by David Mark
‘Our Brian,’ she said, rocking back on her haunches and huffing a strand of hair from her face. ‘He’ll be the death of me. Took a tanner from John’s wallet afore school. What for, eh? What hasn’t he got? Oh he says it weren’t him, looks so bloody innocent you find yourself wondering if your eyes are the ones telling lies.’ She looked down at the paperwork and I saw her head fall forward: a horse stooping to eat. ‘I were harder on him than he’s used to. Gave him a right telling off. He looked so upset. Stomped out the house like he were nivver coming back. And God forgive me but I went into the room where he ties his flies. I thought the money might be in there. Thought I could put it back and make it like it nivver happened. But by God I forgot the money as soon as I opened the door. He’s been collecting things. I knew he liked bones. Frogs and birds and stuff. But it were like a museum. Skulls. Big ones from rams and foxes. I swear, he had a half-dead cat hanging from a string. Where did he get that, eh? And in the corner …’
I waited for more. Saw her fight with the tears that filled her eyes.
‘He had this bucket with a lid on it. There were something in there, in among all this water and scum and rotten meat that stunk like chemicals. He had these big plastic gloves and wooden tongs, like you use for salad. It scared me. Scared me half to death. My own son.’
I stood where I was, wondering how best to comfort her. Truth be told her sudden bout of extra misery was inconvenient. I wanted to get on with what we were here to do. Wanted to make sense of a dead man’s ramblings. I needed her to be useful. I felt for her, of course I did, but sometimes children are just born wrong. The sisters taught me that. Some children are wicked. It doesn’t matter how you teach them and slap them and prophesy an eternity in the bowels of Hell – sometimes a child just needs to pull the meat from the bone and take a look inside.
‘It’ll be for a school project,’ I said, brightly. ‘They do a lot more advanced kind of science at school these days. It’ll be an experiment. We did similar things when I was at school, which was more recently than you. Honestly, you’re worrying for nothing.’
I saw hope flicker in her face. Saw her lower lip wobble and two spots of colour light her cheeks.
‘Would that be it, d’you think?’
‘More likely than anything else. And even if he took that money, who’s to say it isn’t for a school trip or something else. He seemed a clever kid. Bit precocious but that’s no bad thing.’
She clung to my words like they were a rope thrown to a sailor. She wanted things safe. Clean. Wanted the week of the hunter’s moon to draw to a close without any more violence slipping into her world.
‘Don’t think on it just now,’ I said, in the voice I used for bedtime stories. ‘How’ve you done? What have you got?’
She put her hand out to me and I closed my soft palm over her rough fingers. Helped her to her feet. She leaned back against the counter and managed a smile.
‘You got home safe, then? John were worried.’
‘Fine, no problems,’ I said, a little impatiently.
‘You didn’t go by the river, did you? Went the long way, I hope.’
‘I went by the river, yes. It’s quickest.’
‘Don’t know how you dare,’ she said, aghast. ‘I’d shiver meself to death. There’s all sorts in the woods. Caves in the cliff, so they say, but I wouldn’t go looking for them. Me mam would have gone berserk at the very thought.’
‘It was fine,’ I said, gesturing at the papers and indicating we should stop wasting time. ‘Bit cold and muddy but I’m not scared of the dark.’
‘The dark doesn’t know that,’ she said, and I swear I actually saw her shiver. ‘One of the popping stones was taken away after the war. Kissing Bush too.’
I think my face gave me away. I found myself half-laughing, unsure whether to simply let her finish or to push her into some useful answers. It felt like talking to a little old lady: a superstitious crone in a Highland cottage. She wasn’t more than thirty-three but she had the sudden air of somebody who should be wearing candlelight and cobwebs.
‘Used to be an extra stone,’ she said, wavering. Behind her, beyond the glass, the rain had started up again; delicately tapping on the glass like the pecking of countless birds. ‘Nobody knows where it went but it were the biggest. There one day and gone the next. Somebody cut down the bush too. Ancient hawthorn tree, all gnarled and twisted. Dug up and taken away and a great hole in the ground. Ye’d have thought it would tek a giant to shift it. Scared us half to death. It were Mrs Parker’s man who said it were a coffin stone.’
