Why I Went Back

by James Clammer

  ‘Wait a minute!’ Daniel ran to his front door, fumbled with keys, went inside – was back out a moment later.

  ‘Here.’ He handed me something. ‘This is yours.’

  ‘Thanks. Only if it’s OK …?’

  We were both having to shout to make ourselves heard.

  He nodded. ‘See you around then?’

  I looked at this place where he lived, Annandale Avenue, with its big houses and brand-new silver cars. There was no reason for me to come to this part of town any more, not without Dad’s mail to deliver. I remembered as well the new school Daniel’d be going to, the out-of-town place with its old buildings and church-type thing and all the cricket pitches the size of aircraft runways.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you around.’

  I grabbed my bike. It was exactly where I’d left it, propped against the iron railings. It felt like days since I’d ridden it last, years since I’d stolen it on the night of meeting Haxforth. I wheeled it out to the pavement and Daniel waved at me from his front door and I waved back and then he went inside.

  Where to now?

  I could climb on that bike, the rusting racer, and go anywhere in the world. Anywhere. Go to places where nobody knew me or anything about me and I’d survive somehow, knowing a few tricks now like I did. And all the worry, all the guilt, all the bad things that lay in the past or were waiting ahead in the future, I’d leave all of that behind and I’d be free and I wouldn’t leave a single footprint behind for anyone to follow.

  Only, who was I kidding?

  I had to go back, back home to Maresfield Crescent. Whatever was happening there, that’s where I needed to be.

  I shoved the heavy hardback inside my coat and pushed off. Behind me the road drill was screeching out shockwaves. I got up speed, headed for the quieter streets.

  Chapter 50

  A couple of net curtains twitched in the house windows across the way. That’d be the neighbours, getting an eyeful. Probably they’d been watching since the moment the police first arrived. Disgusting, something like that happening on the Crescent, I imagined them saying. A man taken away in handcuffs – just like Crimewatch. Not that I gave a rat’s arse about anything they ever thought or said. They didn’t know the first thing about what’d really been going on.

  There weren’t any police in our house now. There wasn’t anyone, or at least that was how it looked from outside. I turned in, pushing my old-new bike through the clicking closing gate. There were scuff marks on the front door but they were from where Dad had forced his way in yesterday night. Before going inside I took a peek at the back garden.

  The shed door was flapping open. Inside I could see the high cobwebbed shelves with their old tins of paint and orange-flaked tools. They must have gone in there, the police and Royal Mail investigators, but I couldn’t see any evidence of a proper search.

  Evidence.

  I took a deep breath and went into the house.

  OK. Everything looked OK. Or, at least, the same. The kitchen was still foul with greasy water in the sink and the unwashed plates reeked and there was the red gas bill lying on the table like some ancient historical document. A halo of flies buzzed around the bin even though it was December and not really the time for flies.

  I filled the kettle and clicked it to boil.

  I drank a cup of water, waiting for it to boil.

  I thought, I’m here, and the mail isn’t, and the police aren’t either and all those are good things and they can’t be bad in any way.

  I wondered where Dad was and what he was doing and I hoped he was all right.

  I walked from room to room, looking at everything. Strange how I felt like an intruder, a thief, in my own house. Upstairs the sheets and blankets had been turned out of the airing cupboard and the wooden loft hatch lay broken in the bath. A few floorboards were up here and there, the ones that were loose already.

  I thought how it must have been for them. It wasn’t like they were searching for something small, a knife or a handgun or a memory stick. They were expecting to find mountains of mail. It should’ve been obvious, hitting them smack between the eyes. You can’t hide mountains of mail under floorboards or in drawers.

  I felt certain, by the time I’d gone round the whole house, that they’d given up fairly early on.

