The Rye Man

by David Park

  He tried to fix the geography of the line in his head, to remember the direction it had taken them that Sunday morning when they had discovered Maguire’s place. He took it slowly and calmly, working it out step by step, pushing along a straight line in his head which passed close to Maguire’s place and then carried on towards the next town. He remembered the barbed wire fence which had blocked their path and then he knew that the line had to pass somewhere close to the boundary of the McQuarrie farm. He switched off the light and sat in the darkness. The wind rattled across the roof and vibrated loose glass in the windows. He had been wrong about Maguire’s place, wrong about many things. In his hands he felt the softness of the paper drawings. Perhaps he was wrong now. His breath crystallised in the coldness and he pulled the coat tightly about him. Finding her would change everything, scatter every poisonous spore that had settled and festered on his life, make everything well again. He went to the window and peered out into the night. Even with the torch it would be impossible to move along the line in the darkness and he knew he would have to wait until dawn. But he knew, too, he couldn’t go home, could never go home until he had the child in his arms. Locking the door behind him he made his way to the staffroom then switched on the one bar of the electric fire and pulled some of the chairs together. There was a blanket in one of the cupboards where first-aid equipment was stored and he lay down as best he could and pulled the blanket round him. He didn’t try to sleep. If he slept he knew he would dream. Sometimes he slipped into a doze and then his head would jerk forward and he would wake again. Sometimes he imagined he heard children’s voices in far-off corners of the school, the patter of their passing feet in the corridor. The talk he had given on the in-service day swam across his memory like eels, the words sliming and wriggling into constantly changing confusions. Once he glanced at the noticeboard to convince himself that Reynolds’ postcard was no longer there, stuck like a royal seal on the ante-chamber of some sarcophagus.

  The fire glowed red in the darkness but the thin element pushed little heat into the room and he curled his legs towards his chest. He got up to make himself a coffee but the jar had been locked away somewhere and there was only a bowl of brown-stained sugar and the sour, thickening remains of an old carton of milk. He lay down again and pushed the ends of the blanket under the cushions of the chairs. His mouth felt stale. Then he was aware again of his tiredness and he laid his head down and drifted into a broken, splintered sleep.

  It was the cold which woke him and looking at his watch he saw that it was 6 a.m. In about another hour there would be enough light. He stood up and tried to stretch the stiffness out of his legs, then warmed his hands at the fire. He heated the kettle and washed his face, splashing the bleary redness from his eyes and patting the warmth of the water on to the bruise on his cheek. A tiny black crust had formed at the corner of his mouth and he touched it lightly with the tip of his finger. The coldness felt as if it came from his core and he shivered and placed his hands to the fire again. Some of the fluff from the blanket had balled itself on to his coat and he plucked it off as if pulling burrs from a dog. It would be warmer in the car. He switched off the fire and tidied the room, removing all trace of his presence. As he was about to close the door he looked at the blanket, remembered the sheet flapping and thwacking on the line, his father striding towards it, knowing what it was for. He folded it carefully, and opening his coat, pushed it inside his jumper.

  In the foyer dampness had infiltrated further behind the displays, bubbling the pages like blistered paint. More leaves had fallen to the floor. Outside there was another frost, the steps leading from the school slippery under his feet. He sat in the car and turned on the engine and blower and waited. It seemed to take forever and he started to drive before the windscreen had fully cleared, the white cloud of the exhaust spurting upwards in his wake. Empty roads. Church bells still silent. He put the heater on full as the engine warmed and blew gusts of hot air into the car, then changed the focus of its direction at intervals. A yellow council lorry passed him in the opposite direction and he started as it clattered the side of the car with a hail of grit.

