by Mark Morris
Alex swung himself into a sitting position. ‘I will open that bottle of wine, after all,’ he said. ‘That’s definitely something worth drinking to.’
As he stood up, someone knocked on the door – or rather thumped it. Five hard thuds.
Immediately I felt everything tighten inside me. I looked at Alex, and saw his eyes narrow, his mouth set in a thin line as his jaw clenched.
‘If that’s that fucking animal—’ he muttered.
‘Please, Alex, don’t make a scene,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I can stand any more tonight. If it’s him, just pretend I’m not here, pretend you haven’t seen me.’
‘I’m not hiding inside my own house,’ he said. ‘I’ll just tell him to fuck off.’
‘Please, Alex …’
‘Don’t worry. If it’s him I won’t even open the door.’
He stomped through to the hallway and turned on the light. The upper half of the front door was a stained-glass panel through which Alex would immediately be able to see who was standing outside. I folded my arms and braced myself as if for impact.
Sure enough, after a few seconds I heard Alex shout, ‘Fuck off!’
From here the actual words of Matt’s response were indistinct, but I could hear the anger in his voice.
‘Well, she doesn’t want to talk to you,’ Alex shouted back. ‘In fact, she never wants to see you again. So why don’t you just get out of her life for good, Matt. Go and see a fucking psychiatrist or something.’
More shouting from Matt. When it was finished Alex retorted, ‘I’ve already told you, she doesn’t want to see you. Now piss off or I’ll call the police.’
But Matt didn’t piss off. Instead he started kicking the front door, the crashing echoes of which reverberated round the house. He raised his voice too, until he was almost screeching. ‘Let me in, you fucking queer! Let me in!’
Alex shouted at Matt to stop kicking the door, then he came storming into the room, eyes blazing, looking around. ‘Where’s my fucking baseball bat?’ he said. ‘I’m going to brain that bastard.’
‘Please, Alex, don’t sink to his level,’ I said, uncurling myself from the chair. I ran across the room to the telephone, snatched up the receiver. ‘I’m calling the police. Tell him I’m calling the police.’
Alex looked at me a moment, then he gave a sharp nod and ran out of the room. I punched 999, pressing the receiver hard to my ear. I was still aware of shouting and crashing in the background, but I tried to keep calm, tried to concentrate on being as concise and coherent as possible. When the call was over, the first thing I heard was the sound of footsteps thudding up the stairs. This was followed by another crash as Matt kicked the front door again, and then a sudden high-pitched howl of pain which seemed to make every one of my nerve-endings leap to attention.
I ran out into the hallway. I sensed movement to my left and whirled to see Alex coming down the stairs, savage satisfaction on his face.
‘What’s going on?’ I said.
Alex raised his right arm and I saw that he was holding a kettle. ‘I poured boiling water on the fucker out of my bedroom window.’
‘Alex, you didn’t!’
‘I warned him. I warned him that if he didn’t stop I’d do it, but he just carried on.’
I can’t deny that there was a part of me that wanted to rejoice, to revel in my brother’s actions. After all those things Matt had done to me, the bastard deserved some pain. Nevertheless I said, ‘Alex, this is really serious. You could have scarred him for life.’
‘I hope I have,’ Alex said.
‘But you might go to prison for … for … I didn’t really know what for. Assault, grievous bodily harm, one of those sorts of things.
‘No, I won’t,’ Alex said, ‘because if he goes to the police, all the suffering he’s put you through this last year or so will come out, and we’ll soon see who the real psycho is.’
It was only now that I realized Matt’s assault on the door had stopped. I pointed this out to Alex.
‘Let’s hope he’s got the message and buggered off,’ Alex said.
‘What if he’s passed out on your path because he’s so badly scalded? That’s not going to look very good when the police arrive, is it?’
