by Zoe Drake
The large room beyond was lit by two wall-mounted lamps beneath a very high ceiling. it was immaculately furnished, with chairs arranged around a low coffee table and beside a standing rack of pamphlets.
Above the rack, the wall held a large framed painting. It was obviously a reproduction, because Gareth recognized it as a Rene Magritte, although he couldn’t remember the title. A landscape with three male figures in the foreground, two with backs to the onlooker, one in profile – a face with prissy, petulant features. All three of them wore heavy black coats and black hats, either homburg or bowler, crammed onto their heads. Each figure had a crescent moon glittering above his hat.
A side door opened and released a short woman with blonde, frizzy hair; the first human being he’d seen for several hours.
“Hello,” she said brightly. “Are you Mr. Mainwaring?”
“Manning,” he said. “Gareth Manning. I have a reservation.”
“Oh, yes. Did you have any problems finding us?”
“Well, I had a bit of an accident along the way…” When he saw the woman’s worried reaction, he explained with a laugh and a shrug. “One of the car’s front wheels went off the road, nearly into a dyke.”
“Oh, I’m glad it was nothing serious. Those ditches can be a real nuisance. You wouldn’t believe what the police drag out of them sometimes.”
Gareth now saw that the woman was older than she had first appeared. Her cream-colored blouse and black skirt, her plainness of face, and the grayness in her slightly turned-up bob of hair, gave the impression of attempting to be posh but not quite getting there.
“Would you be Mrs. Chapman?”
“That’s right. Stay here, I’ll get your key.”
While she was gone, Gareth peered though another archway, into the dark recesses of what looked like a dining room. He could see the bar, locked away behind big steel shutters. He cast an eye over the pamphlets; most of them advertised musicals in Norfolk.
“Here we are, Mr. Manning. I’ll show you to your room.”
On the stairs, they passed a huge cork notice board with more Norfolk musicals touting for trade, and a row of Dickensian china figurines lined up on shelves. Down a short corridor they came to Room Four.
“Here you are, Mr. Manning. The lock opens this way to the right, like so, and you lock it when you go out by turning it to the left. Don’t worry, it doesn’t lock itself behind you automatically. The bathroom and shower is here, and the toilet is over there.”
“Thank you. I’ll nip outside and bring the car round, I had to park it up the road.”
“You can park it outside, there’s plenty of room at the moment. Oh! I nearly forgot.”
Along with the room and house keys, Mrs. Chapman passed him a large manila envelope with DO NOT BEND printed at the top.
“Your messages.”
“I’m sorry… I don’t quite…”
“Your messages.” Mrs. Chapman smiled brightly. “Someone left this for you.”
It was late, Gareth was tired, and his mind was sluggish, so he still thought there was some mistake even though the envelope had GARETH MANNING written across it in black felt-tip pen.
“Someone left this yesterday,” Mrs. Chapman continued. “Delivered it by hand.”
“Did they leave a name?”
“I’m not sure. My husband took care of it. I’ll ask.”
Pushing the letter into Gareth’s hand, she gave him a big ‘I-love-a-mystery’ grin. She didn’t seem to notice his ‘mystery-is-one-thing-I-can-do-without’ frown.
“Breakfast is from seven to eight-thirty. Goodnight, Mr. Manning.”
For a small B&B, the room was surprisingly large. To the left of the door stood a large closet; to the right was a bed that occupied most of the room, a small bedside table and a washstand with sink and mirror. Directly in front of him was a window with the curtains drawn, and beside it was a chest of drawers with a TV set on top.
After going back outside and parking the car, he returned to the room with his luggage, took off his jacket, and methodically checked the contents of the camera bag. He saved the envelope for after he’d finished, waiting until all essential business had been seen to, resisting the gravity pull of curiosity.
He tore open the flap and pulled out the envelope’s contents.
They were photographs.
