Why I Went Back

by James Clammer

  ‘You can’t expect us to believe that,’ Daniel said.

  ‘I’m not asking you to believe anything.’

  ‘What about the tree?’ I said. ‘And the bird – why’s the bird so important?’

  ‘Old Beautiful?’ Haxforth reached into the pocket of the Admiral hoodie. Slowly, carefully, he pulled out the thing that was sheltering inside and held it up for us to see. Outside, moving and flying around, it’d looked fast and agile but now I saw it for what it was, a crusty old bird, unbelievable it should even be alive, with tattered feathers and a face and beak covered in dark pustule-like growths. Worst of all were the eyes, two evil black eyes that stared at you, that if you looked at them too long seemed like they were saying BEWARE.

  Instinctively I shifted the piano stool backwards.

  ‘My companion,’ Haxforth said, stroking the torn feathers. ‘Or my warder, depending on how you look at it. Sometimes he goes away, but always he comes back. A far more frightful creature than Christy, or any of his sort. But finally the time’s come for us to part. Isn’t that right, eh, Old Beautiful?’ He turned the swallow in his hands, brought it up close to his face. When they were almost eye to eye the thing screeched at him, did some weird spitting thing with its beak.

  ‘Doesn’t look very happy about it, does he? That’s because he knows it’s the end for him too. Well, back inside you go then, till tonight.’ Haxforth slipped the bird back inside the hoodie and cupped his hands around the pocket’s openings, cupped it like you see pregnant women do with their baby bumps.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Daniel said. ‘Why do you need that – thing – before you can go and find your brother?’

  ‘The brother with the voices inside his head …’ That was what I really wanted to hear about of course – not being forced to look at some horrible disgusting old bird.

  ‘Those voices. The first and biggest things I ever stole. That we –’ Haxforth patted the pocket, correcting himself – ‘ever stole. Not that I was given much choice in the matter.’

  ‘You stole them? You mean you took them away?’

  ‘I gave him peace. Now it’s time for me to have a little of my own. That’s what the apple tree means. Time to come home, that’s what he’s saying.’

  ‘He must be very old,’ Daniel said.

  ‘No. You’re wrong. He’s very young. Not much older than you two.’

  I didn’t say anything. Obviously that was impossible. But it didn’t matter because in that moment I’d made up my mind. Seeing the apple tree blossom and grow fruit like that had clinched it. It had a shape, this plan of mine, and it wasn’t vague and right then it was pumping the purest oxygenated blood through the wide healthy chambers of my invincible heart.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘We’ll help you find him. Take you to where he lives, Shuttle Hill.’ I glanced at Daniel, saw him nod in agreement. ‘We’ll try to anyway. Only – well, maybe there’s something you can do for me first.’

  ‘Of course,’ Haxforth said. ‘There’s a debt to be paid, I understand that. Without you and those cutters …’

  ‘Great. It won’t take long. It’s going somewhere – a sort of place you visit.’

  I saw Daniel shoot me a warning with his eyes. He was a step ahead already.

  ‘When do we leave?’ Haxforth asked.

  ‘As soon as we get you tidied up. They won’t even let you on the bus, looking like that.’

  ‘There’s some old clothes of Dad’s upstairs,’ Daniel said. ‘Some of them might fit.’

  They went upstairs, Haxforth taking the thing he called Old Beautiful with him, and I heard the two of them moving around and talking. He must really have left in a hurry, Daniel’s dad, I thought – leaving all those history books behind, and clothes too.

  After a while of them not coming down I decided to look around the basement room. It was packed full of stuff when you started noticing, not just the big blocky piano. Clear plastic boxes were stacked high on shelves. There was a dead Tamagotchi inside one, and a chew-eared lion and a Pikachu clock without batteries. There were piles of old schoolwork and art projects and things made out of string and toilet rolls. It was like someone had packed away and catalogued the whole of Daniel’s childhood. And then there was the table with the pink lamp and the pile of music books, the scores. I picked up a couple and flicked through them. They were mad and impossible, full of dots and squiggles and unpronounceable foreign words. But each sign and symbol corresponded to a note on the piano, I knew that. Could Daniel really make sense of this? And then make music out of it? I looked at the score open on the little shelf above the keyboard. Moonlight Sonata, it said. I reached out a finger, wanting to strike down on a white or a black key, but then I heard someone on the stairs, pulled guiltily away.

