by Graham West
Despite my buoyant mood, October loomed like an ominous storm cloud over my life. It was a dour month which, if it had a face, would be heavy eyed, deeply creviced with the thick jowls of a fearsome headmaster. I had always hated autumn, as beautiful as it could be. The crimson and gold had turned to brown mulch under busy feet, and I saw only death and decay. It was a month that heralded the onslaught of long cold nights and cheerless mornings—the beginning of hibernation.
Usually, by the time December arrived, as dismal a month as it could be, we had become accustomed to the dark nights and looking towards the festive season as we gathered around our fires and grew fat on beer and TV snacks. Elizabeth and I had always started the Christmas shopping by then. It was routine. Routine. You only miss it when someone takes a sledgehammer to your life and it shatters like a cheap wine glass.
I called Josie, who answered against a background of raucous laughter and jukebox music. Something inside me stirred when I heard her voice.
“Hi, Rob!” she said brightly. “How’s it going?”
I told her about my walk with Sebastian and my subsequent drunken visit to Jenny’s bedside. She laughed and told me that we should go out for another late-night coffee sometime. The idea sounded good. Even better than a long walk with my geriatric friend. When I called off, I told Josie that I loved her. It wasn’t planned, it just happened. The words were out before I’d had a chance to stop them. There was a brief silence.
“I love you too, hun,” she whispered. Then the phone went dead.
I did love Josie. Was it just a platonic thing? A love that existed between two friends? No, it was more than that, yet I failed miserably in my efforts to categorise those feelings and eventually settled on the fact that very few people objected to being loved. Josie would probably be quite happily pulling pints for her jukebox jivers at that very moment.
***
My relationship with Josie and the feeling of warmth that I felt each time I thought of her did nothing to distract me from the need to dig deeper into the mystery surrounding Amelia Root. Jenny could not find a link to the wretched woman in her ancestry but Ellen Pascoe knew something I didn’t, and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t come up with any answers. What secrets was she hiding? What was this whole picture? The picture will change…let it rest.
I could never understand why people revealed that they were holding onto secrets if they really didn’t want anyone to find out. Something compelled Ellen Pascoe to dangle the carrot, inviting me to dig while warning me of the consequences. I thought that Sebastian had probably thought the same thing but had not wanted to encourage me to push the old lady.
I sat scanning the morning paper with Frank Sinatra crooning away in the background. I’ve got you…under my skin…
He was singing that line when I made up my mind, killed the sound and picked up my car keys. Within twenty minutes, I was outside Victoria Pascoe’s front door.
Her manner was less than welcoming. “Mr. Adams. What do you want?”
“The truth.”
Victoria Pascoe was an intelligent woman, immaculate and organised in every part of her life. She would not suffer fools gladly. I had to stand my ground. She would spot any weakness.
“You’re hiding something. Something I need to know.”
Victoria frowned. “I’m sorry, I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
My heart sank. The woman looked genuinely bemused by my approach. Maybe she really didn’t have the whole picture, either. Don’t give in…don’t back down!
“There is a link between my daughter and your ancestor. I need to know what it is.”
I was sure that Victoria was about to close the door.
“Mrs. Pascoe…please. This is destroying me. It’s destroying Jenny. Mrs. Pascoe, try to put yourself in my shoes.”
It didn’t work. “I’m sorry—I can’t help you.”
“Ellen told me that I should stop asking questions…something about the whole picture changing. What did she mean, Mrs. Pascoe?”
Victoria glared at me. “I haven’t got a clue! Look, she’s old and she gets confused…”
“I need to know. Even if it means paying Ellen another visit.”
I’d known from our first meeting that the faintest whiff of a threat would be like throwing a cigarette end into a barrel of gunpowder. It wasn’t that I minded a blow-up—just not in my face.
“You set foot on her doorstep and I’ll have you arrested!” she hissed. “Now stop stalking me, okay?” She paused, only for effect. “I can make this very difficult for you, Mr. Adams. If you want to play hardball then check out your opposition first!”
