The Mausoleum

by David Mark

  I could hear the river again. Could hear the roar of dirty brown water tumbling over rocks and shifting the stones with a movement that seemed to contain purpose and threat.

  ‘Really?’ I asked, keeping my voice calm. ‘That’s interesting. I’m sure Felicity mentioned seeing a man with a bag …’

  If he thought my probing suspicious he didn’t show it. Just kept on chatting.

  ‘Aye, he said he were working in Carlisle and took the train out here because he’d heard there was some rare bird. Walked from the station so this were early in the year because Beeching hadn’t bloody closed it then. Asked me if there were anywhere to stay for the night and I told him to tek his pick. Since they killed off the rocket programme there’s plenty people eager to rent out a bedroom for the night.’

  ‘Where did you take him?’ I kept my voice steady. Didn’t want to rush it or make too much of what I was beginning to suspect.

  ‘Dropped him in the centre of Gilsland,’ he said. ‘Told him the food at Bridge Inn was worth his time. He was going to make his way to one of a couple of addresses I’d mentioned but to be honest it were Fairfax he wanted to see by that point.’

  ‘Fairfax?’

  ‘Like I said, I always sent Fairfax the blokes with the best stories though I don’t know if this charver was one of them. He asked me if there were somebody in the village who could help him identify somebody. Asked if there was anybody who knew everybody.’

  I looked down at my boots. Saw the dirt in the footwell and the mud on the soles. ‘You told him to see Fairfax.’

  ‘The bloke I gave the lift to – can’t remember his name – he said he thought he had recognized somebody. He wondered if there was somebody in the village who knew everybody. Knew the village like the backs of their hand. He said “backs”. That was when I twigged his accent wasn’t local. Said he was French, like I said.’

  ‘And you sent him to Fairfax …’

  He turned, looking a bit perplexed. ‘Aye, love, like I keep saying.’

  ‘Did Fairfax mention him to you?’

  Loz chewed his lip, considering it. ‘Aye, said he turned up and were as polite as you like. Described somebody he thought he’d seen out towards the camp and wanted to know if Fairfax could help. Fairfax told him he didn’t sound familiar and the charver went on his way. Must have been mistaken or it were somebody from out of the area.’

  I realized I was breathing hard.

  ‘Did he describe who he saw?’ I asked.

  Loz turned the car left, over the little bridge. My stomach lurched and a solitary golden-brown leaf landed on the windscreen. Its stem was caught by the windscreen wiper and it swished back and forth across my vision.

  ‘Nobody I recognized, from what I can remember. Bit older than himself he said. Bald head. Hard hands. Could be anybody.’

  ‘And him?’ I asked.

  Loz shrugged. ‘Blue suit. Wrong kind of shoes for the weather. Canvas bag. Not a film star but not a navvy neither.’

  I stayed quiet. Let my thoughts ebb and flow like a leaf carried on water.

  ‘Could I ask you to take me somewhere else?’ I asked, making up my mind. ‘I’d like to see a friend.’

  He grinned, pleased to have helped a soaking, timid girl feel the need for company. I surprised myself by letting him enjoy the moment rather than treating his interpretation as a challenge. Perhaps I was growing up.

  ‘Who’d that be?’ he asked.

  I found myself grinning. Found myself suddenly very eager to be in the presence of the one other person who had seen the dead man in the blue suit.

  FELICITY

  Transcript 0005, recorded October 30, 2010

  Brian was going through his phase in ’67. Trying it on, we used to call it. Testing to see what he could get away with. James hadn’t been a bother at that age. Never been any bother any time. Brian were always that bit more trouble. He was the sort who would smash a plate just to see what sound it would make. In ’67 he’ll have been 11 – a couple of years younger than his brother and twice as bright. Had that fire in his eye that never seemed to go out. Always seemed a few steps ahead of you in an argument. Always seemed like he had an answer prepared for anything you might say. Don’t know where he came from, I swear I don’t. He could have become a lot of things, my Brian. Could have become something important if he hadn’t been so dead-set on causing mischief. Loved to wind me up, he did. Always had a lie ready on his tongue. Couldn’t answer the simplest question without needling one of us. So I didn’t believe him when he said she were getting out of a car. Thought he were having me on.

