Бен Ааронович - The Hanging Tree

‘Really? Like what?’

Lady Ty grimaced. ‘Nice try,’ she said. ‘You’re both young and stupid and nothing I say is going to make you stop. But you need to listen to me carefully. Whatever you think this thing you’ve got with Beverley is, it’s got to be strictly short-term. It can’t get serious. And if you’re thinking about getting married, it is right out of the question.’

‘What the fuck?’

‘I’m serious,’ she said.

I felt myself flush.

‘You don’t think I’m good enough?’ I said.

Lady Ty sighed and held up a hand.

‘You seem to have got the impression that I don’t like you,’ she said. ‘As a person, that is – rather than a fucking impediment to everything I’ve been trying to build for the last twenty years.’ She hesitated and then sighed again. ‘Where was I?’

‘Fucking impediment,’ I said.

‘Look, this isn’t going to work unless you have a drink,’ said Lady Ty and pushed a wine glass across the table at me and picked up the bottle. ‘I can’t do this with you staring at me like a Methodist preacher.’

‘Tyburn,’ I said.

She gave me a weary look and then intoned that she, Lady Ty, held me to no obligation and that I could partake freely of her hospitality without obligation.

‘Satisfied?’ she asked.

I nodded and she poured the wine.

‘You remember that Christmas I dug you out from under Oxford Circus?’

‘How could I forget?’ I said.

‘That’s what I wondered all last week,’ said Lady Ty.

I sipped my wine. It tasted like, well, red wine. Despite Nightingale and Molly’s best efforts that’s still as far as my palette goes.

‘After that Christmas, George and I went on holiday,’ she said. ‘Stephen was away at uni and we packed Olivia off to go skiing in the French Alps. With Phoebe’s family, as it happens.’ She shook her head. ‘All that needless worry about chalet Romeos – oblivious, that’s me. Anyway, we hadn’t been on holiday alone together since the kids were born and it was glorious.’

I asked where she went.

‘Barbados,’ she said. ‘I know the Island quite well – he did a sabbatical at Oxford while I was there.’

I drank some more wine while that sank in. I wanted to ask what the Island was like as a person. I really did. But sometimes even I’ve got to stay focused. Not to mention, you’ve got to suspect that someone who read Machiavelli in the original Italian is going to be looking to distract you – even if it’s only out of force of habit.

‘So, you had a good time?’ I asked.

‘When I came back I felt like was twenty again,’ said Lady Ty.

I had a horrible feeling I knew what was coming next.

‘You’re young, reasonably fit and not bad looking, so the reality of getting older hasn’t sunk in yet,’ she said. ‘As you get older gravity starts to take its toll, especially if you’re a woman, especially if you have two kids and then breast feed them.’

I must have squirmed ever so slightly, because she laughed.

‘I’m not saying they were heading for my waist,’ said Lady Ty. ‘Let’s just say I wasn’t going to go topless on the beach. This is really making you uncomfortable, isn’t it?’ She pronounced it innit – she was definitely taking the piss. ‘Scaring you with the thought of my old lady tits.’

‘Truthfully,’ I said, because sometimes people want a bit of honesty, ‘yeah, a bit.’

‘Good,’ said Lady Ty. ‘Then there’s stretch marks and moles and these weird flaps of skin and cellulite – let’s not forget the cellulite. There’s nothing you can do about it and if you’re sensible you learn to be comfortable in your skin.’

‘And are you?’

‘I thought so,’ she said. ‘Until we were getting ready for our last night out on the Island and I decided to wriggle into my emergency little black dress and I’m hoiking everything into place when George looks at me and says “Hey, we should do this every year. It really seems to agree with you”. And I was feeling pretty damn hot, even if I say so myself, so I sashayed over to the mirror and found my twenty five year old self staring back at me.’

‘You’d physically changed?’ I asked.

‘I closed the bathroom door and had a good feel,’ said Tyburn. ‘It was all real.’

‘You must have known it was a possibility,’ I said. ‘I mean, look at Oxley and Isis.’

‘Peter,’ said Tyburn. ‘I need you to stop just pretending to be clever and actually be clever. Of course I knew it, intellectually – Mum’s looked basically the same since I can remember, and there’s Father Thames who doesn’t look a day over a thousand. But that’s not the same as staring it in the face.’ She shook her head.

I nodded my understanding, but she wasn’t convinced.

‘So when we came back to London I sort of let myself fall back into middle age.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Well, I stayed away from mirrors and watched a lot of Antiques Roadshow – that helped.’

‘How quickly did it happen?’ I asked.

‘A couple of months,’ she said. ‘Crow’s feet, fat thighs and all.’

Fairly unobtrusive crow’s feet, I thought.

‘And it all just reverted?’

Lady Ty shrugged.

‘I may have left out the stretch marks,’ she said

‘Did he notice?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘When you’re married you get used to each other – you really only see the person you expect to see.’

‘Can Beverley make herself look older?’ I asked, and then I thought of her sister Nicky who was allegedly nine years old and might just have drowned a man on dry land. ‘Can Nicky?’

‘There’s no manual, Peter,’ said Lady Ty. ‘There’s no self-help group with a Tumblr page and an easy-to-access FAQ. And I’m the oldest, which means everything happens to me first – of course. I have to make all the mistakes, and my first one was thinking I was human and could have a human life.’

I felt a cold clutching in my chest. It must have shown on my face.

‘I’m going to outlive my babies, Peter,’ she said. ‘I’m going to outlive my babies’ babies. Barring some radically unforeseen circumstance I’m going to outlive everyone I love, except my family.’ She made a strange head bob. ‘I want to save my sister some pain – so sue me.’

I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.

‘Are you at least going to think about what I’ve said?’

‘Who stabbed the sniper?’ I asked. ‘Do you know?’

Lady Ty stiffened and she took another sip of her wine before answering with a question. ‘Do you have any theories?’ she asked.

‘I think it was Sir William Tyburn, late of this parish,’ I said. ‘Do you know who I’m talking about?’

‘The son of old Father Thames,’ she spoke the phrase in a formal manner, as if invoking a spirit or introducing a judge.

I waited, but she sipped more wine and looked at me over the rim of her glass.

‘Was it him?’

Lady Ty shrugged.

‘Is he associated with you in some way?’ I asked. ‘At a spiritual level?’

Lady Ty snorted into her wine, put the glass down and quickly covered her nose and mouth with her hand.

‘Spiritual, Peter? Having difficulty integrating this within your rationalist schema, are we?’

‘Only because nobody ever gives me a straight answer,’ I said.

‘That’s because they don’t know,’ said Tyburn. ‘It’s like economics. Everybody’s got a theory, and some people make it their religion.’

‘Is he part of you or not?’ I asked, louder than I meant to. ‘I need to know.’

Lady Ty snorted again, so I defiantly lifted my wine-glass and drained it in one go. I grabbed the bottle and poured myself the last of the wine.