  As he met country roads he drove more slowly, knowing that they would be untreated, and as he got closer to his destination he grew more nervous, his imagination generating a clicking freeze-frame of unwanted images. There was a grey half-light and with it funnelling spirals of white mist which snaked up from the earth like tendrils twining round the hedgerows and trees, smothering the edges of the world, absorbing and flattening all definition. It grimed itself like a cat against the windscreen and he flicked the wipers on to intermittent. Then into sudden pockets where the road was clear and untouched, while on either side of the road stretched fields thickened and coarsened by the heavy starch of frost.

  He parked the car in a gateway to a field, paused a moment to check his bearings, then got out and headed for the broken haunches of a bridge which he knew must once have crossed the line. As always in such places there was a coil of beaten path which twisted down from the road into the track below, and he followed it, sometimes placing his hands on the spiked tufts of frozen grass to control his descent. Thick wedges of bush and trees tumbled down the slopes, long thin fingers of thorn cascading over the tops of lower trees and pushing through their branches. He started off in the direction he had decided would take him past the McQuarrie farm, pulling the cuffs of his coat over his hands like gloves and using them to prise back the springy whips of thorn. In places the track constricted into a single, narrow pathway and over his head pleached branches twisted through each other until their place of origin was uncertain.

  In a little clearing he stopped for breath and felt the vaporous dampness of the morning press against his face and seep into his lungs. All around him were the vestiges of autumn – yellowing leprous leaves, large palmate leaves impregnated with black spots, browning, wilting ferns wearied by their own weight. He passed a plant rusted with strange red spots and in already bare trees squatted the exposed framework of birds’ nests, like giant knots on the branches. Sometimes he stumbled as he walked, tripping over hidden stones or bits of rotting wood tangled and hidden in the grass. Ahead the path narrowed again and suddenly he felt afraid to push through the vaulted entrance. His breath streamed ahead of him. There was something he recognised, something he knew from some other time, some other place. It was the journey of his dreams – a long, unlit corridor of locked doors, a flight of bare stairs spiralling round a dark well, a laneway hemmed in by thorned hedges. He had heard the first whimpers when he was still in the car and as he pushed his way through the veil of branches they grew louder, insistent, pleading with him to come. Thorns plucked at his coat and water sprayed on to his face, but he hurried forward until he had forced his way into a clearer part of the track.

  He paused again and pushed the droplets on to his tongue. A rowan tree reared up its red berries in front of him and on either side the jagged needles of gorse were laced and linked by trembling web. He stumbled on, past a smear of withered hips, wrinkled like collapsed balloons, past the gorged seed-heads which brushed his coat. His pace had slowed now and on the hard, frozen parts of the track dead leaves rustled and whispered under his feet. He heard the child calling his name, calling out to him to come. He wanted to call in return but was frightened no words would break from his throat. He reached a damper part of the line where he walked over a blackened, rotting mulch of leaves, the sudden softness under his feet unsettling his balance. Each step he took seemed to stir some foul smell until it clung to his coat and he shook his head to be free of it. A child with his hair smirched with shit. A child with bowed, misshapen spindles for legs. He checked the blanket was still secure – he would need it soon, need it to wrap her in.

  Emma was wrong. He would be the one to find her because he was the one who loved her more than anyone else. He was the one she was waiting for. He loved them all, more than Emma could ever know or be able to understand. Loved them because they
were a living part of himself and because the strength of that love could save them from all the shit and sickness of the world. Hold them safe even for a little while until they were strong enough to make their own way. He would be the one to find her because he had been the one to stretch out his hand to touch the boy.

  He stumbled on across a frozen stretch of water where the sharp spikes of reeds pushed through the ice. She was calling to him, over and over. He was getting closer all the time. The ice cracked with each of his steps, white rucks forking across its surface. The sound of the axe cracking against the door, the yellow wood splintering and splitting. His feet slipped from beneath him and as he stumbled he pushed his hand into the ice but he staggered again to surer ground where the track widened to its original width. Ahead, blocking the track, was the shell of a wrecked car, shining with frost and rust. For the first time he called her name, the words exploding out of him. There was a rustle in the undergrowth and two birds shot skyward at a sudden angle, and then silence again. And in the silence he heard the echo of his own voice and the strangled, choking breathing.

