks at me steadily, deliberately allowing a note of impatience to enter his expression. He shrugs mildly, indicating that I’m straying onto things that are really not his business. It is obvious he is not going to respond. “What about the people he was with? Has anyone spoken to them?”

  “I believe he was living with a girl for a while, but there is no way of knowing where she ended up. On the face of it your son had no fixed abode.”

  “My son is not like that, not how he is being painted.”

  “I am not responsible for that Mrs Tennant.”

  “I didn’t say you were, I’m just saying that my son wasn’t like that.”

  “Like what, Mrs Tennant?”

  I feel cornered, led there by myself. Yes, indeed, not like what? Was he good, was he bad, was he indifferent? And really, should it make any difference to his dying what he was? I am being asked to review my memory, recreate the past and judge something in the present from that review. I am being indulged as a grieving mother, a blind, indiscriminate mother who refuses the truth for the sake of something pedestrian and rubbished anyway. I don’t want my child mired. So, if he was good would his death then be palatable? And if being bad reduces the sympathy and dread is it a case of judgement and punishment we are dealing with. It is all hearsay.

  I blurt out: “I just don’t believe.”

  “I don’t think anyone would expect it of you Mrs Tennant.”

  “But you didn’t know him Jason.”

  “No Mrs Tennant, obviously not.”

  “Drugs were his profession not his pastime.”

  “Mrs Tennant the toxicology report is quite unambiguous. There were quantities of alcohol and drugs in your son’s body.”

  “No Jason, no. You have it all wrong,” I say, aware of the rising distress and panic in my voice.

  “I’m not saying it Mrs Tennant, I’m just telling you what the toxicology report states to be fact.”

  “There are no facts, facts can’t exist.”

  Jason closes the file. He obviously feels the subject is closed and there is nothing more to say. He must have judged that we have reached the point where we are now going around in circles, the circle of grief and unreasonable doubts. I can’t leave it here, allow him to shuffle me out into anonymity. “Look Jason, his body was run over three times, found on a remote road miles from anywhere. There must be grounds for investigation somewhere in that.”

  “It is an issue for the French police and they don’t feel the case warranted investigation.”

  “The case?”

  “Yes Mrs Tennant, the case.”

  “My son.”

  He purses his lips and shrugs. He puts both hands, palm down, on the file and says: “I believe you were involved yourself in a road traffic accident.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Quite so. I understand that someone died.”

  “Yes someone died, a child died. I ran into a child who had got off a school-bus and then ran in front of the bus and out into the road.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We have to be thorough Mrs Tennant, that’s all.”

  There is a period of silence. Jason breathes deeply through flared nostrils a number of times and I sit quietly, rebuked, defeated, the wound open, the wound that has never closed, gaping, raw. Eventually I whisper: “I was found to be entirely innocent.”

  “Oh yes, Mrs Tennant, I know, I wasn’t suggesting anything else, not at all. But something like that must be difficult.”

  “Difficult?”

  “To live with.”

  “Yes something like that is difficult to live with. I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t think about it, don’t think about the things someone can’t do but should be able to. Of course that’s difficult.”

  “You were on your way to see your boyfriend I understand.”

  “I was inexperienced. I had just passed my test.”

  “Yes, of course, but to overta
ke a bus. I understand that you have never gone back to live at home.”

  “London is my home.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Why have you brought all of this up?”

  “Have you not thought yourself that someone, someone like yourself with something like that in the background, might be inclined to read more into something than there really is?”

  “No.”

  “It is possible though.”

  “No, this is entirely different.”

  “I am really sorry Mrs Tennant but we are dealing with a tragic accident contributed to by the use of alcohol and drugs.”

  “There is a piece of music goes over and over in my head, Spiegel im Spiegel. I can’t get it to stop.” He signals vagueness, incomprehension. “It is there for a reason.”

