by Sam Christer
In Cann Common he glides the old Audi off the road near Ash Tree Lane, bangs shut the door and just walks for five minutes. There’s not much to see. Retirement bungalows. A whitewashed cottage. Black smoke billowing from a garden fire. Endless green fields.
Gideon doesn’t really care what’s around him. He’s thinking about what he doesn’t want to see. His father. Dead. Laid out in a funeral parlour only minutes away. Some mortician no doubt hoping his reconstruction disguises the fact that a bullet blew the man’s brain away.
Gideon suddenly throws up. It splatters the pavement in the quiet cul-de-sac. He retches again and feels bad that he didn’t make it to the verge or a drain. If anyone is watching, he knows what they’ll think. He’s a drunk with a monstrous hangover. Fat chance.
Embarrassingly, he doesn’t even have a handkerchief to wipe his mouth. He uses a hand and then rubs it on the grass. Thank you Mother Nature. He turns and sees a sour-faced granny in a doorway glaring at him. There and then he decides on a course of action that will make him late. So be it.
He climbs back into the car with a sense of purpose and drives quickly through Cann Common. He comes to a roundabout and spots a Tesco.
Inside, he feels like he is in Supermarket Sweep, rushing the trolley down the aisles, throwing in milk, bread, beans, pot noodles, orange juice, anything he can think of. Then, most importantly, toothpaste, shampoo, shaving foam, razor and blades. He grabs packs of underwear, socks, deodorant and even a hairbrush.
Straight after checkout, he rushes to the washroom to clean up. It’s such a luxury to use his own toothbrush, not one left by some anonymous guest of his father. He remembers something and goes back into the store and picks up cheddar, a packet of biscuits, some chocolate and a selection of fruit – the items from his father’s shopping list pinned to the fridge. The ones he never lived to buy.
On the way out Gideon casts a greedy eye at a small café. He’s been dreaming of eating a full English breakfast. Maybe later. He asks an old guy walking a Labrador how to get to Bleke Street.
A couple of minutes later he’s there – literally at Death’s door.
Abrahams and Cunningham is to funeral directors what Chepstow, Chepstow and Hawks is to solicitors. Traditional. Old-fashioned. Grim. For a split second, he’s taken in by the illusion that he’s wandered into some old aunt’s quaint hallway. The brushed-velvet striped wallpaper and thick dark-green carpets guide him into a dowdy reception area.
It’s empty. A discreet sign is pinned to the wall: ‘Please ring for attention’, below it is a polished brass plate with a white marble button. He doesn’t ring. Instead, he wanders. Down the corridor he goes. He doesn’t really know why. It’s a compulsion. He wants to see beyond the dull and easy façade. Understand a bit more before he steps into the black business of burials and cremations.
Behind the first door, the room is filled with caskets. A showroom. Where the gentle persuasion no doubt begins. Oak or cedar instead of cheaper pine or chipboard. Next-door is a staff room. A few chairs, a big table, microwave oven, sink and coffee machine. Life goes on, even around death.
The third room shocks him. First the smell. Embalming fluid. Then the metal. Too much of it. Steel sinks, trolleys, implements. A young man in a white coat looks up from a slab of grey flesh. ‘Excuse me, you shouldn’t be in here.’ He hesitates, walks around the lifeless form laid out on its trolley. ‘Are you a relative? Can I help you?’ The man comes towards him, trying to block Gideon’s view as he advances. ‘If you go back to the reception area, I’ll call through and have someone help you, Okay?’
Gideon nods. He notices the man has put his hands behind his back, hiding the red mess on his white rubber gloves.
‘Sorry,’ Gideon says as he exits and heads back to the bell. This time he pushes it. Within a minute, a stout man in his mid-forties with curly hair and brown rectangular glasses appears, straightening his dark suit jacket as he approaches. ‘Craig Abrahams. Mr Chase?’
He extends a hand. ‘Gideon Chase.’
‘I’m very sorry for your loss, Mr Chase. Would you like to see your father straight away or would you like to sit down first and talk about the arrangements?’
‘I’d just like to see him please.’
