Stranger Than Kindness

by Mark A Radcliffe

  ‘So how do I, we, fight that?’

  ‘We change the rules.’

  She looked at him.

  ‘Come back down to Margate. I’d like you to meet Freaky Bob.’

  18. Strangers When We Meet

  Anna and Adam covered half the M6 in near silence. They stopped for coffee just past Birmingham and Adam took over the driving.

  ‘You can sleep if you like,’ he said as they rejoined the motorway but Anna wasn’t sleepy. They drove on quietly until she said: ‘I’d hate to think he was the father of my son.’

  Adam let out a short laugh and said: ‘You don’t get to choose.’

  ‘I suppose you can see a certain irony in that.’

  ‘For what it’s worth I think you got him this far without any help. He is talented, engaged, in love, secure, bright… I’m not sure anything else matters, does it?’

  Anna didn’t say anything for a few moments. ‘So you don’t care if he is yours or not?’

  ‘That’s not what I said. I said, in the scheme of things, it doesn’t much matter. He is who he is, you and he did that. Everything else… well, that becomes someone else’s story doesn’t it?’

  ‘Well, no not really. It’s his story too, isn’t it? Tom’s. My going missing was almost the excuse he was looking for to come and find you, and he could just as easily have gone looking for Black first.’

  ‘I’m not sure Grace would have known how to help him find Portier.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ Anna was speaking softly. ‘I think he wants to know who his biological father is.’

  ‘And that upsets you?’

  Anna thought for a few moments. ‘I don’t know. I think I tried to be everything and it feels like it wasn’t enough, but I know that that feeling isn’t reasonable…’

  ‘Feelings aren’t.’

  ‘Yeah, thanks Professor. What if he is angry with me for not knowing? What if I got it wrong?’

  Adam drove on in silence. Past Oxford, toward the M25.

  ‘Look,’ he said. “I know nothing about being a parent but I still visit my difficult, confused, loveable, annoying, demanding relic of a mother every week and I have learned only this: there is no right. No matter what you do, someone, a mother or a son, can see parenting as anything from beautiful wisdom to an assault. If Tom wants to know, he is welcome to my DNA to test against. If that simply eliminates me, then you and he can write a story where his dad is a git. If it doesn’t… hell, I’ll teach him to play guitar properly.’

  ‘Oi, he got to Grade Seven by the time he was fifteen. He is a very good guitarist!’

  Adam laughed: ‘Could be so much better.’

  They were quiet going round the M25. The conversation was limited to Adam complaining about the traffic—‘too many cars for a small island’, ‘This is why I don’t like driving’ and ‘This motorway is the biggest car park in Europe’—and Anna asking random questions like: ‘What do you like to read?’; ‘Are you finished with the tattoos now?’ and ‘Shall I drive?’ It was as they approached the M2 and began to head toward the sea that she said: ‘What are you thinking about?’

  And he said: ‘I’m thinking of a woman I met the same time I met Tom.’

  ‘Pretty?’ asked Anna.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Adam.

  ‘Young?’

  ‘Bit younger than us,’ he said distractedly.

  ‘Interesting?’

  ‘Well she must be, I’m thinking about her.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I’m wondering, given everything that has happened in the last few days if her appearing when she did is a coincidence.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, she is a psychologist and she came into the shop the same time as Tom. She is friendly and flirtatious but odd too. She wants to rent the basement of my shop for her brother who sounds as if he is schizophrenic.’

  ‘Is a person with schizophrenia.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘That’s what we say now: the person is not defined by their diagnosis, they are a person who happens to have something called schizophrenia.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Anyway, carry on. You sound as though you have a bit of a crush.’

  Adam smiled. ‘Well, it’s been a while but I’m not sure that’s why I’m thinking about her.’

  ‘You think she has something to do with all of this?’

  Adam shrugged. ‘No idea. I suppose I think that the last week or so has been an exercise in trying to figure out the space between paranoia and coincidence.’

