‘I’m tired,’ said Chad. ‘I ’ave to get up early tomorrow. Think I’ll get to bed.’
I had thought – hoped – he would ask me to sleep with him. I had thought we would spend the night holding each other tight. But he did not say anything else. He just left the kitchen. Then I heard him going up the stairs.
I drank some more water, then turned off the light and went upstairs. Nothing had changed in my old room, except for the thick layer of dust on all the furniture and the bed linen. The sheets were the same set I had used in 1943. The bed had obviously not been stripped. The sheets smelt musty. I quickly opened the window and let in the fresh, cool night air. I pressed my hands to my hot face.
It was all too much. The magical hours at the beach. And then the sudden change of mood when we talked about Nobody. And the painful distance between us which had come with it. It hurt me as much as seeing the Beckett farm so rundown, dirty and bleak.
And I understood something else. I was disappointed in Chad, and that hurt the most. I had always forgiven him everything: the dismissive way he had treated me at first, the fact that he had not told me about the death of his mother and his signing up for the army, that he had barely ever answered my letters, that he had left me in the dark as to whether he had survived the war. I had not taken any of that personally. I knew him, after all. He was not a communicative person, he never would be. I could live with that. However, the way he had got rid of Nobody horrified me. That evening I did not yet realise the full extent of my feeling. Poison had trickled into our relationship, and it would work slowly. Chad had told me his motives, and I had understood them. I could see why he did it. I still did not think they were reason enough to do to a person what he had done to Nobody.
I consoled myself with the thought that perhaps everything looked bleaker to me than it was. Of course, there was also the possibility that everything was worse than I could imagine.
I could not sleep that night. I brooded.
I was sad.
14
The next day I set off for Ravenscar. I made a point of not getting up when I heard Chad banging about in the kitchen early in the morning. I did not want him to ask me what I was going to do, as I would have had to lie. So, although I was wide awake and nervous, I stayed in bed and only got up when I had not heard any noise coming from downstairs for a long time.
Chad had definitely gone. The all-terrain vehicle was no longer in the yard, which gave me the hope that he was some distance from the farm and might not come back too soon. I could not see Arvid anywhere either. He was probably still asleep.
I did not dawdle over breakfast, but was soon running over to a shed where Emma used to keep her bike. It was still leaning against a wall, and even still carried the basket in which she used to put her shopping.
My eyes became moist. I suddenly missed Emma terribly.
The tyres were a little flat, but I hoped they would get me to Ravenscar and back. I could not see a pump anywhere, and did not want to waste time rummaging around. After all, I did not know when Chad would return.
It was a cloudy day; a northerly wind had picked up overnight. The air was cool and dry. It was just right for a bike trip. The dirt track was not easy to ride down, but once I got to the narrow road I was much quicker. My mum had packed chocolate in my rucksack. I had not touched it. I put it in the basket for Nobody. He would like it, and I would promise to visit him often and always bring something nice for him. That would be sure to cheer him up, if he was down at all. I might find him a contented boy.
I felt more positive in the daylight. Although at night I had painted a dark picture of Nobody’s fate, that morning the whole thing did not look too bad. He would be better off with Gordon McBright than with Arvid, who was obviously letting himself go completely, and with Chad, who would not have a moment to spare for Nobody. At least he would have something to do on McBright’s farm, and even if the man were a tough nut, like most farmers round these parts, that did not mean he was necessarily inhumane and cruel.
Ravenscar is only a cluster of houses. At the time it was not much smaller than it is now. It has a lovely location on the crest of a hill, with a wonderful view down to the nearest bay and across the rolling green hills. Here and there you can see a farm, a blotch of another colour in the green. Of course I did not know which one belonged to McBright, but I had decided to ask around.
Someone would be able to tell me.
‘McBright?’ asked the woman standing behind the counter of a roadside stall, where she sold lettuce and beans she had grown. ‘What do you want with him?’
‘I want to visit someone,’ I said truthfully.
She looked at me as if I had lost my mind. ‘You want to visit Gordon McBright? Dearie, you’d be better off not. He’s …’ She tapped at her head.
I did not find that encouraging, but I still got her to tell me how to get to his farm. I went the wrong way the first time, and had to ask at another farm. There too they could hardly believe me.
‘You’re a brave lass,’ said the farmer, amazed.
‘I just want to visit an old friend,’ I murmured, before turning away and getting back on my bike. I had secretly hoped that someone would ask me about Nobody. He had been living for almost half a year at McBright’s place, so someone might have known he was there. It would have been an immense relief to hear someone reply to my visit an old friend with, ‘Oh, you mean that nice young fellow who lives with Gordon! A little touched, the lad, but doing fine. Great help on the farm. Almost like a son to Gordon!’
How naive I was to wish that! How hard I was trying to twist the facts to something I could live with. Nobody was a little touched. He was so touched that he could barely be used for any work at all, not even simple menial tasks. Even for those he needed to have some understanding of what he was being asked to do. The only way I could imagine getting the Nobody I knew to work was through physical violence, which would break the resistance of his clouded mind. But of course I did not want to imagine that.