  ‘Lady from the big house,’ he shouted from upstairs. ‘Looks like somebody’s drowned a film star.’

  I was getting tea ready. Chucking potatoes in the fryer and talking to James about school. They were studying Henry the Eighth, he said. Was doing a sketch of one of his wives. I knew better than to look. His drawings were always a bit grisly. He used up his red crayons a lot sooner than the others.

  ‘What did he say?’ I asked, pointing at the ceiling as if the voice had come from the lightbulb.

  ‘Said there’s a lady from the big house.’

  I dried my hands on a tea towel. The rain was still coming down and it was almost dark beyond the kitchen window. I had to look through my own reflection to see the back garden and the field beyond. Saw my own little kitchen with its soft warm light and its comfortable chairs and sturdy furniture and my children’s clothes dripping dry in front of the fire. I remember that moment. Just one little heartbeat, one instant: a photograph I carry with me – seeing James’s head bowed to his task and the curls of steam coming off the coats like they were souls leaving empty bodies.

  ‘That’s the door,’ said James, in response to the knocking. ‘I’d get it but I’m decapitating Anne Boleyn.’

  ‘Good lad,’ I said, smiling at him. I wasn’t keen on the activity but I admired the big word.

  I opened the kitchen door and stepped into the cool of the corridor. The kitchen was always hotter than a butterfly house but every other room took your breath away with cold. Brian had got there before me and opened the door. He was standing on the front step wearing a dressing gown. He was a short lad and it trailed on the floor. He looked like a wizard, with his floppy sleeves and the puddle of material behind him. And she was standing on the path outside, looking past him. Looking at me. Cordelia. She was paler than when I’d first seen her and her hair was stuck to her face like it were painted on her skin. There were dark lines under her eyes and her coat was soaked three shades darker than it was meant to be. I think she was smiling. Not a proper one – not a grin or the way you look when somebody says something that tickles your funny bone. But she was trying to make herself look a bit softer. She looked like a child trying to hold a pleasing face for a school photo. My heart went out to her. I’d been worried, to tell the truth. After what I’d found in the church and after what Pike and Pat had said, I’d been desperate to talk to Cordelia again. But we hadn’t parted on good terms. It felt like I’d let her down. Told a fib and turned my face away from hers when she asked me to support her story of what we had seen when the tree came down. I’d had a nervous feeling in my chest at the thought of walking up the hill and knocking on her door. But she were here now. Here, looking forlorn and feeble and desperate to be invited in.

  ‘Mrs Hemlock,’ I said, like it was all normal and we were friends. ‘Brian, let the lady in, she’ll catch her death.’

  Brian smirked. He shuffled sideways a little. He was only wearing his underpants beneath the dressing gown. The material hung like stage curtains across his skinny white body.

  ‘Were that Loz dropping ye off?’ he asked. ‘Yer gev us a start. Thought he were after me. I’ve had two bellyfuls of petrol out that tractor o’ his. Thought he’d worked it out.’

  Behind Cordelia the rain continued to pour. There was only one street light and it illuminated the sad shape of Fairfax’s cottage across the street. The light died
before it reached Pike’s ragged cottage down the hill. The church, a little further down, was no more than a square of darkness; an unlit furnace in a coal cellar.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ I said, feeling myself start babbling as I stepped back down the corridor. ‘I was doing mince …’

  Her face fell. ‘I should have rung,’ she said.

  ‘Wouldn’t do no good,’ said Brian. ‘We aint got a phone.’

  ‘We use Fairfax’s, if it’s an emergency,’ I said, and I swear it felt like somebody had my heart in their fist and were squeezing it. ‘Used it, I mean.’

  ‘That’ll have to stop,’ said Brian, standing between us at the foot of the stairs. He had one of his comics in his pocket, sticking out like a truncheon. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. maybe, or one of his old ones from when he liked cowboy films. He was smirking, like he always did. I could smell cigarettes on him. He liked to smoke while he tied his fishing flies. Had a talent for it. I’ve pulled plenty hooks and barbs out of his fingers over the years but the finished fly is always something beautiful. Could have sold them if he’d had any interest in making an honest living.

