by Mark Morris
‘He sounds like most of my year-ten class,’ Liz quipped, but I sensed behind her smile she was a little perturbed by my intensity. I forced myself to smile too, and then Liz surprised me by saying, ‘Actually, I do remember something about the grey man.’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘What’s that?’
‘You’re not supposed to see his face. If you look him in the face, you’ll die.’
I finished my drink and went to the bar for more. Liz had a Coke without the rum this time. I had another G and T, telling myself that if I wanted to avoid another night of terrible dreams I’d better make it my last. As I sat down I said, ‘You don’t think Alex might have followed Keith to Australia, do you?’
Liz did that little tilt of the head again. ‘It did cross my mind, but … no. It wouldn’t make any sense, would it?’
‘I suppose not,’ I said. All the same, it was a faint hope to cling to. ‘When is Keith due back?’
‘I’m not sure. He said he’d be away for about three weeks, so it could be any time now.’
‘Do you have his number?’
‘Yes I do.’ Liz rummaged in the small shoulder bag which she had placed on the seat beside her and took out a tiny black address book. She copied Keith’s number down on a beer mat and handed it to me.
After that our discussion about Alex’s possible whereabouts became a more general conversation about my brother. I told Liz things about him that Alex would have been too modest or embarrassed or forgetful to tell her himself. She in turn told me what a good teacher he was, and how popular he’d become with his pupils in the short time he’d been there.
‘How about the staff?’ I asked. ‘Is he popular with them too?’
She hesitated a moment, then said, ‘He’s certainly not unpopular. The younger staff members like him. It’s just that the school has its share of … dinosaurs. Traditionalists.’
‘People who don’t like the fact that he’s gay?’
‘Oh, I don’t know if it’s that so much. I’m not sure they even know about that. No, it’s more they don’t like change of any sort. They view new people and new ideas with suspicion. It’s symptomatic of the whole town.’
‘Was Alex surprised by that attitude when he came here?’
‘He rose above it. He didn’t let it affect him. We talked about it now and then, but it didn’t even seem like much of an issue on his part. I guessed he’d coped with far greater prejudices.’
I asked Liz about herself. She’d been at the school for five years. Before then she’d lived in the village where she had been born, had taught at the school that she herself had attended as a little girl.
She was easy to talk to and we got on well. I always liked the people that Alex chose as his friends. The same worked the other way too, apart from Matt. It wasn’t that Alex and Matt were antagonistic towards each other in those first few months, it was just that there had never been a spark between them. Despite the fact that I found both of them interesting to talk to, they just couldn’t seem to find any common ground. Their conversations would peter out in awkward silences, and when I asked Alex about this, he would say – to my annoyance – that Matt made him uncomfortable, that he wasn’t really interested in what you had to say, and that he had no sense of humour.
I should have listened to my brother. He was a better judge of character than I was. But with Matt I had a blind spot. I took issue with Alex’s assessment of him, accused him of not giving Matt a chance. I got on well with him, I told Alex, I was able to talk to him, and most of my friends seemed to like him well enough. Alex would just shrug and apologize and say that he didn’t want to have an argument about it. ‘Maybe it’s just me,’ he’d say. ‘Sometimes you meet people, people who you feel you ought to get along with, but you just can’t, you’re like repelling magnets. Each time you come close you just veer away from one another. Your minds never touch.’
Liz and I stayed in the Rooster until closing time. During that period only eight or ten people entered the building. The staff stood around looking bored and pissed off, probably wondering where their next wage packet would be coming from when this place closed down. At times I found myself casting surreptitious glances in their direction to ensure we weren’t being watched or overheard, and then silently admonished myself for doing it. Had I really become so paranoid that I believed the staff here – most of whom looked like college kids out to earn some extra money – were in on the underhanded goings-on in this town? Several times I almost told Liz everything, but on each occasion the time didn’t seem quite right, and I couldn’t get the words out. All the same, by the time we left the pub I felt I’d made a new friend and ally. We exchanged phone numbers and promised to keep each other informed of developments.
‘Don’t feel as though you need Alex as an excuse to keep in touch,’ Liz said. ‘If you just want a friend to talk to or you fancy a night out, then give me a call. I’m usually in.’
She offered me a lift back to the Solomon Wedge, but I decided to walk in an attempt to clear my head. We said our goodbyes by Liz’s car, which I was astonished to see was a red Spitfire. ‘It’s not as impressive as it looks,’ she said. ‘A friend of mine’s brother does them up. I’ve got it on a sort of extended loan.’
We shook hands a bit awkwardly like business colleagues at the end of a meeting, and then Liz reached out and enclosed me in a brief but fierce embrace.
‘He’ll turn up sooner or later,’ she said. ‘Try not to worry.’
I nodded, her hair tickling my face, absurdly grateful for the physical contact.
We broke apart, Liz clasped my hand briefly once more, then she got into her car and drove away. She stuck her hand out of the window in a wave as she turned the corner. I waved back, and then she was gone.
