Marcel Theroux - The Paperchase

‘That was unavoidable. Tug — one of the …’

‘Thieves?’ I suggested.

‘He said we had to make it look like a random break-in. It took them almost an hour to find anything a random burglar would be interested in.’

‘Well, I’m relieved he’s happy.’

She took my hand. ‘Please don’t be angry with me.’

I wanted to tell her that her simpering little-girl routine might have worked on Patrick, but she was old enough to be my mother. I sulked for a while, enjoying the view and going over the sequence of events in my brain. Mrs Delamitri fiddled with her handbag. ‘Here,’ she said. When I looked over at her, there was a cheque for five thousand dollars folded in half by my wineglass.

‘I can’t accept that,’ I told her.

‘Damien, don’t be proud. I want to make amends. You have every right to be angry with me. I don’t want anyone else to be the victim of my selfishness.’

As the afternoon had gone on, I noticed Mrs Delamitri’s accent meandering between Boston’s North End and somewhere in the Cotswolds. The idea that Mr O’Brien and I were victims of her selfishness seemed part of the same aspirational self-deception: that she was the star-crossed lover of a famous writer.

‘Believe me,’ she added tartly, ‘I spent quite a bit more than that having your house broken into.’

‘You know what’s strange, though,’ I said. ‘I could have sworn those files were on Patrick’s desk when I went to the house after the funeral.’

She looked very sneaky for a moment. ‘How many times in your life have you done something really foolish, Damien?’

‘Probably not as often as I ought to,’ I said.

‘You have to put yourself in my position. I was distraught. I was in a hurting place.’

‘You were composed enough to organise a fairly efficient burglary.’

‘Not the first time.’

‘The first time?’

‘Janine and I came with a ladder. It was her idea. I’m — I’m not blaming her. I’m just saying I’m not proud of what I’ve done.’

‘You burgled the house twice ?’

‘I had no idea where the letters were. We took the boxes because they were the first thing we could find. Then Janine decided she wanted the skull.’

‘She just took a shine to it?’

‘I told her to leave it behind. It was Patrick’s. All I wanted was what belonged to me. But Janine’s like that. She’s creative.’ Mrs Delamitri made it sound like a medical condition — like diabetes. ‘Once she gets an idea in her head, she just runs with it. Well, we argued about it. I told her it would be terrible feng shui — I mean, it’s basically the head of a dead person. Can you imagine? Then I was sure I heard someone coming. We rushed out. Janine took the skull and sprained her ankle on the way down. I had to carry her to the car. I warned her about the skull’

I had a mental image of Janine and Mrs Delamitri struggling up and down the ladder in shoulder pads and high-heel shoes. Or possibly, Mrs Delamitri would have bought a special outfit for cat burglary — a one-piece black number with a matching mask by Donna Karan.

When the waiter brought the bill over, Mrs Delamitri slipped him a credit card made out of some rare metal — titanium or zinc or something.

‘But the letters weren’t in the boxes, so you had to hire professionals to do the job properly,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry, Damien.’

‘What had you stolen, the first time?’

‘I really don’t know. I mean — I have an idea that there’s some bills and stuff. This probably sounds silly after everything I said, but I wanted to respect his privacy.’

Far out to sea, a three-masted yacht was under sail and carving a chevron into the deep blue water.

‘What will you do now?’ she asked.

‘Go back and have a swim,’ I said.

‘I meant more generally.’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said, and for the first time, my uncertainty seemed like a virtue. I knew that I would leave the island as soon as the cheque cleared. I wanted to go somewhere where I could have a life of my own, but where or what that might be, I couldn’t say.

*

She talked about Patrick on the drive back. ‘I saw him last year about this time.’

‘Did you stay at the house?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t spend the night with him. Not in the same bed. He had terrible dreams. I used to hear him crying out and I’d want to go to him. But I always stopped myself.’

‘Was he on medication?’

‘Two or three kinds. For the depression and the mood swings. He could just about keep it together living the way he did.’

‘Yeah, seeing people in homoeopathically small doses.’

‘I loved him, you know,’ she said. ‘But there was always this feeling that he’d done something awful. I kind of felt bad for thinking it about him …’

We talked about funny things Patrick had said or done. I recounted Patrick’s description of the fungus on the saucepan of soup that had been sitting on Edgar Huvas’s stove for three days. ‘It looked like an echidna!’ ‘What’s an echidna?’ I had asked. ‘It’s a species of anteater. Green, and hairy, and, I might add, inedible.’

Mrs Delamitri pressed a button and the top of the car folded up in a slow, creaky way like an old woman settling into a chair. I closed my eyes against the sudden sunlight and drifted off into a pleasant alcoholic reverie.

The clocks in the house were striking five in a dishevelled chorus of bongs and plinks. Nathan had gone home and left a note inside the front door saying he would be back to finish off in the morning.

I grabbed a couple of towels and we went down to the beach. I swam lazily in the cold water, while Mrs Delamitri took off her shoes and paddled along the shoreline.

Afterwards, we sat on the towels and I smoked one of her cigarettes.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘For what?’

‘For lunch, for the money. For bothering to tell me the truth.’

‘Oh … Don’t mention it.’ She smiled, but I thought she looked a little sad.

‘You can see the Vineyard sometimes from here on a clear day,’ I said. ‘Look.’

She dusted the sand off her hands and stood up. The sky to the west was beginning to turn a lobster pink. ‘Where?’

I came up behind her and put my hands on her shoulders; she softened slightly into my touch. ‘Over there, I don’t think you can see it today.’

I put my arms round her waist and pressed my face into her crispy, dry hair.

‘Patrick hated this beach,’ she said, in a whisper. ‘He complained about the flies and the stones.’

Her back arched slightly towards me, her hip pressed into my crotch. She stayed there for a moment and then gently disengaged herself.

‘Miranda,’ I said.

‘I’d love to, Damien,’ she said, ‘but I think it would be a little weird.’

MRS DELAMITRI KISSED ME on the mouth when she left. She honked her horn as she backed out of the driveway, and I waved at her as Patrick must have done many times from the bank of lawn beside the road. Then I went back to the house and had another drink.

I hadn’t been drunk since coming to the island. I think I had some idea that it would set a dangerous precedent for someone living alone. It had been part of Patrick’s weird stability that he rarely drank — although I had a distant recollection of him drinking whisky and listening to opera on a rainy afternoon while following the libretto.

But I was already drunk — and I was already leaving — so I poured myself a whisky, leavened it with a couple of drops of water from the tap, and turned on the jukebox in the summer kitchen.

The sunset was fading out of the sky, and the evening that drew on seemed to hum with possibility. It was the wine, but it wasn’t just the wine. All I wanted was to be back among the living — anywhere — in Vientiane, Cardiff or Cuzco. And I didn’t care what I did. Even going back to work in London held no terrors; at least it was a life.