by Mark Morris
‘Disappeared? Left, you mean?’
‘Well, that’s what everybody thought, but the thing was she’d always said to me that even if she was driven out by this thing, even if she was forced to leave, we’d always stay friends and keep in touch. But then one day she was just … gone. I never heard from her again.’
‘Maybe she’d had enough, just wanted to break all ties to the place.’
Liz pulled a face. ‘Maybe. Doesn’t quite ring true, though.’
I was silent for a moment. I almost didn’t want to voice what was going through my mind, but at last I said, ‘What happened to your friend sounds just like what’s happened to Alex. Disappeared without trace.’
Liz might have been pissed, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know when to be reassuring. She shook her head and said, ‘No, no, Ruth, this is totally different. Alex hadn’t had a rud-in with Running … I mean, a … a run-in with Rudding. There was no reason for anyone to make him disappear.’
‘None that you know about, you mean.’
Again she shook her head. ‘No, if there had been anything he’d have told me, I know it.’
‘Rudding sounds like a monster,’ I said.
‘He is a monster. He’s a despicable human being.’
‘Has he never given you any hassle?’
‘Not yet. Not directly. I try to keep out of his way.’
The wine was making me feel melancholy. Once again my own tears took me by surprise. I had no idea I was shedding them until I felt them wetting my cheeks.
‘Hey,’ Liz said, her slow, liquid-eyed drunkenness exacerbating the tenderness of her voice. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said between sniffs, the tears still coming. ‘I’m just crying because … because I am.’
‘It’s all getting too much for you, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘I s’pose so.’
‘Well, that’s OK. Just let it all out, girl. Get it gone. Clear out that toxic waste.’
As if her words were the permission I needed, I cried harder. I was only half-aware of Liz moving the box of after-dinner mints out of the way, shuffling towards me across the empty middle ground of the settee, holding out her arms. I sank into her embrace, snuggled my wet cheek against her breast, heard her utter a wordless sound, a breathy moan that I presumed was intended to be soothing. She stroked my hair, then adjusted her position slightly so that she could wipe away my tears. Next I felt her hands on my cheeks, tilting my head up, and then her warm, soft lips on mine.
At first, unsure what was going on, I didn’t react. Then her tongue, tasting of wine, darted between my lips and teeth, flickered inside my mouth. I jerked back, startled, confused. I broke out of her embrace and stared at her, my eyes searching her face. Her cheeks were crimson, her lips wet, her eyes already dipping to avoid mine.
‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m sorry. I was drunk, I read the signs wrong. I’m sorry.’
She pushed herself up from the settee and hurried out of the room, one hand pressed to her cheek. I sat there, at first stunned by the turn of events, and then, as it began to dawn on me what had happened, ashamed by the way I had reacted. I wasn’t gay, but the reason I had recoiled so violently had not been because of Liz’s pass at me, but because it had taken me by surprise. Now, though, I felt terrible that the vehemence of my rejection had caused Liz to flee, hurt and embarrassed. Liz had been nothing but kind to me, and I’d treated her as if she had some disease. What was more, I felt that by responding to Liz as I had, I had somehow let Alex down. I was well aware of all the shit he had had to take over the years, and I felt sick that I had now contributed to somebody else’s similar burden.
I sat for a while longer, composing myself, working out what I would say, then went after Liz. I entered the little dining room and saw that she’d left a note for me on the table. I picked it up and read:
Dear Ruth
I’m so sorry about what happened. Heat of the moment, too much booze, whatever. I’ve gone to bed to sober up. I’ve made up the spare bedroom for you in the attic, but I’ll understand if you don’t want to stay. I should have told you before, but I stupidly thought, being Alex’s sister, you’d just pick it up. What a moron I am. Again, I’m so sorry.
See you in the morning?
