As they left through the ward security door, Bennett immediately recognised the junior doctor, James, coming the other way along the corridor. They said hello and Bennett told Daniel that James had been at university at the same time as Bennett’s brother where they had been best friends.
‘We drank a lot together,’ said James ruefully. ‘And did some silly things along the way to getting a degree. Just.’ He tapped his lips and then asked if he could speak to Daniel alone for a moment.
‘You can speak to both of us. Bennett’s my best friend. That’s why he’s here.’
James nodded. Tucked the folder of notes he was holding tighter under his arm. ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about what you were asking yesterday, about why things happen and how to explain them. It reminded me of a book I read a few years ago by a man called Viktor Frankl. I thumbed through it again last night.’ James cupped his chin in his hand and thought for a moment. ‘How about we say it doesn’t matter why things happen, but only what they can do for you.’
‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ said Daniel.
James drummed his fingers on the folder of notes he was holding.
‘Imagine you switch your brain from trying to figure out why something happens to you to thinking about how to respond to it. If you do that then the power’s with you to decide who you want to be, what sort of person you want to become. The most important thing isn’t about trying to work out why things occur, or how the world works, it’s about discovering who you are in the face of everything that happens to you, the good as well as the bad, and even the somewhere in between.’ He smiled at Daniel. ‘I thought it might help in some tiny way, to have something positive to ponder rather than all the dark inside you. Daniel, if there’s anything you want to talk about, anything at all, then please ask and I’ll do whatever I can to help. The ward staff know how to get hold of me.’ He bade them goodbye and then went on his way.
Bennett leant in close to Daniel as they walked towards the lift. ‘James was like you, you know.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He was in the papers as well, about ten years ago. My brother told me what happened. He was a bit younger than you when he ran away and got kidnapped by travellers. My brother said James told him there was some weird stuff that happened. Black magic stuff, the sort that people would never believe if they knew about it.’
‘Like what?’
‘Maybe you should ask him. Maybe he can help you and Rosie with the fit. He might know something?’
Daniel shrugged as he punched the call button for the lift. ‘He’s a doctor, Bennett. I bet he wouldn’t know anything about how it works.’
On the bus ride home, Daniel thought about everything James had told him. But it was hard to stop wishing for answers about the sinkhole and what had happened to his father, and how he had found a way out of the ground. He didn’t want to think about who he was supposed to be now, he wanted to be the same person he had always been, the boy his dad had always known and would recognise when he woke up.
A buzzing in his pocket made him flinch, scattering his thoughts, because he knew what it was immediately. But he didn’t look at Mason’s text straightaway. He sat there, pretending that Mason lived in a different world to the one he was in. But when the phone started to buzz again and again he checked the messages. They all said the same thing:
Will pick u up tomorrow. Hospital. 12pm. Bring Rosie. Mxx
Seeing ‘M xx’ at the end of every message made Daniel so angry that when he stepped off the bus at his stop he only managed to walk a few steps before he hurled the phone against the wall and heard the screen crack.
51
Foxton was a small village seven miles outside Cambridge. The cemetery there was separated from the churchyard by a narrow lane banked on either side by a drystone wall decorated with green ferns the size of ostrich feathers. A wooden gate was hung on spring-loaded hinges, powdered with rust, and Daniel watched it click shut as Mason and Rosie walked on ahead down the grassy path between the gravestones. Jiff was ambling behind them, the hump on his back like a tiny burial mound of his own.
All the gravestones around them were crooked and slanted askew in the ground. Daniel wanted to turn round and run away rather than walk between them. Looking back, he saw how easy it would be to sprint across the lane and disappear into the hedge and hide there. But Frank was leaning against the blue BMW parked up the lane, and he looked up suddenly from his phone as if a text had pinged in to tell him what Daniel had been thinking about doing. When he stood up and started walking, Daniel just turned round and pushed the gate open and went on through.
He tried not to look at the gravestones as he walked down the path, letting them bob at the edges of his eyes, his fists turning damp on the inside.