‘A coffin stone?’
‘Somewhere for the pall-bearers to rest their burden on the way to the church. Smooth, flat stone. You can imagine what some of the locals used to use it for after they’d asked their lovers to marry them.’ She twitched a nervous smile. ‘Parker, from farm next to yours – he’d only just moved here when the stone vanished, though at that time there were so much coming and going it were hard to keep track. He and Mrs Parker had already wed but he wanted to do things properly, like. Wanted to be a proper part of the village. Took her to the Popping Stone and turned white as a ghost. Told us all sorts of stories about how those old stones were centuries old and how in his country they were thought of as something to be feared – like they’d soaked up all the dregs of all the bodies who’d rested there over the years. Said the stone were like a cork in a bottle, holding bad spirits in. You can imagine what that did to us.’
‘How do you know this?’ I asked, unable to help.
‘He gave a talk at the school not long after. The headmaster had asked him special.’
‘And he spoke about proposing to his wife?’ I asked, confused.
‘No, that were just gossip, the sort of thing you pick up. But he told us about the coffin stone and what it meant and when it vanished like that we were all scared to sleep for weeks.’
Behind Felicity a tiny shaft of sunlight was trying to find a gap between clouds. A thin line of illumination cast a sudden yellow glow onto my face and the left side of my body and then was just as quickly snatched away.
‘He’s foreign?’ I asked. ‘You said “his country”.’
‘Aye, Swiss. Where the cuckoo clocks come from. You’ve not met him?’
I tried to remember. I think he waved hello shortly after I moved in: a distant stick-man in green. And perhaps I had seen him and his wife in their car once or twice. I’d never paid them any attention. I just knew him as the man who wanted to buy the house and his wife as the mousy, miserable woman who had knocked on my door.
‘I don’t really know anybody,’ I reminded her.
‘Aye, suppose. Nice man. Gave money to the Reading Rooms when it needed a new roof and always sponsors stalls at the wrestling and the cattle market. Turned that farm into a money-spinner. Her faither would have been proud.’
I clicked with my tongue; a sudden, unexpected clucking noise that betrayed my impatience.
‘Her faither?’
‘Dad. Mr Parker.’
‘Same surname?’ I asked, baffled.
‘No, look, sorry, I always forget how little ye know. It’s a horrible word but Audrey Parker were a spinster. Past thirty and not married. Quiet lass. She’d been away to school and not settled. Her faither was a military man, proper old-fashioned colonel-type though I don’t know if he was an actual colonel – that’s just what people called him. Was already a soldier before the first war. He bought the farm next to your place about 1910. Married a lass from Greenhead who didn’t want to move to wherever it were that he were from. Audrey came along during the war when he were off fighting. Her brother, Loveday, the year after. Aye, I see you looking! He paid the price for the name his family lumbered him with. Can’t say the local lads were too kind to him when he were home for the holidays. The colonel came home after the war to be a farmer though from what Mam told me he weren’t the same man who left. He’d gone grey and looked old and weren’t fit enough to lift a spade. It were his
wife who made a go of the place and then Audrey and her brother took it on when she died. Always a bit touched by tragedy, so Mam said. Two of Audrey’s brothers didn’t see their fifth birthdays. And Loveday had an accident that took his arm at the elbow, though it didn’t stop him working like a Trojan. The colonel died not long after. Farm was doing OK and Audrey had come back from school and was happy to run the place with her mam and her brother. But brother went off to war …’
‘With one arm?’
‘Oh aye, they’ll find work for ye if ye’re willing. Well, he nivver came back. All those years studying at the posh school and at university and he goes and gets blasted to bits. Her mam died not long after and Audrey were alone with a great farm to run on her own and she were already the age I am now. We all thought she’d end up a bit dotty, all alone. That were mebbe why she wrote to all the old POWs and sent them bits and bobs when they were going through hardships. Bit of company, even if it were miles away. Then next thing she’s got herself wed. Met some Swiss man while in Ireland buying a breeding bull. Were a proper local romance. There were those who reckoned she were one of those who had no interest in marriage but it just shows what little people know. He were a gent, Mr Parker, even if he weren’t the prettiest. And it were a lovely tribute, what he did.’
