The Funeral Owl

by Jim Kelly

  When Humph turned back towards the Capri Dryden could see that he’d begun to accept that it might happen: that his life might be defined by this day, the day his daughter was never seen again. This had been his last shot, the last place Grace might have gone for refuge and comfort. Now they were left with a chilling alternative. That she’d taken to the road. Despite the building heat of the day, Dryden shivered at the thought of those three words, which seemed to hang in the wide fen sky: never seen again.

  ‘Can you make tea?’ Dryden asked Meg. ‘Humph needs to slow down. Just wait. We all need to wait.’

  Suddenly Humph raised his arm, pointing past them, back down the drove they’d driven up.

  The horizon had gone. In the mid-distance the water tower at the fen township of Brimstone Hill, and the little steeple of its church, were grey ghosts. Wind bent trees back like slingshots. Above it all broiled a cloud of dust, with a dark heart, almost black, but edged in what looked like ash. A soil storm – a ‘fen blow’. The summer had been water-free and the wind had blown a constant stiff breeze, so that the telegraph wires sang all day. Dust storms wandered the Fens like giant spinning tops. Wind stripped tiny particles of dry silt off the fields and rolled them up into billowing, rolling clouds.

  Meg Humphries was dragging in washing. ‘Get inside,’ she said. She’d spent a lifetime living with the wind and sky. The soil storms stung the flesh, blinded the eyes, and filled mouths and noses and ears. Farm workers wore hoods and face masks. The locals ran for the house, or found any shelter they could out on the land.

  ‘And get the dog!’ shouted Meg.

  Dryden checked all the Capri’s windows were up and locked the car. Humph helped his mother with the sheets, secured the bungalow’s old sash windows and quickly laid three sandbags – set ready on the step – at the front door. Boudicca was last in before they shut it.

  Then they stood in the bay window and watched the storm come. Dryden was aware immediately that this was unlike the ‘blows’ he’d seen around Ely that summer. They’d been benign by comparison, veils of amber dust in wide tornado-like funnels, dodging over the landscape. He’d been in one once on the train, the carriage plunging from sunlight to semi-darkness in a second. He’d always recalled the sound, a kind of sizzling, as if milk were boiling over.

  This was different. The wind here was strong enough, steady enough, to lift the whole surface of the soil, blotting out the sun. The cloud wasn’t see-through, or thin, but thick and churning, like a smoke bomb. And it seemed alive within, sudden billows erupting upwards and outwards, the heat in the air fuelling it, dragging in more heat, self-propelling; as violent as a volcano’s pyroclastic wind, charged with energy, an eruption of the earth into the sky.

  ‘They’re much worse this year,’ said Meg Humphries. ‘It’s so dry, so …’ She covered her mouth again. ‘So violent. My God …’

  Dryden knew that she was thinking about Grace, that she might be out there, alone.

  ‘It’ll be gone in a moment,’ he said.

  They watched as the forward wall of the cloud engulfed a pair of tied cottages a mile away, then a line of poplars, and a car parked on the drove. One second the trees stood in the grey polluted air ahead of the cloud, the next they were gone. The forward wall of the storm began to throw out debris – fence posts, pieces of roofing, uprooted plants, farmyard litter.

  Humph checked his mobile; the signal had gone.

  They moved into the hall, away from the glass. The light faded; it was almost dark. The sun was eclipsed and there was an instant silence. Meg kept chickens and their constant clucking soundtrack died. Even the wind itself seemed silent. Boudicca lay by the fireplace as if she had been shot.

  The front door had an art deco fanlight. The rainbow of colours faded away. Above them they heard the roof creak with the effort of staying on the house. The storm front hit with a muffled thud. They heard a tile fall, then others, and all the windows rattled. Then the noise of the wind returned, but they were inside it now, so the sound was circular, accelerating around them. From the backyard they heard splintering glass. Something hard hit the bay window and the glass cracked but held. In the chimney they heard the dust churning, a clatter as a dead bird fell into the fireplace, and finally a brick.

  Then it was gone, as suddenly as it had come. Sunlight burst into the house.

  Dryden hoped it was a parable; just like the storm, their fears for Grace would pass.

  He ran to the back door and threw it open. Outside the world was grey – covered in a thin snow of soil the colour of school socks.

