‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘You can look after Haxforth’s coat for us while we’re gone.’
I hadn’t forgotten the ancient pustule-covered swallow stowed inside the overcoat’s pocket. It didn’t seem such a great idea, taking something like that past the airlock doors and into Mum’s room.
Daniel put his hands up, shook his head. A reflex reaction and I knew why. Nobody’d want to go near that repulsive thing unless they had to. Nobody that is except Haxforth. Hearing my suggestion he’d pulled the coat tight around him, not wanting to take it off or part with it so that I stood there a moment uncertain, trying to decide how important this really was while being super-aware all the time that we weren’t exactly even supposed to be there in the first place.
‘Those pockets have got zips,’ Daniel said. ‘Nothing’s getting out of them.’
‘Let’s see.’ I was reaching out a hand to check, because although the overcoat was well padded it still looked kind of frayed, when the lift doors opened again and out stepped another nurse.
‘You’re Mary Hale’s son, aren’t you?’ she said, catching my eye. ‘I remember you. Your father was here till late last night.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Was he?’ That drove a spike of numbness down inside. Why couldn’t he include me? And what happened afterwards, for him not to come home?
The nurse glanced at Haxforth but there wasn’t anything like suspicion in the look. ‘It’s nice you’ve found somebody else to bring you. Give him a break. Who’s this – your granddad?’
‘Yeah. My granddad.’ I looked her right in the eye as I said it, kept everything blank and neutral. Your face is your mask, your protection, it’s not a set of traffic lights.
‘In you come, then.’
I shrugged at Daniel, told him we’d see him in a while, that we’d only be up the corridor, and then I beckoned to Haxforth and together we followed the nurse along to the buzzer by the door with the oblong of reinforced glass. It was just like before, the card-swipe through the entry point, the Harley-Davidson man standing chewing a mouthful of T-shirt, the leather sofas smelling like public toilets, the nurses all wearing those plastic aprons.
‘Come on, I’ll take you to her room,’ the nurse told us. ‘Then my shift really is over. Home to a hot bath and a cup of cocoa.’ She winked at Haxforth. ‘Or something stronger.’
We went along the corridor, Harley-Davidson man ambling after us like he did last time.
‘What is this place, Aidan?’ Haxforth whispered.
No time to answer though. Corridor’s end already, the door to Mum’s room.
‘Great news, isn’t it?’ said the nurse.
‘What news?’
‘About your mum going home tomorrow.’
I just froze, hearing that. It was like all my muscles went into lockdown or something. Maybe I’d heard wrong? But the smile on the nurse’s face told me No, she’d said it and meant it all right.
Haxforth stared at me and I knew then that he’d made the connection: Mary Hale who hears voices like your brother did once and do you think you can do anything to help her like you must have done with him? He wasn’t exactly looking overjoyed about it either.
Haxforth with those eyes that looked like the back of his skull was showing through. Haxforth who’d told us that he’d been around for a thousand years. Wild and emaciated and rotten-mouthed he struck me as now, beside this neat plump nurse. And with that thing stuffed into his overcoat pocket. All the certainty I’d felt earlier, after seeing the apple tree blossom, drained away right then. It was gone in about a tenth of a second. You would not believe it, how fast a thing like that can die.
I was taking this person into a room to meet Mum? Someone who spent her time hiding from or battling against those things that tormented her, but still breathing after all – not only breathing, but improving. Going home.
‘There she is,’ said the nurse, holding the door open for us. ‘Some people to see you, Mrs Hale. Well, aren’t you going in?’
Chapter 35
‘Hello, Mum.’
‘Hello, Aidan.’
‘Are you feeling better?’
‘I – I think so.’
She was sitting up in bed, propped by pillows, still white and swollen in her nightgown like her arms and legs had melted into the rest of her body. I went towards her, wanting to hold her, wanting her to hold me, but then I saw deep in the sleepy eyes a glimpse of that old look, the look of confusion and alarm, the wanting to get away, so I just sat on the end of the bed and felt the weight of her foot against my side.
