'No you didn't. If you'd waited I would have driven you home. Where did you spend the night?'
I moved past her, confusion and annoyance causing a headache to start pulsing just behind my eyes. I snatched up my pills from the bedside table and poured some water. I took them all at once and we stared at each other while I worked them down my throat.
'I was asking the questions,' I said. 'Now you tell me where you'd gone. I couldn't find you anywhere.'
'I was at Charlie's fish hut,' she said.
'Doing what? Anyway, I didn't see you there.'
'Did you knock? Did you go in?'
I shook my head. 'It was quiet as the grave. There were no lights on anywhere.'
'What can I say? I was in Charlie's fish hut. I was checking up on him, taking him some food.'
'But he lives in Breydon.' This was getting more and more perplexing. I felt like an alien being introduced to complex rituals. I didn't understand.
'There was a last-minute charter, a firm of accountants from London booked a fishing trip. They wanted to push off at first light and Charlie needed to prepare. He'd been rushed off his feet all day. He's still out there now, and will be till dusk. Would have appreciated some help if you hadn't gone haring off across the county.'
I had no comeback. I hadn't knocked, but there had been no sounds coming from the fish hut. Yet Ruth's car was there. What more proof did she need? Maybe they were both asleep, Ruth choosing not to get back into the car and risk waking me by starting the engine. I don't know. It seemed, suddenly, of no importance whatsoever. I felt foolish.
'Now you,' she said. 'Where did you run off to? It'll be the ward again for you if you don't slow down.'
Amy's name was on my lips, but at the last moment I chose not to tell Ruth about her. I didn't want to tell her I'd been to the B&B either. I don't know why. It seemed crucial I keep some secrets for myself.
'The café on the pier. The back window was loose. I climbed in and went to sleep on one of the banquettes.'
'You did what? You couldn't climb a pebble with a set of portable steps, never mind hoist yourself through the café windows.'
'It's amazing, the lengths you'll go to, when you're desperate.'
She gazed at me levelly and seemed on the verge of saying something. But then she softened, the nurse face gone, the arms unfolded.
'You look like the shitty sheets we take off the beds,' she said.
'That good, hey?'
'Bath. Pyjamas. Sleep. I'll bring you something to eat.'
I did as I was told. There were no little adventures. No footsteps outside the bathroom window. No voices. No box on the doorstep, no shattered seagull spreading its wings, all the better to reveal its magisterial injuries. By the time I was in bed I couldn't work out how I'd got there. I seemed to be moving much more easily these days. Only the previous week I'd needed assistance to get in or out of the bath, and into or out of my clothes, but I was managing okay now. Perhaps it was because I was overdoing things. My muscles were getting a workout, being stretched and flexed so much that everything attached to them had no choice but to follow suit. There were the inevitable aches and pains, the cricked neck, the jarred back, but things were getting better. This rushing to be mobile again might mean that somewhere down the line there would be cataclysmic payback, but I couldn't take a retrograde step now. There was always the chance that I was a good healer, a fast healer, and that I was merely ahead of what the doctors predicted.
I closed my eyes and listened for the pain. It was all over me, dulled by analgesics, like concentric circles tattooed deep into my flesh. My skeleton shook and sat up, grinned down at me and said: 'If I had some eyelids I'd give you a wink, old friend.'
I opened my eyes and five hours had gone by. A tray next to the bed contained a plate with cold ham, cheese, a chicken leg, a bottle of water. There was a note. Eat this when you wake up. I'll be in my room if you need company. Rx
I managed to eat some of it. Your stomach shrinks when you're in a coma. Liquid feeds just don't keep your gut at the shape at which it's happiest. And it's got other things on its mind, like slowly consuming you, from the inside out. More IV juice? No thanks, I'll tuck into some of this slow-cooked belly of Paul.
