‘Right.’
‘I need you to come and get me.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Philip,’ she said, tenderly or was it wheedlingly, ‘I can’t cycle back.’
‘Get a taxi.’
‘I could try to get a taxi,’ she said, rebuffed. ‘I don’t know how long it’ll take getting here. And if it does get here, I shouldn’t think it’ll take my bike.’ Her voice was rising: ‘I would have thought . . .’
‘I can’t drive,’ he said. ‘I’ve had too much to drink.’ Although in fact by now he had probably metabolised enough to be OK.
‘Oh,’ she said. And then: ‘Can’t have that. Can’t have nice Dr Newell taking a risk.’
‘I can’t,’ he said, ‘do it.’
Then he said: ‘Have you rung the police? . . . The police need to know that you have found Ash’s boat and that Albert’s not there. And then’ – he said – ‘maybe they’ll be able to take you back.’
‘You think,’ she said coldly.
‘Janet,’ he said. ‘I am your doctor. If there’s anything medical you need from me, then do by all means call.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ she said.
He said: ‘I’m going to put the phone down now.’
She said nothing.
He moved the phone away from his ear and pressed End Call.
He put the phone down on the shiny pine table.
He was sitting hunched forward with his forearms resting along the top of his thighs.
His lowered head was twitching.
His upper body, which was leaning forward, was nudging up a little, and down a little; up a little, and down.
There was a large sticking-plaster stuck across the front of his brain.
He levered his upper body straight and got up and went round to the kitchen surface where there was a bottle of whisky. He pulled out the cork and poured a tumblerfull of whisky and raised it to his mouth and drank; the liquid blocked his throat and he gulped it; it blocked his throat and he gulped it until he was choking on the scratchy liquid and stopped and retched. Then he raised the glass again and sipped a little more.
Now it was true. Now it was completely fucking true.
Then he sat sideways on a kitchen chair with one arm resting on its back and the other arm resting on the table.
Sue stirred, pulling her sheet tight around her as a laugh echoed up from the towpath below.
Philip heard again Janet saying ‘can’t have nice Dr Newell taking a risk.’ Then he saw her face as she said ‘we never been to no hospital’; and then he heard himself exclaiming ‘but this is blackmail!’
Janet spat on the ground. Philip heard the labial percussion as the slithery glob of saliva left her mouth and tumbled in slow motion through the air, stretching and wobbling and twisting, until splat it hit the pavement and adhered to it, with only a pearl-like droplet, two pearl-like droplets arcing up away from the impact and landing elsewhere in their turn.
Janet took little Albert’s hand and the two of them walked away from him and she looked back over her shoulder at him as though he were a threat.
Sue’s legs stretched and her head pushed deeper into the cushion.
Philip lifted his head as a goods train started its long rumble along the edge of Eden Grove. Space came into his mind; a landscape came into his mind. He saw the river winding through an empty landscape with far in the distance a barge upon it like a toothpick. He saw the raised path through Kidney Meadow that must surely once have been the embankment of a railway. He saw the place of giant’s bones where Ash had parked his boat; and he saw the great trees black against the cold late-winter sky. High up he saw the little silhouette of Albert, a twig among their enormous suppliant arms.
As Sue corkscrewed round so that her nose was nuzzling into the cushion, Philip was shutting the front door. He went to his car which was beside the little rowan tree in a tube and made the tailgate swing up. Yes, there was a torch.
And then he was off, along the illuminated, empty streets, his arms swinging, and legs swinging, his trapezius and deltoid and triceps and biceps and sartorius and rectus fermoris and so many other muscles all collaborating to move him smoothly along Parnassus and through Elysium and out along Helium where ornamental planting at the edges of the road served also as a traffic-calming measure. He branched right onto a thin, meandering, nubbly path that led down into the dark. On either side, conglomerates of vegetation: blackberry and hawthorn and nettle and burnet saxifrage and corn buttercups all indiscriminate and entangled, even the gaudy gladiolus unnoticed in the night. Philip flinched at the crackling of something, the scrunching of something; but there are no pumas in England so only a hedgehog maybe or maybe a little squirrel its jaws stretching around . . . um, maybe the little tart beginnings of an apple until, kerrunch, the bite went through the skin.
But now he has gone through the low arch under the railway and is rising a little up onto the grassy plain where meadowsweet and clover and sorrel and fox-tail and mouse-ear and all the rest are blurry and pale beneath the invisible air which is in turn surmounted by the white diffusion filter of the cloud-filled sky. To the left, the embankment angles across. To the right, in the distance, little black broccoli-heads of trees mark the river. He wades through the amalgam of long grass and flowers towards the embankment. Then he is upon it walking faster. The ground keeps on turning out to be higher than it seems to be so each foot meets it with a jolt. He is over the echoing bridge. He is along the river now, among trees. The trees are black, really like cut-outs of nothingness until you focus your eyes upon them when dapple-patterns of leaves appear like down. Between the slender trunks of little trees the path winds on.