  ‘Brian, take Mrs Hemlock’s coat.’

  ‘I’m not the butler,’ he said, looking her up and down.

  ‘Brian!’ I snapped, wishing that he cared enough about my feelings not to show me up. ‘Do as you’re told.’

  He rolled his eyes. He’d started doing that. It drove John up the wall. They came to blows a few times, in later years. John never knew how to win those fights. Never knew whether he was being a better dad by drawing blood or in letting his lad work out his aggression on him. He could fight, could Brian. Had a temper like an alley cat and used to bite and scratch and claw like one too. But they weren’t the right fights, if you get me. He never seemed to care about right or wrong or what were kind and what was mean. I’d tried with him. God knows I’d tried. Told him that unkindness was wrong. That cruelty was wrong. That bullying was wrong. He always wanted me to explain. Why, Mam? Why is it wrong? Why is it good to be generous and friendly and welcoming? Why is that better? Who said, Mam? The animals don’t worry about it. Birds neither. And that’s all we are, aint we? Meat in shoes. Who set the rules …?

  ‘I hoped we could talk,’ she said, and I noticed how wide her eyes were. Her pupils were like tadpoles; like spilled ink on blue writing paper.

  ‘We’re having tea soon,’ said Brian. ‘You won’t want any. With the carrots chopped up it looks like sick.’

  I were embarrassed. I swear, I don’t know why he had to behave like that. I wanted to run into the kitchen with her and show her James and say, ‘Look, I can make children who are nice and caring and who don’t cause people grief’.

  ‘We can be quick,’ she said, looking at Brian like he were my dad and she was trying to persuade him to let me play out. She looked desperate, poor thing. It felt like I was seeing her properly at last. How young she was. Younger than me but for all her learning she were half-clueless when it came to people.

  ‘We can be as long as you need,’ I said, and glared at Brian. He looked at me like I were nothing. I thought he were going to spit on the carpet. He suddenly seemed tired of the game. Turned away from her and slouched back up the stairs to his wires and feathers and sharp little hooks. I hadn’t been in the tying room for months. Last time I’d gone in I’d seen nowt but bones and skulls and dead things. Birds. Foxes. Little sad skeletons of field mice and dormice and a leathery, dehydrated toad he had found on one of his expeditions. I told myself it were normal. Boys liked gruesome stuff. Liked to know how our bits fitted together and what we were made of. I told myself it were all learning. All a different form of school. And he were so clever it was good to see him using his brain for something sort of scientific. But I didn’t like the way the chemicals made his skin smell or the smell of warm, rotten meat that sometimes wafted under the door. John put a stop to it, in the end. But by then Brian had already learned enough.

  ‘Come into the kitchen,’ I said. ‘I’ll make tea.’

  She followed me like a little girl. Stayed standing by the door until I invited her to sit down. I took her coat from her like she were an invalid. Handed her two clean towels from the drawer beneath the sink and she stood holding them as if she were a daft lass. She seemed like her batteries were running out.

  ‘This is Mrs Hemlock,’ I said to James. He turned and gave her a big smile.

  ‘From the Winslow farm? Aye, nice place that. Sorry fer yer troubles.’

  I saw a tower demolished once. All dynamite and dust and three-two-one. It were like that, the way she collapsed. Something just blew in her foundations and the next thing she were sliding down onto the arm of the chair and there were tears coming out of her like she were a squeezed sponge. James looked to me as if he were watching somebody die. I shooed him out of the room like he were a chicken. I didn’t know what to do for best. She was half folded in on herself, sobbing and gulping as if she had a fever.

  I fussed over her like she were made of glass. Patted her damp back, clucking out ‘now now’ and ‘there there’ like they were spells that could make her feel better. I didn’t expect her to cuddle into me. I swear, but when she turned towards me and pressed her face against me it were like a baby looking for the nipple. That’s what I thought, God forgive me. That’s what it reminded me of. And I didn’t know what to do so I just held her and patted her arm and tried to think of her like she were one of the bairns. We were still there when John pushed open the kitchen door. I had to angle my neck to see who it was. He were standing there with nowt on his face but rain. Didn’t look shocked nor taken aback. Never did. Just dealt with things as they happened.