  He had to force himself to go closer, each step a struggle of will. He fingered the shell like a talisman, prayed to the God he didn’t believe in, summoned the upturned faces of the children washed by sunlight, the lilting chant of the skipping girls. Wheel-less, buckled, coated in rust, the car had been pushed down the bank from above, a broken swathe of scrub left in its wake. Jumping off the rock into the water below, her coat flapping open like wings. He had been frightened then too. Plunging below the surface of the water. The silhouette of the children on the rocks, the only light where the sea broke in white. It felt like he was walking into the waves, each one beating him back. His lungs were filling with water. He couldn’t breathe. His foot caught something metal in the grass and he almost fell. He saw her through the glassless window of the rear door, curled in a tiny knot on the back seat. Curled asleep, her face pressed to the ripped upholstery, hands buried between her legs, her head swaddled by the piss-coloured foam pulled from the broad tears.

  He whispered her name, frightened to waken her too suddenly, but she didn’t hear him. He pulled the handle of the door and it cracked and rasped as it slowly opened. He looked at his hands – they were sprinkled with a sheen of rust. He called her again, louder this time, and gently touched the heel of her shoe, but all he could hear was the strangled, choking breathing which came from his throat. He knelt down beside her on the wet, rotting carpet and stretched out his hand. And as he did so he spoke to her, telling her again that everything would be all right, that nothing was going to hurt her ever again. He touched the side of her face with the tips of his fingers, then pulled them back as if burnt by the hoary skim of her skin. He lightly touched her hair, tried to smooth the stiff and tangled tails, brushed away the crystals which sat like spangles on her eyebrows. He tried to cradle her in his arms but couldn’t pull the stiffness of her body into his. Like the first time he had touched her. He placed his knees on the front of the seat and rocked her gently. Over and over. His lost child, safely in his arms. Rocked and rocked. Then he laid her back down on the seat and covered her with the blanket.

  3

  The long corridor stretched ahead to where shadows played in glass doors.

  ‘Does he get many visitors Sister?’

  ‘A few from time to time, not many.’ She stopped to pick up a towel which was lying on the floor then turned to face him, folding it neatly as she spoke. ‘Have you ever visited before Mr Cameron?’

  ‘No, this is the first time.’ He could feel her looking at him and it made him nervous, anxious to find the right words. ‘I asked my parents a few times shortly after but they discouraged it. I suppose I stopped asking after a while. I wasn’t much older than he was.’

  She smoothed the towel flat with the palm of her hand and suddenly he felt like a little boy with a poor excuse. In desperation he played his best card.

  ‘I was the boy who found him.’ Immediately he felt foolish. He had told her something he had already told her on the phone. The words sounded pathetic – a child’s attempt to claim some adult’s approbation. As she set the towel on a radiator he felt the heat of his embarrassment flush his face and turned his head away.

  ‘Come into my office for a few minutes Mr Cameron.’ She gestured him wordlessly to a seat then sat behind her desk.

  He hoped the redness had seeped out of his face and concentrated on regaining composure, some control of the situation. ‘I suppose it must seem very strange to you, wanting to come here after all this time. I don’t know whether what I said on the phone made any sense or not, but if you think it would be best that I didn’t visit, then it’s OK.’

  For the first time he could see her relax a little. ‘No, you can visit. Seeing a new face from time to time does him no harm. You understand we have to be careful. Sometimes we do discourage people – this is not a zoo, not a place to satisfy idle curiosity.’

  He nodded his head to show his understanding of what she was trying to say. For a second he thought of attempting some further explanation of his motives but he knew he would have to lie to her and she was not a woman who looked as if she could be easily deceived. He would have to lie because he had no words to express the truth, was unsure of what the truth was any more. All he knew was the strength of the need which had brought him to this place. A need for what? To confess? To be given absolution? To receive a blessing? He didn’t know. His fingers felt the damp spots on his jacket.