I knew exactly where this was going. I held my hand up in temporary surrender and walked away, but I wasn’t defeated. The mother of my wife’s killer only had the law on her side—a flawed legal system that frequently parted company with the most basic concept of human morality. But I had God on mine. That was how it felt. Maybe God was not a being, either sprit or human. Maybe He was just the inner knowledge—the understanding of evil. The appreciation of goodness.
Behind me, a door slammed shut but in my mind, a bell rang. I was a boxer. It was the next round.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I sat at the window that night, sipping slowly on a malt whisky and watching the trees shifting lazily in the evening breeze. Ellen Pascoe appeared to be my only hope of finding the answers I needed, but she had become almost as hostile as her daughter-in-law when I’d asked too many questions. Yet, she was troubled, and a troubled old lady with time on her hands craves a listening ear.
I poured myself another malt while an old compilation disc of Elizabeth’s played in the background. I closed my eyes as the last track played. After this, I’d vowed to take to my bed. Then I heard what must have been a bonus track—the ones that you find hidden away on the CDs—a girl with a gentle voice that sounded like a melodic whisper. I have a picture of you, I see a picture of you and I cry, she sang. That picture of you made me cry—made me cry—made me cry—made me cry. Her lament was interrupted by a sound coming from the lounge.
I rushed through from the back room, my heart thumping, praying that I wouldn’t find myself confronted by some thug with a baseball bat looking for easy pickings.
The room was still—that awful stillness that only the parting of a loved one leaves. I glanced around. Jenny’s youthful face looked back at me from a gold photo frame. The picture itself was intact, and so was the frame. But the glass had shattered.
I felt a clawing coldness in my bones. There was something—someone in the room with me. I knew that it was nothing I’d be able to see of touch. I felt no malice in the presence, but I wanted to run. I wanted to run from the room, to run from my life yet my legs felt like lead.
“What do you want with us?” I whispered. “Why can’t you leave us alone?”
There was no answer. I picked up the photograph, running my fingers over the broken glass. Slowly, the warmth returned to my body and the presence faded. I emptied the glass into a plastic bag and removed the photo from its frame. The music played gently in the background. If I remembered correctly, it was the first track playing again—Tony Bennett singing about his heart and San Francisco. I opened another bottle of malt and poured a glass. It was five past midnight.
The old compilation CD played through and I’d finished my third glass of malt when the final track began to play. I recognised the plaintive female voice. Over the rainbow… I’d been mistaken. This couldn’t be the final track. This wasn’t the song about a picture. I have a picture of you. I see a picture of you and I cry. It was track 19, and there were only19 tracks on the CD.
I peered through the glass-fronted cabinet at the display on the player. The green numeric display was clear. Track 19. I picked up the plastic case. The final song was ‘Over the Rainbow’ by Judy Garland. The song I’d heard was nowhere to be found on the CD. I flicked through with the remote, checking each track until I was sure that �
�Picture of You’ was not hiding somewhere.
I punched the song title into my laptop and waited for the results and then scrolled through the pages looking for an artist whose name I didn’t even know. I could live with the tree with its changing shapes, I could live with the subtle brushes with the paranormal. But this was heavy stuff. Where had that song come from? How could I have heard it, and what did it mean?
Jenny’s photo lay on the table beside me as I shut the laptop. My head ached, my eyes stung like crazy, and I felt a compulsion to throw up the whisky. My mind whirled until the tiredness kicked in. I turned on the TV and flicked through to the rolling news channel, and after five minutes felt myself drifting. Maybe all this would make sense in the morning light.
***
I called Josie just as she was opening the door of The Keys for the lunchtime drinkers.
“What’s up, Rob? You sound awful.”
Frankly, I was relieved to find I wasn’t talking to Lou. I felt guilty making small talk with a bloke when I’d rather be talking to his wife. “I’m okay. Just some weird stuff happening here. Can we talk?” It was a rhetorical question. Of course we could; Josie was always there when I needed her.
