Natural Flights of the Human Mind

by Clare Morrall

  ‘What does that mean? Is she ill?’

  ‘You know she is.’

  ‘She’s always ill. Why should we take this one more seriously?’

  He sounds young, vulnerable, worried. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure. But she does seem different…’

  Doody is astonished. It has never occurred to her that her mother might be genuinely ill. Logically, it’s not impossible. Some of the symptoms might be real ones. Maybe her doctor is intelligent after all, able to tell the difference. ‘But she didn’t say anything to me.’ At least, she did. But, then, she always does. She was the same as usual.

  ‘Well, she wouldn’t, would she, because you wouldn’t believe her?’

  Doody needs to think about this. ‘I have to go, Jonathan. I have an appointment. I’ll speak to you later.’

  She should have told him about the Tiger Moth. He paid for the repairs, and has a right to know it’s finished. But he must know already. He doesn’t need her to tell him. They’ll have sent him the bill.

  Straker and Doody are examining the windows again. They’re standing with their backs to the sea and the lighthouse, looking up at the upstairs front windows, which are reflecting the setting sun. They look magnificent, pools of limitless colour, red, fiery, enormous. But even as Doody looks at them, she’s conscious of Straker beside her, aware that she feels safer with him there. With some shock she realises that she missed him. She has never missed anyone before in her entire life.

  Except Harry.

  How could she miss Harry, when she didn’t even know who he was? Did she miss him coming home, the meals eaten together, the presence of someone else in the flat? She can’t remember. She can’t recall a similar feeling to the one she’s experiencing now, a warmth, a comfortable feeling of being in someone else’s company. Why she should experience this with Straker is a complete mystery. It’s not as if he says very much.

  ‘Stimulating conversation isn’t exactly your strong point, is it?’

  He says nothing for a while. ‘You think I should talk more?’

  ‘No, of course not. Well—yes, maybe.’

  ‘I see,’ he says, and falls back into silence.

  Doody wonders if she would miss Mandles if she stopped writing about him. He’s still stuck there in that aeroplane, in imminent danger of being thrown out, and every time she tries to solve the problem, her mind drifts away from it. She’s no longer sure that she wants to save him.

  The windows will have to be replaced. They have decided this together, and Straker suggests they do it now, before winter sets in. ‘I know about winter storms,’ he says. ‘You’ll really suffer with frames like that. The wind’ll come whistling through, then the rain, then the ice, and before you know where you are, you’ll be freezing to death.’

  ‘How do you keep warm in the lighthouse?’

  ‘The windows are in better condition.’

  ‘I thought it was falling apart.’

  He shrugs. ‘Yes. Well—I’m used to it.’

  ‘So am I.’ Not strictly true. There was central heating in the caretaker’s cottage. Not very efficient central heating, but it was heating of a sort. She’s not experienced real cold since the days with her mother and Jonathan in the council house after her father had died. That was cold.

  ‘I could pay,’ says Straker.

  ‘What with?’ she says.

  ‘I have an allowance. From my father. I don’t use it all. Most of it sits in the bank, waiting to do something useful.’

  ‘Father? It’s all revelations today. I didn’t know you had a father. What’s he got to do with all this? Do you ever see him?’

  Infuriatingly, he stands next to her, looking up at the windows, and says absolutely nothing.

  Doody’s mobile rings. She rummages around in her bag, pulls it out and turns it on.

  ‘Mrs Imogen Doody?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is Birmingham Police, Sergeant Bill Waitley.’

  ‘Yes?’ Doody has contacted the police herself. She knows that if she waits for Stella to pass on any news, she could wait for ever. She’s not convinced that Stella even went to the police station.

  ‘None of the unidentified bodies from the train crash was Harry Doody.’

  ‘What?’

  He speaks more slowly. ‘None of the unidentified bodies from the train crash was Harry Doody.’

  Doody tries to absorb this. She had become almost certain that he was on the train, that this was the rational explanation she’d been expecting for twenty-five years. ‘But he must be.’

