Killing Time
Page 39
‘I’m going to answer your question because I believe you’ll need to know for clinical reasons. It’s his imaginary friends, CJ and Buster. Please don’t convey that information to anyone unless you have to for clinical reasons.’
‘Raymond, you have a visitor,’ said Doctor Ellington. ‘Are you going to turn around and say hello?’
He didn’t move a muscle.
Above their heads there was writing.
RIP Raymond Dare 2003–2020.
Clay noticed details in the shadowy space where their faces should have been. As she moved closer, a shiver ran through her as she recognised two halves of a face painted in the darkness, framed by their two hoods. In the hood to the left was the left side of Raymond’s face, and in the hood to the right was the right-hand side of his face.
She looked at the writing across their hearts. ‘CJ.’ And then she read the next name. ‘Buster.’
Clay took a picture of their names and their single face, then turned to face the bed.
‘CJ and Buster,’ said Clay.
Staying in the same posture, Raymond Dare started to turn around.
‘CJ and Buster,’ repeated Clay, two names that accelerated his turning until he faced her, still squatting on the bed.
Raymond’s face was alive with multicoloured felt-tip dots that turned from one thing into another along a dead vertical centre from his hairline down the centre of his nose and to his chin. The surface of his face was no longer his own. He had used pointillism to make the left-hand side of his face that of Jasmine and the right-hand side that of Jack.
Raymond pointed at the left-hand side and said, ‘Jasmine.’ He pointed at the right and said, ‘Jack.’
Clay looked around the room and saw there were no mirrors.
‘We’ve moved back in,’ said Raymond, in a voice that sounded like it had fallen from Jack’s mouth. ‘We’re all together again, a small but happy family. Raymond’s soul has left to join CJ and Buster in the underworld. Do you get it, Clay?’
‘I get it.’
‘Where do you get it?’
She pointed at her right temple, but Raymond shook his head.
‘Where do you get it?’
‘Tell me. Tell me, where I should get it?’ The closeness of his voice to Jack’s made her scalp crawl. She looked into the glaze of his half-closed eyes, a doorway into a bizarre inner world and wondered if he would ever truly return to the real world around him.
He whispered, and she walked closer to him. ‘Did you get that?’ he asked. ‘The answer to a question you once asked me. I am Jasmine and I am Jack and we live in the body that Raymond Dare left behind. You’d better get that into your soul.’
Epilogue
It was five past four. Looking at the clock above the reception desk, Eve saw she had been waiting for ten minutes for Sister Ruth to appear.
She sat between Thomas and Philip, who was still in his school uniform and growing increasingly restless.
‘It’s been ages we’ve been waiting,’ whispered Philip. ‘And it’s so quiet in here.’
‘Be patient, Philip,’ said Thomas. ‘This is important for your mum.’
Clay saw Jane McGregor, the home’s duty manager, walking down the stairs towards them. Clay looked around the reception of the modern purpose-built care facility and wondered if she was sitting on a seat once occupied by Aaron or Lucy Bell.
‘She’s ready to see you now. She was napping when you arrived and she’s a little slow to wake up. She is getting old.’ Jane eyed up Thomas and Philip. ‘Sister Ruth has said she wants to have a private chat with you, Eve.’
‘Are you OK with that, boys?’ asked Eve.
‘We’ve got a games room with a snooker table,’ said Jane. Philip brightened up immediately. ‘You two come with me then. Eve, when you get to the top of the stairs, take a left and her room’s the third door along.’
As she walked up the stairs, Eve felt the onset of nerves. She hoped that the private conversation would be positive, though she knew that whatever emerged, it was all in the past and beyond repair.
She knocked on Sister Ruth’s door and heard her say, ‘Come in, Eve.’
The elderly nun was sitting up in bed and the smile on her face when Eve entered told her that her nerves had been misplaced.
‘Have a seat.’
Eve pulled up a chair and faced Sister Ruth. ‘Thank you for agreeing to see me.’
‘No, thank you for coming to see me, Eve.’ Sister Ruth held her hand out and Clay held onto it, felt the thinness of her skin and the bird-like frailty of the bones beneath it.
‘It’s strange to think that you live here in Dundonald Road and I live five minutes away in Mersey Road. How long have you lived here?’ Clay asked.
‘Six years.’
‘I had no idea you were so close.’
‘Well, we know now,’ Sister Ruth smiled. ‘I can still see the little girl in your eyes, the little girl who lived at St Claire’s all those years ago.’
Her eyes closed slowly and Clay thought she was going to drift off to sleep. She opened her eyes and said, ‘I have two things to give you and a piece of information that I hope will gladden your heart. If you open the locker beside my bed, the things I have for you are there. I say they’re from me but they’re from Sister Philomena really, God rest her soul.’
Clay opened the locker door but the only thing on the shelf inside was a very old black leather Bible.
‘Take it out, Eve.’
As she did so, Eve saw there was something stuck between the first few pages of the Old Testament.
‘Open it near the front, the very first page in.’
Underneath the words The Holy Bible was cursive writing, blue words formed from a fountain pen.
Clay turned hot at the centre of her being and the heat spread to her entire skin. ‘This is Sister Philomena’s handwriting, isn’t it, Sister Ruth?’
‘She surely was neat. What does it say?’
‘It says, Ruth Chapter 1, Verse 16.’
‘You’ll easily find it – there’s a book mark of sorts at the opening of Ruth.’ As Clay opened the Bible, Sister Ruth said, ‘Naomi was left without a husband or sons, the husbands of Orpah and Ruth. She told her widowed daughters-in-law to go back to their own land, their own people, their own gods. After many tears and much protesting, Orpah left, but Ruth stayed with Naomi. Read what Ruth said to Naomi, Eve. Chapter 1, Verse 16.’
