by Mal Peet
The desexed cadavers in the charnel pits, gurning up at him over their neighbours’ ribcages.
They all had Godley’s head.
At other times the heads had no faces at all, like the dummy wearing Julian Godley’s uniform.
By such nocturnal instalments, Martin Heath’s revulsion at his employer’s deathly appearance modulated into disgust, then fear. It became increasingly difficult to disguise these emotions, to simulate the respect and deference that were part of his job. He knew that he ought to leave. But he had nowhere to go. Besides, when the ghosts left him alone he liked living at Burra Hall. The somewhat glum stolidness of the house appealed to him; its solitude, its furnishings, its stubborn unchanged existence all pretended that the murderous twentieth century had not occurred. Also, this was where the Phantom lived.
He imagined himself living here for ever. With Annie. With the Rolls. Without Harold Godley.
When the nightmares were very bad he walked around the courtyard, smoking, like a prisoner taking exercise. From a position close to the gateway he could see Annie’s bedroom window. Now and then he saw her vague silhouette traverse its thin curtain. On these occasions he imagined her naked, or nearly so.
On a night when tumultuous rain deterred him from the courtyard Martin went downstairs and followed the beam of his battery torch through the tack room and entered the coach house via the connecting door. The reflection of his torch in the Phantom’s pale flank was a moon trembling through creamy cloud-haze. He climbed into the passenger compartment and settled himself on the sleek and yielding leather. He switched the torch off; then, after less than a minute, switched it on again, feeling a surge of anxiety. It seemed to him that Godley maintained a spectral presence in the car. That he was sitting at the other end of the seat. This was a foolish notion but also unbearable.
Martin got out and took up his proper position behind the steering wheel. That was better. Much better. In complete darkness he ran his fingers over the switches and dials. By now, his hands knew them; he silently recited their names. After a while he fell asleep. The Godley-headed forms of death swarmed in but he didn’t wake up.
He took to sitting in the Phantom a few nights every week, regardless of the weather, after Annie’s light went out. He’d sleep for an hour or two behind the wheel and it was as if the latent power of the huge engine in front of him entered his unconsciousness and drove death away.
The lurid images paled. Dreams that were his own interceded. Dreams of sex with Annie. Dreams of killing death, of purging it.
He’d awake from these dreams tingling with a kind of impatience in the dark.
7
HE HELPED GODLEY into the Rolls. The old man had to get both feet on the running board before he could step in and more or less topple onto the back seat.
‘Where to, sir?’
‘Okehampton first, Martin. I have a prescription to be filled at the chemist’s. There’s also a small number of items I’d like you purchase on my behalf. I have a list. You might like to take the opportunity to stock up on cigarettes and so forth. And get me a copy of the Telegraph while you’re at it.’
‘Certainly, sir.’
July. Hot. The beeches either side of the road spread umbelliferous shadows through which sunlight flared and flickered. A man and his dog shrank into the hedge to let them pass. When he saw the kind of car it was he lifted his hat by way of salute.
Martin felt the now-familiar flowering of pleasure that driving the car brought him. The sense that he was not in charge of her. That he was following the flight of the silver girl. That the Phantom’s huge intelligent engine was taking him somewhere better, somewhere unsoiled by his presence. With Godley’s permission, he’d slid the roof of the driver’s compartment open; green-scented air spooled in.
In Okehampton they parked close to the junction of Fore and Market streets. Immediately, a number of people gathered to admire the car. Martin, in shirt-sleeves today but wearing the cap, shifted to get out of the nearside door. Godley’s tinny voice coming out of the speaker stopped him.
‘I don’t quite feel up to this, Martin.’
Martin twisted awkwardly to look into the passenger compartment. Godley hung the microphone back on its cradle and lowered the window blinds, then leaned forward and wound down the glass divider.
‘Sir? Is anything the matter?’
