by Tim Weaver
‘It’s a Steri-Strip today,’ she’d said, placing the transparent plaster over a cut close to my eye. ‘I don’t want it to be a coffin tomorrow.’
My eyes fell to my newly bandaged fingers, and – finally – to my body. Cling film was still wrapped around it, blood pooling at the sides, crawling around from my back in thick, maroon tendrils. I couldn’t see the lacerations themselves; wasn’t sure I ever wanted to. One thing I did know, though, was that I didn’t have the courage to start removing the cling film.
Not yet.
Once I was cleaned up, I went back to the bed, dropped on to my stomach and faced the door. And twelve, restless hours later, I woke again.
49
It was 13 December, eleven days after she’d first come to me, when I headed to Mary’s for the final time. It was late afternoon by the time I got there. I drove, but with difficulty, sitting forward the whole way. My back was still stiff from sleep, and I could feel the cling film loosening. By the time I got out of the car, pain was crackling along my spine.
I slowly moved up the path and on to the porch. Snow had collected in thick mounds at the front. Christmas lights winked in the windows of the house. Mary answered after a couple of knocks, lit by the fading dusk sky.
‘David.’
‘Hello, Mary.’
‘Come in,’ she said, backing away from the door.
She looked at me, at the cuts and bruises I’d patched up. I inched past her, my body aching.
‘Your face…’ she said.
‘It looks worse than it is,’ I lied.
‘What happened?’
‘I got into a fight.’
‘With who?’
I looked at her, but didn’t reply. She nodded, as if she understood that I didn’t want to talk about it. At least not yet.
‘Let me fix you something to drink,’ she said.
She disappeared into the kitchen. I made my way to the windows at the back of the living room. They looked out over the garden. The snow was perfect. No footprints. No bird tracks. No fallen leaves. It was like no one had ever been out there.
Mary came through with two cups of coffee, and we sat on the sofas.
‘Where’s Malcolm?’
‘Upstairs,’ she said.
‘How is he?’
She paused. ‘Not good.’
On the table in front of her I placed the envelope she had given to me with the rest of her money in it. She looked down at it, studied it, but didn’t reach for it. Instead, her eyes flicked back to me.
‘You don’t need any more?’
‘No, Mary,’ I said. ‘We’re finished now.’
There was little emotion in her face. I wondered whether she’d already talked herself into believing it had all been a mistake.
‘Finished?’ she said.
‘He was in Scotland.’
‘Alex?’
‘Alex.’
She took a moment, her mouth opening a little. All the doubt, all the times she’d told herself she must have been seeing things, fell away. Her eyes started to fill with tears.
‘What was he doing in Scotland?’
‘I don’t know,’ I lied.
‘Is he still there?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Have you spoken to him?’
‘No,’ I lied again, and when I could bring myself to look at her, I suddenly wasn’t sure this was the right path, despite Alex having asked me to play it this way. ‘I think he wants to see you, but I think he’s also confused.’
‘He can come back home,’ she pleaded.
No, he can’t. I looked at her, a single tear breaking free.
‘Why doesn’t he come home?’
I didn’t answer. It had to be like this. Alex had to decide when the time was right. He had to find his own way back in. They all had to find a way back into a world that had forgotten they existed. A world that had given them nothing the first time. It would be easier for Alex in many ways, despite the baggage he carried with him. He had something to grasp on to, memories he’d never let go. For some of the others, what awaited them was simply a blank. No memories of their first lives. No life to fit back into. Perhaps no chance at starting again.
‘After he left home, he went to France,’ I said, hoping that would be something. ‘That’s where he went before he came back.’
‘Why did he go there?’
I looked at her and thought of Al, of Malcolm, of the way he had shut Alex out. Kept secrets from him. From the family. I guessed his brother was also unknown to Mary. It was up to Alex to bring that to her, not me.
‘Why did he go there, David?’ she asked again.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, but couldn’t look at her when I said it.
She broke down and started crying into the sleeve of her cardigan, using her arm to cover her face. Eventually, she calmed a little and I looked at her. She was staring into space. I saw what I might do to her with these lies, but I’d given Alex my word.
Briefly, I thought of another lie; a way to comfort her. It was a lie about the friend of mine who just decided one day that he needed to break away – even if it was just for a short time – to clear his head and decide what he wanted. But I didn’t feed her that one. The deeper I dug, the further away from safety I got. And I didn’t want to get caught out. Not like the people on the farm, making mistakes that cost them their most precious, most necessary commodity. Secrecy.
50
Mary led me to the basement and we talked in there for a while, like we had before. The wind had found a way in somewhere, making a sound like a child blowing into a bottle. The place was still a mess. The cardboard boxes were still stacked high like pillars, wood and metal still strewn across the floor. There were books in one corner, stacked twenty or thirty high. A lawnmower. More cardboard boxes. Some old walking sticks, different colours and weights, probably all Malcolm’s.