  Back in the kitchen I made tea and stirred in some old powdered milk. The clock on the microwave said 08.54. The cloud outside had thinned and everything felt brighter so I opened some windows and a fresh chill began to travel through the house. I couldn’t think about all the things that had happened the night before. My head was going to need plenty of processing time for that. I felt dead tired, like I hadn’t slept in about ten years, but I didn’t want to lie down and rest, knew somehow that I wouldn’t be able to drop off even if I tried. So what I did was, I cleaned up the kitchen. I scooped the liquefying apple into the bin. I wiped down the table and I took a pair of rubber gloves out from under the sink and washed the dirty dishes with hot water from the kettle. Then I mopped the floor and threw out the bad food from the fridge, which was most of it, and I would’ve emptied the bin too only for that I needed a black bag and there weren’t any so I had to leave it.

  All the time knowing that the next visitor would decide the rest of my life.

  Either it would be Dad.

  Or it would be a social worker.

  Chapter 51

  12.03. A key went into the lock and the door opened. Dad stood there, looking pale, like he was going to faint any minute.

  ‘Jesus. Make me a cup of tea, would you, Aidan? Plenty of sugar.’

  He gulped it down in one go then looked anxiously around. ‘Good lad, you’ve had a clear-up.’

  He was wearing the same clothes I’d seen him in last night. They were old and dirty then but they looked even worse now. The hair on his face was thicker, not stubble any more but the beginnings of a proper beard.

  ‘They came. Just like you said they would.’ He rubbed his face with the palms of his hands, rubbed it hard and groaned. ‘Show me your elbow.’

  He meant, Show me the place on your arm where I hurt you last night.

  I rolled up the sleeve of my jumper and he looked at the graze. It was small, about the size of a twenty-pence piece. It was scabbing over nicely. In a week or two it’d be gone.

  ‘I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ I said, because what did a graze matter after all.

  We went into the lounge. The curtains were closed like they had been for weeks but before Dad sat down on the brown sofa he pulled them wide open. Bright winter light flooded the room.

  ‘What did you do it with it, Aidan?’

  ‘Do with what?’

  ‘All the junk. You promised you wouldn’t deliver it.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘So where is it?’

  ‘It’s gone,’ I said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Just – gone.’ I didn’t say anything more. I looked right at him, told him straight and direct with my eyes that he’d never find out, so better not ask again.

  Silence. A long silence.

  ‘I knew you knew,’ he said sadly. ‘About me hiding it in the shed.’

  ‘But not that I was going out every morning doing your round.’

  ‘No. I didn’t know that. Take enough of those sleeping tablets and you wouldn’t notice if the house was burning down. I’ve chucked them away, you’ll be pleased to hear.’

  ‘What happened, Dad? The police, the investigators – what happened?’

  ‘Not much.’ He stared at his shoes. ‘They were expecting to find sackloads of mail, weren’t they? But there wasn’t anything. They had a good poke around. Even got me to open up the car. ‘What have you done with it, what have you done with it?’ they kept saying. And I said, “I’ve delivered it, like I’m paid to.” Which wasn’t exactly a lie …’

  ‘You did it all?’

  ‘Every last item.
Grafted right through the night. What with that and everything else, it feels like I haven’t slept in a month.’

  By everything else, he meant Mum. I quaked inside, thinking about my visit to Tredegar House with Haxforth.

  ‘But what did they say? About your job and having to go to court and all that?’

  He squirmed around. ‘There’s been no mention of it. They released me without charge. Well, there wasn’t any evidence, was there? No complaints either. Not one single one. That was another funny thing.’

  Not one single complaint. And all those nights spent in alliance with the moon …

  ‘It’d be nothing more than I deserve though,’ he said. ‘I’ve made such a mess of everything.’

  ‘And Mum?’ Feeling sick, knowing I couldn’t put the question off any longer. ‘Have you called them today? Talked to anyone there about, you know – what happened?’

  ‘Look, Aidan, I’ll tell you about that later. I’m all done in. I need to go upstairs, get my head down for a bit.’