Alex looked at me, then put the kettle down and walked up to the front door. It was a good stout wooden door which had stood since the house had been built in the mid-1800s. All the same Matt’s assault had taken its toll. There were bulges on the inside where the paint had cracked and the wood had splintered slightly. It was clear there was no one on the other side of the door now. Though the view through the stained glass was distorted and murky, you could make out an impression of the pale path leading to the front gate, the dark patch to the right which was the flower bed encircling the minuscule front lawn. Alex crouched down, lifted the flap of the letter box and peered through it.
‘I can’t see him,’ he said. ‘I think he must have – shit!’
I glimpsed a blur of movement through the stained glass and then heard an almighty shattering of glass from the front room. I didn’t know until Alex told me later, but what had happened was that Matt, spattered by hot water but not seriously hurt, had gone across the road and picked up one of a pile of breeze blocks that was stacked inside a neighbour’s front gate. He had then run back across the road and hurled the breeze block through Alex’s big front window.
Alex went bananas. He scrabbled at the front door, wrenched it open and catapulted out into the night. Barefoot, I went after him, shouting at him to come back. Matt was standing on the pavement outside the house, hands spread wide as if offering himself. Alex crashed into him just as a police car turned the corner, headlamps illuminating the row of parked cars on the other side of the street. I jumped up and down, waving my arms, and the police car came to a halt in the middle of the road. By the time two uniformed officers had got out and were running towards me, Alex had Matt by the lapels of his Armani suit and was banging his head on the pavement.
fourteen
The rabbit brooch is on my bedside table. I don’t remember putting it there. I remember very little between leaving the police station and crawling exhausted into my bed at the Solomon Wedge. My eyes are closed, but I know that the brooch is there, within arm’s length, because it is calling to me. I feel it behind my eyelids, pulsing like a little heart. I sit up, reach for it. It is warm in my hand, and it does not feel hard like metal, but soft like skin. It translates a sense of urgency to me, a need to perform a vital but unknown task. I get up, walk down the stairs, through the dark and deserted pub. I am barely aware of myself or my surroundings, details are irrelevant. All that matters is where I am going, what I am about to do. I do not remember leaving the pub, but suddenly I am in my car, driving, the brooch on the seat beside me.
I drive for a while, and gradually become aware that there are no more buildings, only trees and hedges and fields. I stop at the roadside beside a large field, pick up the brooch and get out of the car. There is no moon, no lights. It is dark and silent. I walk across the field. Am I wearing shoes? Am I clothed? Is it cold? I don’t know. I walk across the field until I know it is time to stop. Then I drop down on to my knees, and using a sharp stone and my fingernails I begin to dig.
It seemed as though I was wondering what had really happened even before I woke up, because the instant I became conscious the thought was there. I was back in my bed at the Solomon Wedge, daylight struggling feebly behind the curtains. Had I really left my bed in the middle of the night? Had I really walked into the middle of a field and begun to dig a hole with my bare hands? The memory of doing these things was vivid, but the details, the peripherals, were less than vague. And in the cold light of day, the impetus for my actions seemed not merely vague but ludicrous. In my befuddled state last night I hadn’t thought to question the fact that the brooch was influencing me, directing me, that to all intents and purposes I was in its possession. I turned my head and looked at the bedside table, and
felt a little jolt of surprise when I saw that the brooch was still there.
I hesitated a moment and then reached for it. It was cold, hard metal. I held it in front of my face, looking at it now as if for the first time. The design had a fluidity, a sinuousness, but without the gem that fitted into the setting of the eye socket, the rabbit looked dead.
It was difficult to tell what it was made of. Brass? Copper? Gold? Or perhaps some kind of alloy? As I turned the trinket over in my hand, I suddenly realized I had all the proof I needed that last night’s episode had been nothing more than a dream.
My fingernails were clean. If I had really been digging in the dirt only a few hours before, there would still have been some residual muck either beneath them or embedded in the pores of my fingertips, no matter how hard I might have scrubbed them when I got in. I threw my duvet back and saw that the rest of me was clean too. Furthermore, a quick look round assured me that none of my clothes or shoes had any mud on them.
