Prayers, and the rituals that went with prayer. The washing of hands, the removal of shoes, and the sheer organisation of a mosque – of so many people in rows, with the women on one side and the men on the other. Days punctuated by prayer at specific times, the closeness to God marked every few hours – by dress, by gesture, by food, by language and most of all by day-to-day conduct.
Michael found himself yearning for such a life. Paradise might be waiting, if he could only join this man’s team.
‘Why are you going to your father’s house?’ he said.
What an absurd question.
‘Today?’ said the man.
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, everyone is there. Everyone has come, and I think there are more than seventy people.’
‘A meeting, then? Seventy people in your house.’
‘More. Many people came from Pakistan, you see. To see him – or his body, I should say.’
He laughed.
‘At the hospital, you know – the nurses did not need even to touch him.’
‘In what sense?’
‘Mmm? To feed him.’
‘What, you had family to do that?’
‘To wash him, yes. To clothe him. To help him. To nurse him. The nurses… they did not need to do anything, even at the end. It was his family who helped him to pass, and prepared him and… we did everything. He was never alone, and that made him very, very happy.’
The man said goodbye as they came into Accrington, and Michael watched him step off the train and walk down the platform. Suddenly he was out of sight and Michael knew then that he should have followed him – he had missed his chance to talk to a prophet. As the train moved off, he was in silly, stupid tears again, and he got to his feet. The peel from his tangerine fell onto the floor, and he dried his eyes as they left the station, just as the sun turned red and flashed in his face. He gazed backwards, hoping for a last glimpse – but the bend of the carriages made it impossible, and they were balanced on the most colossal viaduct, teetering high over a glorious town. Should he press the alarm?
‘I need to get down!’ he would cry. ‘I need God!’
The train wouldn’t stop, and if it did they wouldn’t let him jump down onto the tracks and run back to the platform. In any case, it would be too far now. He’d be detained by officials or even arrested – and how would he get back to anywhere and leap in front of anything, ever? He stood helplessly, and the windows were all too small. He couldn’t get his head out now, and smash it into a concrete post, and in any case a pre-recorded voice was soon shrill in his ears: Burnley or Manchester was the next station, Manchester Road? It was the next station-stop, and there were people on the train who wanted to get down at that place, too. There were more people, determined to carry on with their lives here on another random stretch of greyness, with Accrington long gone. The Asian woman, for example: she was on her feet, putting away a tablet. There was no hesitation, for she was one of the great army of people who knew her destination. He stood aside to let her pass, and watched her pick up the rucksack. She stepped off the train with it, even as a jogger came through the park in Birmingham, and passed an empty bench. Semi-conscious Morris had been flung into the undergrowth nearby, and she spotted him.
She called the police.
Ayesha, meanwhile, was with her parents, hoping they wouldn’t object to her opening a bottle of wine – and poor Morris was too weak to speak, and couldn’t see because of the blood in his eyes. Michael could see, and he saw that the platform they’d arrived at had no barriers: you exited through the ticket office, and its glass doors were wide open, the rucksack passing through.
He watched it, for it spoke of open countryside and fine, healthy hill-walking. This was Lancashire, and he had a notion that just beyond these towns there were wide moors. He stepped forward, wondering if now was the moment to break free: the rucksack was disappearing just like the Muslim man, and he had nothing in his head at all. The station was more forlorn and anonymous than any station he had ever visited. Its chilly, concrete blankness seemed extra-specially brutal in this particular light, but there were still a few seconds left to him before the train doors closed. Why Burnley? Why this place, when there were so many others? Even as he stepped back, he heard the warning bleep, and why he changed his mind again he did not know. He dived forward, and the doors caught him in their jaws. For a moment, he was stuck and crushed – but they opened almost at once, releasing him. Out he fell, stumbling with his bag, and there was nothing in his head worth having – how he longed to empty it, once and for all. He steadied himself, and just stayed upright. He looked around for the rucksack but it had floated away, leaving him alone again.
He turned, to reboard the train.
The doors closed in his face this time, and the train was a sealed unit, moving out.
The passengers who’d seen him stumble were staring at him, positive now that he was drunk. He glimpsed himself in a variety of windows, gazing back as he raised his hand to wave as usual, to nobody and nothing. His own image waved happily back. The train departed, and he was left looking at a length of track that was streaked in red. The sun was red, and the signal was red, too. His hand was in the air, and his fingers were splayed out wide – so he lowered his arm and put the hand into his pocket.
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Maria didn’t notice him.
She showed her ticket, but the inspector hardly glanced at it, and when Michael came through the man turned his back completely – not out of rudeness, but because something was flashing on his screen. The station concourse was very small, and two pensioners waited in silence while a handful of other people fanned out across the car park. Maria stood still with her rucksack, checking a piece of paper.
She crossed to the other side of the road, where there were two shelters. At the second, a bus was waiting – Michael saw her and followed. He watched her speak to the driver, and once she’d bought her ticket he backed away. Then he changed his mind and approached.