Love,
Liz
The lump which had never quite gone away rose in my throat again. I let myself out of Liz’s cottage as quietly as I could and went to my car. It was raining thinly and steadily. The fruit trees, guardians of the house, whispered between themselves. I opened my boot, took out my overnight bag, and went back to the cottage. I closed and locked the door, put guards over the two fires, and then went upstairs, wincing each time a step or floorboard creaked.
sixteen
Dry-mouthed, I walk along the tiled hallway, particles of grit too tiny to be registered by the human eye crackling and popping beneath the soles of my shoes. I pass the mirror with the wooden frame and catch a glimpse of myself flashing past. When I reach the door to my left I stop. My mouth is shrivelling up from the inside and my stomach is digesting itself. I raise my hand, the palm and fingertips of which are slippery with sweat, and place it on the doorknob. I watch with mounting dread as I take a grip on the knob and turn it. My sweaty hand slips on the polished wood, but there is enough friction for the knob to turn. The door opens not as if I am pushing it, but as though it is being pulled from within. Not wishing to, but feeling as though I have to, as though all that I do is inevitable, pre-ordained, I step into the room.
Something terrible has happened here. I know that as soon as I enter. I have a peculiar impression that past and present have come together, that one is overlaid on the other. Dust covers still shroud the furniture, and many things are still in place – the furniture itself, the TV, the shelves of CDs and books and videos, the dining table beneath its black chandelier, the objects on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. But some things are not in place, some things are different, and these things carry a charge, an energy, that resonates within me, that touches me on some primal level. There is a dropped plate of dried-up pasta on the floor, and the telephone that sat on the shelf behind the TV is now on the floor too, its receiver detached and a splotch of blood on it. Most terrible of all, however, is the blood on the settee and the carpet, pools and trails and spatters of it, dried to a reddish-brown crust.
The blood itself is shocking, but it is not that which terrifies me. The awful thing is what lies behind the blood, what it signifies, what it means. I shake with terror because I am afraid of what my own mind may reveal to me. I know instinctively that it will be the worst thing in the world. I know it will be unendurable.
And so, terrified of discovering or rediscovering what happened here, I turn and flee. And as I run, I scream not merely to give voice to my panic, but also to drown out the memories that threaten to unwrap themselves like poisonous sweets in my head.
seventeen
It was the sun slanting through a gap in the curtains and stretching itself like a sword of light across my face that woke me the next day. My eyes opened a crack, then closed again as light that felt like white heat rushed to fill the crevices between my lids. I groaned and rolled over. A wine hangover, like sour, fermenting grapes in my stomach and head, gleefully announced its arrival. I might have tried to sleep it off if I hadn’t suddenly remembered how last night had ended.
I sat up, groaning, feeling like shit for several different reasons. My priorities were two-fold: I needed some water and I needed to know if Liz was OK. I dragged myself to the orange-walled bathroom, splashed water on my face, then rinsed out what looked like an already-clean tooth mug and filled it from the cold tap.
My legs were feeling wobbly, so I sat down on the toilet while I drank. The house was silent and I felt almost peaceful sitting there. I wondered what time it was. It was light, so it couldn’t have been too early. After five minutes or so I felt well enough to go and see if Liz was OK.
As I crossed the landing it occurred to me that perhaps I ought to get dressed first. I was wearing a skimpy T-shirt, and didn’t want to appear provocative. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, however, I felt angry with myself. What did I think Liz was going to do? Leap on me because she’d be overcome with lust at the sight of my bare legs? As a result of my annoyance I knocked harder on her door than perhaps I should have done. All the same there was no reply.
‘Liz,’ I called softly. ‘Liz, are you in there? It’s me, Ruth.’
As if it could be anyone else. Was I going to be this dumb, this clumsy, throughout the coming encounter? I needed to be able to say the right things, to express myself properly. I took a deep breath, then opened the door and leaned forward to peek inside.