  ‘I’m sorry. We’ve done tests on various items from Harry Doody’s home, and they don’t match up.’

  So Stella had contacted them after all. She would be the best person to provide DNA samples, with none of Harry’s belongings touched since he disappeared, nothing cleaned. They must have done a DNA test of Stella herself as well. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Absolutely positive. Mrs Doody supplied us with plenty of items from his bedroom and there can be no doubt whatsoever.’

  ‘I see.’

  She turns off the phone and stands looking at it. Straker doesn’t say anything. She keeps thinking about Harry leaving her. He knew what he was doing. It wasn’t a mistake.

  ‘He wasn’t on the train,’ she says to Straker.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Harry.’

  ‘Great,’ he says. He sounds unusually cheerful. ‘Then I didn’t kill him.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So he must be still alive.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You don’t sound pleased.’

  She’s not. It shouldn’t matter to her now if he’s alive or dead. Their marriage had never been what she thought it was. He means nothing to her. He never did. And yet—

  Straker seems very close. She can hear his breathing right by her ear. She should move away, because she dislikes being so close to people, but she doesn’t.

  ‘So if he didn’t die in the train crash, then he knew exactly what he was doing. He didn’t come back because he didn’t want to.’

  ‘He might have had another accident.’

  ‘No. He was running away from me. He hated me.’

  There are tears running down her cheeks, pouring out, cascading over her face. She hasn’t cried for Harry for years and years. She thought she had finally reached the stage where she didn’t mind, that it was all a childish dream and she had never really cared for him at all. She tries to wipe the tears away with her hands, but they keep coming.

  Straker stands next to her, not moving, but solid and permanent. Like a lamp-post.

  Chapter 26

  25 September 2004

  8 a.m.

  It’s a fine, sunny day, the sky pale blue and hollow, with tiny wisps of cloud drifting lazily up from the horizon. A jumbo jet climbs effortlessly upwards, leaving a trail of white behind it, which breaks up easily into streaks of pretend clouds.

  Carmen Halliwell stands at the door of the coach. She’s tall and thin, the bones of her face standing out sharply, accentuating the look of neglect that she likes. Her hair is dyed a solid black and cut very short, with tufts sticking up on top. She spends hours in front of a mirror every day, cultivating this look of deliberate dishevelment. She’s dressed completely in black, despite the hot day, in a long-sleeved T-shirt and a skirt down to the ground. A striped rucksack sits at her feet, containing all her papers.

  She ticks her list as people appear, and provides each with a name badge. She knows the history of everyone, but can’t recognise them until they give their names.

  A very tall young man, slightly droopy, with his hands hanging loosely at his side, approaches her. He gives the impression of great strength, harnessed and controlled. He has hazel eyes and a pony-tail.

  He grins at Carmen. ‘Hi,’ he says. ‘James Taverner. Grandson of Maggie.’

  This could be my Robbie, thinks Carmen. A bit younger than her son would have been, but her insides still flutter at his at
tractiveness.

  ‘I just thought I’d come along for the ride,’ he says. ‘Out of curiosity.’

  Mrs Mehta, mother of Sangita. She is elderly and very small, with round shoulders, her hair grey and thick. She’s wearing a bright red sari and dangling gold earrings, which end in large, pear-shaped diamonds. They look very expensive. She’s dressed up, special, ready for an important event.

  ‘I don’t really expect anything,’ she says, ‘but I want to see him, know how he feels, isn’t it?’

  Jack Tilly, father of Fliss. He’s short, with wisps of white hair on the edges of his largely bald head. He insists on shaking hands with Carmen, and his grip is strong and authoritative. He looks unreliable, slightly threatening, although she can’t work out why.

  ‘He’s guilty,’ he says, in a low voice, leaning close to her face. ‘That’s what an open verdict means. They know he did it, but couldn’t prove it.’

  ‘I know,’ says Carmen, backing away from him, uncomfortable with his familiarity.