She knows my name, I thought. That’s good. That’s really good.
‘Came to see you,’ I said.
From the corner of my eye I saw the nurse leave the room. Haxforth was already sitting in the one single chair. He’d moved it right away from the bed. His eyes, what I could see of them, were puckered and near-focused, like a weightlifter’s when he’s about to snatch the bar. His arms were fixed and folded across his middle. The bird in the zippered coat pocket seemed to be moving around under them quite a bit.
‘They told me you’re coming home. That’s so great. We’ll get you all comfortable and you won’t have to go out, not at all if you don’t want to.’
‘I can’t wait,’ said Mum. ‘I hate this place. It’s full of nutters, crazy people.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Are you taking all the medicines they’re giving you?’
‘I’m taking everything. Handfuls of pills. It’s all I ever do.’
It was funny, all the drugs they’d been prescribing had made her put on weight, turned her skin to hard yellow wax, made her look more solid than she ever did before. But somehow it felt like the real her, the real Mum, was flickering inside, buried deep, a candle flame that might go out with the slightest breath.
She nudged her foot against my side. ‘Who’s that? Do I know him?’
‘That’s Haxforth. He’s sort of a friend of mine.’
‘He’s a ghost,’ Mum said.
I tried to smile, tried to look at Haxforth – still refusing eye contact.
‘I mean it. He’s a ghost.’
‘He’s not a ghost, Mum. He’s just someone I know.’
‘I’m telling you, he’s a—’
But Mum didn’t finish what she was saying because all of a sudden Haxforth was standing up, standing and waving his hands in the air. He was saying something too with his mouth wide open but I couldn’t understand what and I couldn’t look at him anyway to try to understand better because by then I’d seen how Old Beautiful, its two eyes like black thorns somehow, had escaped from the overcoat and was loose in the room.
Mum, when I looked back at her, was whimpering. I knew straightaway from her eyes how scared she was. It was like a fear-supernova exploding inside there.
Oh god oh Jesus.
‘Catch him!’ shouted Haxforth. But I didn’t even try. Old Beautiful was going too fast, making jagged runs in the air, hitting walls. It left a smear as it collided with the window in the door. I saw the blue of the body and the red at its throat, it was crazy possessed, feathers beak and claws everywhere. Haxforth moved after it with his skinny old man’s arms, hands snapping together to grasp but always a split second too late. I was more worried about protecting Mum. She hadn’t moved a muscle, hadn’t even pulled the bedsheets over her head like maybe another frightened person would’ve done. Perhaps she saw things like this all the time, I don’t know. Perhaps she fought every day to stop them coming through from her shadow mind and now here was one breaking through for real.
This next bit, I can hardly bring myself to write down.
Somehow Old Beautiful banged against or got through the hands that I had out protecting encircling Mum. Its claws skimmed the topmost part of her neglected hair and snagged and then next thing the whole bird was tangled up there and I heard its tiny scream and saw the wings beating right in her face so it almost looked like it was trying to attack her and there was some blood already
from her scalp. I thrust my fists in there, right into the screaming thrashing mess that was Mum’s head, and Haxforth was doing the same and somehow I don’t know how we got it disentangled and when we lifted it away there were feathers in Mum’s hair so she looked like some mad Indian goddess, only she wasn’t acting too much like a goddess what with all the screaming she was doing by then.
The door burst open and a nurse came running in, not the nurse from before. I don’t know what she was expecting but right away she took a step back seeing the bird, locked in Haxforth’s hands now like a seed in a seedpod. The same reaction as Daniel and understandable really because it looked like some plague-carrying thing you’d only ever see in a nightmare. Just glancing at it made you feel sick to your stomach.
She looked from me to Mum and from Mum to Haxforth and Old Beautiful. She saw the feathers in Mum’s hair, the blood on her scalp where the claws’d cut.