Mary was quiet. I knew she was fighting back tears. It felt wrong to leave, so I offered to sit with her for a while. The last time anyone had sat down and really talked to her was probably before Malcolm got ill. Since then she’d had to fight every demon herself.
‘What did Alex do in France?’ she asked.
‘Just worked some jobs there.’
‘Good jobs?’
I smiled. ‘He’d probably say not.’
She nodded. Rubbed her palms together. Her hands were small, the nails bitten. To her side was a cup of coffee. She reached down to it and placed her fingers over the top, as if trying to warm herself up.
‘How can he still be alive?’
I knew she’d ask. I just didn’t want to answer.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘All I know is that he misses you, and he will phone you. He’s just spent a long time on the outside, and now he has to make the step back inside.’
‘What do you mean?’
Above us, floorboards creaked. Malcolm was shuffling across the living room.
I looked back at her. ‘I mean, he needs time.’
Mary glanced around the basement, her eyes locking on the photograph albums in the opposite corner.
She raised her head to the ceiling, then turned back to me.
‘The AD has been really bad these past few weeks.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He can’t retain anything. Not even things he used to repeat before. When I bath him, he looks at me and I can see he has no memory of me at all.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said quietly.
‘I know I can’t do anything about it. But it hurts.’ She looked again at the ceiling. ‘I’d better go and check he’s all right.’
I nodded. ‘And I’d better go.’
We walked up the basement stairs, into the kitchen and through to the living room. Malcolm Towne was sitting in front of the television, the colours blinking in his face. He looked tired and old. He didn’t turn to face us. When Mary went to him, and put a hand on his shoulder, he glanced up at her. His eyes drifted a
cross to me. Total confusion. Behind those eyes, there were conversations with Alex that would never come out, and Mary would never know. I felt sorry for them – for both of them.
‘Are you okay, Malc?’ she said.
He didn’t reply – just gazed at her. His mouth was slightly open, a blob of saliva on his lips. Mary spotted it and immediately wiped it away with her sleeve. He didn’t even move. He glanced at me again and I smiled at him, but nothing registered.
‘Would you like a sweet?’ Mary asked him.
The minute detail in his face had become important to her. When a part of his mouth twitched, she took that as a yes. She went to the drawer and got out a bag of sweets. Took one out and unwrapped it.
‘Here we are,’ she said, slipping it into his mouth.
‘Aren’t you worried about him choking on it?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘He seems to be all right with these.’
She held the bag of sweets against her, and watched him suck on it. His lips smacked a little, the only part of him moving with any kind of normality. I could see what she meant about his illness – it had definitely got worse since the last time. After a while, he slowly turned back to the television.
‘Would you like a sweet, David?’
She held out the bag to me. I took one.
‘They’re Malcolm’s favourites,’ she said, following me towards the front door. ‘It’s about the only way he’ll interact with me these days.’
We walked on to the porch and down the driveway towards my car. I could see her hanging on the back of that last sentence. Staring into the face of what had become of the man she loved, and wondering how it might have been different without his illness.
As I flipped the locks on the car, a fierce winter wind ripped up the road. Distantly, something registered – a noise I recognized – and I looked back at the house.
Mary was standing behind me.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said.
I listened.
‘David?’
I shook my head. ‘Guess it’s nothing.’
I got into the car and pulled the door shut, buzzing down the window. As Mary stepped in towards the car, I unwrapped the sweet and popped it into my mouth.
‘Thank you for all your help, David,’ she said.
‘It will come together, Mary.’
‘Okay.’
‘You will get the closure you need,’ I said. ‘You were right. Right to come to me, right to force me to believe you. But something like this… it’s more complicated than a simple missing persons case. There’s no file, no proper line of enquiry. Your son has been places and seen things that he needs to process himself before he can come back to you. I don’t know everything, but what I do know is that a lot of those things need to come from him.’ I put my hand on hers briefly. ‘He’ll be back, Mary. Just give him time.’
Wind roared up the road again and pressed in at the car windows, so hard they creaked. Mary stepped sideways, pushed by the wind, her hand sliding out from beneath mine.
And then that noise again.
I looked past Mary to the house. Hanging baskets swayed in the wind. The front door swung on its hinges. Leaves swirled around.
‘What’s the matter, David?’ she asked again.
‘Uh, nothing, I gue…’
Then I saw it.
On top of the house, almost a silhouette in the evening light. A weathervane. The wind buffeted it, spinning it around. And then, as the wind died down again, the weathervane gently started squeaking, as if a part of it had come loose. Metal against metal. A noise I’d heard before.
On the farm.
The weathervane was an angel.
‘Where did you get that?’ I asked her, pointing at it. She looked back at the house. As she did, a second reaction hit me, even more powerful than the first.
My mouth.