‘What he did?’
‘He took her name! What a thing, eh? Whatever he were called afore he were happy to be a Parker if it meant keeping the name of her faither on the deeds. Parker’s Farm it were and is still and he’s made a profitable business, like I said. Quiet man but kind and though you don’t see Audrey smile over much there’s a happiness in her that weren’t there when she were young. No children but they works so hard they’ve probably no time.’
I rubbed my lip and realized how still I had been holding myself. My joints were aching. I’d been cold too many times. Shivering, I glanced back down at the mess of papers. The words looked like so many squashed lice: a jumble of scrawls all scribbled in the same hand.
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here earlier,’ I said. ‘You must be going blind.’
Felicity sucked at her teeth, rolling her eyes. ‘Wouldn’t have made a difference, even with a big brain you need to be able to read the writing and I swear Fairfax has just done this to give me a headache. I’ve tried as well as I can to put it into order but there’s no headings and it’s only when I can make out a word that I’ve been able to make any kind of system. That pile by your feet seems to be the earliest stuff. It’s in pencil and the handwriting makes some kind of sense. It’s neat and there are initials. I reckon I’ve worked most of ’em out. Armstrong. Irthing. Sawyer, Lightfoot. Some of ’em have gone but others are still alive and I don’t suppose many of them will be worrying about their secrets being shared. It’s all just memories of school and the jobs they used to do and their mothers and faithers giving them a hiding for this or that. Just pages of how lovely things used to be, though I’ve no doubt when I’m old I’ll say the same about now.’
‘Right, well, that’s a start …’
‘Middle pile have the occasional date on them. Maybe ten years ago. Chats with the navvies, the lads who drained the bog, the charvers who built the base. Lots of people talking about how times are looking up and there’s good money to be made and wouldn’t it be a thing if it were true what people were saying – that Gilsland would be a terminus for the moon.’
‘That lot?’ I asked, pointing at the most chaotic of the piles.
‘I’d say that’s round about the point he lost his wife, God rest her, and there were nowt to keep him focussed. I can barely make any of it out but it’s not as faded as the other stuff and it’s in pen, not pencil and he’s using more pages and not cramming everything in so it must have been after rationing stopped …’
I found myself grinning. ‘That’s proper detective work,’ I said.
She shook her head at that but seemed pleased. ‘Stuff about local landmarks. The wall. The fort.’
‘The fort?’
‘Roman fort. Chats with somebody whose name I can’t make out, page after page talking about types of stone and architecture and gargoyles and the sort of stuff you’d only read if you had bugger all else to do.’
I looked a little disappointed. ‘Nothing about a Frenchman?’
‘If there is I can’t make it out. I’m disappointed, despite myself. The page under the church floor was at least legible. Like he’d made an effort with it.’
I breathed out, rolling my head this way and that. I felt stiff and cold and hungry but had no desire to warm up or eat anything. I just wanted to understand.
‘The tape recorder,’ I said, closing one eye. ‘If he’d started recording conversations then he could listen to them back and not have to scribble it all down as people were talking. Maybe the page you found was a transcript. Something from a recording.’
Felicity opened her eyes a little wider. She twitched, like Bogart, as though something suddenly pained her.
‘There’s no tape recorder here,’ she said.
‘Have you been through the whole house? Top to bottom?’
‘No, of course …’
‘Well, let’s do that.’
It took better than three hours and by the time we had finished the house looked as though a tornado had blown through. We found no tape recorder. It was a sad, dispiriting trawl. Felicity went very quiet when we found ourselves in Christopher’s old room. Little had been touched since his death. It looked as though he had simply popped out. There was a notebook on the windowsill, next to some battered paperbacks and a chunk of rock. The bed was made up with a sheet and brown woollen blanket. The cupboard and the chest of drawers were different types of wood and a sketch of Lanercost Priory hung on the chimney breast against a cold blue wall. I couldn’t bring myself to open the notebooks. Nobody had disturbed the dust in years: the thoughts of a boy dead for twenty years still safely imprisoned beneath the covers.