‘I shall stay in the car,’ Godley said. He handed over two pieces of paper and a five-pound note. ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘Quick as you can, there’s a good fellow. And shoo these people away.’
Martin ran the errands and returned to the car. The divider was still down.
‘Home, sir?’
‘No.’ The old man’s voice was the stirring of dry leaves. ‘Go over the bridge and take the second turn on the right. I’ll direct you.’
Martin drove cautiously. In many places the road between its mossy stone walls was barely wider than the Rolls. The thought of scraping her flanks was a horror to him. They juddered over a cattle grid.
‘Here,’ Godley said. ‘Just ahead on the left.’
Martin eased the car off the road onto an uneven parking space, making sure that the rear door would open onto the gap between two black and sizeable puddles. It was strange that they were there; there had been no rain for almost three weeks. He made to get out and open the rear door.
Godley said, ‘I’ll stay inside, Martin. There’s a chill in the air. But if you’d like to get out for a smoke, please do.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
He walked five paces to the rear of the Rolls and lit up. He’d been driving on a twisting uphill gradient for several miles through dim green tunnels. Now, the open high moor stretched and folded away to great distances. To the west, a wall – a vertical jigsaw of stone – curved past an area of boggy ground in which big grassy hummocks stood like the heads of mad-haired giants buried upright; then it plunged down into a wooded cleave within which he could see the twinkle of water. Beyond this valley the land rose again, became an endless hill patchworked by more stone walls into gorsey paddocks in which sheep wandered, groaning. To the east, a plateau of grass and rocky outcrops fell away into farmland. The low tower of a church surrounded by a small jumble of roofs. Overhead, a lark – he tried to find it in the sky but could not – stitched the air with hectic music.
Martin ground his cigarette out with his heel and returned to the car, sliding back into his seat at the wheel. Godley had raised the blind on his window and was gazing out.
‘I haven’t been up here since before the war,’ he said.
‘It’s a marvellous view, sir,’ Martin said, reluctantly deploying troops in his head.
‘Yes. You’d think nothing had happened.’
‘Are you sure you don’t want to get out, sir? It’s quite warm, actually.’
The old man didn’t respond. Martin’s hands started to tremble. He gripped the steering wheel.
After a while Godley said, ‘Are you settling in all right, Martin? It’s been a while since we had a chat. I’ve been rather preoccupied.’
It had been a fortnight or so since they’d done more than exchange cursory greetings. Martin had taken instructions from Mrs Maunder and Annie or devised chores on his own initiative. Gates, the gardener, seemed to find him something of a nuisance and refused to remember his name. Now, it seemed, Godley wanted to talk. He usually did, in the Phantom.
‘I’m perfectly happy, thank you, sir. No complaints.’
‘You’re feeling well, in yourself? Better, perhaps?’
He said, ‘Yes, sir. Thank you.’
‘And you’re getting along with Annie?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘Hmm. A good girl, but a bit of a cold fish, wouldn’t you say?’
Martin didn’t know how to respond.
‘She grew up in Plymouth,’ Godley said absently, as if he were speaking of an uninteresting fictional cha
racter. ‘She was evacuated up here to her aunt’s house in ’forty-one when the German air raids started in earnest. A week later, her parents’ house took a direct hit. They were both killed. She was sixteen at the time. Has she told you any of this?’
‘No, sir.’
‘No. I’m not surprised. She’s close, is Annie.’
Martin said nothing.
Godley said, ‘I’m told that from up here you could see Plymouth burning.’
Then he fell silent. Martin risked a backwards look at him. He seemed near to death, as always.
‘Sir? Shall I drive on?’
‘No, not yet. Tell me, are you content with your accommodation? Hmm?’
‘Yes, sir. I’m perfectly comfortable.’
‘Good.’
After an eternity that lasted five minutes Godley turned away from the window, said, ‘Enough, I think. Drive on, Martin.’ He leaned forward and wound the divider up.
The beautiful car rose and dipped effortlessly along the road that seemed to have been built only for its pleasure.
