by Graham Joyce
Young people are obsessed with remaining cool, and it is always good advice anyway not to scare away the object of one's love with excessive displays of ardour. I had loved Mandy passionately but had never really told her. The nearest I had come to any serious declaration was that drunken night in the mist-draped dales of Yorkshire. But I blew it. And ultimately I made the sacrifice that protected her. Isn't this what love, genuine love, is supposed to be about?
Well, I did see Fraser again, but not for over fifteen years. I was in a café in Ealing—one of those earnest brown-rice-and-holistic-happiness joints where demons never bother to go—when on a cork-board between notices for flat-shares and Anarchist meetings my eyes fell upon his name. He was involved in one of a series of workshops organized by something called Karmic Insight. His workshop was titled How To See Spirits. I almost fell over.
It had to be him. It was too much of a coincidence. I looked at the other workshops. His was sandwiched between a workshop on Holistic Drumming (Intermediate) and another one about something alarming called Ear Candling. The workshops were being conducted at a nearby Adult Education Centre on Saturday afternoons. I glanced round the café. Everyone was intent on their tofu so I was able to snatch the notice from the board and stuff it in my pocket.
I was in a state for the days leading up to the Saturday afternoon of the workshop. I was going to see him; I wasn't. Was; wasn't. It's not that I was afraid of Fraser, but I was scared of what he represented. By now I was married to Fay with three small children. I had my job with the youth organization and I lived quietly. But there he was, in my neck of the woods, muddying pools, poisoning wells.
The Saturday came round. I dithered. I finally made up my mind to go along.
I deliberately arrived late to his workshop. He had a class of about eighteen or so, arranged in three rows on plastic chairs. He was writing some words on a large flip-chart with a day-glo marker pen, so he had his back turned when I slipped into the room and took a spare seat at the rear of the group. I hoped to go unnoticed.
And indeed I did, for several minutes, because Fraser was utterly absorbed in what he was saying. His lecturing style was to prowl and stroke his chin as if deep in thought, making little or no eye contact with his class. He wore a black silk shirt and black trousers belted at the waist and secured with a piratical silver buckle. He was carrying a lot more weight than when I'd last seen him. The fingers of his large, pale hands were be-ringed with silver and gaudy stones, and he fiddled with these rings whenever his hand dropped from his jutting jaw. He had another silver ring through his left eyebrow. I noticed a very slight stammer. He was a bag of nerves.
I didn't think he could possibly recognize me. For one thing I myself now sported a trim beard and neat moustache, which although it rightly engenders universal hilarity today was fashionable at the time. What's more, my head was covered with a beanie and for good measure I was wearing dark glasses.
And yet with all of this amounting to a disguise, he clocked me. He was in the middle of describing some esoteric process of mental preparation when he looked up at me and stopped dead. He stared hard at me. One or two of the members of his class coughed or shifted in their seats, so long was the hiatus as he stared at me unblinking.
He was obviously a professional at this teaching game, because he recovered his stride, managing to pick up where he left off. For the next hour he talked complete balderdash to his group, recognising full well that I was sitting there knowing it was balderdash; and yet he betrayed no shortage of commitment to his teaching.
I don't know why it was called a workshop. It was actually just a lecture, with fifteen minutes of Q&A at the end. A lady with a chopstick through her hair asked him if he thought the Spiritualist Church might help; an intense young man with bad skin asked a question about the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and then proceeded to answer his own question, sort of.
Two or three people, including the lady with the chopstick, lingered to quiz Fraser after it was all over. I hung back, waiting for them to clear. When they'd gone he collected up his papers, ignoring me. I waited patiently by the door with my arms folded.
Eventually he approached me. I thought for some reason that he was just going to breeze through the door but he didn't. He planted himself squarely opposite me. "A surprise," he said.
I nodded. "Do you do a lot of this?"
He sniffed. "Brings in a crust."
"I didn't think you'd recognize me."
"I wouldn't have," he said with a nod to the side, "but I saw your demon first."
"Oh? How many do I have these days?"
He looked around the room. "Just the one as far as I can see."
"Okay. Just testing."
"You were always testing me, William. Always."
"A drink," I suggested, "for old time's sake?"
He had to pick up his coat and hat from the cloakroom. The coat was a long black leather trench coat. The hat was a black fedora with a white band. I thought he looked a complete tit, and as we crossed the road to head for the pub, I said so. "What's with the Halloween get-up?"
He stopped in the middle of the road. "Do you have to be so fucking insulting?"
"Come on Fraser, let's get off the road. You'll get run over and then where will you be?"
No sooner had we stepped inside the Red Lion opposite the Ealing Studios than Fraser said, "Trust you to choose this place."
