by Nina Allan
Your friend always,
Bramber
10.
AFTER CROSSING THE ALBERT BRIDGE, the train seemed to enter not just another county but another world. Rolling green hills were replaced with scabrous, parched-looking moorland, whitewashed cottages with angular, bare-faced homesteads constructed from granite and surrounded by loose agglomerations of rickety-looking outbuildings, roofed with asbestos shingles or corrugated iron. Here and there, the broken towers of abandoned tin mines reared up from the sparse vegetation like ruined castles.
The landscape seemed derelict, barren. The train called at numerous one-horse stations along the route, disgorging clumps of disheveled passengers onto mostly empty platforms. Eventually, even the straggling villages petered out, and there was nothing beyond the windows but the dung-colored, featureless expanses of Bodmin Moor.
It took most of another hour to reach Bodmin itself. I was alone in the carriage by then, although I had once again become preoccupied by the conviction that I was being watched, that there were CCTV cameras somewhere, or a two-way mirror. I stared fixedly at a poster over the door, an advertisement for an amusement park somewhere near Land’s End, wondering if it might conceal a hidden microphone. I knew these ideas were ridiculous even as they occurred to me, but ever since boarding the train I had felt like a fugitive.
It was the doll, of course – “Artist,” my secret cargo. I was a thief, a common thief. In my head the words sounded outrageous, even comical, yet they remained true, nonetheless, and my increasing awareness of that fact and of the doll’s presence only made them seem more so.
Don’t sweat the small stuff, “Artist” murmured. You set me free. Don’t I deserve to be free? Museums are no place for the wicked. I’d rather be in a prison than in a museum.
I understood what she meant, though I doubted a court of law would be so easily swayed.
As the train ground to a halt, I disembarked in front of a small cluster of granite buildings: a stationmaster’s house, a boarded-up waiting room, and the ticket hall itself, which appeared to be unattended. There was no one about and, after a minute or two of waiting, the train released its brakes and sidled away. I glanced briefly at my watch: ten to five. I realized it was pointless to think of going on to Tarquin’s End that evening, that I would have to look for somewhere to stay in Bodmin itself.
I passed through the station building to the access road beyond, then set off in what I took to be the direction of the town center. My holdall was heavy and I felt very tired. I cursed myself for not having foreseen the necessity of booking ahead – I had planned my earlier overnight stops so carefully, so why not this one? I could only suppose it was because I had found it difficult to imagine anything beyond my meeting with Bramber. I hoped it would not be too difficult to find a reasonable hotel, though the desolate air of the town’s approach road was not exactly encouraging.
* * *
—
BODMIN TOWN CENTER, WHEN I finally reached it, was larger than I expected and not so down-at-heel as I had feared. Neatly kept granite houses lined the high street, which led on to a central square, planted with trees. Facing onto the square I noted a variety of local businesses, now mostly closed for the day. Cars stood parked at the curb, their erstwhile occupants gathered on wooden benches outside a pub. The pub was called The Tarquin. As well as the chalkboard menu and a banner advertising a Sunday carvery I was relieved to see a signboard for bed and breakfast.
I made my way briskly through the crowd of evening drinkers and into the saloon. The man behind the bar had shaggy, shoulder-length black hair and wore a T-shirt printed with a design of a fist clutching a rose. When I asked him if there were any vacancies, he said there were two rooms left, one with an en suite bathroom and one without. I asked to see the room with the bathroom. I had made up my mind to take it, whatever, at least for tonight.
The Tarquin must have been twice the size of the Bluebell Inn at Wade. It was also much older. The downstairs consisted of two large bar areas and a billiard room. A staircase near the public lavatories gave access to a long upper landing leading to five or six bedrooms. The uncarpeted floorboards were creaky and uneven, blackened with age.
“This is the en suite,” said the barman, opening a door. “Overlooks the backyard, so it’s quiet enough.”
He had not offered to carry my holdall. I couldn’t decide whether this oversight had arisen out of rudeness or out of respect.
I had not expected much from the room, and my first impressions were of dowdiness and mild discomfort. The space was dominated by an enormous brass bedstead, the mattress covered by an ancient-looking eiderdown patterned with roses. A worn rug lay on the floor to one side of the bed, but otherwise the boards were bare. There was a half-height gentleman’s wardrobe in one corner and a straight-backed wooden rocking chair in another. There was no television. An inner doorway led to the en suite facilities, which consisted of an old-fashioned, high-cistern toilet and a chipped enamel bath.
“Breakfast’s from half-past eight,” said the barman. “If you want it, that is.”
I wasn’t sure which he was referring to, the breakfast or the room.
“It’s a beautiful room,” I said, deciding for both of us. “I’ll take it.”
The barman nodded, then handed me an iron Chubb key attached by a piece of string to a wooden number three. It wasn’t until after he’d gone that I saw that the room truly was beautiful, after all, the simple arrangement of necessary objects creating an ambience of quiet authenticity that made my room at the White Hart seem false and ostentatious by comparison. The well used furniture had a comforting solidity, the waxed floorboards shone pale gold in the evening light. On a low table at the foot of the bed stood a china tea service, together with a radio with a leather hand strap and a Bakelite case.