  He heard a shout from the front room.

  They were all looking out of the bay window. The air was still misty with dust but they could clearly see, lying on the path, the body of a girl, her head partly hidden by a holdall, her legs bare and white in the dust.

  TWO

  Grace was unconscious, caked in white dust, like the victim of some exotic earthquake, carried out of the ruins of a Mexican suburb, lit by TV floodlights. The silt had settled over her body and formed a crust, and there were no cracks in this carapace. Dryden got to her first and lifted her head. Her eyes were closed, her lips dusty and slightly parted to reveal her teeth. The thought that she might be injured, or even dead, made Dryden hold her very still so that he could look for signs of life. He searched her face and felt a second pass in slow motion.

  She coughed, expelling a small cloud of dust.

  ‘Thank God,’ said Humph, kneeling down beside her. He wriggled an arm under her knees and they lifted her together.

  They carried her into the front room and laid her on the sofa. Her limbs fell awkwardly, as if she was still unconscious. Opening her eyes, she tried to sit up, which sparked a bout of coughs. Meg arrived with water but the teenager pushed the glass aside. ‘Don’t fuss, Gran.’

  Humph shook his head. ‘You’ve given us a scare, Gracie. I’ll ring your mum. She’s in a state.’

  ‘The holdall,’ said Grace. Her voice was furred up. They gave her the bag and she put her hand in and fished out a can of Pepsi. She drank it all, coughed, then closed her eyes. Dryden thought that she had pressed them closed, to shut them all out.

  ‘Thank God,’ said Meg, her face wet with tears.

  Instead of ringing Grace’s mum, Humph pulled open the holdall. He found a few clothes, an iPod Touch, a hockey stick in its own carry-case, a copy of The Catcher in the Rye, a framed picture of a dog – a mongrel that had been run over the year before, a bath-bag the size of a football, a cuddly toy Humph recognized and a purse crammed with membership cards. And a portable draughts set in a little inlaid wooden box Humph had given her just before the divorce as a present. They played when they met because it meant they could spend time together without talking.

  ‘What were you thinking?’ asked Humph, sitting down opposite, as if he was preparing to interview his own daughter. The role of father inquisitor didn’t suit him, overshadowed as it was by his real role as absentee father.

  Meg told him to go and make eggs on toast and tea.

  ‘I don’t want tea,’ said Grace. She brushed dust from her face and hands.

  ‘Come on, you.’ Meg took her granddaughter by the arm and led her into the bathroom. There was a shower only, a stand-up thing with a cord to pull, but she’d have to make do. And she had to pull the curtain on the bathroom window, because even though they were half a mile from the nearest neighbour, people had sharp eyes on Euximoor Fen.

  ‘She’s grown up,’ said Meg when they could hear the buzz of the shower.

  ‘You saw her a few weeks ago,’ said Humph, worrying the eggs in the pan with a spatula. He’d driven Grace out to his mother’s house on the Bank Holiday for a barbecue. Her little sister, too. The girls had made salad while he’d tended to a long line of sausages.

  ‘A fortnight’s a lifetime when you’re fifteen,’ said Meg. ‘Leave her here for now, Humph. When she’s eating, you go. I’ll talk to her when she’s ready to talk. Her mother can call
.’

  Always ‘her mother’. Meg couldn’t stand the sound of her name. She’d blamed her for the break-up of the family, although she had a pretty comprehensive grasp of her son’s shortcomings.

  ‘I’m all right,’ Grace said, emerging in a dressing gown Humph recognized as one he had bought Meg twenty years ago.

  ‘You passed out,’ said Humph, by way of putting her right. ‘You’re not all right.’ He led the way into the front room where he’d put a plate on the table. Two fried eggs, both yolks broken, the toast burnt. The dog came and sat under her chair.

  Grace took her father’s hand. ‘I thought I’d never be able to breathe again. I panicked. Sorry.’ She looked out of the window at the grey world, the air clearing now, as if after a snowstorm. ‘I’ve not been in one like that. It’s weird.’

  ‘It’s the dry summer. Global warming. Stuff,’ offered Dryden.

  She coughed. ‘I’m not going back.’ She attacked the eggs with apparent enthusiasm.