The meal re-energised me to some degree, but now I really fancied a drink before I went to the reading room. I don't know why. I didn't want any nasty shocks and I thought the best way to combat them was to be slightly numb. The 22 pills a day I was popping just didn't seem to be enough. The synthetic morphine when mixed with a whisky and beer chaser would soften the edges of whatever horrors lurked in the back of the museum. Or maybe I was being paranoid and all I'd find would be a few twee letters home from sailors missing Mum.
I went to The Fluke, ordered my drinks and sat in the window seat. Ruth would have heard me moving about - unless she was asleep - and might be wondering why I hadn't gone to see her. I got the feeling she wanted to talk. I wasn't all that sure I wanted to any more.
No boxes for three days now. I didn't miss the grim little job of burning them, but I was concerned about the timing. Why now? I couldn't shake the suspicion that the boxes, and what they contained, were clues, like the strange items I'd found on the beach, or the way the seagulls all stood facing in the same direction. Rationalising it, I might have pointed out that the seagulls were merely facing into the wind, the better for taking off, but the fact was there was no wind that day. There was an explanation for everything, but it did not satisfy. Nothing would stick.
I swallowed the whisky - a harsh, cheap blend - and washed away the taste with a swig of beer. I felt a rush of alcohol meet the prescription drugs in my head and everything went warm and fuzzy. I gazed around me at my fellow boozers and felt a strong wave of affection for them all.
For Ruth too, and I was tempted to finish my drink and go to her, fix the tension that had developed between us. But I couldn't, not now that I had booked my trip to Amsterdam and not let her know about it. She was patently appalled by what she saw as a futile search that was going on largely behind her back. How could I account for my movements when she always presented a negative face? I knew, and appreciated, that she felt responsible for me and was looking out for me with a tenderness I frankly did not deserve, but I couldn't understand how she could not grasp - refused to grasp, it seemed - my need to discover the truth.
Don't believe the truth.
Where did that come from? I stared into my beer as if there might be an answer forthcoming in the pattern of bubbles. A female voice, something I'd overheard somewhere, once upon a time. I'd invested it with an adornment all my own, given the words Tamara's voice for some reason. Now I remembered: one of the passers-by on Surt Road, chatting outside my open bathroom window while I soaked. Footsteps, snatches of dialogue. Why remember that particular snippet? Why remember anything? The coma part of my head, still coming back, ejecting nonsense. The drugs unlocking strange little chambers of thought. The beer talking.
My drink finished, I resisted the temptation to have another, and hauled myself to my feet.
Jake was standing outside the pub as if he'd known I would be emerging from it at that moment. He was carrying a white plastic bag and my heart sank, but he didn't try to hand it over to me, or beg me to get rid of its contents. It turned out to be a packed lunch. I hoped it contained something with raw onions, but I guessed it didn't. He shared his odours around like the open throat of a binman's lorry.
'You work here?' I asked.
He nodded. 'Work here. And harbour. Sell fish. Got hut.'
'Doesn't everyone?'
He shrugged and led me around to the front of the museum and, checking both ways that the coast was clear, unlocked the door and shooed me inside.
'That was a bit Smiley's People, wasn't it?' I asked.
'Shouldn't open,' he said. 'Bit naughty.'
'Why are you doing this?'
He gazed up at me shyly while he knelt to bolt the door shut. 'Helped us. Burned shit.'
'Abusive parents. Not happy. Long time. Prison Dad. Mum died. Dad wrote. And wrote. And wrote. Thousand letters. Kept all. Never read. Couldn't chuck. Fucking bastard. Dead now. Burn them. Burn all. Never read. Wouldn't read. No guts. No willpower. Thanks mate. Thanks tons.'
'Don't mention it,' I said. I thought he had an accent at first, maybe something Baltic, but it was a combination of shyness and a breathing difficulty that made him hitch in breath after every couple of words. He'd somehow adapted the way he spoke so that he could get his meaning across in spasmodic phrases. 'Do you live here? In Southwick?'
He shook his head. 'In Breydon. Little house.'
'You know Charlie Finglass?'
'Doesn't everyone?'