I crossed to the window. Immediately below lay a concrete yard. A row of wheelie bins stood lined up against the retaining wall. On the other side of the wall was West Moor, a vast tract of lichen and heather, on fire with gorse. Birds darted amidst the twilight, gathering insects. A woman passed along the horizon, walking her dog. I stood quietly for ten minutes or so, relishing the stillness and taking in the scene in front of me as if it were a sequence from some minor but visually arresting art-house film. Nothing was happening, and yet everything was. It was as if my life, for those brief moments, were being held in stasis. There was no past, no future, just that room and its contents and the view beyond.
It occurred to me that my journey could end here, that I could spend this one night in The Tarquin, then instead of going on to Tarquin’s End I could return to Bodmin Station and from there, home.
What if Clarence was right, and my relationship with Bramber Winters was all in my head? A fantasy that, were it revealed to her, could only provoke embarrassment and revulsion.
At least if I backed out now there would still be our letters. Letters contained worlds after all, you could read anything into them.
You don’t mean that, surely? “Artist” hissed at me from the holdall. I know people call you names, but “coward” has never been one of them.
Her. She didn’t even have a name, only “Artist,” which surely said everything about the kind of madness she had inspired in me. I turned away from the window and seized the holdall, dragging it from where I had deposited it just inside the doorway into the space between the bed and the entrance to the en suite. I felt suddenly appalled at the prospect of opening it, at being confronted with the evidence of the crime I had committed.
I would have to admit then that the doll was there, that I really had stolen her. The action seemed already distant, impossible, and yet it had happened.
She was lying on her back, apparently sleeping. As I raised her slowly towards me her eyes flew open. The green transparency of her gaze – bright as phosphor – was almost shocking. I had thought her expression imperious. Closer to
, it seemed defiant, the expression of an elf queen on the warpath. You think you command me, sir? Then think again.
I was also disconcerted to discover that her hair was real. Such a detail should not have surprised me – synthetic dolls’ hair remained uncommon until the 1950s and, even then, many of the smaller manufacturers stuck with mohair because it was cheaper and more readily obtainable. Yet something about “Artist’s” auburn tresses unsettled me deeply. I remembered Ewa Chaplin’s flight from Poland, from Hitler’s armies, and from there I found it was impossible not to think of the Nazi death camps, the vast mounds of human hair that had been left behind in the wake of genocide. Such images were disturbing, inappropriate, and yet they persisted.
You should understand that I felt no love for her. I realized that in taking “Artist” I had transgressed, not merely against the law but against the boundary between the kingdom of reason and the world of desire. In ways I could but dimly understand, I was now her prisoner. I began to wonder if she had engineered this even, drawing me to her in the knowledge that she was my fate, and I hers.
My act of theft, when I thought about it now, seemed ludicrously easy: the preoccupied attendant, the open door, the silent alarm bell. Even a practiced felon could not have bargained for such a cavalcade of lucky coincidences, might have considered the challenge unworkable and therefore dangerous.
And yet, I had done it. There was no hue and cry, no uproar. I laughed to myself then, a little, anyway. If this happened in a film, you would not believe it.
Just go with the flow, young master, said “Artist.” This is what you wanted, is it not? It is you who talked of dragons, of rescue. A quest without hidden dangers is no quest at all.
I could not now remember whether it had been me who had mentioned dragons, or the Scotsman in the yellow shirt. Not that it mattered much. My stomach grumbled, reminding me of how hungry I was. Enslavement to an elf queen did not preclude the usual human frailties, it seemed. I could have ordered a meal at the bar but decided against it. The saloon bar had seemed unpleasantly crowded, and the outside tables were mostly full. I wrapped “Artist” loosely in one of my used shirts and replaced her inside the holdall – not exactly royal apartments but she would have to make do.
I pocketed the key to my room and went downstairs. Some of the drinkers at the bar turned to look at me as I passed through, but their casual curiosity did not bother me. In comparison with the contents of their glasses, I was of scant interest.
I set off across the square, choosing one of the side streets almost at random. Cooking smells drifted from the open windows of the cottages, making my mouth water. The road led to an area of tarmacked hardstanding. There was a bicycle rack, recycling receptacles for glass and aluminium drinks cans, a footpath leading directly on to the moor. In a cul-de-sac just off the tarmacked area I spotted a fish and chip shop called the Jolly Roger. The shutters were open and a small queue had formed outside.
I felt for my wallet. There were perhaps five people in the queue ahead of me. The young woman serving seemed to know all of them by name. The lanky boy directly in front of me bounced a black-and-white football repeatedly against the concrete. He wore a grass-stained white T-shirt and shorts, and had a grazed right knee. He kept glancing at me sideways, his narrow face set in a frown. Suddenly a girl ran up to him. She was younger than he was, curly headed and chubby with a face full of freckles. She wore a Manchester United T-shirt with matching red socks.
“You’ve forgotten the money,” she said to the boy. She waved a ten-pound note at him, as if to prove her point.