‘Where did it come from?’ She stared at me. ‘Did you bring it in?’ They hadn’t taught her to deal with anything like this at nursing school, you could tell that by the shock in her voice.
I didn’t give her an answer. I couldn’t. I looked at the floor, wanted to burrow right down into it with my eyes and never have to come out above the surface again.
‘She was meant to be going home tomorrow. The doctors thought she’d levelled out. What have you done to her?’
‘I – I’m sorry …’
Mum was just staring at her hands laid in her lap. The screaming was over. Her eyes were glassy. There didn’t seem to be any light behind them any more. That’s it, I thought. The flickering-inside candle’s gone out. I killed it.
‘What will your father say? You are her son, aren’t you?’
I nodded.
The nurse held the door open. She didn’t say anything else. She didn’t have to.
‘I love you, Mum,’ I said, my voice trembling. ‘I’ve got to go now. You’ll feel better soon.’
I felt useless saying that. But I had to say something. I pulled the door shut behind me, leaving the nurse inside with Mum.
I walked along the corridor. Behind me I heard other nurses being called into Mum’s room. One of them was running. I waited by the main door until someone let me out. Haxforth was next to me, not that I really cared too much about him at that moment. Daniel was still waiting on the bench. He opened his mouth to say something but then he saw the expression on my face and thought better of it.
I got into the lift. I hardly knew which button to press, I felt so dead and numb and kicked about inside.
We walked down the driveway of Tredegar House and waited at the bus stop in silence.
‘What do we do now?’ Daniel asked after a little while.
I turned away. I didn’t feel so much like talking to him or anyone else just then. My throat was all closed up and my eyes were prickly and damp. What I was thinking it’d be really good to do was walk a bit further along, to where there was a bend in the road. The buses came along there nice and fast. When the next one zipped by, I’d throw myself right under it.
Chapter 36
I didn’t do that though. A bus pulled in but all I did was get on it. It was heading back into town. The journey took five hours, five minutes, five seconds – how should I know? Daniel and Haxforth talking in the seats behind, the cars and roads and verges, the Christmas-busy high street, all of it swished past. My head was too busy exploding with what’d just happened. Why hadn’t Dad told me she was coming home? Did he want to surprise me or something? But then how could he tell me anything when I hadn’t seen him for ages – not to talk to at least. Where was he? And what was he going to say, when he found out about this? Because there was no doubting that he would. The very next time he went up there, to Tredegar House, they’d let him in on the whole story. Your son and some old man, some strange-looking type, and this bird they brought into her room, that attacked her …
Oh Christ. And there’d been me all set on confronting him about the mail, thinking maybe we could get it delivered together and then enter into some Bright New Era of father-son relations.
Daniel tapped me on the shoulder and the three of us were standing again on concrete pavements, watching the bus drive away.
‘I thought this was the best place to get off,’ he said. ‘Close to your house.’
Great. Maresfield Crescent was only a couple of streets away, coming from this direction. Pretty much the last place on earth I wanted to go. My own fault though, for not paying attention.
‘Look, show him,’ Daniel said to Haxforth, pulling at the old overcoat. Haxforth opened up the front and pointed a finger. There was hole in the lining of the pocket there, and that was how Old Beautiful had got out.
‘It wasn’t your fault, that’s the point.’ From the way Daniel said it I knew Haxforth must’ve clued him in. There wasn’t any I told you so though. He could easily have done that. It would’ve paid me back for all those times I’d bullied him to get dinner money. Daniel just wasn’t the type. He was a good person to have on your side. I wished I’d seen it earlier.
‘The hole wasn’t that big before,’ Haxforth muttered. ‘It was careless of me.’
‘Careless!’ I could’ve stamped and shouted at that. Once, I would’ve done. But I knew it wasn’t right to blame Haxforth – him or his weird possessed bird. No, there was only one person to blame, only one person who’d insisted we go to Tredegar House. That was the one person I’d never be able to get away from.
‘Where is it now?’ I asked.
‘In the other pocket.’
‘Oh, that’s fantastic. That’s really excellent.’