‘I’ve forgotten where this bus goes,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ said the driver. ‘Where are you going, sir?’
‘I’m going all the way, but—’
‘To Bacup?’
‘That’s your final stop?’
‘Bacup is, yes.’
He pondered a moment, struggling to breathe.
‘Good,’ he said, climbing on board. ‘Could I have a single to Bacup, please?’
If the driver was surprised by Michael’s nervous uncertainty, she didn’t show it. She pressed a few digits on the ticket machine and told him the fare. He produced his second twenty-pound note – still so clean and pure – and she didn’t grumble as she hunted for the change. She counted the coins carefully, and when she handed him the notes she actually smiled at him. For a moment he wondered who would be getting her children’s tea, for it was after seven o’clock and she looked like a mother. If her husband was out of work, perhaps he was doing the cooking? He hauled his mind back to the moment, and said, ‘How long’s the journey?’
‘We get into Bacup at about ten past eight.’
She spoke slowly.
‘When do you start? Have I time to do something?’
‘To do what, my love?’
‘To find a shop.’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’
Michael smiled.
‘So you were waiting for the train?’
‘We connect with the train, yes.’
‘I’d better get out of the way then. I’ll make us all late.’
She laughed, and he was grateful. She had heard what he said and even acknowledged its casual merriment – she liked him. The engine was on, but Michael noticed that she didn’t pull away until he was actually seated: she waited as he chose a place at the back of the bus, and he could feel her giving him time to settle safely. There were only five other passengers, three of them travelling alone. The other two were teenagers, who were sha
ring a pair of headphones. There was an elderly man, a middle-aged woman and the backpacker, who’d now found a space for her rucksack and seemed to be checking her paperwork again. She was holding it close to her face.
The doors had closed, and he didn’t know where he was going.
They eased gently away from the kerb, and the next moment the driver was heaving the vehicle carefully over the railway tracks, determined not to jolt her precious load. The tracks stretched left and right to vanishing point – and Michael had time to look in both directions, and see the width of his new world. He was on his way to Bacup, but he’d never heard of it. A road sign mentioned Burnley Town Centre, but they were going in the opposite direction, uphill, and they were soon on some kind of ring road, or bypass. There was a lot of traffic, but they seemed to switch lanes effortlessly and suddenly they had taken a turning at random and were spinning off to the right, past an old mill. This was where the dark, satanic mills had stood, of course – for this was England’s pleasant land. The houses were dropping away now, and they were moving out of the town.
He was totally lost, and the red sun was caught in a web of bare, black trees. It was unable to stop sinking, and he could see dry-stone walls overgrown with thorn hedges, and the fields seemed surprisingly small. Some contained sheep – the grass sloped upwards, and he glimpsed the occasional farmhouse. They passed a telephone box, and a pub that wasn’t open yet – if it was going to open at all, for it had an abandoned look.
They picked up another passenger, who knew the driver well enough to exchange quick, interested enquiries – and once again the bus didn’t move until the newcomer was seated. The driver checked her mirror and wasn’t in a hurry: it was more important to ensure nobody got hurt. At once, the road turned back on itself, and they were climbing even higher. He caught views of wide skies, and the sun’s rays had reached that point when they painted layers of cloud: there were ridges of deep pink, so part of the sky was deeply furrowed and even bloody. The driver found a lower gear and took them to a hilltop, and suddenly the cultivated land fell away and they were out on the wildest of moors – just as he’d predicted. Michael realised he had crossed a border into sheer wilderness. They were driving into wilderness, and the light was fading quickly – even as he watched, the clouds above were losing that bright, dramatic red as if the batteries were dying. The day was draining away into darkness.
He would be abandoned in some tiny town.
He would find a pub, and take a room, perhaps. If that wasn’t possible – and why would it be, out in the wilderness? – he’d have to sit in a bus shelter and wait for that same sun to do its business elsewhere and rise again. It would rise, and it would rise on him if he let it. Of course, the bus he was on might simply turn round, and it could take him all the way back to the station they’d just left – in which case he’d be at Burnley Manchester Road again, retracing his steps to the opposite platform so as to catch another train south or west. He’d buy a ticket with a card that couldn’t last much longer – or perhaps he’d try to dodge the fare. In fact, he’d enjoy being caught doing that, because he’d relish the attention.
‘I’ll need a name and address, sir.’
‘Of course you will,’ he’d say. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just… caught short, so to speak.’
‘What I’ll have to do, sir, is put down that I issued a penalty fare and you couldn’t pay it as of now. So what will happen is the company will write to you, and make arrangements for payment.’
Could he give a false address?
They’d be wise to that kind of ruse. If he had nothing with which to identify himself, perhaps the transport police would appear? Too busy to investigate lewd graffiti, they would be there for his misdemeanour, ready at the next station – ready to take him into an office and treat him with the infinite patience of those who knew what to do when a man had no money.