  ‘You can see him for about twenty minutes. Much longer than that will probably prove too tiring for both of you. He has his own regular routines and too much deviation from them can be confusing and possibly distressing for him. He may, or may not, give you some response. It depends on the mood he’s in – a bit like us all I suppose.’ For the first time she allowed herself a brief half-smile. ‘As you know he never developed the power of speech. At first they thought it would come but it was too late. He walks, not perfectly, but fast enough when he wants something. A few times when he’s felt shut in or something’s upset him he’s taken off on us, but mostly, as far as it’s possible to know these things, he seems reasonably contented with his life here. He doesn’t give out a lot, keeps himself mostly to himself. Likes to watch television – I think that’s what he’s doing now in the day room. What he remembers or what goes on in his head would take someone more than me to say.’

  She straightened some papers on her desk that were already straight and did not look up when she spoke again. ‘I see a lot of sad things in my work and if you let them affect you, you wouldn’t be very good at doing your job, but whenever I think about it it makes me shiver. It’s hard to believe that such a thing can happen.’ She looked up at him and he could see that she was embarrassed at revealing a personal aspect of herself.

  ‘It was very terrible. Sometimes I dream about it,’ he said quietly.

  But she was deliberately looking at her watch, discouraging him from saying any more. She had closed herself off again and as she stood up he rose and followed her down the corridor to the day room. Once again she walked a few paces ahead of him and the only sounds were the clack of her scuffed white heels on the tiled floor and the crisp rustle of her uniform. He could see the doors ahead, the smear of fingers on the glass. Mrs McQuarrie’s handprints on the porch window. Jacqueline’s wet prints as she turned back to the changing room. The wreath of bruising. Always the wreath of bruising. Part of him wanted to turn and run, to run and never stop. But it was already too late. She held the door open for him.

  It was a large room with a long window stretching the length of one side, affording a view of open countryside. The ebbing light of the afternoon filled the room with a shifting greyness, draining all the colour from it but no one had switched on the light. Tables and chairs sat in tight, inward-looking groups, comics and magazines stacked in neat piles, and the only colour in the room came from the television set which convulsed with cartoons.

>   ‘I’ll leave you to make your own introductions. You can call in to my office on the way out and let me know how you got on.’

  He felt startled by the abruptness of her departure which left them alone together in the room. He hesitated – all he could see from the doorway was his left hand on the arm of the high-backed chair, the thin white fingers splayed across the wooden armrest. On the coffee table in front was a remote control for the television. He stepped forward slowly, saw the side of his face for the first time. Smaller, younger than he had any right to be, a stubble of cropped hair flecked with thin slivers of pink skull, his eyes and cheek coloured only by the changing light from the television. He sat down on one of the chairs but the eyes stayed locked to the screen, the face a pale gleam in the gloom of the room. The light seemed to shape, then shade his face, moving across it like a shadow on water. A child who knew the world only through a fantail of light from an opening door, the chinks in the slats behind sacking. A child carried into the fierce, raw light of the world wrapped in a sheet.

  He told him everything, holding nothing back, his voice strange to him as if it came from somewhere far outside himself. When he had finished the unblinking eyes still stared up at the screen as if he had heard nothing, nothing had registered. He grew more desperate.

  ‘I was the one who found you. I was the one whose hand you touched, the boy you tried to say something to.’ He stopped. The eyes had turned towards him, flicking over his face as if searching it for something forgotten, the mouth suddenly breaking into wordless speech. A hand was reaching out to him, reaching through the vistas of years, the pale glint of finger slowly crossing the space which separated them. He raised his own hand in response, then let it fall again, as the finger fell randomly on to the control and the eyes turned away to stare through the grainy striations of light at the picture trapped between stations, the rising pulse of static.