The Little Death

by Sarah Till

  But I woke up at one o’clock in the morning and I heard his voice.

  ‘Come on Polly. Come and see me.’

  I can’t remember getting in the car or anything else but the next thing I knew I was walking across the scrub then into the heather. I looked down and I had my bedroom slippers on. I remember thinking it was a dream, but the pain was real. Sharp rocks bruising my feet. So dark that I couldn’t see my way except by the dim moonlight.

  I looked behind me and I could see the pinprick of Sarah’s bedroom light I the distance, and the light outside the farmhouse. I had my mobile phone just in case. So I carried on. I reached the wreckage and sat down. The ground was wet and I suddenly wondered if I had shut the front door. Oh well. Too late for that now. I spoke it out loud. Because this is where he was.

  ‘Eh, Jimmy? Too late for that now?’

  I listened. There was nothing. I squeezed my eyes together end tried to feel him. The sense of him. His life or his death.

  ‘I kept one of the roses you gave me. In a bible.’

  It sounded stupid and childish. I’d kept a rose for seventy years. It struck me that even if he had walked away or never gone to the airport he could be dead by now. If Sarah really was psychic wouldn’t she know that, though?

  I was shivering. I pulled my dressing gown around myself and scraped some soil from underneath the wreckage and heaped it into my pocket. It started to rain. There was nowhere at all to shelter so I hurried back across the moor. I turned and spoke again, just in case.

  ‘Night. Jimmy. See you tomorrow.’

  There was nothing. It wasn’t until I saw the pinprick light in the distance that I realised how this worked. He would only talk to me through Sarah. Of course he would. For two hundred and fifty quid. I sat in my car, wet through. Mud in my dressing gown pockets. She would make the maps. She would tell me where he was. It all made sense now.

  I was very tired. So tired that I doubted whether I could make it home. So I slept at the side of the road and in the morning I watched as Sarah did some kind of yoga naked in front of her house. The world had gone mad and I was trailing along with it. I started the engine and drove home. I had a good wash and emptied the mud into my garden. Jimmy wasn’t in there.

  Jimmy was in the article by the child survivor, In the library books about the crash. In the microfiche news article and the passenger list. In his birth certificate and his football award. He was all those places and in my heart.

  I lay down on the bed and slept for a full day or so. The home help had been knocking on the door, it turned out, and had alerted the doctors, who sent a different social worker round the next day. As I let her in I caught a glimpse of a frail old woman as I passed the front room window and wondered what she was doing staring in mad-eyed.

  This one was much nicer. Julie, she was called. She made me a cup of tea and some toast and I explained about Sarah and the moor and Jimmy. She didn’t judge me. She let me keep talking for ages. She phoned the home help and stayed while she came in and we went through all the papers so she didn’t throw anything away.

  Then she made me some soup while Carrie, turns out that’s what that lovely cleaning lady was called, hoovered up and polished. By the time it was afternoon they were sat in front of me with yet another cup of tea. I looked around.

  ‘Colin would have been pleased.’

  Julie smiled.

  ‘Who’s Colin? I though Jimmy was your bloke?’

  I laughed.

  ‘I was married to Colin for thirty-one years.’

  She sipped her tea and I realised that I hadn’t mentioned Colin once. Only Jimmy. Yet Colin was here, everywhere. At least now Carrie had uncovered him. It felt like home again, like I could just make him some tea. I laughed loudly again and Julie smiled.

  ‘How are you feeling, Polly? Are you up for a trip to the hospital?’

  I laughed.

  ‘I don’t need a check-up. I’m alright. A bit sore but I go on that moor every day.’

  She checked her mobile phone.

  ‘You’ve got an appointment at three. Didn’t you get the letter?’ I look at the pile of unopened mail by the phone. Her eyes met mine. ‘I’ll drive you there. And come in with you. Carrie can get on here then, can’t she?’

  I had a shower and got dressed as she waited for me. I could hear them whispering and moving things around and when I went down they looked very pleased with themselves and I suddenly whished I’d had daughters. This must have been what it would have been like when someone cares about you.