  I opened my mouth, wanting suddenly to shout at him for treating me like a child even after everything that’d happened. But I didn’t. After the stunt I’d pulled yesterday I wasn’t exactly in a position to go demanding things. At the top of the stairs he turned. There was a strange look on his face that I couldn’t read. A look of concealment maybe. Was that all the future held for us then, just permanently hiding things from each other? And for us never to be the sort of people who did things openly and honestly?

  ‘Wake me at four,’ he said. ‘It’s important – four o’clock.’

  I heard him go into the room he shared with Mum and shut the door and for a minute or two I heard him moving around and then there was quiet.

  I went into the kitchen and stared out of the window. I wondered what I should do next. There was always something to do, something urgent, but now there wasn’t. Now there was nothing to do.

  Four o’clock. Perhaps Mum had stabilised and that’s when we’d be going in to see her?

  Or was that when we were due to be visited by social services? Pointed our way by the police? And that was the reason for the sly evasive look he’d given me from the top of the stairs?

  I went up to my room, closed the door, sat on the bed. I knew I should try to get some sleep too but my brain wouldn’t settle. From under my pillow where I’d put it I took out the heavy hardback Daniel had given me. For a while I just gazed at the gold lettering on the cover. Then, when I’d had enough of that, I opened it up. The inside front cover still said:

  DENNIS CUSHWAY, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA. MAY 1979.

  But I knew it belonged to me now.

  The weird ancient runes on one side, the modern English on the other. I scanned the pages, turned to the back – thinking of what Miss Tuckett talked about in school, how storytellers always leave the best bits till last, even all those hundreds of years ago.

  Now death held him fast,

  he had made his last use of lairs in the earth.

  Standing by him there were bowls and flagons,

  there were platters lying there, and precious swords,

  quite rusted through, as they had rested there

  a thousand winters in the womb of earth.

  And this gold of men was full of power,

  the huge inheritance, hedged about with a spell …

  Haxforth’s curse. Living for all those centuries – could such a thing ever have happened? Was there really once a man like he’d described, a monster or magician, someone who could reach right into the pulse of life, turn it any way he wanted?

  What I needed to do, I decided then, was to get everything down, everything that’d happened from beginning to end. And I needed to do it fast, or at least make a start, because a person could go off their head thinking about all those things from last night. So I hunted around for a pen and paper and I got writing. Sources, I thought. Miss Tuckett would be proud because now I understand why they’re so important. Memories change, wishes or dreams get tangled up with them, and if a person isn’t careful the things that really happened start getting mixed up with the things you only think happened, or even just wanted to happen.

  But, I don’t know, I guess I was pretty tired after all. I’d only written a page or two before my eyelids started sagging. I put the writing stuff aside. All that could wait for later. Really, there wasn’t so much of a hurry.

  I laid down and closed my eyes.

  No moon. No collapsing paper houses. No queen’s head, fierce and full of punishment.

  My sleep was deep and dreamless.

  Chapter 52

  ‘Aidan! Aidan, come downstairs!’

  ‘Huh?’ I heard myself say. ‘What?’

  ‘Downstairs!’

  I sat up not knowing where I was for a moment. Dad was standing in the open doorway. He was freshly shaved and washed and wearing a clean pair of trousers and a new shirt, one I hadn’t seen before.

  The red lights of the digital clock said 16.16.

  Down below, I heard someone knocking at the front door.

  ‘Who is it?’ I said. They were knocking insistently, you could tell they weren’t going to go away.

  ‘Come down and answer the door. I want you to do it, Aidan.’

  I followed down the stairs, him sliding ahead into the kitchen, and there on the table sat an enormous vase of pink and white flowers. In the frosted glass of the door I saw a figure raising its arm to knock.

  ‘Who is it?’ I whispered.

  ‘Just answer the door.’

  Suddenly I saw how nervous and tense he was.

  Social worker?