Now to the left are thistle and elder and blackberry, from which Philip cannot see that the petals have almost all dropped, leaving fluffy brush-heads on the thistles, and orreries of little green balls on the elder and, on the blackberry, multiple ovaries that have begun to swell, still green and hard but soon to soften and blush.
Now to the right the river leads on through the dark, a path of light surprisingly much brighter than the hazy sky.
A felled trunk lies along the land: is that the one?
No, maybe not because there is another over there and then another.
Remember!
The thing to do will be to go past and then turn back and approach from the right direction and then it will be easier to know.
Philip does. Walks past, rotates, advances slowly, scanning the forms of standing trees and fallen trunks.
This one!
His torch is in his hand and he switches it on and rakes it along the bottom where he had remembered there were half-hidden sandy pits and burrows. He is down on his knees pointing his torch into a tunnel. Only black. Black thickened with floating dust which gathers the light of his torch and blocks it back towards him.
No. But then the other logs may be the same.
He searches them too.
No.
But maybe Albert is so little or can make himself so little that . . . ?
He goes back and kneels and looks again into the tunnel: no.
Obviously there is no point calling out.
He calls out: ‘Albert!’
He calls out again searchingly, reassuringly: ‘Albert!’
He points his torch up into the tree. The beam bleaches the leaves which alternate grey and paler grey.
There is the rope dangling. Surely not?
He edges around the base of the tree angling the beam up as best he can between the thick forks and branches. He takes two steps back and does the same again; and two steps back and does the same again.
Well, there are places the beam has not probed. There are intractable patches of black.
He stretches out and pulls on the rope. Strong.
But it would be crazy for him to try to climb this tree in this darkness, on the millimetrically tiny chance that . . .
He pulls on the rope again, lifts a foot, braces it agai
nst the trunk.
Obviously the sensible thing . . . He turns his eyes to the sky which is bright but that must be with a mixture of the moon behind the clouds and reflected light from the town. He gets out his phone to see the time: 02.47.
Still, obviously the sensible thing is to wait until dawn which must be hardly even an hour away.
He heard: ‘can’t have nice Dr Newell taking a risk.’
Fuck you! Fuck fuck fuck fuck you!
He throws the rope against the trunk and stumbles backwards from the force of the exertion.
He turns and takes a few steps down towards the river. His feet are on gravel. He looks to the right. Black overhanging bushes cast a deeper blackness on the water beneath. He looks to the left. That comparatively narrow whitened branch reaches out into the water really like a hairless forearm and a thumb.
Behind him is a cut-off stump. Head-height and the same distance wide. Well, if that is a forearm then this is an ankle. He felt sick with disappointment, pointlessness. Stupid, stupid stupid, what was he thinking?
He sat down, his back against the barkless wood, his legs stretched out. He looks out across the river, out across the meadow on the other side. It as though the dark brush-stroke of the land is hovering between the brightness of the water and the paleness of the sky.
So wait.
Wait.
And tomorrow he just needed to get up in time and set the camera and if he dozed off after that it would be OK.
The sky was so strangely white.
His mind faded and then, bang! – his head had fallen back and knocked against the stump. His occipital bone vibrated with a frisson of slight pain.
Knocked.
But of course what happened with these stumps was that the centre rotted. Like bones, like marrow, like when you scraped out the marrow.
In which case . . .
He stood.
He looked.
He couldn’t bloody see over the edge.
So he is going to have to . . .
He steps back, throws himself forward, jumps!
The edge of the stump is painfully against his tummy and he is swinging his legs round and up and over. He is sitting. He finds his torch and points it down inside and switches it on:
There is the boy curled up! There is the boy like a baby.
Philip switches the torch off.
He switches it on again.
He points it at the boy’s little white face with its snub nose.
The closed eyelashes cast tiny shadows.
Then they stir.
And then the eyes open and the little forearm is brought across the eyes and the face is looking up at him, blinking; and Philip moves the beam away.
He says: ‘Hello Albert.’
He says: ‘It’s me, Dr Newell.’ He turns the torch beam into his own face, creases his eyes against it. ‘Philip, call me Philip.’ Then he tries to place the torch where it will light up both of them.
The boy turns his head back and lays it down as though he wants to sleep again. He is curled up again among soft rotting bits of wood and also there is fungus, and a couple of crisp packets, and a squashed tin can.
‘Albert, your mum’s been looking for you, we’ve all been looking for you.’
No reaction from the boy.
‘Albert.’
And again: ‘Albert will you listen to me?’
Obviously what he should do is call the mother. But Philip does not want to call the mother. Why does he not want to call the mother? Because he does not want to appear this ineffective in her eyes, because he does not want to have to say: there is your child, I cannot get him out of there, can you?
Because what he wants to say is: no, I can find the child you lost and bring him back, I know how to handle Albert. He likes me.
Or anyway, also, the simple fact is it would be better if he, Dr Philip Newell, could think of a way of getting Albert out and getting him back home now because it would be quicker and the boy, who is so thin, might be cold, it must be damp down there among the rotting stuff.
And if he rang Janet now the boy would hear him and that would be it: if Albert knew his mother was coming he would stay there until she came; there would be no chance at all of budging him until she came.