  Carrie handed me a big black folder.

  ‘You can have this. It’s my old art folder. It was in my car. I’m at uni – I’m only doing cleaning to pay my way.’

  I opened it and she had put all my pictures in date order in it. Arranged like this they told a story. I shuffled to the back and pulled out one of Jimmy.

  ‘That was him.’

  He smiled out at me and I felt a flush up my neck. Carrie touched it.

  ‘He was very handsome.’

  Julie nodded.

  ‘No wonder you loved him. This is beautiful, Polly. They all are. You should show them to someone.’

  And that’s when I had my idea to give it all to someone. Right there and then. Because I knew my card was marked, really. I knew that there was something else. You don’t get to ninety without being able to read people – although I’d failed bloody miserably with Sarah.

  Once we were in Julie’s car she started asking questions about Sarah. How I had given her the money. How much she asked for. What happened.

  ‘Look, Polly. We can get the police, if you want. Or My manager can go and have a chat with her.’

  My head felt woozy and I panicked a bit.

  ‘She meant no harm. It’s her job and all that. Anyway, I’ll bloody give her what for when I go up there again.’

  She just stared straight ahead, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. When we reached the hospital she told me we would be seeing a Mr Ali. I knew what that meant. Mr meant very important doctor. Head doctor. Bloody hell, I thought, it must be bloody bad.

  And it was. He had my scan up on a brightly lit screen as we sat down. Someone had drawn little measurements on it. He talked to me like I was a child.

  ‘This is your liver, Polly. You had the scan?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Look. I’ve sat through a plane crash inquest. You can give it to me straight.’

  He shook his head and I knew it was curtains.

  ‘You’ve got liver cancer. Secondary, probably, but we would have to do more tests. I’m afraid there is no cure. You can have treatment but it will be palliative.’

  I stared at him then looked at Julie. She took my hand. I always wondered what would happen at the end. Who is there when you have no one?

  ‘How long?’

  He took a deep breath.

  ‘I can’t say for sure. But about three months. It could be weeks.’

  I drew from my reserve of stock answers to save anyone else saying it.

  ‘Well, I’ve had a good innings. What will happen now?’

  He looked at his schedule.

  ‘You will be under the care of your GP for now. The we’ll send in a MacMillan Nurse. Have you got anyone to look after you?’

  It was the defining question of my life. No I haven’t. I have no one. But Julie jumped in.

  ‘We’ll take care of that. Polly lives alone. We’ll find a hospice place when the time comes. If that’s what you want, Polly?’

  Of course, I knew all about what happened at the end because of Colin. I prayed that he would go in a hospice, but he didn’t want that. No. And I had promised to look after him.

  ‘Yes. That would be nice.’

  It wouldn’t be bloody nice and they knew it. But it was the right thing to say. Then we were back in the car. Julie looked at me.

  ‘Look, Polly. I know you have no relatives. Is there anything I need to take care of?’

  I nodded.r />
  ‘Yea. I’ve got a couple of friends and I’ll let them sort the house out. After, like. I don’t want to bother them. But my car...’

  She nodded.

  ‘When the time comes.’

  As it happens, lovey, that time is now. I can’t drive any more. I know I’ve been making a show of walking over the moor and I did feel all right for a bit, but the last couple of days I’ve been fading away. I can feel it. So I’m calling it a day.

  If there’s one thing I wish it’s that I got to know you lot up there sooner, even that bloody Sarah. But everyone has their regrets and mine are many, even at my age. But if you can tell everyone I won’t be along anymore. I’m not up to it. I hope one of you reports them bird egg thieves and l goes to sit with my Peregrine Falcon. I don’t like to thing of them all alone up there.

  I’ll be fine. There’s still life in the old dog yet.

  PATTI

  Identification of Moorland Impostors

  Within the food chain, it is often difficult to recognise who is the impostor. Is it the peregrine who swoops for the vole? Or the Owl? Or the bird that gets the worm? Although this may seem cruel, it is the natural food chain, with major predators naturally residing at the top to keep balance. The Impostors work in a different way; they impersonate another member of the species, and steal their habitat, for no reason.