  She watches them all boarding the coach and feels the familiar anger inside her. It’s still there, burning hot, but cleverly concealed, brought lovingly to maturity, ready for this day. The most important day for a quarter of a century. All that wasted effort trying to find him in the early years. The frustration of trying to trace someone who has completely disappeared. Then the letter through the post and the realisation of who the writer was. She can still taste the triumph she felt when she was writing to him and suddenly made the connection.

  She tries to see Robbie in the moment of clarity that she can usually reproduce in her mind—on the bouncy castle, suspended in mid-air, his hair spiking upwards as he descends, a look of pure joy on his face as he smiles at her. But today the image is stubbornly absent and she can only find a blank space where she expects him to be. She knows there’s something missing inside her, a hole that has grown bigger and bigger over the years, and the only thing that can fill it is this anger, this raw, incandescent rage that has been building up its temperature for so long—a furnace, white-hot, powerful enough to melt iron.

  10 a.m.

  Straker and Doody stand in the office of the window-manufacturer and look through their brochures.

  ‘UPVC windows are best,’ says the sales rep. He’s a very young man, the son of the owner, he tells them, but Doody thinks he doesn’t look old enough to be working. It’s probably just a Saturday job—earning his pocket money.

  ‘They’re plastic,’ she says.

  He smiles at her and looks even younger. He’s called Edward, and has acne on his chin. ‘Everyone says that at first,’ he says, ‘but have you looked round the village? At least fifty per cent of the cottages have UPVC now. They look good and they’re very low maintenance—no painting. They don’t rot, you can have them in any shape and design you like, and they’re no more expensive than any other material. You can have aluminium, of course, if you prefer, or seasoned wood, but it’ll cost you more.’

  ‘I suppose you get more commission if we have plastic?’

  He smiles again, not in the least offended, and Doody’s slightly annoyed about this. She would feel better if he stopped being so nice. People are less slippery if you know you can annoy them. ‘What do you think?’ she asks Straker.

  There’s a long silence. He’s not going to say anything, she thinks in a sudden panic. Finally, he opens his mouth. ‘The lighthouse windows are metal,’ he says.

  Edward looks interested. ‘Are you from the lighthouse?’

  Straker nods.

  ‘You live there?’

  He nods again.

  Edward’s enthusiasm is real. ‘You must be Mr Straker. I should have realised. I’d love to live in a lighthouse. My boyhood dream, I suppose.’

  But he’s still only a boy.

  ‘I’ve heard it’s going to fall down one of these days. The cliffs are crumbling, aren’t they?’

  ‘Maybe,’ says Straker.

  Doody is proud to be acquainted with a lighthouse-dweller. She wants Edward to know that she’s been there and he hasn’t. ‘The doors don’t fit any more, and it creaks.’

  ‘Cool,’ says Edward.

  ‘I don’t think metal windows are a good idea,’ says Straker.

  ‘Why not?’ says Doody.

  ‘They’re cold. You get ice inside.’

  She has a sudden bleak memory of their council house. She sees the ice in great thick layers over the metal frames, hard, shiny, impossible to remove, then the pools of water that dripped off the windowsills when the sun shone. ‘Not metal, then,’ she says, with relief.

  ‘The question is—’ says Straker, and stops. They wait for the question, and it seems to take for ever. ‘Is wood likely to last?’

  Edward is immediately enthusiastic. ‘Yes, if you have seasoned wood, although I don’t think it’s as good as it was years ago. There are houses in the village with windows that date back one or even two centuries. Solid oak, seasoned for years before it was used. Or mahogany—real hardwood—but you can’t get it now. Sustainable forests are the new way forward. They don’t make window-frames like that any more. I shouldn’t tell you this, really, but I think it’s best to be honest.’

  His father comes down the stairs with two mugs of tea, and hands one to Edward. ‘How are we doing?’ he says. ‘Edward looking after you all right?’

  Doody doesn’t want him to know that she likes Edward, so she nods briefly and turns to Straker. ‘You decide,’ she says. ‘You’re paying.’