‘It’s beautiful out here, isn’t it,’ he said, trying a different line. ‘It’s a really special place. I can’t believe’ – he carried on – ‘you can climb that enormous tree.’
Albert looked up.
Albert said: ‘It’s a Railway Poplar. Railway Poplars can grow up to a hundred feet tall! I can get up it because of the bark, I can get my fingers into it, into the cracks. My fingers are really strong!’
‘That’s amazing. Do you know a lot about trees?’
Albert had lifted his head and his shoulders now, his hand was pushed down into the woody mush and his arm was buttressing his upper body.
‘I know the difference between poplars. My dad taught me. He took me on a trip to see a Black Poplar so I could see the difference. The Railway Poplar is a hybrid.’
‘Your dad,’ said Philip, risking it, ‘is a wonderful man.’
Albert was now sitting with his knees up in front of his chest and his arms tight around them. His chin was resting on his knees and his little shoulderblades stuck out at the back.
What Philip wanted to do was veil the world with light. Albert was sitting there hunched as if he were about to be hit. And what Philip wanted to do was soften the world. So that then maybe Albert would come out into it.
‘Your dad,’ he said, ‘loves you more than anyone. And he loves the world. And when he goes off, like he has done now, it is to try to make the world a better place. And do you know why he does that? So it can be a better place for you to live in when you grow up.’
No reaction from Albert but maybe the words are sinking in?
‘And your mum loves you more than anyone. Do you know,’ Philip said, ‘this evening she got on her bike and chased along the river, all the way along until she caught up with your dad in his boat, because she thought you might be there.’
‘I wanted to be,’ said Albert. ‘But when I got here he was gone!’
‘He’ll come back. Lots of dads have to go off to work. Lots of mums do too. But they come back. Your dad will come back.’
There was no response to that.
‘Do you know,’ said Philip: ‘I don’t know how you got down there. I don’t think I could.’
‘It’s easy. You jump’ – came the contemptuous reply.
‘And if I could get down there I certainly wouldn’t be able to get up again. Do you think you can?’
‘Course.’
‘Really?’
‘Course.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Course I’m sure.’
‘How?’
‘Like this!’
It had worked. Albert was sitting on the stump beside him. The two of them were sitting side by side on the tree’s edge, where there was no longer any bark, and their feet were dangling down into where there was no longer any heartwood. Albert’s pin-like legs and Philip’s adult ones.
‘I bet you don’t know the way home from here,’ Philip said. ‘I bet you . . . do you know what I bet you? – I bet you five pounds.’
‘Alright.’
The boy looked down into the pit of the tree for a moment and then he had swung his legs over and sprung to the ground and was scampering along. He shouted: ‘Come on then!’
So the two of them went along, Albert leading and Philip working to keep up. Now they were at the end of the big trees, at the end of the railway poplars, and going in among the scrubby elder and brambles and thistles. Philip pulled out his phone and pressed Janet Stone.
‘Hello doctor,’ she answered acidly.
‘I’ve found Albert. He’s fine.’
A high-pitched sound came through the phone, a shriek or mew.
‘He was in Kidney Meadow. By the river. We are walking back toget
her now through the Meadow towards the gate by The Willows.’
‘You’ve found him? I’ll come. I’ll meet you there. I’ll come.’ And she was gone.
The little trees with slender trunks.
The rattly bridge.
The causeway.
The causeway stretched out straight before them. It was lighter than the land around. Flints glittered in it. And there at the end of it, under the brightening sky, with the orangey, blurry lights of the town behind, was a figure standing. No, walking towards them. It looked squat among the immensity all around. Albert was scampering faster; and when he saw it was his mother, really was his mother, he was running. The little arms scurried and the little legs scurried and his thin form moved smoothly away from Dr Newell, quite slowly, it seemed, though Albert was running his fastest. And then his little form and the squat figure of Janet Stone became one.
When Philip caught up, Janet Stone said:
‘Thanks.’ She held out her hand. Her face was reserved, blunt. Anything could break on it and leave it unharmed.
‘My pleasure,’ he said. His eyes moved over her face, noticing her cheekbones, her eyebrows, her skin which was bright white, her eyes which were looking up at his.
They turned and the three of them walked along for a bit. Once they got to the road, Philip kept left, the side where the entrance to The Willows was, while Janet and Albert went over on to the pavement on the right. So for a minute or two they were moving along on opposite sides of the road. Then Philip turned; and the others kept on; and Philip walked back down Helium and through Elysium and along Parnassus back to Eden Grove. He opened the door and climbed the stairs and took his clothes off and slipped into bed. He checked the alarm. His hard, tender head sank into the soft pillow. Now at the front of his brain there was a lump of plaster of Paris. He had taken ibuprofen but it was still sore. He had drunk water but still his tongue was polystyrene. There was a fizzing in his arms and legs around the muscles: ions dissipating, presumably; and the tissue charging up again with glucose and fat and creatine phosphate. He tried to quieten this interference from his body. In his mind were the shades and forms of Kidney Meadow, the light-diffusion sky, the floating land. The curled-up child in the empty heart of the tree.
The World Was All Before Them Page 25