Mason stopped at a round-topped headstone made of sandstone that had been dulled by the wind and the rain, with lichen smeared over it like gum. A plain stone. A plain inscription. Mason rubbed it over with the flat of his hand:
HERE LIETH THE BODY
OF FRANCIS GREEN
BORN
FEBRUARY 17TH 1718
DIED
AUGUST 26TH 1779
Carved above it was an ornate oil lamp with a tiny flame protruding from the spout. Mason crouched down beside Rosie and Daniel, a thick, hot smell coming off him.
‘Know what an oil lamp means on a gravestone?’ They shook their heads. ‘Immortality. Legend has it Mr Green was an alchemist who discovered the secrets of eternal life. Didn’t do him much good though, did it, boys?’ shouted Mason, and Frank and Jiff both laughed, nodding as they lit up cigarettes.
Mason grinned as he patted the grass beneath him. ‘We dug up the bones a few weeks back and Lawson looked them over. Said they were Green’s all right because Lawson saw things. Moments. Like Green making a beautiful golden flask. Like something made from sunshine, Lawson said. And he said Green gave it to his wife as a present and it stayed in their family for years. Lawson only found out bits and bobs about the flask. But you two, well, you two might be different; you might see a whole lot more than he did. You might be able to see where it is now and that’s got me very excited.’
‘Mason wants to live forever,’ said Frank, puffing on his cigarette. ‘Don’t you, boss?’ He raised his arms. ‘Not like all these poor buggers.’
‘In this world?’ grunted Mason. ‘You must be joking, Frank.’ He grinned at Rosie and Daniel. ‘So don’t worry, I won’t be around forever. I don’t believe the legend. I want the flask for another reason. So I need you to tell me what Lawson couldn’t. To find out what other secrets are lurking in those bones below us and tell me where the flask is now. For you to have a look around in the places I can’t get to.’
‘You want us to do that right here?’ asked Daniel.
Mason nodded. He looked up into the sky and screwed up his face at a big black cloud. ‘Looks like rain so we should hurry up,’ he growled. ‘This is an expensive suit. Savile Row, don’t you know,’ he said, rhyming it like it was a line of verse. And then he folded his arms. ‘Come on, I’m all ears.’
When Rosie closed her eyes, Daniel expected something to happen, but it didn’t. There was no golden warmth in his chest. No sensation at all. When he saw Rosie’s face tensing more and more, he knew that something was wrong. Before he could say anything, she opened her eyes and stood blinking in the sunlight. Then she reeled back suddenly and grabbed hold of the gravestone for balance. In one sweeping bow, she leant forward and vomited on to the grass.
The first drops of rain hissed as they landed. They looked like wet thumbprints on the gravestones, but Mason just stood there, more raindrops popping on his shoulders and his chest as he watched Rosie wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘Well?’
‘I didn’t see anything.’ Rosie took a breath and spat something white and foamy as far as she could.
‘What? Nothing?’ asked Mason. And Rosie shook her head. ‘But even Lawson got something.’
‘W
ell, why don’t you try asking him?’ hissed Rosie, crouching down, pulling something stringy and white from her lips and wiping her hands on the grass.
‘Because he’s dead, Rosie. Daniel popped his hand off like a champagne cork. Which means you two are filling in now.’
The rain was pattering harder and Mason’s bald head was starting to glisten. A droplet rolled down his brow, making him frown even more.
‘I need to go home,’ said Rosie.
‘What?’ replied Mason, blinking like a baby bird.
‘I’m not feeling well.’ When Rosie wiped her eyes, the green in them glistened. ‘It’s the chemotherapy. It’s done something.’
Mason dug a divot in the grass and stared at the moist, muddy earth. Then he looked up at the grey sky, into the drops of rain, as if weighing up whether it was just a shower that would pass.
‘We could dig up the coffin like we did for Lawson, see if that helps. Give you something more to work with. But we’d have to wait till tonight to do that.’
‘Didn’t you hear me?’ replied Rosie. ‘The chemo’s done something. I can’t make the fit with Daniel.’
‘Well, what would you like me to do?’ Mason wiped his face and his eyes shone as though a fire had been lit inside him. ‘This isn’t exactly what I was expecting.’
‘I don’t know.’