The quality of the six color prints received a thorough criticism from Gareth’s professional eye. The shots had been taken in poor light, probably at dusk, on average quality film. There were two churches, three pictures of each, taken from different angles. He peered carefully at one of them; the church had a tall steeple and a long chapel ranked with rows of stained-glass windows. It was situated at the end of a cul-de-sac, and leading away from the church was a lane with road signs and parked cars on one side of it. On one print the photographer had stood further back, and the rear end of a minivan could be seen in the bottom left hand corner.
Whoever had taken them wouldn’t win any prizes. They also hadn’t put any letter in the envelope, or written any names on the back of the prints.
The prints also had what looked like developing flaws. Gareth peered at them carefully. At certain points there were signs of double exposure – on one print, there was a reflective object in the sky above the steeple. On the prints of the unidentified church, a wide, grainy mark ran at a diagonal across the top. Lens flare?
Gareth slid the prints back into the envelope and put them away in his attaché case. “I’ll sort them out in the morning,” he told himself.
Switching on the TV, he found the night’s schedule was the news, a repeat of last week’s The Fast Show, and a movie from a couple of years ago called Fire in the Sky. It had only just turned nine o’clock.
If there were a pub nearby, the evening wouldn’t be a total waste of time after all…
CHAPTER THREE
Saturday March 9th 1996
Caroline had a way of dancing that Gareth had always found incredibly sexy; it was one of the first things he’d noticed when they met. She bent her legs, kept her arms straight by her sides, and gave her rump a little shimmy and wiggle – followed by flinging up her arms, hands clenched into fists, in an outpouring of emotion. Or that’s what it looked like.
Gareth, having clambered downstairs after using the toilet, stood at the foot of the stairs and gazed at Caroline, in the overheated chaos of her mum’s living room, giving that same dance to the X-Press 2 single she’d bought the day before.
In appreciation, Gareth hopped into the room, keeping his ‘walking boot’ off the ground. He began to twist like crazy next to his girlfriend, being careful to keep his crutches low and to stop them swinging about too much. Jenny, Caroline’s little girl, joined in by doing her own improvised dance, her elbows pumping away and her bottom wobbling from side to side.
“Here comes the sound…
Here comes the sound…”
“Caroline?” came her mother’s voice out of the kitchen. “Aren’t you ready yet?”
Caroline shouted back while Gareth reached out and turned down the music. He swung himself out of the room and toward the source of the voice. Caroline’s mum stood in the kitchen, coat already on and cigarette already lit. Her hair was the same sandy-blonde as Caroline’s but she was shorter than her daughter, and wore heavy-rimmed glasses. “It’s past seven,” she said waspishly.
“There’s plenty of time,” soothed Gareth. “We’re all loaded up and ready to go.”
“It’s Saturday. I told her what the roads are going to be like on Saturday.”
Caroline came out from the living room when the track finished, daughter in her arms. “I did give you the cash for the electric, didn’t I?”
“Oh yes, don’t you worry about that. I’ll pay it this morning then I have to go over to your dad’s later. Are you sure you don’t want any sausage rolls?”
“I think we’ll survive,” said Gareth with a smile
.
“If we get really hungry – we’ll eat Jenny! Raaaaargh!” Caroline opened her mouth wide and buried her face in the little girl’s hair. Jenny screamed with laughter.
*
“How you doing?” Caroline asked, as they approached Kettering.
“Not so bad.” Gareth felt her gaze linger on him, then turn back to the road as she concentrated on driving. She gave his thigh a reassuring squeeze. She really is a good catch, he thought; with her pale, freckled good looks, her pageboy mess of blonde hair, her leggy, tomboy body… The way her soft burr of Dorset accent made her speech different from the other Cambridge girls… And she’s standing by me when something like this happens.
He shifted in the passenger seat to look back at Jenny, sitting in the child seat surrounded by a pile of dolls, coloring books and I-Spy books. She was singing to herself, happily out of tune. She’d never called Gareth ‘Dad’, but it could happen any day now; he’d been going out with Caroline for over six months. If or when it happened… how would I feel?
How would Caroline feel?
“Do you want me to get in the back to keep her company?” he offered.
“Maybe later. She’s all right for the moment.”