‘… colm bought it from a shop before he got Alz…’
I lost what she was saying. Suddenly it was like I’d been smashed across the face with a baseball bat. At the tip of my ear, I could feel someone’s breath, warm and saccharine like the smell of boiled sweets. The night down in Bristol, before they’d taken me out to the woods to kill me. The man with the saccharine breath.
His tone had altered, but I’d recognized his voice.
It hadn’t been Andrew.
It was Malcolm.
I opened the door and headed up the path. Behind me, I could hear Mary saying my name. I turned to her and held up a hand.
‘Wait there,’ I said.
I left her like that and moved back inside. The heat of the house hit me. I could see Malcolm had changed positions. He had his back to me.
‘I knew there was something off about you.’
He almost fell off the sofa. When he saw who it was, surprised at the sound of my voice, he held up a hand, made a noise. A grunt. Fear darted across his eyes.
‘Don’t hurt me.’
‘I saw it that first time I came round.’
‘Don’t hurt me,’ he said again.
‘Is this all an act?’
He shifted position on the sofa, moving back to where he’d been before. He looked me up and down. His eyes darted backwards and forwards. Left to right. He was trying to see whether there was anything nearby he could use to protect himself with. There wasn’t. He moved further across the sofa.
‘Don’t hurt me,’ he said a third time.
His voice trembled. Frightened.
‘Is this all an act?’
‘Where’s Mary?’
‘You want Mary?’
He remembered her.
‘Where is she?’
I took a step closer. ‘You know her now?’
‘Mary!’ he yelled, looking beyond me.
‘Malcolm,’ I said again. ‘Are you listening to me?’
‘Where’s Ma–’
‘I know about you.’
He was up on his feet now, over on the other side of the sofa. In front of the window that looked out over the garden. He glanced over my shoulder again.
‘Mary!’
‘You wanted me dead.’
‘Mary!’ he screamed again.
‘You tried to kill me.’
Tears filled his eyes.
‘Do you remember?’
‘David?’
I turned. Mary was in the doorway, her face white.
‘David, what the hell are you doing?’
Her eyes darted from me to Malcolm, then back again.
‘Wait there, Mary.’
‘David!’
‘Wait there.’ I turned back to Malcolm. ‘How did you do it?’
‘Take whatever you want,’ he said.
‘Are you listening to me?’
‘Take it!’
‘You know I’m not here for that.’
‘There’s money in the kitchen!’
I paused. ‘You remember where Mary keeps the money now?’
He realized what he had said even before he’d finished the sentence. I could see him wince, like the air had been punched out of him. His shield cracked a little.
‘Malcolm?’ Mary said, a small voice from behind me.
He glanced at his wife as the crack started fragmenting, the shield disintegrating, piece by piece. After a few seconds, his body relaxed. Straightened. He smiled and held out his hands.
‘You got me, David,’ he said.
This time his voice was different.
The same one I’d heard in Bristol.
‘Malcolm?’
Mary again, even weaker this time. I looked back over my shoulder. Her eyes were fixed on her husband, tears running down her face. When I turned back, Malcolm was staring at me, his face, his physicality, changing in front of my eyes. He seemed to broaden, to fill out, nothing of him sagging any more. He ran a hand through his black hair, the grey flecks passing between his fingers, and then the fading shell of a dying man was gone completely.
‘You’re him,’
I said. ‘You’re the one Jade talked about. You’re the reason they couldn’t kill Alex. That’s how you were on to me from the beginning.’
He shrugged, glanced at Mary. Back to me.
‘The first time you came here, I spoke to Andrew and told him it might come to this. That was why he sent that… freak down to visit you in Cornwall. We wanted to see what kind of a man you were. When Legion told us about the photo you had of Alex, I knew we might have to fight you. We were protecting a secret, and part of the secret was with you. By the time you made it down to Bristol, to the house we had down there, I thought decisive action was needed. I needed to sort things out myself.’
I ran a hand across my face, across the bruises put there by him.
‘How did you get to Bristol without Mary knowing?’
‘Mary’s a nurse, David. She works shifts. The people she gets in here to look after me…’ A pause. A smile. ‘They’re fucking monkeys. Useless. That night I came to see you… I drugged them.’ He brushed himself down, like he was blowing dust away from an old book cover. ‘I wanted to see first hand what we were dealing with.’
I looked at him.
‘How did you become involved?’
‘Involved?’ he said, smirking. ‘I didn’t become involved, David. I ran the fucking thing.’
‘The farm?’
‘Everything. Where do you think Al’s money went?’
‘You took the five hundred grand?’
‘I took more than that.’
‘How much?’
‘It doesn’t matter now. It’s untraceable. The money’s been through the system and back out again. Al threatened us, threatened all of us. I took what was mine.’
‘It wasn’t yours.’
‘Don’t take the moral high ground, David. You have blood on your hands, remember. More than me.’