Daniel folded his arms and stood as tall as he could. ‘We should go. Try again another time.’
Mason clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Then he pointed at the church. ‘No, we’re not going anywhere. Let’s sort this out in the dry.’
52
Inside the church, the rain sounded like tacks falling out of a box on to the roof. Rosie and Daniel stood, hot and prickly with damp, on the flagstone floor as Mason clunked the big oak door shut behind them, the echo ringing round the stone walls as if all three of them had entered the belly of some ancient, fossilized beast. He walked past Daniel and Rosie and stopped on a red carpet running the length of the aisle.
‘Dearly beloved,’ he quipped. ‘We are gathered here today to ask you, God, and baby Jesus too, to help Rosie get over whatever problem she’s got so she and Daniel can make the fit. Because I need them to. Amen. Bless you and all that.’ He bowed comically and tried to make the sign of the cross and then he turned to Rosie and Daniel.
‘I told you. It’s the chemotherapy. It’s done something. I can’t see anything,’ said Rosie.
‘What do you think, Daniel? I thought you were supposed to be the battery, the power. Maybe you just need to bump up the charge to help Rosie, is that it?’
‘I don’t know how it works,’ replied Daniel. ‘If Rosie can’t do anything then I think we need to wait until she feels better. Try again—’
‘BUT . . . I . . . DON’T . . . WANT . . . TO . . . WAIT!’ shouted Mason and his voice rolled like thunder round and round the vaulted ceiling, forcing a trio of pigeons, roosting outside the stained-glass windows, to flap noisily away. He smoothed a hand over his bare head and glared at the two of them as the silence settled again. The air was bitter with Brasso and wood and cold stone as Daniel struggled to breathe.
‘Francis Green may or may not have been an alchemist,’ continued Mason more calmly, ‘but he was most definitely one of the finest goldsmiths of his time. In fact, his contemporaries said he struck a deal with the devil his work was so unique, so ex-quis-ite. You can look in any auction catalogue or museum guide to see why.
‘Now a couple of months ago, I got talking to a collector about Green at a function, one of those hoity-toity affairs with pearls and bow ties and drinks bubbling in glasses on silver trays, that people like me are always desperate to get invited to. And this collector told me he was very keen to find a particular piece of Green’s work. A flask made of gold. The Headington Flask. Rumoured to be somewhere near Cambridge, buried in the Fens perhaps or maybe hidden in a church or one of the colleges in Cambridge. And I promised to find it for him because this collector is willing to pay a lot of money. A lot of money. And, as you know, I like money.
‘I thought to myself, Lawson can help me out here. Lawson’s my go-to guy for that kind of stuff. But now Lawson’s gone and if I can’t locate the flask I promised to deliver then I’ve got a problem. So I don’t need you, Rosie, to be a problem on top of another problem. That just would not do. Because I don’t have time for problems. Not even at the best of times.’ Mason glared at her. Clicked his fingers and raised a large forefinger. ‘You’re my go-to girl now Lawson’s gone.’
‘I don’t want to try anything now,’ said Rosie as she raised a trembling hand to her brow. ‘Please, I don’t feel well. I have a headache. I don’t want to do this.’
Mason shook his head. ‘You’re going to have to try harder. Work through the problem. What you need, Rosie, is some gentle encouragement.’
Mason took a deep breath and strode down the aisle, raising his arms as he looked about him. ‘We’ve got lots of dead people here. Names on plaques. Tombs. Even a person on a cross. We’ll work through this chemotherapy problem with you or else I’m going to start cracking a skull or two and I’ll begin with your gran’s.’
Mason tripped back down the aisle like an overweight Fred Astaire and dug around in the change in his pocket and popped a pound coin into the donations box beside the door. When it hit the bottom with a thunk, he picked up a small pamphlet entitled: ‘A History of St Barnabas’s Church’.
Mason dabbed a finger with his tongue, parted the thin pages and started reading out the names of people.
‘Francis Levant. Josephus Dunn. Charles Lavelle.’ He paused and tapped the page. ‘John Bannister’s the one!’ Mason beamed. ‘It says here he’s buried down in the crypt.’