“Sure, hun. Lou’s got his mate Sammy giving him a hand today. We could meet for coffee at that late night place. I fancy a slice of death by chocolate!”
I laughed. I laughed because Jo could always make my world feel brighter. “Sure. But I’ll give the chocolate a miss.”
Within the hour, we found ourselves sitting across a table in the revamped diner with two large coffees and a calorie-ridden slice of chocolate cake. Josie sat eying the dark mountain of decadence with childlike joy. “I’ve lost three pounds,” she said, sinking her spoon into the mass. “I deserve a treat.”
She took a mouthful and closed her eyes, savouring the flavour while I waited and watched. Maybe chocolate was better than sex…for Josie, anyway. She opened her eyes and smiled.
“Okay, hun, what’s up? Shoot.”
She listened to my tale of phantom tracks and splintering glass, replacing the spoon by the side of her plate and pushing it to the centre of the table.
“Maybe you should call Sebastian about this,” she said, resting her chin on her hands.
The old guy would have been top of my list, but it was Josie’s company I’d craved as I’d woken that morning. “You’re prettier!” I said.
Josie grinned. “Gee, thanks, Robert. Prettier than an old man in his late-seventies? Are you sure?”
I nodded. “And prettier than many girls half your age.”
I hadn’t meant to throw her a line; it just seemed to slide off my tongue. Josie blushed.
“I’m sorry. That sounded really cheesy.”
We both laughed and Jo fed me a spoonful of chocolate. The young waitress eyed us from behind the till and probably thought we were lovers, both married, but not to each other.
“Anyway,” Josie said as the smile faded. “You have to ask yourself if there is any rational explanation for all this stuff. I mean, if you had a cat then that would explain the broken glass but wouldn’t explain the phantom song. That could have been just a dream, of course.”
“There isn’t a rational explanation for the picture, Jo, and even if I had been dreaming, isn’t it a coincidence that I was listening to lyrics about a photograph?”
Josie shrugged. “I know what Sebastian would think.”
“What?”
“The same as you’re thinking. That picture of Jenny is the key to something.”
“So, what do I do?”
Josie took a sip of her coffee and laid her hand across mine. “Put it in your pocket. Take it with you wherever you go.”
***
I called Sebastian that afternoon. He sounded downbeat on the phone but told me I was welcome and the door would be on the latch. “Just come in,” he said before hanging up prematurely. My head ached. I was afraid. Afraid of the world I’d been caught in. Afraid that I was falling in love with Josie Duxbury. I swallowed two painkillers and set off for Sebastian’s house with the radio on low.
Carly Simon was singing ‘You’re So Vain’. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw the reflection of an unshaven old man. Whoever she was singing about, it wasn’t me.
Sebastian’s door was ajar. I crept in like a burglar. “Hello? Hello?”
A strained voice seemed to echo down the hallway. “In here.”
I opened the door to a room I felt I knew so well to find the old man kneeling over his dog. Ricky, the German Shepherd who bore more than a passing resemblance to a mountain bear, lay motionless as Sebastian looked up with tears streaming down his face.
“Sebastian?” I stopped in my tracks. “What’s wrong?”
The old man shook his head slowly, unable to form a single word. He patted Ricky’s head gently.
“Is it the dog? Is he ill?”
Sebastian didn’t answer. I took several tentative steps forward and reached over to stroke the recumbent animal. Sebastian began to sob yet the dog didn’t stir. The old man looked up at me “He’s dead, Robert!” he wailed. “He’s dead!”
***
After half an hour or so, I was allowed to lift Ricky onto the floor and pour his master of fourteen years a brandy. Don’t forget. To you, Ricky was just a dog. To the old man, he was a friend and companion. They loved each other.
I could hear my father’s voice. It was as if he was standing behind me, watching as I poured a measure into a crystal glass. Let him do the talking.