We were standing on the upstairs landing, looking dejected, feeling grey, when the bird hit the window. There was no warning. There was just a sudden, startling bang on the glass and then the window on the landing erupted inwards in a sudden geyser of flying glass and feathers.
I jumped backwards, my hands coming up to protect my face, shrieking like a child. Felicity’s noise was something else entirely. She gave a low, tremulous growl: the noise people make in the seconds before they die. A death rattle, they call it, and that’s the only sound I can liken it to. I felt her hands dig into my arm hard enough to draw blood. I swear I think she believed she was about to be carried away by whatever spirit had won her soul.
‘Felicity, it’s OK, it’s OK, it’s just a bird,’ I said, looking down at the sad, blood-spattered creature that was twitching on the threadbare carpet. It was brown and yellow with an eye that made me think of polished black stone. ‘It’s just a bird. A bird came through the window …’
But Felicity was scurrying down the stairs, her legs half buckling as she slithered against the bannister and dragged herself toward the front door.
‘Felicity, it’s fine, I’ll tidy up, it’s nothing …’
She pulled open the front door and ran out onto the road.
I heard a screech of brakes and then the crunch of metal hitting stone.
And then there was just the pitter-patter of the ceaseless rain.
FELICITY
Transcript 0006, recorded October 30, 2010
Noise and speed and flashes of colour. That’s what I remember. A sudden blur of red and green and a rush of air and a howling, angry screech as tyres fought for grip on the wet road. Metal hit against metal and then against brick and I was just laying there, wet and shaking and cold and watching dust rise into the sky like a volcano had erupted and not knowing whether it were a Tuesday afternoon or Christmas morning.
‘Felicity. Oh God, Felicity …’
I heard me name but it meant nowt to me. Not at first. My heart was hammering inside my chest. It didn’t feel li
ke mine. It made me think of a crazy person headbutting a wall, over and over. I might have giggled a bit, like the lunatic had taken over. It was all just wet air and wet road and grey sky and hard stone beneath my head. What had happened? Why was I laying in the road, arm under my body like it belonged to somebody else. And then I saw the bird. A flicker of it; an insinuation of feathers and spindly bones, fluttering into my mind as if it were an eyelash caught on the edge of my vision. It was the rhythm, I think. The swift pat-pat-pat of my pulse turning into a peck-peck-peck of a sharp, angry beak. Everything flooded back. Hit me like a wave. I was on the ground outside my house. Grazed knees, bleeding palms, a pain all down one side. A bird had come through the window at Fairfax’s. It had stripped the years from me; made me a child, wrapped up in ribbons by a terror beyond reason. I’d fled, Cordelia calling my name. The wagon had been slowing down, ready for the turn down towards the church. The driver saw me just in time, swinging the vehicle to the left. I’d stood still. Just stood, motionless, like I had roots sunk into the earth. Something had hit me. A sudden blur of speed and power and I had hit the ground as the wagon struck the side of Fairfax’s house and sent slates tumbling from the roof and scattered the birds into the clouds.
Groggy, I looked to my left. He was on his knees, breathing slowly, like he’d run a race. He was looking at me, face pale. Looking as if I had done this on purpose. As I had let him down.
‘Jaysus, where did ye come from? My God, I thought I’d squashed you flat. Are you hurt? Mother Mary, you’re bleeding so you are.’
It felt like I was underwater. The voices were muffled. Everything was moving slowly. I opened my mouth wide. Stared up at the slow-moving clouds and thought they looked soft and warm and comfortable.
‘Mrs Goose. Can you hear me? Oh Jesus she’s bumped her head …’
‘She had a fright. Ran straight out …’
‘Christ, Ronan, ye’ve tekken half the wall down.’
‘Never mind that, how’s the other? Who were it?’