  The impostors go to great lengths and take up valuable energy attempting to trick their host into accepting them, only for them to take over and often kill them. Their sole reason appears to be survival – it seems that reproduction is enough to sustain this - and this behaviour does not benefit any other aspect of nature, it has no implicit altruistic value.

  The identification of impostors often comes too late, at the expense of those birds, bees and mammals who balance the moorland symbiosis, leaving only barren destruction and desolation.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I throw the pages onto the table, then pick them up again. I turn them over and search for an address. I panic. She never said where she lived. She must have gone to the hospice. How could this happen? Somehow the world had let Polly down, badly. The poor woman, all alone up there at night. It was true that she probably knew every inch of the moor, but even so, she could easily have died. I sat at the table with a complete set of notes from her. Her life had been so amazing yet so lonely, and she had just carried on. I hear her voice. ‘We have to carry on.’ I’d never see her again. The shock hits me like a wave, suddenly puncturing my optimism. What about the search for Jimmy? What about the shoe? I saw it, there in my sink, dirty and stinking. It probably wasn’t Jimmy’s shoe anyway. But it was worth telling the police, wasn’t it? Wherever she was, the police would go and tell her if anything was found. I took the maps out again and looked it over. Maybe I’d combine my work on the moor with continuing her search for him. Wherever she was, she’d know someone was trying.

  Fucking Sarah. Polly was going away and it was Sarah’s fault. All this time she’d been watching her, hard faced, standing in her garden saluting the fucking sun while Polly trekked across the moor on a busman’s holiday. I picture Sarah’s patronising witchy stance and imagine her trying to dupe Polly. She’s probably sitting discussing ways to rip old people off with Gabriel right now.

  I get my pumps on and hurry across the moor to Sarah’s. It’s a still evening and the moon is almost full, staring down at me and judging me, telling me not to make a fuss. But I have to, if only for Polly’s sake. I look back and see the house, the patch where I scattered my parent’s ashes and I’m a little bit afraid of what I’m going to do. The bees are returning to the apiary and the birds are already back at their nesting boxes. Somewhere, a blackbird is singing, and I see the bats flying into the barn to their nests I could turn back now, keep calm and carry on, and nothing would be lost. But I’m past caring. David’s gone. Gabriel’s gone. Now Polly’s gone. What else have I to lose?

  I’m marching up to her door and the birds that have settled on her porch scatter as I stomp up the drive. I don’t bother knocking, I just walk right in. She’s not in the lounge, and I hear music from upstairs. Perfect. They’re in bed. But I see her lying on her bed naked and alone, her arms over her head. I run into the bedroom and look around. Gabriel’s not there. I rummage through the wardrobe, searching for his leather and denim, I try the bathroom and she’s standing there, hair fashionably ruffled, hands on hips.

  ‘Where is he? Where the fuck is he?’

  She drags me towards the stairs and I push her away.

  ‘Who? Where’s who? You’re not making sense, Patti.’

  She pulls on an elaborate dressing robe, slightly oversized.

  ‘Fucking Gabriel. Where is he? I know he’s here.’

  I run through the bedrooms, opening cupboards and looking under beds. Then I run downstairs and into the kitchen. He’s not here. Sarah follows me.

  ‘He’s not here, Patti. I was going to ask you where he is. I need to speak to him.’

  ‘Do you? What about? Was it about shagging him or was it about pulling a fast one on Polly? She’s told me everything. Everything you did to her.’

  ‘Right. I wondered when she’d get to that bit.’

  I push past her and sit at the dining table, the same seat Polly had sat in.

  ‘Why did you do it? Why would you dupe an old woman like that?’

  She sits on the edge of a chair.

  ‘It’s my job. And anyway, who says I was duping her?’

  I snort my derision.

  ‘Oh, come on. Everyone knows that it’s all a set up. Why did you do it, Sarah? Why did you go so far and give her the map? She’s been up there every day since then. And she nearly died.’