  They drove on, slowing slightly as the M2 became the A2 and the landscape began to fill with houses.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Adam asked.

  ‘Sounds absurd given everything that has happened, but I’m thinking of the boy I met in Eastbourne.’

  Adam nodded. ‘I don’t think that is ridiculous. After Tim died I didn’t think of Tim, or Libby, Catherine, Stephen, Grace or you.’

  ‘Break it to me gently…’

  ‘I thought of the boy who I talked to. He was so real, and yet the only explanation I have now is that he wasn’t.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that my meeting wasn’t real?’

  ‘No. I am suggesting that we don’t always think about the obvious things. That some stuff leaves an impression and maybe when it does we better take notice.’

  ‘What did you do?’ Anna wanted him to drive more slowly now. She had become so comfortable with the noise of the traffic and the easy company that she had stopped feeling in a hurry to get to where they were going.

  ‘I turned it into a sign, I suppose. Isn’t that what people do when they can’t do anything else?’

  ‘If I tell you something weird, will you promise not to call me mad?’

  ‘I am no longer on the nursing register, Anna; I don’t believe I have the power to call anyone mad.’

  ‘I want to try it. I want to make tea from freshly collected dew and give it to mad people. That is mad isn’t it?’

  Adam nodded his head. ‘Probably.’

  ‘So why do I want to do it?’

  Adam shrugged. ‘Because it can’t do any harm and sometimes whimsy makes us feel human.’

  ‘Is that a polite way of telling me I am naïve?’

  ‘Nah.’ He smiled and glanced over at her. ‘Hope lets the light in.’

  When they got to Margate, Tom and Laura were in the shop, waiting. Anna filled them in on everything that had happened including Black’s presence. Adam listened as Grimy Nige and Jim outlined every book sale, near sale and strange browsing non-buying customer they had logged in his absence. Alison had been round. She and her quiet brother had spent ages in the basement. When they emerged she was smiling and had cobwebs in her hair. Her brother spent some time looking at the books. He had asked Grimy Nige and Jim if they had any recommendations and bought a book of short stories by Raymond Carver on their advice. They liked him. Alison had asked them to tell Adam to call her when he got back please. They finished speaking and waited to see if there were any follow-up questions they needed to answer, any detail they had failed to feed back or any tests they might need to pass in order to be allowed to run the bookshop again. There were no questions, but Adam didn’t know how much to pay them and said as much. They said they didn’t want payment, but Adam insisted he split the day’s income, £86, between them. They were very happy, Jim looked like he might cry, and subsequently they spent £23.50 on five books.

  ‘How about,’ Adam said loudly, ‘Tomorrow night I make a fish curry and we eat it and come up with a plan. Anna, you bring the wine; Grimy Nige and Jim you just bring yourselves; Laura, you bring your lovely self; Tom, you can play guitar.’

  ‘We can’t come,’ said Grimy Nige and Jim as one. ‘We have French class.’ Adam stared at
them both. ‘French on Fridays, Choir on Thursdays, Book Group every fourth Tuesday and Life Drawing on Mondays.’

  ‘What do you do Wednesdays?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Pilates, but it’s more a drop-in sort of thing,’ said Jim.

  ‘Are you going to try to catch the fish?’ asked Anna. Adam nodded. ‘Can I come with you?’

  Adam smiled. ‘I’d like that, and if you can stay around for a few days I would love to take you out on the boat, but first I think there is someone I need to have a chat with and the sea feels like the best place for it.’

  Anna smiled. ‘It’s because I haven’t brought my swimming things, isn’t it?’

  Adam laughed. ‘We’d be so far out you wouldn’t need them,’ he said. ‘Although it has turned a bit cold the last couple of weeks.’

  ‘Invite her to dinner?’ said Anna.

  ‘I may invite them both.’ He looked at her intently. ‘You could make your special tea?’

  ‘Ohh, so I better get up early and gather some dew.’

  Adam turned to Tom. ‘Your mother may be going a tiny bit mad.’

  Tom nodded. ‘It was always going to be just a matter of time.’