But at what point did things become menacing?
He would have to raise his voice and insult them. Perhaps if he’d finished the whisky he might manage to be unreasonable? He might throw a punch and shout, ‘God is great!’ – then everything would change. How long before you found yourself sitting bruised and cuffed on a metal bed, your shoelaces gone? You’d sit, knowing there was nobody coming to claim you. No mother to sigh with disappointment, and no wife or brother or son – no partner, even.
No Monica, no Amy. Absolutely no Elizabeth.
He would be like a piece of left luggage that nobody was looking for.
Michael smiled, for self-pity was never far away. It had rolled in again, straight off the moors – the mist came down and left you staring through the bus window at the reflection that followed you round the world: your own, foolish face mouthing the words, ‘So what?’ And as he met his own eyes again, he didn’t want the journey to end. The world was getting so much more dangerous, and the black rocks were getting spiky and dramatic, rearing up in the dusk – there was a soft booming sound, too, and he realised it was the wind. You hardly heard it on the train, but out here the driver had to sail her bus hard into a gale that tugged and heaved.
He heard the ticking of the indicator, and she pulled into a layby.
Nobody was waiting to board, but the two teenagers were getting off – and they also knew the driver, and said goodnight to her. The light was all but gone, and Michael craned his head round as the bus set off again – and they weren’t in a village. He hadn’t noticed so much as a house, and yet that was the destination for the two teenagers. They were farmer’s children, perhaps, used to a bracing walk in the dark – they’d been doing it for years, and could have done it blindfold, over the cattle-grid into the farmyard, the sheepdogs barking in joyful welcome and the warm yellow lamp in the kitchen blazing like a beacon.
Bread in the oven, and a broth warming on the hob. A newborn lamb in the farmer’s arms – an extraordinarily late birth, admittedly. He’d be trying to feed it milk from a bottle, and the youngest boy – a child of seven, perhaps, in his pyjamas – would be sitting close, knowing he now had a special pet which would follow him everywhere.
‘You two!’ said the farmer’s wife, in a broad Northern accent. ‘You must be right frozen. Sit down, there’s tea in’t pot.’
‘Saw a stranger on’t bus, Ma,’ said the girl.
The accents were getting broader.
‘A stranger, eh? A stranger on’t bus?’
‘He weren’t a walker, because he had nowt wi’ him. Just a little bag, really.’
‘Was he wearing boots?’
‘No, Ma. Shoes. He was all on his own as well, starin’ out at nothin’.’
On they went, and he was breathing quickly again.
If he got down at the next stop, he could simply walk onto the moors until he was too tired to go on. He could drink the rest of the whisky, and stagger another half-mile – but would he die of exposure? This was hardly the South Pole where a man could tramp heroically out into oblivion. In a snowstorm, the deadly cold tricked you into feeling warm and sleepy – that’s what he’d read. The danger zone was when you wanted to sit down and rest for a moment, for you’d never get up again. He had heard about a woman in the wilds of America who’d parked her car because she needed to relieve herself, and headed into the woods to find privacy. Rangers found her body months later, and deduced that she’d stood up, lost her bearings and gone the wrong way. She never found her car, for the disorientation had got worse and she’d wandered further and further from it. She hadn’t plunged down a ravine or been attacked by bears; she’d simply got weaker, and more dehydrated… And she’d had time to write a note of farewell and surrender. The rangers found her curled up under a tree, and she hadn’t wanted to die as he did – if he really did. Because he did, but he couldn’t – so maybe he wouldn’t. He could not take the plunge, and yet he knew he had to try, because the options had so clearly run out and it was the one item left on his particular menu. It was the chef’s special, and the waiter had recommended it. There would be
a waiter talking to Percy’s grandparents right now, in the bistro of that beautiful Yorkshire town. They would be choosing their wine, while he moved further and further into nowhere.
Michael closed his eyes to erase the scene, and when he opened them again he saw that the rucksack was moving. The bus driver had stopped again.
‘You’re sure?’ said the Asian woman.
She sounded anxious.
The engine was still running, and the indicator was ticking. The light had gone, so the bus seemed to have come to rest in a black box.
‘It’s down some steps,’ said the driver. ‘You’ll see it.’
The hiker laughed.
‘I can’t see anything!’ she said, and the driver laughed too.
Michael stood up as the doors opened, and hurried to the front. The rucksack was disappearing, and Michael watched it go.
‘Is this you too?’ said the driver.
He nearly said, ‘No. Sorry.’ The words were on his lips, for to get off the bus was suddenly a momentous, irreversible decision: there would not be another. On the other hand, he could make out walls, and he could see a parked car.
‘I think it is,’ he said brightly. ‘Thanks ever so much.’
‘This isn’t Bacup, love.’
‘No, that’s fine – this is good for me. Have a nice evening.’
‘You too.’
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