  ‘I know where you want to take him, Aidan. I don’t think it’s such a great idea.’

  ‘Why not? He can help her, I’m sure of it.’

  Daniel looked worried. ‘Will they even let him in?’

  ‘Don’t see why not. It’ll probably help. I think the visiting rules say all minors need to be accompanied by an adult. I’ll say he’s my grandad or something.’

  ‘But what do you expect to happen?’

  ‘How do I know? Maybe nothing. But here’s this bloke who’s come out of nowhere and who can make something like that happen.’ I nodded in the direction of the deadened apple tree.

  ‘It looked like he was watching it to me, same as we were.’

  ‘Whatever. It was amazing anyhow.’

  ‘And it only came to life for a couple of minutes before it died again.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So! So there has to be a rational explanation!’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘I don’t know! But just because I don’t know it, it doesn’t mean there isn’t one.’

  We lapsed into a bad-tempered silence.

  I went up to the piano and plinked a couple of keys. ‘You play this a lot then?’

  Daniel nodded. ‘All the time. She wants me to go to the Royal Academy in London.’

  ‘Go on, play us something. While we’re waiting.’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s taking ages.’

  Daniel picked up the little stool and sat it back down in front of the piano. ‘OK,’ he said, a bit reluctant. He did some weird stretching thing with his fingers, and then he started.

  I don’t suppose I’m too much of an expert. I mean, I know what classical music sounds like because it’s something Mum liked to have on every now and then. In fact I had memories of listening to it with her on the radio in our kitchen, back when the kitchen was a warm cosy place and not filled with grease and dirt and unpaid gas bills. She’d sing along with the bits she knew, enjoying herself, and as I watched Daniel playing I suddenly realised why. It’s because that sort of music is like taking part in a conversation. It’s always changing, and you’re always part of it, but you don’t have to say anything. It’s a thinking sort of conversation, and that means there’s no pressure. Somehow in that no-pressure she’d found a little bit of freedom.

  He played on and I thought, Please please this next time I see her let her remember who I am and please let her come home soon and please let everything go back to how it was before.

  Daniel did a little rolling flourish and then he stopped and looked up at me. His face was red and I could tell he was embarrassed. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Really good.’ I said that because it had been.

  ‘Bravo.’

  Haxforth stood clapping from the bottom of the stairs. He looked different now, almost like a respectable pensioner. The sports gear was gone and he wore brown pressed trousers and a light blue shirt under an old overcoat. The thin yellow hair was combed across. He’d come down silent as a shadow, without the slightest scuff or misstep, neither of us noticing. There was a bulge in the pocket of the overcoat, so I guessed that was where Old Beautiful was.

  They’d let him into Tredeg
ar House dressed like that, no problem.

  We bundled up against the cold, counted money. Through the house, down the front steps, past the dead tree. Almost impossible to believe what’d happened to it earlier. For a moment I remembered that doctor on the radio. Mild hallucinations to begin with, auditory and visual.

  Thank Christ Daniel had seen it too.

  ‘Not bothering with school today then?’ I asked him. He had his keys in his hand, ready to lock up the house behind us.

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Not much point, is there, if it’s your last week.’

  ‘Not much.’

  School. That made me remember something. That and Daniel’s piano playing – how he’d made sense of all those dots and squiggles.

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘I wanted to …’ I ducked back inside quick before he shut the door, ran into the chandelier room, over to the little coffee table thing where I’d left it. Then back outside again.

  I opened it at random, the big hardback Beowulf. The modern English on one side, the Old English on the other.