  Royal Mail investigators, with new evidence from somewhere?

  I opened the door.

  ‘Aidan Hale?’

  A smartly dressed woman, mid-thirties. Blouse and jacket, rectangular glasses, straggly hair held up with a big tortoiseshell clip. Leather bag hanging from her shoulder.

  Social worker.

  ‘I’m Aidan,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Visitor for you.’ The smartly dressed woman smiled and stood aside.

  I leaned out of the door and looked down the passageway. There was another woman, hovering uncertainly by the gate.

  Mum.

  I ran out and kissed her and held her and kept kissing and holding her. ‘Hello, Aidan,’ she said. ‘Hello.’

  ‘May we come inside?’

  I pushed the door wide and in they came. ‘Everything spick and span,’ the smartly dressed woman said, glancing around.

  ‘Oh, that’s how it is all the time,’ I said. ‘That’s how we like it.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  I smiled and then Dad came forward with the pink and white flowers. He’d taken them out of the vase and water was dripping from the stems onto the carpet.

  ‘Hello, Mary,’ he said shyly.

  ‘Hello, Bob,’ said Mum.

  ‘Nice to have you back.’ There were wet silvery points around the rims of his eyes.

  Mum took the flowers, lifted them to her nose, laid them carefully on the kitchen table. Her head moved this way and that, taking everything in.

  Dad sat down at the table and so did the smartly dressed woman. It seemed like they’d met before. I filled the kettle and clicked it to boil, not knowing what else to do but remembering something I’d heard once, about social workers and how much power they have.

  Mum stayed on her feet, still hovering. You could tell she didn’t know what to do next.

  ‘You’re well trained, Aidan,’ the social worker said. ‘I’ll help you make the tea, if you like.’

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve heard a lot about you, from your mum. In fact I feel like I know you already. I’m afraid you’re going to be seeing rather a lot of me in the coming weeks.’ She took an ID card from an inside pocket of her jacket and held it out to me. Her first name was Hannah or Harriet or something, but she didn’t hold the card up long enough for me to read it properly. It started with an H anyw
ay.

  ‘Yesterday’s incident was extremely unfortunate. Nobody really seems to understand what happened. A bird getting into the room like that – it’d upset anyone if you ask me, let alone someone who’s had to spend time at Tredegar House. But, well – overall – we don’t think it’s helping your mum at the moment, being there. Sometimes places like that can hold up a recovery as much as help it. It’s commonly recognised. The doctors think that what she really needs is to be back at home with the people she knows and loves. That doesn’t mean she’s completely better though, or that she won’t ever have to go back. It’s important you understand that, Aidan.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Just like it’s important that you need to take really good care of her, now she’s home. Do you think you can do that?’

  I nodded. ‘I’ll try my best.’

  ‘I’m sure you will.’

  The social worker lifted her leather bag onto the kitchen table, started taking out forms that were green and yellow and white. ‘It’s funny sometimes what a change of environment can do. We’d told her she was coming home but, you know, it was like she didn’t really realise it until this morning. And then you perked up almost immediately, didn’t you, Mary?’

  Mum didn’t say anything. She was watching the kettle tremble on its white plastic base, watching the wild boiling bubbles as they clung to the inside of the see-through panel on the side. Then the cut-off switch kicked in and the kettle fell silent, and the kitchen too.

  The social worker made to stand up, to help.

  ‘Aidan’ll do it,’ Dad said. ‘He knows where everything lives.’

  ‘If you don’t mind?’ the social worker asked.

  ‘No, I don’t mind.’

  There was fresh milk in the fridge when I looked and things in the cupboards too where the shelves had been empty before. I made tea in a teapot, carried it over to the table together with our best cups and a bowl of sugar. Nobody spoke while I did it but it wasn’t one of those silences that’s uncomfortable. On a plate I laid out some custard creams, arranged them carefully in a fan shape. I don’t know why, it just seemed the right thing to do.