  Suddenly she looks very tired.

  ‘It’s not a setup, Patti, it’s very real to those who believe in it.’

  ‘And do you?’

  Our eyes meet.

  ‘No. I don’t believe in anything. But I do it because I want to help people. It gives them some closure, a little bit of comfort. What’s so wrong about that?’

  ‘Nothing. But you go too far. Poor Polly...’

  ‘Yes. Poor Polly. Poor Polly for clinging to hope, for coming to see me for asking for some comfort. How was I to know she’d decide to camp out there? It’s you who lives in a dream world, where everything has to have a start and an end. But some things just don’t. Some things aren’t as clear cut as we’d like them to be.’

  ‘Right. I see. So I’m living in a dream world, am I? Well, did you know that David’s left? That he’s got someone else? You didn’t see that one coming did you?’

  She rests her palms on the table and spreads her fingers.

  ‘I did actually. I saw him today. I told you before that he’d leave if he was happier with someone else. It’s just that you could have done this years ago when you first suspected. But you had to have your evidence, didn’t you? You’ve spent years torturing yourself when you could have been free, all because you needed to know why.’

  She was right. It makes me think of Polly’s life and how she had searched for jimmy and how we had talked about it just yesterday. I calm a little now.

  ‘Where do you think she’s gone? Polly?’

  ‘Probably into an old person’s home or something. Care in the community, Sheltered accommodation. Wherever you go when your mind’s going. I don’t know. It’s not as if we actually know her, is it, Patti? I can’t say I really care.’

  ‘Do you care about anything, Sarah? Isn’t Gabriel moving in with you?’

  ‘No. No he’s not. Like I said, I haven’t seen him since that night.’

  ‘Oh yes, that night you fucked him, and then told me that it meant nothing to you, when you knew full well I was falling for him. You even asked me. You just don’t give a toss about anyone except yourself, do you? You’ve been going on to me about having an orgasm like it’s all that matters in the world, when you knew what you’d done. You nearly killed Polly. Nearly killed her. Screwing someon
e I fancy isn’t a fucking crime, I know, but that poor woman was up on the moor in the night freezing to death.’

  ‘Shut up. Shut up, Patti. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘No. I’ve shut up for long enough. I’ve spent years letting you look at me like I’m psychotic, giving me advice about my non-existent sex life, telling me how you’re a goddess and I should be more like you. Telling me to lock myself in my room and ‘make myself happy’. Has it occurred to you that there are other things that might make me happy? Or that I haven’t met the right person yet? You might be a machine, knowing your own body and having a spiritual death every night, but, you know, I’m a bit busy for that. Busy living my life. All that getting up at dawn and spending time with yourself. You’re no different from me or Polly. One thing on the outside, another on the inside.’

  She stands up now and moves around the table towards me. She’s standing over me and I lean back on the chair.

  ‘OK. You want to hear it? I’m dead inside. Dead. I don’t feel anything. I had a little girl, a beautiful little girl living here with me. Katrina. My little girl. Someone I’d grown inside me, someone I loved more than myself, if you can imagine that, Patti? But you’ve never had a child, have you? The day she went out, I didn’t even kiss her because she was being difficult, didn’t want to get into the car. I’d pushed her in and clicked the seat belt shut. Then I’d gone inside and wished my life was back to how it was six years before, when I didn’t have to deal with the childcare and the tantrum and the early mornings. Later that day I was pulling her dead body off the tarmac. Is that what you mean by aetiology, Patti? Is that your cause and effect? Are you happy now that you know why?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘No. I’m sorry.’

  ‘No one could ever imagine what I saw that day. My partner and my baby dead in the road. The ambulance came and I went with them to the hospital, but I didn’t even know why. They were dead. Gone. I went through a process of trying to get in touch with them, contacting mediums and card readers and anyone who could let me see my baby one more time. Nobody knew what was in my mind that morning, but I knew. Every day when I woke up, I knew I’d wished her away. How do you expect me to live with that? How?’