The engine noise faded, leaving me alone in the dark. There were street lamps lining the pavement at staggered intervals, but typically for Greenwell, they were all but ineffectual. The glow from their soft orange heads seemed flat, stifled by a darkness that was thicker here than anywhere else I had ever known. I imagined shadows seeping from the dark stone of the buildings around me at night, clotting the streets with an almost physical presence.
I started to walk. Despite the treacle-thick darkness, my footsteps – heels clopping the pavement, insteps crackling on the gritty surface – seemed exaggerated, like a sound effect from a film. The sky was starless, so inscrutable that I could just as easily have been looking at a black lid that had closed over the town at night. There was not a sound to be heard, and thinking about it I realized how oddly quiet Greenwell was at all times. Stand outdoors in any other populated area and you would hear birdsong, distant voices, the rumble of engines. But here I honestly couldn’t remember hearing or seeing a single bird. It made me think of Auschwitz, where, it is rumoured, birds will not fly.
I had been walking for two, perhaps three minutes when I heard a sound behind me. It was a soft sound, hard to describe. A kind of swish, like a large curtain being yanked suddenly back. I turned round, but saw nothing untoward. The street was poised behind me; even the fuzzy glow atop the craning necks of the street lamps was photograph-still. The noise was so intriguing, so hard to decipher, that I considered walking back to see if I could get to the bottom of it. Then I thought of my room at the Solomon Wedge and decided that at this moment all I really wanted was to be there. I turned and walked on.
For the next minute or two the sound occupied my mind. I thought of a swooping bird, a cape being flung over a shoulder, a knife or sword slashing the air. This last image made me uneasy and I walked quicker, my breath starting to tug in my chest. After last week’s brief Indian summer, the days, and especially the nights, were beginning to turn chilly, though not cold enough yet to fog my breath.
I passed a churchyard which was raised above road level, the stone wall on my right almost as tall as I was. The wall was sagging outwards, and I thought of it giving way beneath the weight of the earth behind it, smothering me in a land
slide of grave dirt and human remains.
Hurrying on, I passed a row of shops which were succumbing to neglect and the ravages of decay. Weeds sprouted from the stonework of Sublime – Hair and Beauty Specialists; pale brown tape and rain-damaged rectangles of white cardboard held the cracked front window of Great Clobber in place. Across the road an expanse of scrubby grassland ended in a chain-link enclosure where swings and a roundabout and a slide linked to a climbing wall by a rope bridge stood spindly or squat, like safari park animals waiting for daylight. Close to the roundabout was a wooden bench, beside which a bush, paler than the surrounding objects, stirred.
Slight though it was, the movement caught my eye, my head twisting so sharply that I felt a spasm of pain in my neck. The bush wasn’t a bush at all, but a man. A man dressed all in grey.
He was far enough away for his face to be nothing but a blurred oval. His arms appeared moulded to his body, hands stuck in the pockets of a clay-coloured gown or overcoat. When he began to move in my direction, seeming to glide over the spiky clumps of grass, I ran.
It was a wild, panicked run, my breath jagged and spiky, full of fear. I didn’t dare look behind me, not until I was three streets clear of the park, not until my heart was burning so hotly in my chest that I had to stop. Even so, I carried on until I reached the relative sanctuary of a bus shelter, twisting round even as I collapsed against the glass wall, panting, leaving a greasy, long-fingered smear from the hand I used to steady myself.
The road behind me, made tunnel-like by an arch of high, stooping trees, was empty. I listened, but I could hear nothing except the sound of blood pounding through my head and veins.
I shoved myself away from the bus shelter and began to lurch along the pavement, my head trying to dart in all directions at once. I was passing blocks of flats on my left, residential houses on my right. As I glanced at each building I realized something else about Greenwell. Though it was shabby and gloomy and claustrophobic, there was no dropped litter, no graffiti, no vandalism. Something to rejoice about, you might think, but I felt a heavy, somehow oily sensation in my stomach, and a mental jolt of what I can only describe as dread. Greenwell was a bad place, a wrong place. I’d heard of houses having a bad atmosphere, an evil aura, but I’d never experienced that feeling until now, had never thought that such a notion could apply to a whole town. Maybe this will sound crazy, but I couldn’t help thinking that the Greenwell I saw around me was nothing but a disguise, a masquerade of stone and glass and concrete and metal concealing something far worse.
I was nearing the centre of town now, only a few minutes’ walk away from the Solomon Wedge. The closer I got to the heart, the denser the streets and the taller the buildings became. I felt as though I was sinking, as though I was heading not only inwards but downwards too. There was not a soul about. Not a single soul. Even as I thought this, I glanced to my left, up a street which bisected the one I was on, and – so quickly that it was nothing more than an impression – glimpsed a grey figure sliding out of sight around a corner at the street’s opposite end.
The thought leaped instantly into my head: the grey figure in the park was not trailing me directly, but had taken a short cut and was now trying to cut off my route to the Solomon Wedge. Panic rushed through me once more, and though the ebbing of the initial adrenalin surge had enervated me, I again started to run. I felt as though I was running clumsily, as though thick, soupy darkness was clinging to my legs like mud, dragging me down. The sooty buildings on either side seemed to lurch towards me with each barely controlled footstep. I had to turn right, run up another street and then I would be in Wedge Square, within sight of the pub.
