Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thomson Page B

would talk about the old days, that peculiar, almost dreamlike time when Thorpe Hall had been a kind of home to us. On one such afternoon we decided to fit theservice station with an alarm system. We used a length of fishing-twine as a trip-wire, fastening one end to a pile of dinner plates which we’d found in the kitchens at the back. As Bracewell unwound the twine across the main entrance, he surprised me by saying, ‘Do you remember Jones?’
    My heart speeded up. I had never married Jones, I hadn’t even mixed my blood with his, but I had listened as he voiced his worries and I had done my best to reassure and comfort him. When he began to act strangely, I believed it was at least partly my fault. I had failed him, somehow, and that was a source of private shame to me. Then, when he was taken away, my shame redoubled, because secretly, somewhere deep down, I was relieved that our awkward friendship was over. Even now, more than three years later, I blushed at the mention of his name, but fortunately Bracewell was busy stacking plates and didn’t notice.
    â€˜Jones,’ he said. ‘You know. Stork.’
    â€˜What about him?’
    â€˜I know what happened.’
    â€˜He was transferred,’ I said. ‘Reek told me.’
    Bracewell sat back on his heels and steered a crafty look in my direction. ‘Reek was lying.’
    â€˜So what happened then?’
    â€˜They sent him to a mental home.’
    My throat hurt now, as though I had been shouting.
    â€˜He was round the twist,’ Bracewell said. ‘Don’t you remember?’
    He told me that he had been waiting in Reek’s office one day when he noticed a letter lying on the desk. The letter had the name and address of an asylum in the top right-hand corner, and it confirmed Jones’s recent arrival.
    â€˜Where did they send him?’ I asked.
    Bracewell shrugged. He hadn’t bothered with the details.
    â€˜The way he used to stand there on one leg like that – for hours. I could never work out how he did it.’ Bracewell stared into space for a few moments, then shook his head and, getting to his feet, walked out into the car-park. Once there, he turned andstudied the place where the twine stretched across the entrance. ‘I don’t think they’ll see that,’ he said, ‘do you?’
    It seems to me that part of the true function of a mystery is precisely that it remains unsolved. The world would be far too neat a place if the things that puzzled us were always, eventually, explained. We need unanswered questions at the edges of our lives. In fact, I’d go further. It’s important
not
to think we can understand everything.
Not to understand.
The humility that can come from that. The wonder. Every now and then, though, one of the less pressing mysteries is revealed to us, as if a god had decided to satisfy, in some small way, our natural craving for symmetry and resolution.
    I had forgotten all about the silver sandal until Victor took me upstairs one evening to show me a book that he’d been working on. We sat facing each other in the lamplight, our knees almost touching. The book rested on his lap. Two feet high, some six or seven inches thick, it had the formidable dimensions of a family bible. He had bound it himself, he told me.
    â€˜You know what it’s made of?’ His eyes had grown paler and brighter, as light bulbs do before they blow.
    I scrutinised the book. ‘I can see leather –’
    â€˜Yes,’ he interrupted, ‘but what
kind
of leather?’
    I bent closer and ran my fingertips across the cover. There were pieces of leather, but there were pieces of suede too, and rubber and canvas and raffia, all ingeniously and meticulously stitched together into a sort of patchwork.
    â€˜It’s
shoes,’
Victor said, unable to wait any longer.
    â€˜Shoes?’
    When they came for his wife, he said, they hadn’t given her the