They listened to the radio reports about tailbacks heading into London, but the motorways to the North seemed passable. They pulled into a service station the other side of Leicester for a mid-morning snack, and to join the drove of motorists using the toilets and baby-care rooms.
Before they got back onto the road heading north, Gareth sat in the rear with Jenny, his crutches on the floor under his knees. Once they’d exhausted the I Spy books – “I didn’t know they still printed these,” he said to Caroline, “I could never finish them, because I used to get car-sick.” – he engaged the little girl in a dragon-drawing competition, even though the car made their efforts look shaky.
The dragons soon paled in comparison, however, as they entered the Peak District. Crag upon crag of cold, hostile rock. Clouds that scudded over distant snow-covered peaks, land and sky blending into an untrustworthy grayness.
Jenny stared out of the window at the uncanny landscape, and her mother seemed almost as excited.
“There’s still snow up there!” Caroline said.
“I thought you’d been up here before?” Gareth asked.
“Yeah, but when I was a kid. I don’t remember much.”
On Snake Pass, all three heads turned towards the traveler’s lodge and the cars parked outside. They wondered about the individuals who used the rooms to prepare their backpacks and hiking boots. Almost unconsciously, Caroline turned up the heating in the car, and Gareth marveled as she skillfully negotiated the steep inclines of the roads.
Eventually, they found themselves on the A525, and the last stage of the journey towards Gareth’s brother’s house in Buxton. The car entered a quiet suburb and they finally cruised down a cul-de-sac as Gareth said, “Great driving. We’re here.”
While Caroline was parking in the spacious driveway, Paul and Valerie opened the front door to greet them. They were both bundled up in Argyll sweaters, faces flushed and smiling in welcome. Paul’s small nose, thin lips and eyes screwed up against the cold were rounded by brown curly hair and a bushy beard. Valerie grinned at Caroline and Jenny, her cornflower blue eyes twinkling in a strained face, simple but expensive-looking earrings glittering through her blond hair.
As Gareth got out of the car and stabilized himself on his crutches and walking boot, he noticed at once the crispness of the air. It wasn’t only cold; it had a clean freshness about it. Too many cars in Cambridge, he thought, I didn’t realize how much I missed something like this.
Once they got inside, Gareth introduced Caroline to his older brother, Colin, and Colin’s wife, Diane. Colin was the tallest of the three brothers, and could make any living room feel small. He had an open, smiling face, a severe haircut, and a habit of whistling tunes to fill in silences. Diane was blonde and slim, punctuating most of her sentences with laughter.
Lunch turned out to be a huge salad, with large helpings of smoked Applewood cheese, shoulder ham and homemade pork pies. Everyone made a fuss of Jenny, who – as usual – ate everything put on her plate, holding court from a seat with several cushions beneath her. Gareth fielded questions about his injuries, and assured them all he was on the road to recovery.
“You know you’re both perfectly welcome to stay longer,” Valerie said.
“No, that’s fine. I don’t want to impose on you, I mean, what with Jenny and all. Anyway–” – he exchanged glances with Paul and felt a twinge of embarrassment – “I’ve got plans to get back to work pretty soon.”
“Really?”
“Well, this leg is going to slow down my game of rugby, but not my photography. I’ve been buttering up Lynval, and he says he’s got some agency work lined up for me. The insurance company said that there doesn’t seem to be any problems with the claim, so I’ll have that money to tide me over.”
Paul bit into a hunk of baguette and began to chew, and he glanced to Valerie at his side. Was that relief in his eyes? Gareth thought.
As a two-car convoy, they arrived at Buxton General Hospital in the mid-afternoon, driving around the back to a grim-looking car park. “Gareth said that your mum has to be moved next month,” Caroline ventured.
“That’s right,” Paul said with a sigh. “They need the beds, and there are no hospital facilities for her here in Buxton. We’re still looking.”
Gareth turned to his girlfriend, while Jenny bounced up and down on the back seat between them. “Are you sure you want to come in? With Jenny, I mean?”
“Why not?”