  For him the interview is over. He tidies his one file, stands and offers me his hand. His hand is surprisingly small and decidedly moist. He says that if he can be of any further help then I shouldn’t hesitate to call. I might say that he hasn’t been of any help at all but that would be unkind. I am not unkind, just a murderer, a child murderer. I suppose I should be grateful he is willing to take my hand, let alone talk to me.

  I am shown out by a young woman, charming and exquisite the way they are. In the street it is cold and bright. There is no likelihood of snow now at all.

  Chapter Eleven

  I had no intention of accepting his invitation to dinner – whoever he is, I don’t even have a name – but as the time approaches it seems really quite welcome. I spent the long afternoon wandering through endless streets, stopping at cafés and drinking coffee after coffee, until my nerves were jangling and my body felt as if it were charged with excess electricity. Some streets felt like havens, rows of small, clean shops where people had come out of their flats to buy items for lunch or dinner, streets where people obviously lived.

  Of course even the thought of taking pleasure in such quarters was charged with hypocrisy. Jason had underlined something that I have always known – there is no pleasure to be had. Every commonplace is overwritten with the fact that it is a commonplace that someone else can’t have, someone else dead at my doing, everything fouled and soiled. With some spirit and pleasure he had put the case for a moral universe. Everything has a cost. And the price I have to pay for doing terrible wrong, evidently, is to be disallowed from asking what has happened to my son. But that doesn’t make sense. If Joseph is the price of my wrong doing then the universe must be designed just for me, but that is nonsense. The universe is equal, each of its parts equal. Joseph, or for that matter John, are not part of my balance-sheet. But then I am culpable.

  So it went, on and on.

  Eventually I came back to the hotel. The owner said something to me that I failed to grasp but I laughed, laughed as if I’d really got the joke. He could have been delivering bad news, but I didn’t think so. Back in my room I did nothing, went from bed to window, switched on the television and turned it off. There is a brown stain on the carpet beneath the radiator. The radiator obviously leaks. The room smells constantly damp. In summer with the windows open, the air dry and hot, the noise of the street filling the room, it would be an entirely different place. I would read my world differently. I am trapped in dampness and cold and inertia and guilt.

  I never was guilty. Witnesses said how the boy ran across the front of the bus without looking, right into the path of the oncoming vehicle. Louise Shore who was driving the vehicle, her father’s who scarcely drove it himself, was not at fault. Except Louise Shore, coming to the end of her A levels, an artist who hung around with boys in bands, in pubs where bands played, headstrong and truculent, was not only inexperienced but impatient. She gave no thought to anyone bursting across the road in front of the bus, which she should have done, because that’s what happened. She knows how much she wanted to get to her guitarist in the band boyfriend whose parents were out. She knows the feisty, painted up, angry teenager that was driving. She knows it forever. She knows the scream of brakes, the crunching thud of collision, the unimaginable damage. She knows that you cannot run over a body and not know that you have done it. She refuses to accept that the guilty are debarred the rights of the moral universe. Louise Tennant knows she was steered away but doesn’t know why. She is floundering in the dark but will keep on.

  At precisely seven o’clock he knocks on the door, a confident but not insistent knock. When I open the door he smiles casually, warmly, putting neither too much nor too little into it. He raises his hands in an easy questioning manner. I am dressed for the occasion but decline. He steps closer. He half-whispers: “I said I wouldn’t insist, but seeing you now I think I really want to. It won’t do any harm and we will be company for each other. Of course, if you’d rather stay in your sumptuous room, then by all means pass up a perfectly innocent dinner arrangement.” He smiles again and looks frankly boyish.

  “I don’t know your name,” I say.

  He shrugs and says: “You can call me Bill.” Does that mean it isn’t his name, but an alias brought out for tonight’s dinner? Why should he need an alias if everything is so innocent? Besides why does he assume that the issue is innocence whereas, in fact, the issue is guilt? He goes on: “I’m sure there are all sorts of things you don’t know, and lots of things you wouldn’t be bothered to know, but over dinner you could just ask.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. Yes, you may be right.”

  “I don’t know your name, but I don’t insist on it.”