And … like a son to Gordon? To the people of Ravenscar, Gordon McBright seemed like a kind of devil. No one was on talking terms with him. No one seemed able to believe that I would really want to visit him. And yet he was to find a place in his heart for Nobody of all people?
I would really have liked to turn back. I was afraid – of McBright himself, but also of the condition I would find Nobody in. What if I felt I should go to the police? I loved Chad. I wanted to marry him. If I decided to save Nobody, our love would not survive my action. Chad would never forgive me if I got him into trouble over this. He had looked so exhausted, so laden with cares. He was fighting to keep his parents’ farm going, and it was clear he was struggling. I just can’t be ’avin’ any trouble, he had said last night in his dirty kitchen. There had been something desperate about the way he said it.
Was I, of all people, going to bring him the trouble he so feared?
In spite of my doubts I rode on, pushing down harder on the pedals of the old bike whose tyres were losing air. It was becoming more and more of a struggle to ride. I tried to numb the tortuous thoughts in my head with the physical exertion. For the first time in my life I was faced with a difficult question of conscience. I suddenly wished I had not come to Yorkshire.
I could see the farm from a long way off. It was far out of Ravenscar, buried deep in the countryside and a good way from the sea. The buildings were on a little hillock above a wood. There were no other signs of human settlement near or far. It was a place of loneliness and isolation.
The weather was not sunny. A blue sky peeked through holes in the clouds only occasionally. Nevertheless it was still a bright August day. A beautiful day. The wind bent the blades of grass and raced over the stone walls. The day smelt of sea and summer. The atmosphere could have been beautiful, even romantic in a wild and elemental way. Yet it was not. The farm looked dark and threatening, although I could not have said why exactly. Even from a distance it looked somehow desola
te, even though it was no more rundown than the Beckett farm. Nevertheless, it seemed to exude a cold horror. I shivered. Or was I affected because of everything people had suggested?
I approached hesitantly. The path was stony and overgrown with thistles. I found it hard not to fall off the bike. When the path started to go uphill, I had to get off and push. I stopped many times. I was hot, and felt myself sweating all over.
I reached the farm gate unchecked. Behind it was the farmyard. Stables and sheds formed a U shape around the farmhouse, encircling it like a fortress. Thistles and nettles were shooting up between the rusty equipment scattered around the yard. A car was parked right in front of the front door. It appeared to be the only thing which was regularly moved around here, as it was not surrounded by weeds.
I could see all of this when I got up on my tiptoes and peeked over the wooden gate. I had just dropped my bike in the grass at the side of the path. I could hear my heart beating loudly and fast. Apart from that I could not hear anything.
I cannot say that anything really happened. Nothing dramatic or terrible. No dog rushed at me with bared teeth, nor did Gordon McBright appear with his gun at the ready. I was not shouted at, not chased away. I just stood there, looked over the gate, and nothing happened.
And yet in some way which is difficult to describe this ‘nothing’ was worse than a raging McBright would have been. If he had appeared in person I could have had a good look at him, could have made my own mind up about him, confronted him. As it was, he remained a spectre.
And the eeriest thing was that I could feel that he was there. I could feel that people were there on that godforsaken and apparently dead farm. There was even a clue: the car’s tyre tracks crossing the yard. They could be seen in flattened grass and weeds, which had not had time to straighten up again yet. I guessed that the car had parked an hour ago at most. And how would anyone leave here except by car?
However I did not actually need that proof. I simply knew that I was not alone. I could feel that eyes were trained on me from behind the windows. I could feel that the silence here was not the silence of an abandoned place, but of horror and evil. Even nature held its breath here.
Years ago I had read a sentence in a book: A place which had fallen out of God’s hands.
Now I knew what its author had meant.
And in that warped and frightening silence I heard Nobody-scream. I did not hear him with my own ears. Nothing broke the silence. But I could perceive him with all my senses, I swear I could. I could hear him screaming for help. I could hear him calling for me. I could hear his despair and extreme fear. The screams were the painful, tortured screams of an abandoned child.
I picked up the bike, jumped into the saddle and tore down the hill as fast as I could. Twice I almost fell off the bike, as I was almost riding on the rims now. I just wanted to get away from this place and the screams which seemed to pursue me. I knew now that Nobody had landed in hell. Whatever happened to him on this farm, it was torturing him almost to death. He was completely helpless and Gordon McBright could kill him without anyone knowing. He could bury the body in a shallow grave in a field and no one would notice. In a horrific way the name which Chad and I had carelessly, and not without hate, given him proved to be only too appropriate: Nobody. This boy did not exist. In the confusion of the war years, a chain of unfortunate incidents had allowed Brian Somerville to fall through the cracks in the care system. He had become nobody. He had no protection at all. Because of his disability he was unable to protect himself. He was at the mercy of anyone whose hands he fell into, for better or worse.
Three people knew of him and his fate: Chad, Arvid and I. The three of us should have done something to help him.
We did nothing. We had our reasons, the main one being fear. I know that is no excuse. What we did – or rather, did not do – is unforgivable.