Fact is I didn't choose it. It was the nearest available watering hole, and I told him so. "Sometimes these things have a way of choosing us, don't you think?" He gave me what is often described as an old-fashioned look.
It's true though. The place is crawling. I mean crawling. All those photos of dead comedians don't help either. Where do you think all that comedy comes from? It's certainly not from happy folk, is it?
"We could go to the Drayton," he said. "Ho Chi Minh worked in the kitchens there."
I told him I didn't give a flying fuck about Ho Chi Minh. I ordered myself a glass of red wine and he had a pint of Fuller's. Someone at the back of the pub made a piss-taking remark about his hat so he took it off. He got halfway down his pint before he spluttered, "Why the fuck did you never respond to my messages? Messages message messages! You never answered."
"It's all so many years ago," I said, wiping the spray from his mouth off the lapel of my jacket.
"And where did you go? You never told anyone. It was the talk of the college. Where is William Heaney?"
"Well—"
"You never even told that Mandy, did you? Did you?"
That Mandy. "No."
"You broke her heart. You know that, don't you? She couldn't believe that you would treat her like that. I don't think you can guess how disappointed she was."
"I can guess."
"Well, don't feel too pleased. She got someone else pretty damn quick, that's for sure."
It was very easy to remember why I bloodied his nose that time. "Did Dick Fellowes ever say anything to you?"
"No. Why?"
I didn't give him an answer. I glossed the whole thing: said I'd had to get out of college, that it was driving me mad, that it all got too complicated. I don't know if he accepted my blandishments. He talked a bit about how he scraped through his degree. He made no reference at all to the business in the attic at Friarsfield Lodge. We bought more drinks. Then he went banging on about Mandy again and I started to hear myself getting cross with him a second time.
"Look, Fraser, you know perfectly well why I left. You know what happened to those girls. You of all people."
His face flushed a shade of beet. Flecks of white spittle appeared on his lips. He slammed his beer down on the table. It sloshed dangerously in the glass. "But that was just it! That was the whole thing!"
"What whole thing?"
We were attracting too much attention from other drinkers in the pub. Fraser didn't even seem to notice. "That's what the messages were all about. All those messages I sent to you, which you ignored!"
&n
bsp; "What about them? What was in the messages?"
And when Fraser finally told me exactly what was in those notes of his, I almost fell out of my chair.
Chapter 25
At the office, Val and I were getting the papers ready for the forthcoming Annual General Meeting of our organization when I received a surprise visit from Tony Morrison—that's Commander Morrison of the Metropolitan Police Force to you, but Tony to me. Truthfully I never know whether to address him as Commander Morrison or as Tony, which he much prefers. It depends on whether he drops by in civvies or in his impressive serge uniform with epaulette silverware of crossed tipstaves in a laurel wreath. I looked up from my desk to see him standing in the doorway in full panoply. A little flutter of guilt stirred my heart, as it always does when a policeman looks at me; even when I've done nothing wrong.
"Any chance of a coffee?" he said.
Val scuttled away to the kitchen at once. Anyone in authority and she practically curtseys. "Tony! What brings you here?"
"Just passing. Can't stay long—my driver is on double-yellow lines."
"Careful—the police round here are keen as mustard. Have a seat."
It's true that Commander Morrison did sometimes "drop by." He'd been an immensely useful servant to our organization. He'd helped set up funds for projects to work with teenage joy-riders and runaways and young single mums, giving up some of his own time as well as official police time. We got along famously well. He was always trying to get me to play golf with him, and apart from that small detail he was genuinely one of the good guys.
"Let's sit in the meeting room, shall we?"
As soon as he said that I knew he hadn't just "dropped by" at all. He had something to say to me that he didn't want Val to hear. I got up to go through to the meeting room when the phone rang. Val picked up, then put her hand over the receiver. "Home Office," she mouthed.
"Do you mind if I take it?" I asked Tony.
"You'd better."
They were inviting me to chair some new committee. Recent figures showed that the number of homeless children in the country was around 130,000. I wanted to say why not sack the entire committee and use the fucking committee's considerable fucking expenses to build a few fucking emergency homes and fucking shelters. Of course, what I really said was: yes, I'd chair the committee.
"How many homeless children?" said Tony when I told him the reason for the call. "Well, I suppose I can believe it."
"But this is the year 2007," I said. "Not 1807."
"No." He took off his peaked cap and blew out his cheeks. I could tell he didn't really want to talk about the figures for the homeless. Tony has a strong widow's peak and very pale complexion. The temptation to invoke vampire references is only just resistible and I wondered if his staff managed not to. But he has a warm smile to offset this physical affiliation to the undead.
Val brought him his coffee. She always remembers just how he likes it: no milk, two sugars, and he always makes a point of saying sweet as sin, black as death. He flirts with her. She loves it. I smiled benignly as we went through all that and when she closed the door after her, he got to the point.