  The father turns immediately to Straker. ‘Go for the UPVC,’ he says. ‘You won’t regret it.’

  ‘What windows do you have in your own home?’ asks Doody.

  ‘UPVC,’ they say promptly, almost in unison.

  ‘You’ve been asked that question before,’ she says, and they smile together—the same smile, the same creases round the mouth.

  ‘OK,’ says Straker. ‘We’ll think about the plastic. But we’ll have to have prices.’

  So he doesn’t want to pay after all. It might be too much. He’s just been pretending. ‘Yes,’ says Doody. ‘The price is important.’

  ‘We’ll have to come out to the cottage,’ says Edward. ‘Measure up and then give you a quote.’

  ‘OK,’ says Straker.

  Doody is annoyed that he hasn’t checked with her. Maybe she doesn’t want them in her house, looking at her things, being nosy. ‘Can’t we give you the measurements?’

  The father shakes his head. ‘We need to do it ourselves. If there are any mistakes, we accept full responsibility.’

  ‘What about the fitting?’ says Straker.

  ‘We’ll quote you for that.’

  ‘I mean, can we buy the windows, then fit them ourselves?’

  Edward and his father look at each other. They’re thinking, Pair of idiots here. Wasting our time.

  Edward starts to explain in a slow, patient voice: ‘It’s not really in your interest to fit them yourselves because we couldn’t guarantee them. You get a much better deal if we do it.’

  Why are they being so unhelpful? Does this mean that they’re dishonest? Doody looks at Straker, who seems to be thinking the same thing.

  Straker nods. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘Come and give us a quote.’

  If Doody was paying, she could walk out of the shop now and go elsewhere. She’s not used to someone else making decisions. ‘We’ll think about it when we’ve got a quote,’ she says.

  They nod and smile. They know there aren’t any other window suppliers for miles around. ‘Come on,’ she says to Straker. ‘Let’s go.’

  Edward gets out his diary. ‘You’ll have to give me the address,’ he says, still smiling, apparently unaware of her change in mood. ‘Then we need to fix up a date.’

  10.30 a.m.

  The coach stops at a service station, and everyone gets off to stretch their legs.

  A young man approaches Carmen, taller than her, with blond hair cut very short, almost a crew-cut, and moulded to his
head.

  ‘Jeremy Ainsworth,’ he says, as she looks down at his name badge. ‘Grandson of Jerry and Anne Ainsworth. I was named after my grandfather.’

  He’s very good-looking, like James Taverner, but not as old. Maybe all young men are good-looking, she thinks. Especially if you once had a son yourself. ‘You can’t be old enough to remember,’ she says.

  ‘I’m twenty-five. It’s my birthday today.’

  ‘You were born on the same day as the crash?’

  ‘My grandparents had come down for the day to see me. If they’d waited a day, they’d still be alive.’

  ‘But how did they manage that? To come on the same day?’

  ‘I was born at one minute past midnight.’

  She studies his face, trying to read in it some evidence of his mistake, his badly timed birth. She can’t find anything. ‘I’m glad you decided to come.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you started the website and organised the trip. My father was never the same after the crash, according to my mother—distant and uninterested in us, and she says he wasn’t like that before. I think he blamed me. If I hadn’t been born, his parents wouldn’t have been on the train and they’d still be alive.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘No, but people don’t always think logically, do they?’

  Carmen is saddened by him. He seems too young to have such profound thoughts. As he walks away, his long legs striding out with authority, she looks inside herself again, to reassure herself that the flame of anger is still alive. Small, but definitely there, flickering with impatience, poised, waiting for its moment.

  Kieran Fisher, son of Alan Fisher, takes Jeremy’s place. He’s a short, hunched man in glasses, who has so far managed to lose his glasses on the coach, spill a flask of coffee and fall down the steps when they arrived here. His brother, Stuart, is also on the coach, but they sat at opposite ends, and don’t seem to have spoken to each other.

  He leans forward, his face too close to hers, and she backs away in alarm. ‘What if he’s not there?’