  I handed it to Haxforth. Slowly he turned the pages.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘A beautiful book,’ he said. ‘Beautiful writing. I’ve seen them before – these shapes, you understand.’

  He pointed at the weird angular runes.

  I looked at Daniel. ‘Where?’ I said. ‘Where have you seen them?’

  ‘A man I met once. He could read these words. Could write them too.’

  ‘But nobody writes like that,’ Daniel said. ‘It’s nowhere near proper English. It’s not even the right alphabet.’

  Haxforth shrugged. ‘All the same. He showed me how. All his writing equipment ranged out, I remember. We shared a room once at an inn. Wore a black priest’s cloak.’ Haxforth moved his fingers over the grainy pages of the book. ‘An inquisitive sort, hardly religious at all. Discovered I was a thief somehow, and after that he wouldn’t leave me alone. Wanted to know all about it.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘Ah. Well. Stories, that was what he was really after. Kept saying I must know one or two, on account of my travels and profession.’

  ‘And did you? Know any, I mean?’

  ‘Of course.’ Haxforth smiled. ‘The old ones, naturally – the ones I’d heard as a child. He hurried me through those though, said he’d heard them all before. A very provoking fellow, he was. Full of noise and sly flattery. Impossible to escape from. After a while I found myself sugaring the pill.’

  ‘Sugaring the pill?’

  ‘Thief’s prerogative. He wanted tales, so that’s what I gave him. Gold excited him particularly. And dragons. He was convinced those were real. I simply … helped him along. What else did he expect? He plied me with ale till dawn. A thoroughly provoking fellow. Curious, that I remember him so well.’

  ‘Have a read,’ I said. ‘Tell me if you recognise any of it.’

  Haxforth looked at me, embarrassed. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘He means the modern English, not the old stuff,’ Daniel told him.

  ‘I can’t read that either.’

  ‘You can’t read?’ said Daniel. ‘At all?’

  ‘Short words sometimes. Signs, things like that. Otherwise … No.’

  I took the book out of his hands, stuck it back inside the house. We could stand there forever puzzling out the past, but how clever was it really when there was the small matter of the future to think of?

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said.

  We walked out under sheet-metal skies, heading for the nearest bus stop.

  Chapter 33

  A smooth connection to the high street, scanning the dense-packed shoppers for Christy or any of his pals. Everything was Peace and Goodwill. Haxforth didn’t seem rattled by the crowds and the crowds took no notice of him, had their heads stuffed with a million other things. We weaved between them invisible. The time on the bus-stop board said 10.02. A few minutes’ wait for the right one and then we climbed to the top deck where you always go even when it’s empty downstairs. Off it lurched, moving up the gears, a brightly lit box travelling through a dark winter’s morning.

  ‘I’m pretty sure this’ll take us right by it,’ I said. ‘Tredegar House – there’s a big sign and a car park. Press the button if you see it.’

  ‘I can’t see anything out of these windows.’ Daniel wiped at the misted-up glass with his coat sleeve.

  I leaned forward, hung my arms over the headrest of the seat in front where Haxforth was sitting. I was in a sprawling-out sort of mood, happy and wanting to talk. Control. That was what it was all about. That was the whole game. The ability to change direction, to decide where you’re going and then to get there. Control was what I’d been lacking all this time. I’d played catch-up too long, forgotten what it meant to streak ahead.

  Haxforth and Mum. Yes. The idea was getting stronger by the minute. You hold a rag into the wind, you want to see if it flies or falls to the ground. What did the doctors at Tredegar House know anyway? I’d heard Dad say it himself once: I don’t think even they know what they’re doing up there half the time.

  All those drugs they were giving her, turning her into a zombie – it wasn’t working. I mean, doctors can’t know everything there is to know in this world, can they?

  And what was the worst that could happen? Even if I was kidding myself about this whole thing? I’d sit and talk to Mum and say all the things I really wanted her to hear but couldn’t say last time. Maybe just doing that and holding her hand at the same time would help, in some small way.