I have paid for it, mainly with the image which has haunted me in waking and sleeping moments for all the decades of my life: the last image I have of Brian Somerville. The small, shivering boy is standing at the gate of the Beckett farm in the February snow and looking at me go. He wants to cry, because I am leaving, but he is trying to smile behind the tears because he believes that I will come back and fetch him.
He is trying to smile because he trusts me.
Thursday, 16th October
1
She had no wish to carry on reading. She stood up and looked out of the window. The night was dark and overcast, without the moon or stars. A few lights shone in the harbour. The sea was a black, turbulent mass.
She went into the kitchen and, looking at the clock, saw that it was already past midnight. She opened a bottle of whisky, put it to her lips and took a few swigs. She wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her jumper. Suddenly she started to cry.
What had happened to Brian Somerville, the other child?
The images raced through her head in a confused jumble: her grandmother as a seventeen-year-old girl, Chad Beckett as a young man with too much on his plate, the dilapidated farm not far from total collapse. The war just over.
Try to understand her, a voice in her head said. Try to forgive her.
Her crying grew louder. She put the bottle to her lips again. She could see the little boy who had been a victim from the first day of his life and had remained one, because … Fiona had neglected to protect him. Because, given the choice, she had chosen to protect Chad Beckett, the man she loved.
Or at least: the man she thought she loved.
As if Fiona Barnes had ever loved in her life.
She felt dizzy. She had not eaten for a long time, filling herself only with strong alcohol.
Why was I always, always freezing as a child? Why did my mum become drug-addicted?
She had to find out what had happened to Brian Somerville. She only had a few more pages to read. It was obviously not about Fiona’s whole life. She supposed it contained some clue as to Brian’s fate.
‘I can’t face it now,’ she murmured.
She was drinking the whisky like water. That was the next question: why have I become an alcoholic?
Of course she had not really become an alcoholic. She just drank a little too much, a little too often. Particularly when things got difficult.
She knew that she urgently needed to stop doing that.
She stood in the kitchen with the open bottle and looked around at the familiar objects. The coffee maker and the shelf with the mugs which she knew from her childhood. On the table, the clay ashtray decorated with flowers. She had made it for Fiona at school. At least her grandmother had kept it and used it. That was already a lot from a woman like Fiona.
She put the bottle down on the sideboard, but then immediately reached for it again, taking another few swigs. She was going to get drunk now. She was going to get so plastered she knocked herself out. Then – if she could still manage it – she was going to sway over to her bed and sleep until late the next day. When she would finally wake up, she knew she would feel terribly sick, but the headache would numb her thoughts, she knew that from experience. A really bad hangover was just what was needed to switch off from the world around her. The furry, dry mouth, the urge to vomit and the stabbing pain at her temples would push everything else into the background. She longed to be sick, to lie in bed and be able to moan, and pull the blanket over her head.
She wanted to be a child and for someone to console her.
Except that no one was going to. Not a mother or a grandmother. Fiona had never been good at that in any case. Stephen had moved out. He was a few houses further down the street in his bed in the Crown Spa Hotel, no doubt, sleeping peacefully.
She was alone.
Hey, Cramer, don’t drown in your own self-pity now, she thought as the tears rolled down her cheeks.
And at that moment the doorbell rang.
It was only after she had buzzed the visitor in, and was waiting upstairs at the door to the flat, that she realised it wasn’t particularly
safe to open the door after midnight. Maybe it was because she had been drinking, or because she felt so lost, but she remained in the stairwell and listened to the footsteps of someone coming up the stairs. The light had come on automatically, and its very bright white light made Leslie blink. She was still holding the open bottle in her hand. Her make-up must have been smeared and her hair messed up.
She did not care.
Dave Tanner appeared in front of her with a big suitcase in his hand. He stopped.
‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘You were still awake?’
She looked down at her clothes. She was wearing jeans, a jumper and trainers.
‘Yes, I was awake,’ she confirmed.
He appeared relieved. ‘I was afraid you might not open the door,’ he said, smiling. ‘You really should use the intercom to ask who it is! It’s half past midnight!’
She shrugged.
‘Can I come in?’ asked Dave.
She moved aside and he stepped in, putting down his suitcase with a sigh.
‘Goodness, it’s heavy,’ he said. ‘Almost everything I own is in it. I had to walk, because my car finally gave up the ghost just now. Listen, Leslie, could I sleep here tonight? My landlady has just thrown me out.’
Leslie tried to get her drink-addled brain to follow him. ‘Thrown you out?’ she asked slowly. ‘Can she do that?’
‘No idea. But she was completely hysterical. She was screaming for the police, raging … There was just no point in staying. I tried to reach an old friend, but her phone is turned off. She works in a bar down in the harbour, so I waited there from ten to a little before midnight, but she didn’t come. Then I walked up here, hoping you’d be in and could grant me asylum. In all honesty, Leslie, I can’t walk another step.’ He paused, and stared at her. ‘Is everything all right?’
She could not help starting to cry again. ‘Yes. Well, no. It’s about Fiona. She is …’ She wiped her eyes. ‘I need some time to come to terms with everything.’
He carefully took the bottle from her hand and put it on a chair in the hall.
The Other Child Page 33