  “My name? My name is Louise, Louise Tennant. I put a lot of store by names.”

  “Why? A name is just a name.” I shake my head, but don’t want to get into it, wrangling about such personal material. He continues, his voice still tending towards a whisper: “Are you persuaded, Louise?” I must look mystified because he smiles and adds: “Dinner. Shall we dine together?”

  “Oh yes, why not.”

  “Do you have somewhere in mind or would you like me to choose?” I shake my head. I am playing the traditional role. I will be led. Tonight that is what I want. “Vegetarian?” he asks, presumably checking whether I am or not, not whether that is what I would choose. I smile and shake my head. “I thought you might be.”

  “Why?”

  “Being an artist, I suppose. Oh, I don’t know.”

  “I never said I was an artist. How do you know I am an artist?”

  “I don’t,” he says and smiles. “I meant artistic. You strike me as artistic.”

  “A type, you mean.”

  “We are all types.”

  “I thought we were all individuals.”

  “Types of.”

  The idea makes me laugh. In the invention of Louise Tennant, the escapee, guilty of several crimes, only one major, I overlooked the likelihood of vegetarianism. My diet is cosmopolitan– though largely cheese and wine of late – but not absolutely moral. I am red in tooth and claw. He looks pleased with my laughter without looking pleased with himself. I warm to that. “I would like traditional French cuisine.”

  “Of course.”

  We walk to the restaurant which is not very far away. I’m sure he knew all along where he intended to go. It is modern, the frontage different to the rest of the street, glass and brass, the inside uncluttered and clean. John and I tend towards the old, drawn by turn-of-the-twentieth century style and architecture; a time of possibility, John always says. I think in terms of art and agree. We so naturally agree, bringing together two strands of the same confirmation. Looking back I feel that we even divide the language between us and I am now missing his half of it. With John it would all make sense.

  I tell Bill what I want and let him order. He speaks extremely well. I compliment him on it, but below the surface I’m rather piqued that he does. He is a business man and it is the business men who speak well these days. There is something obviously snobbish about my irritation. He is incredibly comfortable in himself. When the wine comes he asks me to taste it which surprises me. I
feel I am being teased. Does he assume I don’t recognize and relish quality, the artist only aspiring to excess? In fact I recognize it, relish it and would drink it to excess. Tonight, though, I will be careful. I tell the waiter it is very good, articulating my words with ease, determined not to be outdone. Of course it is a particularly simple phrase. Le vin, c’est tres bon, merci.

  He holds up his glass says cheers and then asks: “How did you get on today?”

  “Today,” I respond evasively, without knowing why, “today I wasted my time. I wandered around for much of the day and overdosed on coffee.”

  “I meant with your appointment, but if you’d rather not talk about it, that’s fine. Tell me something about the sights of Paris.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He smiles: “It’s really not needed, and I promise that’s the last time I’ll say that tonight, the last time I’ll say it ever.”

  I smile in return. There is something so self-effacing about him, despite his obvious comfort. I suppose he isn’t showing off, play-acting the alias Bill, but being whoever he is. He’s right about the phrases we are building up between us, they should be dispensed with, they are too personal. John and I have so many phrases that bond us, lock us together in the same intimate history, lines picked up from other people and made into our jokes. The primary school teacher who said of Joseph and his friend when they had written on the toilet wall, You don’t know what they’re thinking, which we seized on voraciously, they becoming the whole strange, cluttered world. I loved it when John winked, one time he was putting Joseph’s sheets in the washer, and said: You don’t know what they’re leaking. And now I don’t think John knows what I’m thinking, the raw, anticipatory love I still grudge him with. What wouldn’t I give to have John opposite me now? But, of course, we wouldn’t be in this restaurant at all. Bill is a much bigger man than John, though without the veneer of protection. He might be able to fight for a woman in time honoured style, but I doubt whether he would know how to protect one. I say over in my head for my own pleasure: You don’t know what they’re thinking. I smile appreciatively for myself. Bill accepts it as his without question.