  I tapped Haxforth on the shoulder but only got a grunt in response. I leaned forward and saw his eyes were closed. Probably having a nap. It was warm enough up there that that would be a nice thing to do. Most of the other passengers’ heads were lolling like the oxygen was running out. I leaned back and moved my fingers across the window-glass, making trickles in the condensation. Tried to relax a bit. I listened to the engine and watched the streets and the people fly by outside. Daniel, across the aisle, was doing the same.

  I wondered what Dad was doing. Was he out there somewhere in his Royal Mail uniform, working his round?

  I knew he wasn’t.

  Would he even be around tonight, when I went home?

  Then a freaky thing happened. Really freaky. I saw him. The bus was shooting by the Turkish supermarket and past the little street that leads off from there and as I looked down it I saw him. He was arguing with that other postie guy, Hawkie. Or rather, Hawkie was arguing with him. You could tell that from the wide aggressive way he was standing, hand and finger stabbing the air.

  Gone already. But no doubt it was him.

  I moved a few seats forward, banged open a window, let cold air pour across my face. The memory of the mail came lunging back, the images of it piled in the shed, getting higher and higher by the day. Somehow, with everything else that’d happened that morning, I’d managed to forget about it for a while. Now it came in, full force. That’s the worst thing about really bad stuff, when it happens in your life. You think about it all the time anyway but when you do stop, just for a minute or two, suddenly it surges at you brimmed-up with heart-clutching power. All those people not getting their mail. Not just the Christmas presents but the really important stuff, like Annie Fraser-Howe’s letter.

  Hawkie and Dad arguing like that. What could it mean? Information? Threat? Warning?

  I made a decision then – another one.

  I’d do it, the thing I should’ve done right at the start if only I hadn’t been so scared because of everything that was happening with Mum. I couldn’t deal with it any more, not with Christmas coming. So I’d confront him, I’d tell Dad what I’d been doing. Prise open those Lines of Communication. Let him know what was coming down the track. Maybe, secretly, that was even what he was waiting for. Then we could work on clearing it together, if it wasn’t too late.

  Yes. First Mum. Then get Haxforth off to where he’d be looked
after. Then confront Dad.

  That was it, my whole entire plan.

  Today everything was going to change.

  Chapter 34

  We didn’t have to worry about missing the stop. It came up anyway on the automatic announcer. Another group, from down below, got off with us. Some of them began to walk in the direction of Tredegar House. I’d never thought about that before, how the other people in there with Mum had brothers and sisters and sons and daughters and friends too.

  ‘Must be the start of visiting hours,’ I said. ‘We timed it just right.’

  Daniel grabbed me by the elbow. ‘Are you sure about this?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure.’

  ‘But what if he, I don’t know, freaks her out or something? He’s pretty weird, isn’t he? I really think you should leave things like this to the doctors.’

  I stopped, turned. Waited for Haxforth. He’d fallen behind a bit. What harm could a doddering old man possibly do? Daniel was being too cautious. His whole personality was too cautious. Somebody needed to tell him that sometime.

  As soon as we got inside we saw that a couple of people from the bus had stopped at the empty enquiries office, were pressing the bell for attention. We shot past, headed straight for the waiting lift. I still hadn’t told Haxforth where we were or why I’d brought him here and now inside the lift there was a nurse or someone official like that so I couldn’t talk to him there either. What the hell, I thought, maybe it’s better if all this is spontaneous. Whatever all this is.

  The nurse inched away from Haxforth as the lift went up. Some of that rank smell was still clinging despite the change of clothes. And then old people have that particular smell anyway, don’t they, like dirt or old newspaper print’s been welded right down into their wrinkled overscrubbed seams. You’d’ve thought a nurse would be used to that though.

  At the fourth floor we got off and there was a bench right opposite the lifts and Daniel said he was going to wait there because he really didn’t know about this, didn’t want to go any further.