He gestured to the back of the museum. We went through. The inner sanctum. Normal punters were only allowed to use the front of the building, where the photographs of heavily bearded men in ganseys and oilskins stared into ancient cameras as though willing their plates to break, and the ships' logs were locked behind glass and left open at a page to show what was little more than a shopping list of supplies taken on board before a voyage. Hardtack. Dried apples. A nanny goat for fresh milk.
He saw my assessment of one of these and frowned, as if he couldn't understand why I was choosing to stay in here when there were obviously greater treasures to enjoy in the forbidden zone. 'Hardtack yum,' he said. 'Flour water. Baked hours. Last years.'
'The cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast,' I said. He laughed and a tension I had not known was there fell away slightly. I was nervous as hell and could not understand why. It must have something to do with the room I was about to be led into, I thought, with Jake all the while scampering ahead of me, pulling curtains or shuttering windows to prevent anybody seeing that a mere civilian was being admitted to the secret chambers. A fusty darkness fell, reminding me of my grandparents' houses: antimacassars and gimcrackery and stale nicotine. Every colour you could think of in the range between café au lait and bitter chocolate. Beige predominating.
'Hot drink? Cold drink?'
'I've just had one.'
'You mind?' he asked, brandishing his thin plastic bag. I saw something that looked like an eye bulging against a bottom corner.
'Not at all.'
We stood awkwardly while he opened the lips of his bag and delved in. I was waiting for a cue, although we were where we had intended to be; a silly British trait. The need for hand-holding at every step. In the end, although he told me to 'go mad', it was the sight of his eating that turned me away.
I couldn't escape the sound nor the smell of it, though. And the image of him wadding his white bread triangles into the corners of his cheeks, like a dentist packing a mouth with cotton wool, would not be dismissed. I didn't know how to proceed. There were ledgers, maybe hundreds of years old, left lying on coffee tables as if they were disposable magazines about celebrity TV stars. Yellowed and curled photographs stacked in a plant pot. Ancient maritime pieces, arcane stuff I couldn't put a name to, worth hundreds if not thousands of pounds, lay about like things discarded in a mechanic's garage.
'Why isn't this in the museum?' I asked, and made the mistake of glancing at him.
He was doing things to a pie that I'd last seen in a porn film as a teenager. He extracted himself from it long enough to spray crumbs at me, along with the words: 'No room. Too dear. Robbers around.'
'And this place is Fort Knox, isn't it?' I said.
He shrugged, rolled his eyes, nodded, went back to noshing his pie.
I flicked through one of the ledgers but it was full of more of the kind of stuff that was on permanent display out front: passenger lists, receipts from ships' suppliers, letters from one captain to another. It was interesting in the way that all old documents, written on stout paper in sepia copperplate, are interesting, but once you've ploughed through three or four pages, you kind of get the gist. I was getting deflated. There was nothing here. No secret stash of mind-blowing material. Nothing that would help me, at least - not that I knew what help I needed, or what I was meant to be looking for.
'Kid stuff,' Jake said.
'What?'
'Kid stuff. Broken chest.'
My mouth was open. I closed it. His mouth was open. He didn't close his. Broken chest? Was he talking about Kieran Love? He let me watch what was rolling around with his tongue and I tried to decipher what he'd said. How could he have known that children were occupying my thoughts of late? Maybe he didn't know, but there was that thing about Nietzsche and the abyss. He obviously walked the dark side of the canal, like me. We understood each other.
He was nodding towards a corner of the room. Every time he did so, titbits fell from the corners of his mouth and a fine dusting of dandruff from his hair.
'Okay,' I said, but could not bring myself to thank him. At the back of the room there was an old chest, a domed trunk, with a broken lock and latches, but otherwise restored. It seemed to have once been covered in leather, but only small sections of it remained. The wood - cherry it looked like - had been hand-sanded. Some of the oak straps had been buckled or snapped and were now fixed, after a fashion, and I thought of poor Kieran's greenstick ribs pulverised over the groyne on the beach. I thought of the tatty cardboard boxes that were brought to me and thought I'd enjoy the job of burning stuff much more if it was transported in handsome containers such as this.