And once again Martin pictured opening her up, unleashing her. Putting his foot hard down, making her roar, giving in to her. He imagined it precisely. On that stretch of the A30 the other side of Okehampton. At dawn. No other traffic.
Her huge bulk hurtling towards the sunrise, taking him with her. No Godley.
8
HE WAS MAKING a careful annotation in a margin of the Phantom’s handbook when he heard the clatter on the stairs.
‘Martin! Martin!’
He dragged the door open. ‘Annie? What?’
She was frightened. Her hair was all over the place. Her apron was wet. ‘I need you. Come to the house. Now. Don’t just stand there. It’s Mister Godley. Bloody come on!’
By the time he’d stuffed his feet into his shoes and gone down to the courtyard Annie had already vanished into the house. The late-evening sky was a mottle of apricot and purple.
The backstairs door was open.
‘Annie?’
‘Up here!’
The curtains in Godley’s bedroom were drawn shut. Light tipped into the room from the open dressing-room door. Martin heard Annie say, ‘Mr Godley! Mr Godley! Please wake up!’
He approached cautiously. Looked into the bathroom. Annie was bent over the bath.
From the doorway Martin said, ‘What happened?’
‘He’s had one of his turns. All I did was go for a pee and when I come back he was face up under the water. Oh, shit! Mr Godley! Mr Godley!’ She patted the old man’s face.
‘Is he dead?’
‘I don’t think so. I dragged him up and pulled the plug out soon as I saw him.’
‘Have you called a doctor?’
‘Course I bloody have. Be a half hour afore he gets here, though. Help me get him inter bed. I can’t do it by myself.’
He stood, paralytic, looking down at Godley’s dreadful body. The greyish lips pasted onto the skull, the ribcage of a stripped chicken, the little beige slug resting on the hairless crotch, the withered shanks.
Memory’s claws emerged from its shell.
‘Martin?’
His hands jittered but he could not move his legs. He was a condemned man standing on the scaffold’s trap door.
‘Martin!’
‘I … I don’t … I can’t touch him.’
Annie straightened and turned to him. She studied his face for a second, then slapped it. It was not a fierce blow, but it brought tears to his eyes. ‘Help me,’ she said.
He took a large towel from the rail and covered Godley’s body with it. He went to the curved end of the bath, let out his breath in a little moan and got his hands under Godley’s armpits.
He and Annie carried the old man to the bed.
God, he weighs almost nothing.
When Godley was decently covered and propped up on his pillows Annie held a small bottle under his nose. His eyelids flickered, he moved his head to the side and coughed.
‘Thank Christ,’ Annie said.
Martin could not stay in the room.
He sat on the lower flight of the front stairs. The hall was dark now. He attempted the impossible task of not thinking. When he heard tyres on the gravel he switched on the light and opened the door. It seemed to him that Bloom flinched slightly when their eyes met.
Martin made to lead the doctor upstairs but Bloom bustled past him.
‘I know the way, thank you.’
Later, from the kitchen, Martin heard voices and the front door closing. He topped up his glass with wine and filled the other one. When Annie came in she sat down and drank half of it in a single draught. She helped herself to one of Martin’s cigarettes and lit it with his lighter.
‘Is he all right?’
She huffed smoke. ‘As right as he’ll ever be.’
‘And you? Are you OK?’
‘Yeah.’
It seemed to Martin that she was rather more than OK. Oddly, she did not appear to be either tired or strained. Sort of lit up. Thrilled, even. Perhaps she was a bit pleased with herself for managing the crisis, he thought. He wanted her.
She said, ‘You went all to pieces again upstairs.’
There was nothing accusatory in the statement.
‘Yes. I’m sorry.’
‘You oughter talk to someone, you know.’
‘What, like a head-doctor, you mean?’
She reached for the bottle so as to divert her gaze from his. ‘Or me,’ she said.