I felt an odd mixture of relief and disappointment. I put the rabbit brooch in my shoulder bag and thought about the dream all through breakfast, which this morning was served up by jovial Jim’s wife. She all but threw my fried breakfast down in front of me, causing tomatoes and beans to slop over the side of the plate.
OK, so it had been a dream, I wasn’t refuting that, but was it possible that it had actually been more than a dream? Could it have been … I don’t know … guidance of some sort? A wild assumption, I know, but in the context of everything else that had happened to me it didn’t actually seem that far-fetched. But guidance from whom or what? It was probably best not to dwell on such questions. Better instead to merely follow your feelings, go with your gut instincts, let everything else take care of itself.
After breakfast I went out and bought a spade. Then I rang the school and asked to be put through to Liz.
‘Hi, Ruth,’ Liz said. ‘Did you get back OK last night?’
‘Eventually,’ I said. I told her everything that had happened at the police station.
Liz was so outraged about the way the police had treated me that I felt guilty I wasn’t at least just as angry myself. Perhaps I would have been if my ordeal hadn’t been superseded by the dream, which seemed to be all I could think about.
When I told Ruth what I intended to do, she laughed and said, ‘You’re not serious?’
‘I am, actually,’ I said. I paused, then asked, ‘Do you think I’m losing it?’
‘Well … no,’ she said. ‘If you feel this strongly about it, then I think you should go for it.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘The only thing was, I was wondering whether you’d come with me.’
‘Me? Why?’
‘Because you’re the only friend I’ve made since I came here. And because … I suppose I just need someone along to tell me I’m not crazy.’
‘I can’t promise I’ll do that,’ said Liz with a laugh. Then her voice went semi-serious. ‘But hey, what if we do find something?’
‘We’ll deal with that if and when,’ I said. ‘So you’ll come?’
‘Yeah, why not? Lunch is at half-twelve. Why don’t you meet me by the main entrance?’
I spent the rest of the morning vainly scouring Alex’s address book and diary, looking for anything that might give me a clue to his whereabouts. Just after midday I set off to pick Liz up from the school.
As I parked round the back, children started to spill out through the doors as if the school was becoming too small to accommodate them. I locked my car and took a short cut up some steps and along a walkway between buildings. The walkway emerged at the top right-hand corner of the playground, which I had to cross to reach the main entrance. I was aware of groups of teenagers scrutinizing me as I passed. I didn’t look at them, not because I was afraid of their hostility but because I was afraid of the recognition I might see in their eyes.
I was three-quarters of the way across when I became peripherally aware of three children – a boy and two girls – huddled against a wall to my left, whispering together and casting glances in my direction. When I looked at them I realized that they were the children who had been waiting by my car two days ago, the ones who had told me about the grey man.
‘Hello, miss,’ the boy said as I caught his eye. ‘You’re not still looking for Mr Gemmill, are you?’
‘I am, actually,’ I replied.
‘You won’t find him,’ the girl with the Alice band, the one who had done all the talking last time, told me bluntly.
I looked at her, feeling a flash of anger at her off-handedness, which I was unable to keep out of my voice. ‘Because he’s been taken by the grey man?’
She nodded.
‘And how do you know that?’ I asked.
The children all turned their heads slowly to look at one another. It was eerie. It reminded me of the police station last night, of how everyone in the office I’d burst into had stopped what they were doing and had turned in unison to regard me, their faces expressionless.
‘We saw it happen,’ the boy said.
My eyes widened. ‘You saw it? What do you mean? Where did you see it?’
‘In one of the viaduct arches near the far woods,’ the girl with the Alice band said.
I squeezed my fists together. It was the only way I could stop myself reaching out and grabbing her by the arm to shake the information out of her. ‘When was this? What did you see exactly?’
The girl shrugged, her gaze wandering momentarily, as if she was bored by this conversation, as if it was unimportant.