I opened the lid. Inside there were old pieces of paper, many of them fragile and sleeved in protective Mylar. There were pictures drawn by childish hands. Letters. Some of them to parents, some of them to God. All of them were asking for the same thing.
'How old are these?' I asked Jake.
He swallowed. His throat rippled. 'Dates on,' he said. 'Can't remember.'
I checked. Some of them were dated. Letters from the 1800s. Letters from the 1700s. Maybe some that were even older, but the paper was so deteriorated, the ink so faint or illegible that it was difficult to tell.
Dear Father, Please don't let this happen.
Mother, I will miss you so. God's willing, after this you'll be safe.
Help me help me help me help me help me help
Dear God. Almighty God. Tell my family I love them.
'What is this?' I asked, looking up. The light, such as it was, bled around Jake so I could only see him in silhouette. Motes sprang away from him as if the dust was repulsed by his odour. He kept chewing, kept smacking away at his endless lunch. Kept speaking wetly, haltingly, around whatever it was he was consuming as if it was too hot for his mouth.
'Kid stuff,' he said. 'Letters home. Bad place.'
'What place?'
'Can't say. Not child. Not selected.'
'Selected?' One of those long, slow shudders was rolling along my back. Some fiendish knitter was binding the strands of my muscles tighter and tighter with needles like meat-hooks. I was finding it hard to breathe in this room filled with dead things and the smell of Jake, just as I had all those years before as a child in my grandparents' tiny, stifling living room. The black and white television and the assault of furniture polish. I felt the kick of my blackened heart and thought I would throw up. I had to get out, but I had to know what had happened here.
'Mothers' talk. Myths, legends. Maybe true. Maybe not. Foreign lands. Unknowable places.'
'Jake... I don't understand. Tell me straight, would you? Where were these letters from?'
He stopped eating and licked his lips. He tucked his chin in against his chest. His voice and his breathing changed. It was as if he were channelling someone else through him, and in this room, this madness that was flying around us, it would not have surprised me.
'These letters came in on the tide from the children that were taken from our village and those who continue to be taken they wash up on the shore in bottles and the lette
rs sometimes come with other things fingers and blood still wet and teeth and other things I can't bring myself to think about and nobody can do anything about it because nobody knows where they went and every hundred years or so it comes again and the cycle continues and we should be grateful after all that it is but once every century or so now I must ask you to leave.'
His face had turned blacker within the ring of shadow he had created for himself. Now the breath I recognised in him returned, but it was shallower, weaker. He had tired himself out. Were there any healthy souls in this forsaken place?
I put down the letters - I had absolutely no wish to look at any of them again - and slowly stood up, listening to the stirrings in the joints of my back like a technician will listen to the valves in an old radio. I was convinced that I was dead. That I was an impossible memory of myself. The near-miss had been nothing of the sort. The Trip-7 had ploughed through the Jumbo and everyone had died, including me. This was what happened when death arrived. You took what had killed you, or it took you, and you were formed and led and possessed by it for the rest of eternity. My existence was about injury and child-snatchers and fire and a sea that threw up nasty little secrets every so often, like a wolf regurgitating something unholy and indigestible.
'I'm sorry,' I said to Jake, without knowing what I was really apologising for. It was second nature these days, it seemed.
'No hope,' he said, and he was strangled again, a Morse code voice. I didn't know if he was referring to me or the children or the village or himself. All of us, probably.
At the door I paused. Something he'd said.
'Jake. Every hundred years or so, you said. Every hundred years or so it comes again. What is this 'it'? Do you think there's some kind of, I don't know, a cabal that has a grudge against your people? Your village? A blood libel running down the years?'
He was shaking his head.
'It is. The Craw.'
He wouldn't say anything else, no matter how often I asked him to repeat himself or explain himself. It is. The Craw.
I went out looking for children.
Loss of Separation Page 14