If I could get to my room I would be OK, I told myself. A child’s faith again: the bogeyman can’t get you if you reach ‘home’ before he does. I should have known better, of course. Experience had taught me that the bogeyman can get you anywhere at any time. He is not afraid of the light, he is not afraid of running water or garlic or silver or salt or ancient symbols chalked within a protective circle. He is no respecter of boundaries, he does not have to be invited in in order to reach you. All the same I needed something to cling to, something to believe in. I stumbled, staggered, gasped and whimpered to the end of the street. I glanced behind me, then slowed momentarily to peer around the corner, and saw nothing in either direction.
Relieved, I picked up my pace again, knowing that at the end of this street was the Square, and that at the other side of the Square was the Solomon Wedge. In twenty or thirty seconds I would see the lights shining from its windows. In a minute or two I would be able to run up to it, open the door, let myself in. I began to allow myself to believe I had beaten the darkness, outrun it, outmanoeuvred it.
And then, just as I least expected it, just as hope was rising in me, the dark shape of a man stepped from a shop doorway to my right.
I cried out, slid to a halt, tried to turn, but the figure flowed towards me, full of speed and purpose. It reached out and enclosed my arm in a tight and painful grip.
I struggled to escape, my head turned away from the figure, fearful of looking into its face.
‘It would be better for you if you didn’t struggle,’ a voice suddenly hissed in my ear.
Shocked, I swung round, saw a square, pudgy face beneath the dark dome of a policeman’s helmet.
‘What are you doing?’ I said, both relief and indignation flowing through me. ‘Let me go!’
He cleared his throat, and then in an officious, deadpan voice he said, ‘Ruth Gemmill, I’m arresting you for criminal damage and burglary. Would you please come with me.’
‘Criminal …? You’ve got to be joking!’ I exclaimed. But his face held not even the vaguest hint of a smile.
twelve
At the corner of the Square a police car was waiting, its engine silent, its lights extinguished. The policeman led me to it, hand so tight on my arm that I was sure his fingertips would leave bruises.
Was this it, then? Had they allowed me so much leeway before finally now deciding to put a stop to it? What were they going to do? Make me disappear like Alex?
I was scared and nervous, but at least that was better than a minute or two ago when I’d been terrified.
As we approached the car, it came to life, the engine clearing its throat before settling into a purr, the headlamps casting cones of light before them. In the back seat a shadow leaned across and opened the door.
‘Get in,’ the policeman said, placing a hand on my head and forcing me to bow into the car.
I obeyed without protest, deciding to remain silent for now, to argue my case at a more opportune time. I wondered how they’d found out that I’d broken into Alex’s flat, unless they’d been watching me constantly. I suppose the fact that they felt they needed an excuse to arrest me ought to have given me hope, but I was worried at the accusation of burglary. Did that mean they knew I’d taken the diary and the address book or were they referring to something else?
The inside of the car smelled cloyingly of meat. Burgers. My already nervous stomach turned slowly over again. I wanted to ask for some fresh air, but I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of refusing. So I sat silently, staring between the two front seats at the world beyond the windscreen, and tried to concentrate on not feeling ill.
The policeman who’d arrested me removed his helmet and also got in the back, forcing me to shuffle into the middle, squashed now between his considerable bulk and the slighter frame of the man who’d opened the door. I didn’t look at either of the men, but I was aware of the podgy policeman draping his arm across the back of the seat so that his hand was touching my hair, and of his warm, meaty breath on the left side of my face. I had the impression he was gazing at me, waiting for me to acknowledge him.
‘So we meet again,’ the man on my right said.
I jerked my head in his direction and realized it was the young, horsey-looking policeman I’d given the missing persons form to.
I went cold. I di
dn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.
‘Been a naughty girl, haven’t we?’
Still remaining silent, I faced front again, hoping in vain that if I ignored him he would get bored and leave me alone. He shuffled closer to me and sniggered. It was the snigger of the little man who had always craved the power and authority of the big and had now finally been given the chance to wield it.
‘Playing hard to get, are we?’ he said, and – as the car pulled out into the road – reached towards me.
I flinched, thinking he was going to either slap me or molest me. ‘My, my,’ he said, ‘aren’t we nervous.’
I flushed with rage and embarrassment when I realized that all he was doing was pulling out the seat belt from the slot beside my hip. ‘Clunk click.’ He leered, then leaned across my body, dragging the seat belt behind him. I tensed as I felt the weight of his body lean into me, felt his hand brush across my breast, slide across my stomach, fumble beside my hip. Then the catch slid into its socket with a metallic clunk sound and he leaned back.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that better?’
Nothing more was said on the short journey to the station. When we arrived, I released my seat belt quickly before Horse-face could lean across me again. For the last few minutes I’d been breathing in the hot, beefy, onion-breath of the chubby policeman who had arrested me, and as soon as the door opened I scrambled out of the car after him to gulp at the fresh air in the station car park.