‘It was last week. We were down by the arches, playing. When we heard someone coming, we hid. We saw Mr Gemmill and the grey man. They were talking, but we couldn’t hear what they said. As soon as we saw the grey man we ran away. We were ever so quiet. I don’t think him or Mr Gemmill heard us.’
I thought of the figure in the field, the colourless wraith which had seemed to pursue me through the town last night. ‘But … but what did he look like? The grey man, I mean. How did you know it was him?’
The girl gave me a withering look. ‘He was grey.’
‘But his face?’ I asked. ‘What did he look like?’
The girl’s expression became ever more scornful. ‘We didn’t see his face, of course.’
‘If you see his face you die,’ the boy explained.
‘But Alex … I mean, Mr Gemmill … you said he was talking to the grey man?’
The children all nodded as if their heads were being jerked by the same string.
‘Then he must have seen the grey man’s face.’
‘That’s how we knew we’d never see him again,’ the girl with the Alice band said.
I took a step backwards as if I didn’t want to be poisoned by her words. ‘No, the grey man is just a story, a silly superstition.’
She shrugged, unwilling to offer an argument. The other two children stared at me.
‘What did the man who was talking to Mr Gemmill look like from the back?’ I asked. ‘What kind of clothes was he wearing?’
‘Grey clothes,’ the girl said.
‘Yes, but what kind of grey clothes? A suit, do you mean? A grey suit?’
The girl stared at me a moment as if she didn’t understand the question, then shrugged again. ‘I can’t remember.’
Frustrated, I turned to the others, my voice perhaps sharper than it should have been. ‘What about you two? Do you remember?’
They shook their heads.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Do you know what I think? I think you’re making all of this up.’
I expected the children to react, to protest, but the girl with the Alice band simply shrugged her shoulders yet again. ‘We’re not making it up,’ she said calmly. ‘We’re just telling you what happened.’
‘We’re trying to help you, miss,’ said the boy.
I was more dismayed than perhaps I should have been. What I wanted to be offered, from any quarter, was hope, not a resigned acceptance that Alex was gone for
good. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Maybe you aren’t making it up, but I think you’re mistaken. Whoever Alex was talking to, it wasn’t the grey man. It was just a man. Flesh and blood, like me and you. Maybe the arches would be a good place to start to look for him. Or maybe …’ As soon as I realized what I was going to say, the words dried up. Subconsciously I had been thinking of my dream last night, of the shiny new spade in the back of my car. The implications of such thoughts terrified me. I felt ashamed that I had allowed them ingress. Again speaking more sharply than I had intended, I asked, ‘Have you told anyone else what you’ve just told me?’
The children shook their heads. If this had been anywhere other than Greenwell I would have been furious at their inability to recognize the significance of what they had seen. Resignedly I said, ‘OK, then. Thank you.’ And unable to think of anything else to add, I walked away.
Liz was waiting for me by the main entrance. As soon as she saw me she asked, ‘Are you OK?’
‘Sort of,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you on the way.’
We walked the same route back to my car, but the three children were now nowhere to be seen. When we reached the car park I opened the passenger door so that Liz could get in first, then walked round to the driver’s side. As I pushed the key into the lock, I felt a sudden compulsion to look behind me. When I did, my gaze was immediately drawn to an upper window of the main school building. I saw a figure standing there which, although virtually in silhouette, I knew immediately was the headmaster, Mr Rudding. His arms were raised and his bunched fists were resting on the glass as though he had been pounding on it. Although his face was nothing more than a dark blob, I got the strong impression that he was furious – maniacally, ragingly so. I imagined his eyes glaring into mine and looked away with a shudder. I got into the car, started the engine and drove away. I didn’t say anything to Liz, but I felt the power of Rudding’s baleful gaze following us all the way up the drive and out of the school gates.
‘So what is it you have to tell me?’ Liz asked. She looked radiant, as if the autumn chill agreed wholeheartedly with her complexion. By comparison I felt dowdy and jaded. I related the conversation I had had with the children.