“Well…” Gareth looked at Paul for moral support, but he was too busy navigating the car into its parking space. “Maybe you’ve had enough of hospitals at the moment.”
Caroline pulled her daughter onto her lap, and pressed the door handle. “I think they’re going to get along really well. Do you want to come and see Gareth’s mum, sweetheart? Do you want to come and say hello?”
“Yes,” came the squeaked reply.
“They’ll make a fuss of each other. Just you watch,” Caroline said, winking at Gareth.
A pair of thick semi-transparent plastic screens served as the staff entrance to this part of the hospital. Paul and Valerie, who led the small group, turned left and went through the more conventional swing doors into the wards. When they had walked halfway through the ward, Gareth heard a good-natured commotion up ahead.
He eased himself between Colin and Diane, as the space between the beds was fairly narrow, and caught the first sight of his mother. She was standing up, holding Paul in an affectionate bear hug. The blue cardigan and long blue dress she wore were both unfamiliar to Gareth. On her feet were bright pink ankle-socks and fluffy white slippers. “Ooooh, aren’t you lovely,” she was saying, her voice high-pitched and flutelike. “Let me look at you!”
It took quite some time for Lily Manning to greet all of her visitors in turn. She spent a while over Gareth, saying what a good-looking boy he was. As Caroline had predicted, Jenny was singled out for special attention. Kisses were exchanged. Lily clapped. Jenny giggled. Everybody laughed.
They arranged themselves in the chairs provided, and Lily sat on the edge of her bed, still clapping, as if she were giving everyone a round of applause. “How are you, mum?” Gareth asked. “Is everything all right?”
She smiled at him, and clapped some more.
“Valerie’s made a cake for you,” Paul announced. “Look! Here it is!” He opened the yellow cake tin and pulled out the cake, in its loose wrapping of plastic Ziploc-bag. Chocolate drops speckled the thick crust of marzipan and icing. There were more appreciative noises from everyone in the group.
Lily’s deep gray hair was thick and curly. Her eyes, wide with light and moistness, were constantly wandering, but she often stared directly at Gareth while the rest of the family tried to talk
to her. He looked around the bed at the flowers, the cards, the nightclothes hanging behind the bed, the bottles of pills.
“Do you like the food here, Lily?” asked Diane.
Lily ignored her and winked at Gareth. “You’re a handsome boy, aren’t you!” She lifted herself off the bed and leant over her son, clutching his hand and sending a waft of lavender into his face. “I’ll have to cook you – my special something! There you are!” Having delivered her promise conspiratorially, she planted a kiss on his cheek and then edged past his chair. There was more laughter, and Gareth looked sheepishly at Caroline.
“Where are you going, Mum?” Paul was already on his feet, and Lily stared at him, the smile vanishing.
“Have to go to the Co-op,” she said gravely.
“No you don’t, Mum, we’ve done the shopping today. Come and talk to Jenny! Here’s Jenny.”
Guiding her by the elbow, Paul gently led Lily back to the bed and helped her to sit down. She sat in the place she’d sat before, and started clapping again, lifting one bony hand high and bringing it smack down onto the palm of the other.
Gareth suddenly realized that the clapping was meant to be the rhythm to a tune. As she clapped, her lips moved, and he caught the whispered fragments of words as she sang under her breath.
In the sudden lapse of conversation, Colin started whistling. Gareth looked around the ward, looking for something to fix his gaze on. Caroline leant over and said to Jenny, “Do you want to show Lily your picture?”
“Oh yes, show us your picture,” Valerie cooed. “What is it?”
“It’s a dragon,” Jenny announced seriously, holding up the sketchbook for inspection.
At the request of a nurse trying to get past, Gareth pulled his chair closer to the bed. Turning his head, his eyes lingered on the legs walking away, the uniform stretched tight over the nurse’s buttocks. He felt a sudden, shameful stabbing of lust in the groin. Even here, he thought. Even here and now, when I’m visiting my Mum, I can’t get sex off my brain.
“Dad’s here,” announced Paul.