‘As you wish. Please follow me.’
He trails the man down a river of old blue Axminster and through a door at the far end into another corridor, less well lit. Abrahams stops outside a room marked ‘Chapel of Rest’. He coughs, covering his mouth respectfully. ‘Before we go in, there are two things I’d like to mention. We took the liberty of dressing your father in clothes that the police gave to us. If they are not appropriate, we will of course be happy to change them for any that you prefer.’
‘Thank you.’
He gives Gideon a serious look. ‘Secondly, our cosmetic artist has done considerable work, but I’m afraid you may still be a little shocked when you see him.’
‘I understand.’
‘Many clients expect their loved ones to be exactly as they remembered them. I’m afraid that simply isn’t possible. I just want to prepare you for this eventuality.’
Abrahams smiles sympathetically and opens the door. The smell of fresh flowers hits Gideon. The curtains are drawn and large candles flicker everywhere the eye falls. Nathaniel Chase is laid out in a mahogany coffin with a crêpe interior, the top of the casket hinged open so his head is visible. Gideon approaches the body and he can tell the artist has done a good job. At first glance there is nothing to suggest that his father put a gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.
Slowly he notices things. The skin is too orange. The hair combed in odd directions. His father’s head is misshapen near the left ear – the point the bullet would have exited.
Abrahams touches his arm gently. ‘Would you like me to leave you alone for a while?’
Gideon doesn’t respond. He feels like his emotions are being fast-blended. Regret. Love. Anger. Churned up into a curdled and sickening shake. Fleetingly, he remembers his mother’s funeral. The tears. The black clothes. The men with the long, strange car. Standing at the graveside gripping his father’s hand so tightly because he felt like he was falling off the edge of the earth. It all comes back to him.
‘I’ve seen enough, thanks.’ He smiles at his father, kisses the tip of the fingers and places them on the misshapen head. The brief contact isn’t enough. He can’t just leave it at that. He leans over the casket and puts his lips to his father’s head. Something he can’t ever remember doing before now. Walls in his subconscious collapse. Tears flood his eyes. Gideon wraps his arms around the man who made him, and he sobs.
Craig Abrahams slips silently out of the room. Not out of discretion. He has a phone call to make. A very important one.
39
Nine days to go.
The Henge Master is reminded of the fact wherever he looks. It’s staring at him right now from the calendar on his grand antique desk at work. On the front page of The Times folded neatly for him by one of his assistants. It is everywhere.
In just over a week he must complete the second part of the renewal ritual. He has to prepare the Followers for the nexus. And they are nowhere near ready. If only Chase hadn’t ruined everything. Had he held his nerve and done what had been expected of him, all would have been well. But it isn’t.
The Master’s eyes stray to a gold frame and the gentle face of his wife. Today is their wedding anniversary. Their thirtieth. But it could have been so different, had she not defied the medics and their so-called expert opinions. Their high-tech ‘no-mistake’ diagnosis: PH. Two letters that twenty years ago meant nothing to either of them. They’d both stared at the consultant in disbelief as he said it. Only the twitch in his eye gave away the fact that it meant anything serious.
It was terminally serious.
PH.
Pulmonary Hypertension.
They’d put down the shortness of breath and dizziness to her being tired. Doing too much. Burning the
candle at both ends. No proper job–life balance. A career in law versus raising a young family. It was bound to take its toll.
PH.
‘Uncurable.’
He’d almost corrected the consultant, Mr Sanjay. He wasn’t disputing what the earnest medic meant, just his poor English. He wanted to point out that it was ‘incurable’ not ‘uncurable’. A man of Sanjay’s standing, regardless of his origins, should have known that there was no such word. But suddenly there was. And his sweet, gorgeous wife kept repeating it to herself.
‘Uncurable.’
PH.
Then he found the miracle. The Sacreds. Within weeks of embracing the Craft, ‘uncurable’ didn’t exist any more. PH was gone. It vanished as quickly and mysteriously as it had materialised. The hospital ran three months of exhaustive diagnostics before they finally admitted it and almost grudgingly gave her a clean bill of health.