‘Why’s it so special?’ Daniel said. ‘You never told us, not really. Why do you call it – him – Old Beautiful?’
Haxforth wrapped the coat tighter, laid one protective hand on the new place where the swallow lay resting or sleeping, or at least that was what I supposed it was doing since there was no movement there now. ‘Why? Because Old Beautiful was made by Old Magic. As was I. Both of us kept alive a thousand years, so a kingdom might prosper.’
‘Old Magic!’ Daniel said.
‘You’re right to laugh. It doesn’t exist any more. But it did once, when things like this were made.’
Haxforth opened the white palm of his other hand. A gold clasp lay there – a coiled hinge at one end and an arrowhead catch at the other. Even in the dishwater daylight it glittered like sunshine.
Daniel’s hand flew down to his jeans pocket, tore out the matchbox he had in there, opened it.
‘You took it!’ he said. ‘Right out of my pocket!’
‘And put back the matchbox.’
‘But these pockets are really tight! How did you …?’
‘On the bus,’ Haxforth said. ‘It was easy.’
He held the clasp out in my direction, but I motioned for him to give it straight back to Daniel. I wasn’t about to forget that promise I’d made. Daniel put it back inside the little cardboard box, dug it all down deeper than ever into his jeans.
‘We’ll help you to get to Shuttle Hill,’ I said. ‘Right now. We’ll buy some food on the way. Won’t we, Daniel?’
Daniel nodded. ‘If it’s as near as you say, we can probably be back by tonight.’
I was tired of everything, that was the truth. So, so tired. It’d been weeks since I slept properly. I’d just made the worst decision of my entire life. The consequences’d be off the scale. Whatever the truth about Haxforth, I wanted to get lost in it for a while, get swept along, not to have to think any more about being me.
The only thing is, it doesn’t really work, forgetting about yourself or your situation, when the world insists on sending out reminders.
We were crossing the road, the three of us, about to start for Shuttle Hill wherever exactly it might be, when a red Royal Mail van shot through the junction of the next road along. Even when he was doing his job like he was paid to, Dad was on deliveries, not collections, and he never had a van. So this co
uldn’t be him. But something about the way it was being driven set off alarm bells and then watching it turn left I knew for sure, because of the one-way signs they have around there. Instantly the pictures were playing in my head, bright like on a screen at the multiplex: Dad’s mountain of stolen post, that I’d worked so hard to deliver and keep secret, getting dragged into the open, and all the important men in wigs and uniforms staring and glaring and saying their piece and then soon after jail for Dad and care home for me and permanent hospital maybe for Mum, since there wouldn’t be anyone else to look after her.
Stuff like that you can’t run away from, even if you are standing next to a bloke who says he’s been kept alive for a thousand years by Old Magic.
Chapter 37
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
Daniel’d seen the Royal Mail van too and knew what it meant. Or at least he knew it meant trouble – big immediate trouble.
I shook my head. Somebody had to keep an eye on Haxforth. ‘I’ll be back just as soon as …’
Daniel nodded. He got the picture. I didn’t have to explain anything to him.
Through the familiar streets at a run, hitting Maresfield Crescent fast. Breath like a steam pump and the clouds dark and drooping above so it felt like evening already, one of those winter days that’s over before it begins.
There. My house. The red Royal Mail van parked plum outside and the clicking closing gate wide off its latch for once.
I felt sick, my stomach twisting inside out.
Right away I knew what was happening. There wasn’t anybody inside the house. It was dark and closed up like when I’d left it. I hadn’t really been expecting that anyway.
The garden. The shed. The door that didn’t even have a lock, standing open now.
Mail hurled out over the grass.
And somebody inside, thrashing around and swearing.
I went nearer. I couldn’t hide any more or pretend this wasn’t happening.
A figure appeared in the doorway. It was wearing Royal Mail boots and a Royal Mail coat. Shorts even though it was December. Big black tattoos on both legs. A red Santa hat on its head.
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