Liz’s bedroom made me think of royalty, everywhere purple and gold. Or perhaps a harem, with its four-poster bed swathed in purple fabric, matching the drapes at the windows. But the drapes were tied back with gold cord, allowing chill autumn light to spill across the neatly made bed. I pulled the door closed and stood at the top of the stairs. ‘Liz,’ I called. ‘Liz.’
I think I knew even before calling that the house was empty. I padded downstairs and into the back room. There was still a faint glint of orange in the grey embers of the fire, but the room was cold enough to raise goosebumps on my legs.
Liz had set the table for breakfast and left me another note.
Dear Ruth
I’ve gone to work. I was hoping we might talk this morning, but I couldn’t bring myself to disturb you. Once again I’m so sorry about last night. I hope it won’t stop us being friends. Please help yourself to whatever you want for breakfast.
Speak to you later?
Love,
Liz
Liz obviously felt as guilty about last night as I did. I ached to apologize, and half-wished I’d written her a note before going to bed, though I always preferred dealing with important stuff face to face. I wasn’t very hungry, but I made myself some toast and sat nibbling it while I read her note again. After the toast I made myself a cup of tea, which warmed and settled my stomach, but only at the expense of exacerbating the icy chill that was seeping into my bare feet. I stood up and began to walk around, wincing because my toes ached like bruises from the cold, my hands clasped around my warm mug.
I looked idly at the books on the bookcase behind the little sofa that was angled towards the fire. Wainwright’s walking books; books on gardening and interior design; a bunch of novels by Alice Walker and Toni Morrison; some Penguin classics; the Time Out film guide. As I browsed I realized that I didn’t even know what subject Liz taught. I’d have gone for something in the arts – English or drama or art itself. But if Liz had taught any of these subjects, I would have expected to see more evidence of it around her house. Shouldn’t an English teacher’s house be crammed with novels? An art teacher’s with … well, art, books on art and art materials? Perhaps she taught maths then, or geography, or history, or a foreign language. But again, whatever her subject, I would have expected to see more evidence of it.
I suppose I was thinking about Alex, thinking about how passionate he was about the things he was interested in, and about how evident those interests were just from looking around the place where he lived. I guess I had always had this rather naive, schoolgirlish notion that a teacher’s subject was merely an extension of his or her hobby, that they were constantly and happily immersed in whatever they taught.
I moved from Liz’s books to the framed photographs placed on various surfaces around the room. Here was a middle-aged couple, wrapped up warm on a winter’s day and grinning like teenagers despite their red noses, who must be her parents; here was a copper-haired, heavier variation of Liz, who must be her sister, Moira, sitting astride a bicycle; here was Liz herself with her arm around an old lady who was undoubtedly her grandmother; here was Liz again, her hair bleached blonde and her skin tanned by the sun she was squinting into. And here beside Liz, her arm draped across Liz’s shoulders, was another blonde-haired girl with a wide, laughing mouth and brown sparkling eyes.
Instantly I felt something – a frisson, a shocked jolt of recognition. I knew this girl. I picked up the photograph and stared at it, filled with a fierce but infuriating sense of familiarity.
Her face, her name … The memory was so tantalizingly close, like a taste that filled me with nostalgia, but which I couldn’t quite identify. I stood there for several minutes, waiting for the thin veil to tear, for the memory to break through, but it failed to do so. In the end I put the photograph back on the bookcase, unsettled to the point of anger. I washed up my breakfast things, then stomped upstairs and got showered and dressed, my mind working so furiously that by the time I left Liz’s cottage it felt as though a steel plate was being screwed tighter and tighter into my forehead.
Driving back to Greenwell, I remembered what I had said to Liz last night, about not being able to stand back and see the bigger picture. Being unable to recognize the girl in the photograph felt like part of that, part of something I was missing. And it was not just the fact that I couldn’t recognize her, but that she was with Liz. If I knew her as well as I thought I did, how could she be friends with Liz too? It was not beyond the bounds of possibility, of course, but it felt like something far more significant than a coincidence.