  ‘Ye’ll be wanting your privacy,’ said John. His cigarette moved as he talked and in the light from the hallway and the mist drifting from his lungs he looked like a half-made thing.

  She shifted at the sound of his voice. Sat bolt upright and rubbed her eyes and nose and gave this embarrassed laugh. She made all sorts of fussy little gestures and then took the towel from her lap and started rubbing it herself like she were a sideboard and it were sandpaper.

  ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘Sorry, just got upset …’

  ‘It’s nowt, love,’ said John, not moving. ‘This time of year it’s all tears. And you’ve had your sadnesses. Dry your eyes, you don’t want to get your dress wet.’

  Cordelia and I shared a laugh at that, looking down at her soaked clothes. I loved him fierce. Still do.

  ‘Nivver seen you dry,’ said John, and he shrugged himself out of his black donkey jacket. He eased past us both and went to the kitchen sink. Washed his hands with the fat white soap. He liked to be spotless, did John. Scrubbed his fingernails and his wrists like a doctor preparing to do an operation. Then he combed his hair in the mirror by the sink. The ritual was always the same. Brushed the fine strands back across his head to cover the growing bald spot and then inserted a parting on the left. Half a dozen deft strokes left, half a dozen right, and he would declare himself satisfied. Only then would he kiss my cheek and squeeze my shoulder and sit himself down in his chair. His knees squeaked like the springs.

  ‘How’s the house?’ asked John, as if it were a person. ‘Bet the wind rattles in, eh?’

  Cordelia held her hand to her nose. Seemed to be counting her breaths. When she looked at him she was herself again but her eyes still held the sparkle of tears.

  ‘I don’t use many of the rooms,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit wasted on me. We didn’t need anywhere that big really.’

  ‘He’ll be joining you afore long though, eh?’ asked John. He found his ashtray beneath his chair and extinguished the one he was smoking while fumbling in his shirt pocket for a fresh one.

  ‘We don’t know what the future will bring,’ said Cordelia, looking away.

  ‘London he works, so I hear.’

  ‘Yes. He’s a Mandarin. Civil servant, I mean. Whitehall.’

  John stuck out his lower lip, impressed. ‘
Knew he were important. Only met him a couple of times but he were friendly enough. Generous too.’

  ‘That’ll do, John,’ I said, filling the kettle. I knew well enough how many locals had taken more than their fair share of ready money from Mr Hemlock. It would do to not have his wife be just as familiar with the details as I was.

  ‘The boys in their rooms?’ asked John, undoing his shirt to the waist and making himself comfortable. He looked handsome, sitting there, like the chair were a throne and his damp work trousers a pair of velvet slacks.

  ‘Brian’s tying. James is probably drawing. Henry the Eighth this term.’

  ‘That’ll be a bloodbath,’ said John, winking. ‘Lock up your lipstick. He’s a one for drawing, our eldest. I’m not sure you’d hang his stuff on your wall but it’s got something to it. You got brothers and sisters Mrs Hemlock?’

  ‘No,’ she said, quietly. ‘Only child.’

  ‘And where is it did you say you were from.’

  ‘All over, in a way.’

  ‘Where yer mam, though?’

  ‘Over in Durham,’ she said, and I was surprised to hear that. It were only an hour and a half in the car to Durham. I wondered if she and her mam were close.

  ‘Been there for work,’ said John. ‘Wanted to take Felicity with me but she won’t go out if there’s a chance of driving back in the dark. She’s a nervous passenger. Nervous everything, ain’t you, Felicity?’

  Cordelia shuffled herself around on the seat. She looked uncomfortable. I suppose she weren’t used to family life. I didn’t know the first thing about her past and I didn’t like to ask. John weren’t as concerned with the look of things. He could be an old woman for gossip.

  ‘Had a chinwag with yon charver from Bewcastle on walk from village,’ said John. ‘The estate’s already asked him to fix the headstone and tow the tree. No time for Keith to get his lazy backside to the table. Shame having somebody from outside getting the job but the money were there so no point hanging about.’