So I did. Sebastian drank four brandies and two coffees and we agreed to bury his dog together. “I don’t want a ceremony,” he said. “I just want a burial marked with a rose bush. Can you sort that for me? I don’t feel up to visiting a garden centre.”
I was actually leaving before the old man stopped and shot me a look of surprise. “Oh no!” he said. “I haven’t even asked you what you came here for!”
I smiled. “It can wait,” I replied.
***
The following day, we buried Ricky in the far corner of the garden he had shared with his master, and I placed a rose bush to mark his grave. We sipped a brandy and I stood with my arm around Sebastian’s shoulders as he wept. We both knew loneliness, and we both knew grief, so I spared him the platitudes. He just needed the company and was happy to talk.
“So what’s been happening with you, then?” he asked as we sipped another brandy. “It’s okay, fire away. I need to keep my mind occupied.”
The photograph was the key. Sebastian had no doubt. Josie was right; I should carry it with me wherever I went.
***
I didn’t tell Jenny about the phantom track or the photograph. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was my father’s influence, his ability to know when to speak and when to stay silent. I thought about him as I drove home through the driving rain and wondered if a Hollywood producer ever made a movie of my life, he’d have placed the ghost of my father in the back seat. I felt him watching, silently wishing I could, just for a moment, catch a glimpse of his dear face.
Chapter Twenty-Five
That evening, the weather girl cheerily informed her public that parts of England were on flood alert, and as thick black clouds rolled in over the Irish sea, the nation braced itself. I had already decided to visit Elizabeth and Hanna’s grave, come what may, and the journey itself became something of a pilgrimage.
The rain had not stopped since the previous evening, and the sky was eerily leaden, plunging the whole cemetery into semi-darkness. As I stood over the grave, the fear of loneliness gripped me like a cold steel claw around my heart. I wanted to believe in a heaven, but at that moment, it was no more than a children’s fairy tale. My wife and child lay six feet beneath me, and I would never see them again.
I couldn’t even bring myself to talk to Elizabeth the way I’d done before, but her voice—her voice and Hanna’s laughter echoed around my head. I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream because there was nothing
I could do about the past. I wanted to scream and block out the voices—the voices and the memories. I didn’t. I just sobbed, my heart and spirit broken.
Time meant nothing. Nor did the fact that the drizzle had turned to a driving rain and the clouds seemed so thunderous and low that I swore I could reach up and touch them. I drove home through the traffic, negotiating the flooded roads, listening to a James Taylor disc. When I heard the opening chords of ‘You’ve Got a Friend’, I thought of Josie. I pulled over and called her.
“You sound bloody awful!” she told me. “Where are you?”
“In the car. Just been to the cemetery.”
“What? In this weather?”
I didn’t answer.
“Look, hun, why don’t you come on over? I’ll make you some lunch, OK?”
I muttered something and hung up, firing the engine and pulling back out into the traffic.
***
Josie had made me a club sandwich that defied the human jaw span, but I was desperately hungry and anxious to drink myself into oblivion a soon as possible. The coffee wasn’t particularly welcome.
“Anything stronger?” I asked casually.
Jo shook her head. “Just go with the coffee, sweetheart,” she said looking through me the way Elizabeth had when she was reading my mind. My jacket was drip drying in the cellar, and Lou had thrown me a fresh towel to dry my hair. My eyes were red rimmed, but the weather had been so bad it would have been difficult for anyone to have guessed that I’d been crying.
Lou came and sat with me for a while, making small talk. He asked about Jenny and told me what a beautiful girl she was. I nodded with a mouthful of sandwich, wiping salad cream from my chin. I still felt that cold steel claw. I still felt empty. I needed to get my Jenny back. The Jenny I’d waved goodbye to that Sunday as Darren Pascoe slipped on his trainers and headed off to the park.
I thanked Lou and Josie for the lunch and went home, picking up the phone and calling Ellen Pascoe as soon as I stepped through the door. She answered immediately but sounded stern when she heard my voice. Even in her dotage, the old lady could be fearsome.