by Mark Morris
‘And he didn’t leave a note or anything?’ Keith asked, then admonished himself. ‘No, of course he didn’t. Sorry. It’s just that this all seems unreal. I was so looking forward to seeing him. This is the last thing I expected to find when I got back.’
‘I know,’ I said and shrugged, momentarily at a loss for words.
‘Look,’ said Keith, gesturing at the seat opposite him. ‘Come and have a cup of tea and a chat. I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you look a bit done in.’
‘I am. Thanks.’ I walked over and slumped gratefully into the seat opposite his. It had stopped raining. Something approximating gauzy sunlight was leaking through the louring cloud cover overhead.
‘I’ll order some more tea,’ said Keith. ‘I think everyone’s clearing up after breakfast. Hang on.’
I watched him as he moved away from the table, out of the milky light, and saw that I had been wrong about him. He didn’t look anaemic at all, he looked tanned and healthy and fit. Yet for all that he still retained an air of frailty. Or perhaps not frailty but vulnerability. It was ridiculous – I had only known him for two minutes, but already I was feeling an urge to shield him from some of the possibilities I was being forced to contemplate.
He returned with a tray of tea things which he set before me. ‘Thanks,’ I said and poured myself a cup.
‘Has Alex done this sort of thing before?’ Keith asked. ‘Gone off without a word?’
‘No.’
‘But he has travelled a lot?’
‘Yes, but he always keeps in touch. Phone calls, letters, e-mails. This time, though, there’s been nothing.’
‘Perhaps he’s trying to contact you at your London address,’ Keith suggested.
‘No, my friend Sarah’s monitoring that. She’ll let me know if anything arrives.’ I looked at him. ‘I was actually hoping you might be able to shed some light on his whereabouts. Liz and I did wonder whether he’d followed you to Australia on a whim.’
‘No such luck.’ Keith looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head. ‘And I can’t think of a reason why he would just go off without a word. He was happy here. Everything was going well.’
We sipped our tea for a moment, listening to faint sounds of activity from the kitchen. Then Keith said, ‘Did you check the Fargo box?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘The Fargo box. Alex once said to me that if he ever had to leave me a secret message he would leave it in the box that contains his video of Fargo – you know, the Coen brothers movie? I wondered whether he’d told you that as well?’
‘No,’ I said, trying not to sound jealous, ‘he didn’t.’
Keith shrugged. ‘I asked him why he’d ever want to leave me a secret message and he just shrugged and said, “You never know”.’
I smiled. That sounded like Alex. He was like a kid sometimes, he loved secret places. As kids we’d had numerous hiding places in the house and garden which no one else knew about. I used to forget where half of them were, but Alex had them all logged in his head.
‘I presume you’ve checked out his flat?’ said Keith, interrupting my thoughts.
‘Yes.’ I leaned forward. ‘I didn’t have a key, so I broke in.’
Keith looked both appalled and admiring. ‘You didn’t!’
‘I did. The police found out about it too and arrested me.’
‘What happened?’
I thought of my ordeal in the police station, but shrugged. ‘Nothing much. They let me go eventually.’ Suddenly I no longer wanted my tea, nor to chill out. I stood up. ‘Come on, let’s go and check out the Fargo box.’
We went in Keith’s car, a banana-yellow Punto. I was quite prepared to break into the house, but Keith produced two keys on a Wallace and Gromit key ring, one for the outer door, one for the flat itself. The house was silent as usual. I wondered whether Alex and the reclusive woman in flat three were the only tenants. It wouldn’t surprise me. The longer I spent in Greenwell the more difficult I found it to believe that someone would actually choose to live here. As we went up the stairs, treading softly and saying nothing, I allowed myself a brief, optimistic fantasy: maybe living in Greenwell, simply being here in this dreary, soul-numbing town, had done Alex’s head in to such an extent that he’d had to go away to think for a while with no distractions. To find himself and not tell anyone.
Even as the notion formed, warming me briefly with its optimism, I sensed hairline cracks of illogicality tracing their way across its brittle surface. We reached Alex’s floor. I half-expected to see some evidence that the police had been here, was worried that we’d find the door to his flat secured by some kind of impenetrable barrier, but everything was just as I’d left it. Keith produced his key, but I pulled a rueful face and gestured at the splintered wood around the lock that I’d attempted to tease back into place. I pushed the door and it swung open. Keith and I stepped into Alex’s flat together.
Everything was just as before. Perhaps the place smelled a little mustier than it had previously, perhaps a greater number of dust motes swirled and spun as the air billowed around us, perhaps time had done a bit more of its painstaking, infinitesimal work, but to all intents and purposes, nothing had changed.
I walked into the main room, my eyes scanning the shelves so rapidly that I saw nothing. Keith stepped past me and went straight over to a shelf on the opposite wall. I only saw the video of Fargo – white spine, red writing – when Keith placed his forefinger on it and teased it from its slot. I stepped forward, holding out my hand.
‘Can I have it?’ I said.
He glanced at me, eyebrows raised, and I thought I must sound like a petulant little girl. I forced myself to smile and he shrugged and said, ‘Of course.’ But he handed the plastic box over with what I felt was a degree of reluctance. I took it from him, trying not to snatch, and opened it. I saw immediately that there was something tucked beneath the video. I lifted the video out, was so impatient I would have tossed it across the room in the vague hope it would land on the settee if Keith had not been there to take it from me. I lifted out the white unmarked envelope that had been nestling beneath, then shoved the plastic box into Keith’s hands too. I tore open the envelope and extracted what was inside. Two photographs, nothing written on the back. One of the photos was of me and Alex in London, him with his arm around me, both of us grinning like lunatics. The other was of me and Alex as little kids, sitting in our sandpit in the garden. I was holding a bright yellow plastic spade, engrossed in my digging. Alex had a blue spade and was squinting happily into the camera, a white sunhat on his head.