Abruptly it started to rain, big fat drops spattering like colourless bugs on the windscreen. The dark clouds, lowering themselves oppressively towards the earth, reflected my mood, though more pertinently seemed to mark Greenwell’s boundary, to define the outer edge of the pall that hung permanently over the town. Never mind that I had arrived in Greenwell a few days ago in sunshine. That seemed now like nothing more than a mocking reminder of the life I had left behind. Greenwell’s boundary on that occasion had been defined differently, that was all. Defined not by gathering rainclouds, but by the death of the hare beneath the wheels of my car, and – as though the sacrifice had awoken it – by the tattered thing striding across the field towards me.
I turned my windscreen wipers on and put my lights on half-beam. I slowed down too; my annoyance at not being able to identify the girl in the photograph was making me drive too fast. The roads between Shelton and Greenwell were narrow and twisty, country lanes bordered by high, unruly hedges and trees that craned over the road, leafless branches extended and splayed as though in frozen startlement. As abruptly as it had started, the power of the rain increased, battering angrily on the roof as if frustrated it couldn’t extract me from my metal box. My windscreen became a shimmering wall of water, beyond which trees and hedges and the dark thread of the road were a blur of constantly moving shapes. I shifted down into second and put my wipers on full. They squealed as they whipped from side to side, struggling to fend off the deluge. I leaned over the steering wheel, peering grimly through the instantly deliquescing arcs that the wipers created and constantly renewed. The landscape was deadened by the rain, starved of light and colour. On a straight stretch of road, a narrow corridor between tall trees, I saw a grey bush about fifty metres ahead, so close to the road side that I was forced to make a slight adjustment to my wheel to prevent myself ploughing into it. The bush was only twenty metres away when I realized it wasn’t a bush at all, but a grey-clad figure. The instant I realized this the figure began to turn slowly towards me.
Time seemed to freeze, and my shoulders clamped with dread. I felt cold pinpricks tingle across my skin as I recalled the boy in the playground telling me, ‘If you see his face, you die.’ I tore my eyes away from the figure, which was half-turned now, and stamped on the accelerator despite the driving rain. An almighty shudder rushed through me as the car swept past, the figure a fleeting block of grey in the passenger window.
eighteen
The man waiting for me at the Solomon Wedge was gorgeous. Maybe not Brad Pitt gorgeous, but he drew my eye like a bright light the instant I walked into the room. He was sitting at a table by the window, drinking tea –
a little Earl Grey label was attached to the piece of white thread that dangled from the metal teapot in front of him. I knew he was waiting for me the instant he glanced up and smiled.
He had dyed blond hair (not usually my thing at all) and very chiselled features. His broad shoulders and big hands, and the way he sat upright, straight-backed, on his seat should have made him appear powerful, yet the insipid light washing in through the window gave him a sense of ethereality. He reminded me of a vampire, anaemic, in need of blood. I didn’t know who he was, but I wasn’t instantly pleased to see him. I was still shaky after my encounter on the road, and had been planning to do nothing more than chill out in my room for a while.
The man stood up. At that time in the morning he was the pub’s only customer. Indeed, he and I were the only people in the room. ‘You have got to be Ruth,’ he said. He was tall, dressed in a grey linen suit and a black polo-neck jumper.
‘Have I?’ I replied cagily, which seemed to surprise him.
‘You are Ruth, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘You must be. You look so much like Alex.’
Hearing this stranger speak my brother’s name was like a jolt to the system. ‘How do you know Alex?’ I demanded.
‘I’m Keith,’ said the man. ‘Has Alex not mentioned me?’
‘Keith!’ I exclaimed. ‘Of course! Liz told me you were in Australia.’
‘I was. I got back late last night and called in at the school this morning to see Alex. It was Liz who told me that Alex had gone missing and that you were staying here.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t understand, Ruth. What’s going on? Where’s Alex?’
‘No one knows,’ I said. ‘He disappeared without a word just over a week ago. I came to find him, but I’m not having much luck.’