It had baffled them. They had come to hold their cold stethoscopes to her precious breasts, to inspect her blood and peer at charts and notes. They all agreed – there had been no misdiagnosis – and yet the PH had gone. She was cured.
The mobile phone lying on the leather blotter on his desk rings. He looks at it for a moment before answering. ‘Yes.’
‘It’s Draco. The son is at the funeral parlour.’
‘Anything unusual happen?’
‘No. I’m told he became emotional when he saw his father.’
The Henge Master drums his fingers on the desk. ‘Maybe time has healed whatever rift there was between them.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Go easy on him. Be open to all possibilities.’
‘I always am.’
‘And of the other matter?’
‘Yes.’
‘The Sacreds will decide.’
Draco is worried. ‘Are you sure there is time?’
‘The Sacreds are sure. Inform the Lookers.’
40
It’s early afternoon when Gideon gets back to the house. He is emotionally drained but he knows it would be unnatural to feel any different. Not after seeing your dead father laid out in a coffin, cosmetics barely disguising his bullet-blasted head. But he won’t wallow, it’s not his nature. Life knocks you down, you get up and get on with things.
He realises he is repeating advice his father gave to him. For so long he has tried to deny the man. It comes as a shock. The old man had a much bigger impact than he appreciated. Gideon makes himself a cup of black coffee and sits in the lounge looking absent-mindedly out on to the tumbling lawns. He never had his father down as a gardener. Most probably their shape and maintenance has been done by hired help.
He is close to falling asleep when the front doorbell shocks him with its alien jangle. He goes to the door, opens it, the chain still on. A stocky bald man of around forty stands there in jeans and a blue T-shirt.
‘Afternoon, I’m Dave Smithsen.’ He nods to a big white box van parked by the Audi, his name proudly stencilled in black down the side. ‘I own a building company. I heard from someone in town that you’d had a fire. Thought you might need some help.’
Gideon flips the chain. ‘I do, but in all honesty, I’m not sure now is the right time. My father very recently died.’
Smithsen sticks a hand through the gap. ‘I know, my condolences. I was due to do some work for him.’ They shake and the builder pulls a wad of notes from his pocket. ‘Mr Chase paid me to repair some old iron guttering around the back and fix a broken tile. You best have it back. I’m very sorry.’
Gideon takes the money. He looks at it, about two hundred pounds, and returns it. ‘You keep it. Maybe you can fix the roof when you repair the fire damage?’
‘Thanks.’ The man pockets the cash and smiles sympathetically. ‘Let me get you a card from the van. You can give me a ring when you feel like it. My old man died just over a year ago, I know what it’s like. Parents are funny – they drive you mad while they’re around, then when they’re gone, you feel like your world exploded.’
Gideon starts to think that putting off the work isn’t a good idea. Nothing to be gained from delaying. ‘I’m sorry, I’m just being daft. If you’d like to take a look at the damage and give me an estimate, I’d be grateful to get the job done.’
Smithsen weighs him up. ‘You sure? It’s no trouble to come back.’
‘No. Go ahead.’ He steps outside. ‘I’ll let you in from the back. Do you want a drink? I’ve just put the kettle on.’
‘That’d be great. Tea, two sugars, please.’
Gideon pads through the house. It feels strangely reassuring to have the mundane distraction of a workman around the place. Normality. An acceptance that life goes on. He unlocks the back door.
It doesn’t take the builder long to size up the job. The walls are made from heavy stone, little real damage done. They’ll need pressure washing inside and out and probably repointing in places. Gideon puts down a mug of tea for him. Smithsen thanks him and carries on making pencil notes on a sheet of folded paper.
The inside of the study is a big mess. The parquet flooring is ruined and will need to be relaid. The window will have to be replaced. The ceiling plaster has all cracked off and the beams and joists are exposed and blackened by smoke. He wanders through to the kitchen where Gideon is stood sorting through the morning’s post. ‘Sorry to interrupt. Do you mind if I take a look upstairs, over the study? I think the floor may have been made unsafe because of the fire.’
‘Sure, go ahead.’
‘Thanks.’