“Elephant,” said the boy. “Heffalump.” He chucked the ball straight at her, bouncing it off one of her thighs. The girl caught the ball expertly and held on to it, taking a swipe at the boy with her other hand. The boy made a noise like a machine gun and then darted away across the tarmac. The girl took his place in the queue, wedging the football under her arm. She stared at me openly, her sweet moon face broken in a half-smile.
“It’s nice out here tonight, isn’t it?” she said. She inclined her head as she spoke, enunciating each word carefully, like lines she had learned from a play.
“It is indeed,” I replied. “I’m getting hungry though, aren’t you?”
She grinned at me then, showing her teeth, her bright button eyes narrowed to slits. I waited to see if she would continue our conversation, but she did not. When her turn came in the queue she ordered four portions of haddock and chips. The young woman behind the counter, dressed in a sailor’s cap, packed the food into a cardboard carton and handed it down.
“There you go, Binnie,” she said. “Say hi to your mum and dad for me.”
The child grabbed hold of the carton and sped away. Before disappearing around the corner she looked back at me once and waved.
I ordered battered cod and a double portion of chips, then walked the twenty yards to the edge of the moor. The grass had grown damp with dew but I sat down anyway. The sky above me was the soft, transparent, twilight mauve of amethyst. I rested the packet of fish in my lap and began to eat. I was aware of cars starting up, of the background chatter of the people still waiting for their food, but these things did not intrude upon me. I felt miles from anywhere and for the first time that day entirely at peace. I sat still and gazed upon the moor, at the neat gray cottages with their well-tended gardens. I was struck by the cleanliness of the place, by the fact that there were no crushed drinks cans or discarded food cartons on the forecourt of the Jolly Roger. It would not have been like that in the city. I looked around for a waste bin so I could dispose of my own litter and quickly spotted one close to the recycling station, alongside a post box and a telephone kiosk.
If the pay phone hadn’t been there I would never have made the call. I had left my mobile charging in my room at The Tarquin and in any case, I had not intended to telephone West Edge House in advance of my visit because I had no idea of the protocol. What if, by alerting those in authority there, I inadvertently put the whole purpose of my journey in jeopardy? I had briefly considered asking Clarence to call, pretending to be a relative, just to see how the land lay, but given Clarence’s antipathy to Bramber, that idea was clearly out of the question.
The telephone box was one of the old red ones, with an old-fashioned rotary-dial telephone inside. It could even have been that which finally prompted me to call. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen one of those old phones and I was curious to find out if it still worked.
I dialed Directory Enquiries, then asked for the number of West Edge House, Tarquin’s End.
“Business or Residential?” asked the operator.
“Business,” I said, hoping this was correct. Bramber had always skirted around the exact designation of West Edge House, but I presumed it was run as some sort of convalescent home. The operator was silent for a moment, then asked me if I had a street address.
“There isn’t one,” I said. “It’s just the name of the house, then Tarquin’s End.”
“Do you mean the hospital?”
I hesitated for a moment and then said yes. There was a sharp click, then an automated voice read out a number. I felt in my pocket for a pen and noted it down. The number had only five digits, which meant a non-digital exchange. I thought all such numbers had become obsolete years ago. I looked at my watch. It was now getting on for eight o’clock. I half-convinced myself it was too late to call, that it would be better to stick to my original plan and wait until the morning.
In the end I dialed the number only because I felt certain no one would answer. Either that, or the line would be dead. In fact, my call was picked up almost immediately. There was a short silence, then a tremulous female voice recited the number I had just dialed, the intonation rising towards the end as if to indicate a question. For a moment I forgot it was I who had placed the call.
“Is that West Edge House?” I said. Silence. I spoke again qui
ckly, stumbling over my words in my haste to get my message across before the woman at the other end decided to put down the phone. “I’m sorry to call so late, but I was wondering if it might be possible to speak to Bramber Winters?”
It felt good to say her name. It struck me that the woman I was speaking to would almost certainly know Bramber, might be friendly with her even. In spite of my nervousness I felt a rush of excitement.
“We’re not supposed to speak to the papers.” The woman’s voice was suddenly much louder, forcing me to hold the receiver away from my ear slightly. “Dr. Leslie said that if the papers called we should always put the phone down immediately.”
“I’m not from the papers,” I said. “You’ve made a mistake.” Before I could say any more, the line went dead. I dialed the number again. The same woman answered.
“Go away,” she said.
“If you could just let Bramber know that Andrew called? There’s really no need to worry. I’m a friend of hers.”
I listened carefully for her reply, pressing the receiver tightly to my ear again, but the only thing I could hear was a low hissing. I wondered if the telephone had developed a fault suddenly. Then I realized it was the sound of people whispering.
“Bramber?” I said. My heart was thudding loudly in my ears.
“How are we supposed to know you’re not one of those paparazzi?” A man’s voice this time, much firmer than the woman’s and with an educated accent.
“Are you a doctor?” I said. It was only after I had spoken that I realized how ridiculous my words sounded, a line straight from a film.
“You can’t prove I’m not,” the man said. “I passed all the examinations, you know. I took a First.” There was a strange, bumping sound, which I took to mean that the man had covered the receiver with his hand. I strained my ears to listen. I could just catch the muffled, panicky chatter of the woman.