"William, your name has come up in an odd place."
"Really?" This is it, I thought. The books. They've tumbled to us. That's what all this snooping has been about.
"Yes. An odd place."
"What odd place?"
"Look, I'm here as a mate, not as a copper, okay?"
"What did I do? I'll cough to it."
He seemed to think that was a good enough joke. "Nothing. But enquiries have come my way. I'd go to the wall for you, William, you know. I would. But I just thought I'd see what you have to say."
"And?"
"This case with the terrorist. Outside Buck Palace."
"Seamus? He wasn't a terrorist. He was a desperate old soldier. His mind was completely fogged."
"A bomb is a bomb. Anyway, that's not the point. The thing is you lied to the investigating officer about something the old soldier handed over to you."
"I did lie. It's true."
"Why? Why did you lie?
I looked him the eye. "Tony, I've no idea why I lied. You must know what happened: I was there on the night because of my association with GoPoint—"
"They're a bloody nuisance those GoPoint people. Someone should close them down—"
"And he gave me this . . . scarf, and, I dunno, I just wanted to somehow protect the old boy from the world. It's stupid. I can't explain it."
He nodded thoughtfully. He had sympathetic, soft brown eyes but his gaze was unnerving. He scraped his cup in the saucer, over and over, as if trying to dislodge a drip of coffee. "Okay." At last he took a sip. His Adam's apple bobbed in his throat. He put his cup down again and sat back in his chair. "But why was that, William? Why did you lie to the detective when he came to your house?"
How was I going to tell him? The truth was not going to come out well however thin I sliced it. Well, I could have said, it's like this: I lied about Seamus because he was one of the few people who can see demons, like I can, and I wanted to know what he'd made of it, so I kept the scarf because it had a book in it, which incidentally you don't know about. See? It's all perfectly clear. Forget it; I'll even play golf with you.
Right.
I'd known Tony for over seven years. Not once during our friendship had I ever alluded to demons or anything like it, and for obvious reasons. Of course, I could have tried it on him. I'm sure he's heard some pretty unlikely stories in his long service as a police officer, but in the scheme of things I had no doubt that somewhere in the shells of his experienced ears it was going to sound just a teensy bit ragged. Even if it happened to be the truth.
"I can't explain, Tony. I know I'm an idiot. Maybe I've got a guilty conscience but whenever a policeman interviews me I have this tendency to resist, to equivocate, to—"
"To lie."
"Dammit, I know you're cross with me. I'm sorry I can't explain it. I was there. Send your guy back and I'll tell him."
"He's not my guy, William. Nothing to do with me. It's just that your name and my name got connected up on a SO13 computer. So they came and asked me to vouch for you."
"And did you?"
"I vouched. But once you've started lying to them, well it doesn't look good, does it?"
"I suppose it doesn't."
"They think there's more to it, you see," Commander Morrison said, getting up to leave, refitting his peaked cap. "There isn't, is there?"
"No," I said. "You can tell them that Seamus was just what he appeared to be." I wanted to add that he could say the same for me, but I didn't want to lie all over again.
I walked him to the lifts. In many ways being caught out for lying felt worse than if the police had uncovered our antiquarian books racket. We shook hands and he said I'd probably hear no more about it. As the lift doors were closing on him he pointed at me and said, "Have you thought any more about a round of golf?"
I went back into my office feeling quite shaken. I had to wipe my brow with a tissue.
"Are you all right?" Val said.
"No," I said. "No."
I was late getting home that night because we had to finish off the papers for the AGM, but when I did get back I found Stinx sitting at the kitchen table nursing a cup of tea. Sarah and Mo were with him and appeared to be in counselling mode.
Stinx looked terrible. He had three days' grey beard stubble and his eyes were bloodshot. There was a bit of blood on his ear. His clothes carried the pungent rot of stale Guinness and tobacco. He didn't have to tell me what had happened, but he did.
"Lucy left me again."
Needless to say he hadn't brought me the finished forgeries.
"You want to get that Lucy," I said, "and give her a hard kick up the arse."
"Dad!" went Sarah. Mo sat back in his chair and blinked at me.
"No, I mean it. She keeps doing this to you, Stinx, and I for one am fed up on your behalf. Really, you've got
to show her your toecap."
"But I love her," Stinx wailed. He may have been drinking tea but he was still pissed. "I loves the gal!"
"Don't listen to my dad," Sarah said. "He's not exactly an expert."
Stinx got up off his chair, slightly unsteady, and wobbled towards me. "No, but I loves your dad, too." He put his arms around me and gave me a bear hug. "I know I missed you the other night. Should-a been there. Is Jaz all right?"
"Yeh, he's all right."
"He's all right, is he, that Jaz? All right? Not mad with me?"