Gideon wonders how many more letters are going to arrive in his father’s name and how long he’ll feel a stab of loss every time they do. Another thought hits him. One more disturbing. The door to the room is open. He drops the post and runs up the stairs.
The man is nowhere to be seen.
He rushes into the bedroom. Smithsen is not there.
Gideon dashes into the corridor and into the little room. The builder is on his knees in the corner. He looks up with half a smile on his face. ‘There’s a bit of a creak in the middle but it’s probably all right. Is it okay to take this carpet up and do some proper stress checks?’
‘No. No, it’s not okay.’ He can’t help but look and sound flustered. ‘Look, this is a mistake. I’m sorry. It’s too soon. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’
Smithsen stands up. ‘I understand. No problem. But I wouldn’t spend time in here until you’ve had the place checked out. The fire has probably damaged the beams and you might have a bad accident if the floor is unsafe.’
‘Thanks. But right now I need you to go.’
The man gives him another sympathetic look. ‘Sure. I’ll put that card through your letterbox. Ring me when you’re really sure that you’re ready to have things done.’
Gideon follows him down and says goodbye at the back door. His heart is hammering. Maybe he’s paranoid. Spooked by nothing. The guy seemed honest enough, even nice. He was just trying to help out.
But something is nagging him. He watches the builder’s van drive off and then he returns to the room.
His father’s books have been moved.
41
Caitlyn Lock has a simple rule about men – one date, one goodbye. Simple as that.
Sitting in her father’s apartment, she is reminding herself of all the reasons to stick to it. But there is something about Jake Timberland that makes her want to throw caution to the wind.
It’s not just that he is good-looking. They always are. Or that he is wealthy. They all have to be. It’s that he’s … well … so … British. Which after all is why she is in the damned country in the first place. To get a slice of Britain. See something older than her grandmother’s house. A culture that shaped the world, a people that dominated half the globe. Queen and Empire and all that weird stuff.
And deep down, yes, she had even thought about meeting a man like him. The kind who is exotically unusual and deep. Awkward even. She knows that there’s more to Jake than meets t
he eye. Maybe even romance. Her parents’ split had pretty much drop-kicked that thought out of her, but now it’s back, prompted by the text he’s just sent. A picture message of a beautiful sunrise. Below it the words, ‘Sit with me through this. Drive with me through the night to a place full of ancient magic. Be with me through a cherry-coloured sunrise and laugh with me until sunset.’
The proposition is a delicious one. No nightclubs and paparazzi wolves. No prying eyes of her father’s security team. Pure escapism. The message appeals to her spirit, one starved of the taste of freedom. She types in a simple reply: ‘Yes!’
She doesn’t know how she’ll get past the men in suits who are always watching, with their radios and surveillance logs, but she will. Tonight she’ll escape the golden cage and fly.
42
The builder’s surprise visit and nosing around has made Gideon feel vulnerable. The big old house is isolated. He’s been attacked once already and doesn’t want it to happen again. He certainly doesn’t want to lose the books and the secrets they contain about his father. He needs to take precautions. Lock the gates. Put the alarm on.
It takes several calls and more than an hour to convince the security company that he isn’t a burglar. Finally they tell him how to reset the system and he’s pleasantly shocked at how noisy it is. Not that it matters. You could let off a small nuclear explosion and it would probably go unnoticed around here.
Which is why he searches the place for things to defend himself with. He finds an axe in the shed and takes a large knife from a wooden block in the kitchen. The best he can muster. Makes him feel slightly deranged, carrying them around while making beans on toast for a late lunch but deranged is better than scared.
Afterwards, he finds a handheld controller to lock the garden gates. He activates them, then sets the alarm to cover the downstairs and retires to his father’s hidden room with a cup of tea, bottle of water and his knife and axe. He knows life can’t go on like this. But right now he needs to feel secure not scared rigid. He remembers the builder’s comments about the floor being unsafe. What if he’s right? What if the fire has burned the support timbers and any second now they give way. He’ll fall through, break his back probably. Gideon feels like he’s going mad. Fear is spreading through him like a virus. He’s got to kill it off.