  A tall girl, perhaps five foot seven, with narrow shoulders and an oval face, she reminded Humph of her mother. She prompted divergent emotions in the cabbie: he wanted to stand next to her and let his cheek touch hers, but just as urgently he wanted to leave the room, drive away, in case he was called on, suddenly, to protect her.

  ‘I’m never going back,’ she said. ‘I want to live here with Nan.’

  Meg said they’d talk about it, catching Humph’s eye, glancing at the door. She didn’t think now was the time for a cross-examination. If Grace wanted to tell them why she’d run away from home she’d do it in her own time.

  ‘Last night,’ said Humph, persisting. ‘Mum said you hadn’t slept in your bed.’

  She gave her father a one-shoulder shrug. ‘There’s a bench at the bus station in Ely. By the Indian. I was fine.’ She didn’t look at her father, or her grandmother, but chased a fried egg round the plate instead. ‘I just wanted some space, OK?’

  Humph covered his eyes with one small hand over the bridge of his nose. ‘You’ve got my mobile number. Why didn’t you ring?’

  She took out her mobile and put it on the table, then pushed it away. The movement left a mark in the thin veneer of dust which had somehow settled on the interior of the house. ‘Battery’s flat. It’s useless.’

  His mother was right, thought Humph, Grace had grown up. On some extra mental plane he tried to work out when it was he’d last seen her. A week ago, maybe more. They talked every day, several times a day, on the mobile, by text, but he realized now that she could hide things from him if they didn’t see each other, that if they relied on messages she could construct a version of her life that pleased him, and that he could do the same for her. It was a side effect of the modern world, he thought, that people could be who they wanted to be until you met them.

  ‘Can I stay here?’ She looked at her grandmother. ‘Please.’

  ‘I’ll talk to your mum,’ said Humph, indulging in a huge sigh. ‘It’s her call.’ The cabbie looked at his mobile and headed for the front door. ‘I need a better signal.’

  Outside it was very quiet, as if the landscape was in shock.

  Humph had a personal space slightly smaller than Norfolk, so Dryden said he’d find a better signal too, and wandered off down a path beside a field of leeks. Each of the plants had gathered soil in its leaves, grey and claggy, like the waste from a vacuum cleaner. If he took in a full lungful of air something in his throat would catch, making him cough.

  Dryden had work to do. He was the editor – newly appointed – of The Crow newspaper, based in the small cathedral city of Ely, just ten miles east across the Fens. The Crow came out on Friday. Its sister paper, the free-sheet Ely Express, came out on Tuesday. One of the reasons Dryden had been made editor of The Crow was because he’d proposed increasing the paper’s readership by launching new editions; the first of which was to be here, in the West Fens. He’d rented a new office for the paper in the fen township of Brimstone Hill, just a few miles from Euximoor Drove, and assigned himself to the new edition, at least for the first three months. He’d left his other two reporters to run head office in Ely.

  News was scarce out on the Fens. So the dust storm was a gift from heaven – almost literally. The story was perfect for The Crow’s rural readership, and a strong West Fen story for the new edition. For the town-based Ely Express he’d stick to a picture. He’d got plenty of shots, and from the digital read-out on his phone they were decent ones. Each storm was bad news for local farmers because the wind picked up the topsoil and moved it miles. Some farms lost crops, ruined and uprooted, while others saw seedlings and salad crops buried. Worst of all, some of the soil was lost forever, blown high enough to carry out to sea, or dumped in rivers and estuaries. And this had been a bad storm, much more violent than average, part of an emerging pattern of more extreme weather. There’d be plenty of damage out on the windswept land.

  He rang the local rep for the National Farmers’ Union and told him what had happened and said he wanted an update from his members. Also – a good trick he’d played before – he wanted an estimate of the damage on one, unnamed, farm in terms of insurance claims. Once he had that figure he’d multiply it by the number of holdings on the affected fens and get himself a nice big fat headline figure for The Crow: ‘£1m DUST STORM HITS WEST FENS’.

  He called the local police station in Brimstone Hill. The township had a resident community constable and his house had a blue light and a front counter open every Monday, Tuesday and Friday between ten and two. Dryden tried his mobile and got the busy tone. Bad fen blows caused havoc on the roads, so he guessed the policeman was out somewhere at a traffic accident. Then he rang the head of the primary school, a woman called Jan Riddle.