He drank some more Burgundy. When he managed to look at her again she was smiling, just a little.
She said, ‘Change the subject?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Go on then.’
Martin lit another cigarette. ‘Do you ever think about what you’d do if, when, he dies?’
She looked at him levelly over her glass. ‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘All the time. Don’t you?’
The following morning Annie climbed the stairs to Martin’s flat and let herself in. He emerged from the bathroom only half-dressed, braces dangling, bearded with shaving suds.
‘He wants you to sleep in the house from now on,’ she said. ‘After what happened last night.’
‘Oh.’
‘Just sleep. You don’t have to move out of here.’
‘OK.’
‘Come over when you’re ready and we’ll sort you out.’
When she’d gone Martin stood in front of the mirror holding the razor, willing his hands to steady themselves.
He went up the back stairs to the top floor. Annie stood in the passageway with bedclothes in her arms.
‘I preferred the previous arrangement,’ she said.
‘Yes. I’m sorry.’
They stood looking at each other for a moment until Annie said, ‘Well, can’t be helped. I’m putting you in the old housekeeper’s room down the end. It’s a bit bigger than the others.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, thinking, And the furthest from yours.
9
ON SUNDAYS AND occasional weekdays when he won time for himself, Martin took to hiking on the moor. His rucksack contained austere provisions – a hard-boiled egg, some bread and cheese, a flask of water – and one or two of the OS maps that shared a shelf of his bookcase with the Phantom’s handbook and service record. He still liked maps, despite the use he’d put them to in recent years. He took pleasure in the names of Dartmoor’s tors: Hound, Yes, Great Mis, Brat, Honeybag, Laughter.
Walking, gazing, he was often successful in emptying his mind of thought and memory. He had a tactic: picturing his head as a glass cask of impure fluid draining from a spigot. Sometimes he would go for several hours without viewing the landscape as a battlefield, without assessing its possibilities for troop deployment. That damned quack, Bloom, had been right after all. Or partly right, anyway.
One afternoon in early September, after a long slow ascent through tall dense bracken, he found himself on a jutting ledge of granite overlooking infinite and i
nterfolding swathes of ochre, gold and green. Distant sheep the size of maggots. There was a late-summer thickness to the air and he was sweating. He took off his shirt, folded it and sat down on it.
Halfway through his meagre rations he found himself considering the possibility of happiness. He considered the word cautiously; he’d had no occasion to use it for a very long time. He needed a reference for it. When had he last been happy?
This was dangerous territory. He’d invariably returned injured from forays into the past. But now, very quickly and unharmed, he found a boy – what, ten, a little older? – helping his mother pack a picnic hamper.
Of course, he thought, swallowing egg. Picnic. That’s what triggered this.
The hamper was wonderful and ingenious. Wickerwork, with leather handles and straps. Inside it, at either end, cloth compartments of various sizes for plates, cutlery, tumblers, condiments, bottles. Inside the lid a sort of hammock that tablecloth and napkins could be tucked into. Martin had loved his mother’s unvarying method of packing the hamper. The things you ate first had to be at the top. So, at the bottom, cheese and biscuits and a cake or tart covered with a teacloth. Then two kinds of sandwich and slices of a pork or chicken pie all neatly wrapped in greaseproof paper. Another teacloth, then tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber in a flat biscuit tin.
And this immutable ritual had made him happy.
Yes.
The hamper had been too big for the car’s boot so Martin shared the back seat with it, listening to its creaky whispering on jolty sections of the road, inhaling its promises.
And now, brushing crumbs from his lap, he thought that perhaps happiness was a form of anticipation. Had he enjoyed the picnics themselves? He could not say. The memories – of where his parents had set up camp, of the eating down through the hamper’s strata – were flickery and unreliable. He could not, now, stabilise or trust images of his mother, bothered by wasps, fussing over the arrangements. Or of his father, jacketless, his trilby angled to shade his eyes, propped on one elbow, smoking his pipe.