Pat Barker - Border Crossing

She was aware of the rasp and flare of the match. Why not a lighter? she wondered. But no, always matches. She saw his hands, briefly, in the orange glow. Then he put the cigarette into her mouth, his fingers brushing her lips. Watch it, she thought, and hardly knew whether the warning was directed at Ian or herself.

Still silence. It was getting on her nerves, and she needed to concentrate. The road wasn’t just wet — it was greasy from the long hot summer. At that last corner she’d felt the car start to skid. Corrected immediately, but it was a nasty shock.

‘Do you mind if we stop?’ Ian asked abruptly.

‘No, I could do with a break.’

She pulled up in the next passing bay and got out. Ian disappeared round a bend in the road, and she walked up and down, smoking and shivering and being rude to the sheep. After a while the darkness, the loneliness, the clunk-clunk of the sheep bells began to get to her, and she looked at the brow of the hill, impatient for Ian’s return.

Then the oddity of it struck her. Here she was, a woman alone and nervous on a dark road at night, looking forward to the reappearance of a convicted murderer. She’d never thought of Ian like that — well, yes, perhaps before she met him. But she’d never felt threatened, and in her job she did feel threatened, now and then. Hell, she didn’t just feel threatened, she was threatened — though she’d learnt how to recognize anger seething below the surface, to spot the signs of impending violence, to know when to back off.

Plenty of anger bubbling now, and nowhere to back off to. Extraordinary — she’d just this moment been thinking how she’d never felt threatened by Ian, and yet here she was — not frightened, nowhere near frightened — but certainly tense. She could have done without the sheep and their bloody bells, and the racket they made cropping the grass. Her footsteps, crunching up and down the gravelled passing bay, were beginning to rattle her. Where was he, for God’s sake?

She stayed still, and listened. Immediately she heard his footsteps coming towards the brow of the hill. A light seemed to be growing in the distance and, seconds later, she heard the sound of an approaching car. Ian appeared, head and shoulders first, climbing steadily, his shadow, cast by the car’s headlights, reaching out towards her, lengthening as he reached the summit. He was nothing, nothing she recognized. A dark figure haloed in light. She waited, and couldn’t speak.

‘Sorry I’ve been so long,’ he said. ‘Just had to get out and walk, you know. I can’t sit still when I’m like this.’

And immediately he was Ian. Except that he wasn’t Ian. As they waited for the car to pass, she was aware that a line had been crossed in her thinking about him. Until tonight, she would have said without hesitation that he had changed, that he was no longer the same person who had killed Lizzie Parks, or rather she believed that he’d changed. Those few minutes alone on the dark hillside taught her something, not about him, but about herself. He might have changed, but she didn’t believe it Not absolutely. Not without doubt.

And almost as though he’d read her thoughts, Ian started to talk about how impossible it was to leave the past behind. Being turned away from the prison like that was the final straw. He was beginning to think — well, not beginning, he’d thought it for a long time, only he kept pushing it to the back of his mind — that he was going to have to confront the past, in some way, try to make sense of it, before he could move on.

‘Perhaps you should see somebody,’ Martha said.

‘You mean a shrink?’

‘Or a psychologist. I don’t think it matters as long as you trust them. I mean, in the end, unless you’re suffering from an actual mental illness, schizophrenia or something like that, it’s the quality of the person that counts. You need to feel safe.’

‘I hate shrinks.’

The car splashed into a puddle by the side of the road, and, for a second, the windscreen was marbled, opaque. Christ, she thought. ‘Why do you?’

‘Dunno. Dad, I suppose. He always used to say you’re all right as long as you stay away from them. You can be drunk every night, shit your pants, doesn’t matter, but the minute you go to one of them, that’s it, you’re finished. After that you’re just a bag of shite.’

Now that’s a helpful instance of father — son bonding, Martha thought. ‘Well, perhaps that was your father’s experience. But —’

‘My own wasn’t marvellous.’

‘I thought you didn’t see anybody?’

‘I saw Dr Seymour. That was enough.’

‘But that was for an assessment

‘Yes — and his assessment landed me in court. And his evidence landed me in prison. Well done, Dr Seymour.’

They were driving into a valley now. The headlights revealed a huddle of farm buildings, their bricks turned sombre red by the rain.

‘And anyway, I don’t want treatment. I don’t need it. I just want to talk to somebody.’

‘I’ll ask around.’

She felt, rather than saw, him smile. ‘What are you going to ask, Martha? How are you with murderers?’

That word, said flatly, was enough to bring the fear — no, she wouldn’t admit to fear — the anxiety thudding back. ‘I’ll ask around, try to find out who’s leak-proof,’ she said. ‘It should be all of them, but it isn’t.’

‘No, well, wives get told. Secretaries. Girlfriends.’ He was smiling again. ‘Better not do it at all.’

‘No, I think it’s a good idea.’

They were behind a long vehicle that was sending up arcs of spray and grit on either side, and trailing a white rag from a girder sticking out at the rear. Martha pulled out to overtake. The spray hit the windscreen, and for a few seconds she drove blind, until they pulled clear and the lorry dwindled in the rear-view mirror.

‘Decisive driving,’ Ian said. He hadn’t moved.

The rush of adrenalin loosened Martha’s tongue. ‘It’s not fair, blaming Dr Seymour for your conviction.’

‘Who else should I blame?’

‘How about the police who collected the evidence? The pathologist who examined it, the judge who summed up, or the jury who brought in the verdict?’

‘No, no, no, no, no, no. Dr Seymour. I’d have been acquitted if it hadn’t been for him.’

No point arguing. It was insane.

‘You think I’m mad, don’t you?’ Almost crooning the words, he went on, ‘But they believed me, Martha. They did. I know they did.’ His tone hardened. ‘I trusted him.’

Martha wanted to ask, Are you saying you didn’t do it? She kept quiet, distrusting her motives for doing so. If they’d been somewhere else, somewhere less isolated, would she have challenged him?

Ian brooded. ‘It was a disgraceful performance.’

It was bad for him to slip into thinking of himself as the victim, and yet she’d never met anybody who thought the Lizzie Parks murder trial had been handled well. It was difficult for him not to feel victimized.

‘These aren’t your memories, are they, Ian?’

He glanced sideways. ‘Ian hasn’t got any memories.’

‘It doesn’t help to say things like that.’

‘No, they’re not memories. I got the transcripts through my solicitor.’

Now, hot and nauseous in the sunlit office, Martha sifted through her memories of that night. Events had moved on. He had something to thank Tom for now, after the coincidence of Tom’s being the one to rescue him from the river.

Martha twisted from side to side. Her chair might as well have had spikes in the seat. Coincidences do happen, she told herself. People travel to the other side of the world, and find themselves standing in a queue next to somebody who lives in the same street. It happens all the time. Well, obviously, not all the time, or nobody would exclaim over it, but it does happen. No point saying you don’t believe in coincidence. But she’d have found it easier to believe in this one if she hadn’t heard the hatred in Ian’s voice in the car.