  A little later, Adam called Alison. ‘How was your trip?’ she asked.

  ‘Confusing,’ he said. ‘And it involved psychology. I wonder if you might lend me your expertise in return for a serious conversation about my basement.’

  ‘I’d love to. When?’

  ‘How about tomorrow morning? We go fishing, this time we need to catch fish.’

  ‘I’ll bring hot tea,’ she said.

  ‘Good decision. See you by the boat at ten thirty.’

  He closed the shop early. He was tired, unused to driving, to being with other people who required something like engagement. He went upstairs and lay on the sofa looking at the off-white clouds passing the corner of the window and fell asleep, a wistful sleep where he dreamt he was swimming toward his boat and his boat was getting further away. He woke with a start, just after something dark and unimaginably fast had taken him from below the water line.

  It was after seven and dark outside. He was thirsty and stiff. He hadn’t swum in three days and he hadn’t done anything physical beyond sit in a car for two. In the years that followed nursing he had travelled, read and stretched as often as he could. He had played guitar for money in a range of ridiculous circumstances including an all-Indian (except him) Clash tribute band and a hotel lobby jazz ensemble. He had learnt that without physical movement he shrank in every sense. He knew he still had things to do before giving up on the day and so he lay on the floor and breathed as deeply as he could. He could feel a soreness beneath the ribs on his left hand side and he noticed that he couldn’t expand his chest as fully as he should. Shallow breathing made him think too quickly and made him tense, a tension he picked up first in his hands and wrists, making them feel as though he were wearing heavy gloves. He could feel the thickness slide down his arms to his body and gather around his spine, running to his neck, which he stretched. He thought about going to the swimming pool, but swimming pools were usually frantic smelly places, so he twisted his body from one side to the other, pushed his arms up behind his head and reached out for the wall. He steadied his breathing, closed his eyes for a moment to settle himself again and got up to go and see Freaky Bob.

  Freaky Bob lived above his very small computer and phone repair shop on the same old town street that Adam’s bookshop was on. The shop itself was tiny and managed to look like it had closed down long ago. Freaky Bob was not remotely interested in attracting customers. Everyone knew or would come to find out that he was the best repairer of computers in the south of England and he was more likely to turn people away if he didn’t like their attitude, politics or, on at least two occasions, haircut. He liked to exchange his skills for the skills of others, believing that a reliance on money was at heart a surrender to the capitalist system. Freaky Bob could do anything with computers, indeed the view of the world they offered him was so acute they had simply convinced him that his worst teenage fears were true: the planet was full of self-interested, money grabbing, small-minded capitalists who would sell body parts of family members on ebay if they thought their username could not be tracked back to them. And, when they weren’t using the World Wide Web to screw someone they can’t see, they were using it to watch other people having sex they are not enjoying with people they don’t like, or arguing with strangers about absolute bollocks. In short, Freaky Bob’s genius was also his curse and he had one of those plastic cards above his shop counter that said that very thing.

  Even though it was seven-thirty, Adam knew that Freaky Bob would be sitting in his shop messing around with the back of a phone or computer. Adam believed he did this to test the resolve of his customers. Freaky Bob rarely opened during what people might consider ordinary opening times, reasoning that if people really wanted him they would come often enough to find him open. Anyway, given his range of interests and the many time zones they occurred in, he kept unusual hours.

  Adam walked into the shop wearing his pork pie hat and carrying a small shoulder bag. Freaky Bob didn’t look up. Neither man spoke but Adam placed a book on the counter: Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value by Isaac Rubin. ‘Thanks, Freaky Bob.’

  ‘You’re welcome Adam. I was curious mate, what did you get yourself into?’

  ‘I’ll be honest, I was hoping you’d ask.’ Adam took two bottles of beer from his bag. ‘In short, I’d really like your help.’

  Freaky Bob stopped what he was doing and looked up. ‘Simple hacking?’

  ‘No,’ said Adam.