‘But Ruth replied,’ Clay read, ‘Do not urge me to leave thee or turn back from thee. Where thou goest, I will go and where thou stayest, I will stay. Thy people will be my people and thy God will be my God.’
‘When I left St Claire’s,’ said Sister Ruth, ‘Sister Philomena gave me two Bibles. One was for me; the other one, which is in your hands, was for you. She asked me to mind it for you, to give it to you before I died.’
As Clay reread the verse, she lost all sense of time. In her mind, seconds became minutes and minutes hours. She watched Sister Ruth drifting in and out of sleep and remembered what she was like as a young nun, constantly cheerful as she followed Sister Philomena’s instructions.
Her eyes flicked open and Clay asked, ‘What did you do after you left St Claire’s, Sister Ruth?’
‘I spent the rest of my working life in children’s homes. Sister Philomena was an excellent teacher. When I acted on her advice down the years, something good always came of it.’
‘It was a shame, in one way,’ replied Clay. ‘That she didn’t have children of her own.’
‘Well... there’s a thing. I don’t know if it’s true, but a story did get out that before she took Holy Orders, she was married with a daughter. The story went that her husband and daughter died in the Blitz. I never spoke to her about it directly. Some people believed it. Some dismissed it as the work of gossips. But let’s talk of something we know is definitely true. Sister Philomena knew in her heart you’d never leave her, and she wants you to know in your heart that the same is true for
her. She loves you very much, Eve, and death and the gathering years can do nothing to stop that love. I’m glad we met. I’m happy to pass this on to you.’
Sister Ruth held out her hand. As Clay held onto it, she closed her eyes briefly, and a buried memory from St Claire’s played out inside her head as if it were happening now. Looking over her shoulder, Eve shrieked with delight as Sister Ruth chased her down the back garden and Sister Philomena laughed in the kitchen doorway.
Clay opened her eyes and watched Sister Ruth’s eyes close over, heard the thickening of her breathing as she drifted off to sleep. She watched her sinking further away, then flicked through the pages of the Bible.
Face down against the final verses of Judges was a photograph.
Clay turned it over.
It was a black and white image of Sister Ruth standing over Sister Philomena, who was sitting in a chair with a little girl aged four or five on her knee. The little girl was Eve.
Sister Philomena looked down on Eve with a smile as broad as the one Eve wore looking up at her. It was a portrait of two women and one little girl – but more than this, to Eve Clay’s eyes it was a picture of unconditional love.
Eve Clay withdrew her hand from Sister Ruth’s and made a silent promise to come again soon and visit her. Quietly, she stood up and left the room, walking down the stairs with the Bible and photograph in her hand. She followed the sound of snooker balls cannoning off each other and arrived at the entrance of the games room.
Thomas looked across and said, ‘Shall we wind up now, Philip?’
‘You’re only saying that because I’m beating you,’ replied Philip, standing on a box and aiming the white ball at the last pair of balls on the table.
‘No, take your time, boys, finish your game.’
Thomas grinned, ‘Yes, but you’re not allowed to use your hands to guide the balls into the pockets.’ He smiled at Eve. ‘How did it go?’
She opened the Bible and showed him Sister Philomena’s handwriting, then the Bible itself and the photograph.
‘That’s it. I’ve won.’ Philip left the cue on the snooker table and wandered over to his parents.
‘Have you seen this, Philip?’ asked Eve. She showed him the photograph.
‘Is that you?’
‘Yes, it is, with Sister Philomena.’
‘And, is that other nun the one you’ve been to visit?’
‘That’s right.’
Philip took the photograph from his mother and looked at it. After much scrutiny, he said, ‘Obviously you’re a girl and I’m a boy... but... we look really like each other, Mum.’
‘Have you told him yet?’ Eve asked Thomas.
‘Told me what yet?’
‘You know how your cricket got out of its box and escaped from the house?’ said Thomas.
‘That was bad, that.’
‘Well...’ said Thomas, ‘your mum thought we could get a dog.’
Philip’s eyes filled with light and he looked at them with astonishment and joy. He threw his arms around both of them and said, ‘I love you both so much.’
Clay smiled back at her son as he looked up at her and took a picture with her mind, a picture that echoed the love and happiness in the black and white photograph that Sister Ruth had just given her.
‘Who are you two looking at?’ she asked.
‘You, Mum,’ laughed Philip.
‘And just who am I?’ She thought for a second. ‘I am the luckiest woman in the world.’
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Acknowledgements
About Mark Roberts
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Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank Peter, Rosie & Jessica Buckman; Maddy O’Shea, Laura Palmer, Lauren Atherton, Suzanne Sangster and all at Head of Zeus: Steve Le Comber, Richard Nichols, Martin McKenna, Frank & Ben Rooney, Linda & Eleanor Roberts, Paul Goetzee, John Gunning, Conrad Williams; Noelle Holten, Linda Hill, Susan Hunter, Cathy Johnson, Rambling Lisa, Bookish Jottings, Amanda Oughton, Fiction Books, What Rachael Read Next, Karen O’Hare, Barbara Peters, Sarka Kadlecova, Alexander Naden, Brian & Harvey Massie.
About Mark Roberts
MARK ROBERTS was born and raised in Liverpool, and was educated at St Francis Xavier’s College. He was a teacher for twenty years and for the past thirteen years has worked with children with severe learning difficulties. He is the author of What She Saw, which was longlisted for a CWA Gold Dagger.
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First published in the UK in 2018 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Mark Roberts, 2018
The moral right of Mark Roberts to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781786695093
ISBN (ANZTPB): 9781786695109
ISBN (E): 9781786695086
Author photo: Frank Rooney
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