  She answered her mobile: ‘Dryden?’

  ‘Sorry – just wanted to see if you’re all OK. Did the dust get that far?’

  ‘You’re like the angel of death,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks a lot.’ Dryden liked Riddle and had earmarked her as a key contact on an earlier visit. She was in her mid-forties, playful, one of those rare teachers who don’t have to discipline the kids. Dryden had sneaked a story into the paper about her five-year-olds running a marathon by doing a hundred yards around the playground every day. So she was on his side.

  ‘But yes, we’re all fine, no one’s dead, but we’ve had tears. They were out for break and I didn’t see it coming. Those that aren’t crying are too excited to sit down. The TA got them into the bike shed, so most of them only got a mouthful and their noses blocked. We dished out the milk early, so thank God for school milk.’

  Dryden memorized the quote, thinking it would make a great top line for a sidebar on the main story:

  ‘SCHOOL MILK

  SAVES KIDS

  AFTER DUST

  STORM HITS

  PLAYTIME’.

  ‘Gagging, were they?’

  ‘Have you tasted it? It’s like a mouthful of cinders.’

  He promised he’d pop in later, then ended the call. His mobile rang immediately.

  It was Vee Hilgay, his chief reporter, calling in from head office in Ely. Dryden had recruited Vee in his first executive move as editor. Old money, a spinster, she’d spent nearly twenty years running a charity which looked after the elderly in the fen winters. She wore a donkey jacket, CND lapel badge and Doc Martens. At the age of seventy-four, she was the coolest OAP in town.

  ‘We’ve had a fen blow out here, a bad one,’ said Dryden. ‘I’ll do you a hundred-word caption and send you some pics for the Express. What you got?’ he asked, walking to the end of the path and catching sight of Humph, still standing by the Capri, his mobile to his ear. He could hear his high, tuneful voice, but the tone was odd, as if he was talking to a call centre in Bombay.

  He heard Vee turning her notebook pages. Dryden operated without paper due to his indecipherable shorthand and the fact that people – especially in the Fens – always stopped talking if you started taking notes. He had an exc
ellent short-term memory. He just needed to remember to make a note before the slate was wiped clean by a good night’s sleep.

  ‘One thing,’ she said. He heard Vee sip tea. She lived on tannin, carting a thermos round with her the size of one of the shell cases from the Somme. ‘Metal thieves struck again, out on your patch, Christ Church at Brimstone Hill. Last night, apparently, about thirty foot of lead off the roof and the odd lead angel from the graveyard. The vicar said she’d be on site at noon.’

  ‘I’ll get Humph to run me down to the church. If I can get a picture I will,’ said Dryden.

  ‘What about Humph’s daughter?’ asked Vee.

  ‘She’s here.’

  ‘Thank God. Poor girl. It must be a nightmare being a fen teenager.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why! She lives out in some godforsaken village where most people’s idea of a good time is a smoke on the swings.’

  ‘It’s five miles from Ely.’

  ‘The city that never wakes up,’ said Vee. ‘And five miles, Dryden. You know what the public transport system’s like in the Fens. It doesn’t exist. She might as well live in Timbuktu. Her Mum’s on her case twenty-four-seven. Adolescence is horrible wherever you live. Imagine what it’s like for her.’

  ‘OK. I only asked.’

  ‘And then there’s her dad. If he’s not actually working he’s asleep in the cab in a lay-by. He might as well be in the Navy.’

  Humph was Dryden’s chauffeur during most daylight hours. Since the reporter’s accident more than a decade earlier he’d needed someone with wheels. For nearly a year Dryden’s wife had been in a coma so he’d had to live a strange, lonely life. He’d shared it, in part, with Humph, who in his turn was grieving for the loss of his marriage and children. Dryden gave him all his travel expenses by way of payment, which didn’t amount to much, but that didn’t bother Humph. The cabbie’s core business was late-night trips from the Cambridge and Newmarket clubs, plus the Ely school run. In between times he was available to ferry Dryden around. The last thing Humph wanted was to go home, as home didn’t really exist any more. So it suited the cabbie just fine, and he slept when he could – feet up in a lay-by.