  ‘Important?’ Freaky Bob was a large man with a thick bushy beard that made his eyes appear darker and more intense than an uncovered puffy face would.

  ‘Yeah,’ Adam nodded. ‘Wouldn’t ask otherwise.’

  ‘Tell me. Not what you need me to do, tell me why it needs to happen.’

  ‘Needs to stay between us, mate,’ said Adam. Freaky Bob nodded and Adam filled him on pretty much everything, saving his own analysis of David Cassells until last.

  ‘I don’t know if he was responsible for the fire that hurt the woman Anna worked with or for running the stories about Stern. I personally doubt it: I don’t think he has the balls. I do know he is responsible for covering up what he, and maybe others, will consider an insignificant and annoying piece of research that could, if it were in the world, affect millions of people. It is the smallness of his world that gives him power in a way, that and the fact that he can hide behind something that is supposed to be trusted.’

  Freaky Bob took a swig of beer and pulled his laptop toward him. ‘It’s not just the money that moves these people, Adam, it’s the power. As long as everyone assumes that psychiatry or medicine or whatever it is that is being sold and the industry that provides it is humanity at its best, the industry and all who sail in her can rest easy. Usually, the only thing we have that suggests drugs are not the best thing for everything is ridiculous hippy nonsense like crystal healing or that magic water bollocks.’

  ‘Funny you should say that…’

  ‘Oh Adam, you’re not going to tell me you buy into homeopathy?’

  ‘Good god, no. Anna met this boy when she was on the run and he told her something, something that someone told me—well, they didn’t tell me as such but they hinted—a very long time ago and it’s ludicrous and absurd. He said that he was a former patient and he helped current patients now by giving them tea made from fresh dew, and that it… cured people.’ Freaky Bob stared at him and Adam laughed. ‘Look, I cannot abide all that alternative therapy nonsense. I think it’s just cottage industries that thrive on people’s desperation in nice-smelling rooms, but this… this dew nonsense feels different.’

  ‘Why?’

  Adam shook his head. Because of the coincidence that stretched across a quarter of a century? B
ecause both he and Anna had been bound by it?

  ‘I think…’ he said hesitantly. ‘I think it is because nobody is selling it. It’s a couple of patients saying ‘Look, you have never heard of this, you people didn’t think of it, you are not bringing it to us in a syringe or a bottle or in the form of a shiatsu massage or steeped in ylang ylang. This is ours. We do it in spite of you.’

  Freaky Bob had been tapping away on his laptop as he listened. He raised his considerable eyebrows and said: ‘Sorry Adam, sounds as though you are reaching a bit there, mate.’

  Adam nodded. ‘Yeah, I can see that, but I think the thing is…’ he hesitated, swigging from his bottle and staring at the wall. ‘It’s the fact that I feel the need to reach… because there is something there making me want to make sense of nonsense, even after all the things I have seen.’

  ‘What’s that then?’

  ‘Possibility? Resistance? I don’t know. I think maybe it’s just the possibility of doing something in spite of reason, outside of the rules.’

  Freaky Bob shrugged. ‘Maybe you ought to just try it, then.’

  ‘We’re going to, I think, tomorrow evening on a young man, if he’s willing. But it’s only tea…’

  ‘Do you know that your Dr Cassells counts three senior policemen, two MP’s and three journalists on national newspapers among his ‘ex-patients’?’

  ‘How do you know that?

  ‘He has a file called ex-patients on his computer. And another called ‘ex-coll’. I assume colleagues. He has little biographies and contact details on all of them.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  Freaky Bob turned his laptop round to face Adam. ‘This is his desktop, these are his files. This is like having his computer in front of us.’

  ‘You can do that?’

  Answering the question was beneath him. Instead, he said: ‘My mother believes she’s the Duchess of Windsor.’

  ‘I didn’t know that, mate. I’m sorry.’

  Freaky Bob shrugged again. ‘S’alright in itself, she isn’t unhappy. Unless she goes out, then she thinks everyone is watching her and someone might attack her on behalf of the Queen Mother.’