They stood in the semi-dark, with a lit candle and the tomb of John Bannister in front of them. Mason was using his phone to see the page of the pamphlet clearly, the light setting his face in relief like some gargoyle.
‘Come on, Rosie,’ whispered Mason. ‘Get that talent of yours up and running. Make the fit with Daniel. I know you can.’ He tapped the page. ‘Tell me something about Mr Bannister to prove it or else I’ll break your granny’s fingers one by one . . . snap . . . snap . . . snap . . . like little sticks of kindling.’
Rosie’s face was all bone and shadows in the candlelight. When Mason grinned even more, motioning at her to go ahead, she closed her eyes, swaying until she put her hand against the wall to steady herself.
There was nothing at all inside Daniel. No golden glow. He watched Rosie’s face tensing up. Her hand was pressing harder against the wall and then the fingers started to clench up into a claw.
‘Rosie,’ whispered Daniel. ‘You don’t have to do anything. You don’t—’
‘Daniel,’ said Mason, ‘you’re not helping. Be a good boy and let Rosie concentrate.’
Rosie’s hand was a fist now. Her arm was juddering and the knuckles were chafing against the wall. In the candlelight, Daniel could see that she was rubbing them raw.
When he started to feel something in his chest, it was not a golden warmth. There were painful spots all over it, so electric and sharp it was like his skin was being stippled with a needle.
Daniel shuddered as the pain became more intense, the stabbing sensation faster and harder. Rosie’s face twitched and danced as the candle puffed and skittered, catching the draught coming down the steps into the crypt. She started to talk about John Bannister and who he had been and what he had done. Her fist rubbed frantically over the wall, making the skin start to bleed. When Daniel felt more pain, like nails being tapped into his chest, he cried out.
‘Something’s wrong, Rosie. This doesn’t feel right. Rosie, stop!’
But she gritted her teeth and spat out a few more words and phrases from the pamphlet that Mason was holding until he held up his hand and announced that she could stop.
She fell back against the wall, clutching her raw, bloody hand to her chest. Daniel crouched down, breathing hard, as the pai
n in his chest slowly began to fade.
‘I knew I could trust you, Rosie,’ said Mason and gave her the thumbs up. ‘You just needed a bit of encouragement, that’s all. Now you two find that golden flask for me. Tell me where it is and I’ll forget today ever happened. I’ll even give you a clue: The last place Lawson had been looking for the flask was an old stately home called Ashwell Lodge. I know the spot. It’s a few miles outside Cambridge. Lawson said he’d read something about Francis Green possibly staying there when he was an old man, and wanted to look around more, that he was on to something after making a few visits. So you two scoot along there tomorrow. I want to know straightaway if there’s anything there that might help or whether it’s just a dead end. Or else we’re digging up Green’s bones again.’
Mason walked across the crypt and stopped before he reached the steps. ‘The collector who wants this flask is going to pay me a lot of money for it, enough so I can retire and go live somewhere hot and lie like a hippo by a pool.’ He smiled for a moment and cupped a hand to his ear. ‘I can hear the clink of ice in the glasses now. The sun on my face. And those insects. The grasshoppery ones, what are they?’
‘Cicadas,’ whispered Daniel.
‘Seeec-ahhhh-daaas,’ repeated Mason in some mock foreign accent and then he beamed. ‘You could come and visit once I’m settled.’ He shifted his feet on the dirty stone floor, the dust and the grit crackling beneath his leather soles. ‘You see what I’m saying here? Find this flask and I’ll be gone, out of your lives forever. It’ll be like I was never here.’
He turned and started walking up the steps, whistling as he went until his voice came ringing back down, telling them to hurry up or else there wouldn’t be a lift back to town.
53
Ashwell Lodge was set back from the road down a narrow lane with silver birch trees jammed branch to branch on either side, their trunks like dim lanterns in the shade beneath the canopy.
Daniel and Rosie steered their bicycles over the pocked asphalt, slaloming round the potholes. As they emerged out of the copse, they caught sight of the big house in the distance. It looked decrepit and grey like an old shoebox left out in the rain.
All Sorts of Possible Page 14