I held the photographs, one in each hand, and stared at them. As I did so I felt something rise inside me, an all-engulfing wave of longing, regret and awful, unbearable sadness. I started to shake, then to cry, great sobs making my stomach lurch, tearing themselves out of me, scouring my throat. My eyes flooded with hot tears, the photographs blurring like fragile memories. I sagged as the energy drained out of me. I felt Keith’s hands on my arms, holding me up.
He spoke to me, and even though his words were a mush of meaningless sounds, blurring and blending one into another, his voice was soothing, coaxing, comforting. I clung to him, needing his strength, his support. I felt as though I were standing on the edge of a cliff, and that if I let go I would stumble over it into darkness. The awful grief that was surging up and out of me was like a drug, a heavy sedative, veiling my perceptions. I was aware of what I was doing and of my surroundings only vaguely. Keith and I were no longer standing up but sitting down; I had my face buried in his chest, could smell his clean skin; his hands were moving on my body, stroking, caressing; I lifted my face and felt the soft, warm wetness of his mouth on mine.
All of this seemed like a dream, a fantasy, and yet at the same time it was intense, all-encompassing. It filled me up and I drank it in, craving it. Keith’s skin against mine, his mouth on me, was the salve on my wound, the shot of morphine to deaden the pain. I don’t recall undressing, but
all at once I was naked and he was naked, and he was moving on me, sliding on me, and his mouth was on my breasts and on my stomach and between my legs.
I stretched out my arms, my hands forming fists, fingers hooking into claws, scrunching up the photographs I still held. Except that they weren’t photographs, they were softer than photographs, more pliable. I had the sense of becoming aware, rising up as though from a deep sleep. All at once it occurred to me that what I was clutching was handfuls of bedsheet. I opened my eyes.
I was lying on my back, staring up not at the ceiling of Alex’s flat but of my room in the Solomon Wedge. I was approaching orgasm, exquisite threads of sensation curling up through me as the tongue between my outspread legs lapped and probed. I raised my head muzzily, looked down the length of my body, and saw not Keith’s short bleached hair, but hair that was lustrous, long, strawberry-blonde.
My pleasure turned in an instant to freezing, cramping panic. I dug my heels into the bed, let out a sound like a grunt of pain and propelled myself upwards into a semi-sitting position. I scrambled backwards, my back thumping the headboard, as Liz, naked, raised her head and looked at me, eyes dewy, hair tousled, mouth wet. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said somnolently, raising herself on all fours and moving towards me. Barely realizing what I was doing, I kicked out at her, my foot impacting with her shoulder.
‘Get away from me!’ I screeched at her. ‘What’s going on?’
She sat up, rubbing at her injured shoulder, her face full of pain and bewilderment. Then abruptly her eyes narrowed, her face hardened. Suddenly she was furious.
She scrambled from the bed, snatching up clothes that were strewn on the floor. ‘What’s your fucking problem?’ she said.
I shook my head, dragging covers to me, concealing my body. ‘Don’t be angry, Liz. Just tell me what’s happening.’
Liz was dressing quickly, yanking on her clothes. ‘You’re crazy,’ she snapped. ‘You’re a fucking schizo. You ought to see someone, get your head sorted out.’
‘I don’t know what’s happening!’ I wailed.
‘You’ve lost the plot, that’s what’s happening,’ said Liz, and stormed out of the room.
nineteen
When Alex had caught up with him in the street, Matt had not fought back. He had simply gone limp, had not even tried to push Alex away when Alex had started banging his head on the pavement. It was creepy and scary. Who knows what might have happened if the police had not arrived and dragged Alex away from Matt’s prone body? Later Alex said to me that Matt was a coward, that he only attacked those who were weaker than himself, but I wasn’t so sure. I couldn’t help thinking that Matt was more cunning than that, that he was playing mind games with us. By capitulating, by soaking up the pain of a nasty beating without retaliation, I believe that Matt was trying to make a kind of warped point, was trying to let us know that nothing we could possibly do to him would deflect him from his chosen course of action.
As a result of that night’s events, both Matt and Alex were bound over to keep the peace, and Matt had a court injunction imposed on him forbidding him to come near me. I spent a quiet Christmas with Alex that year, and an edgy, uncertain winter wondering whether it really was all over. It was only as the hard frosts gave way to softer ground and new buds, and as the days began to stretch out their arms, that I finally began to relax. I’d spent a lot of time at Alex’s house, feeling vulnerable on my own, but now I began to live a more independent life again. I got a good job on a movie, a crime caper starring Pierce Brosnan and Rachel Weisz, with Michael Caine doing a cameo as a shadowy underworld boss. The first part of the shoot was in London, but in April we were all due to fly out to Venice to do some location work there.
I was happy and excited about that, and although there were always shadows beneath the surface, I felt as though I was finally getting my life back on track. I wasn’t in a relationship, but that’s because I didn’t want to be. I didn’t think about Matt all the time any more – if I had enough other things to think about, then I found I could push him right to the back of the queue. I could never get rid of him completely, however, which was why I could never settle to anything – I needed to be busy to keep him at bay.
One March morning, towards the end of the London shoot, I came out of my house and started walking down the street towards the tube station. The film company was happy to pay for cabs, but if there weren’t any hold-ups on the line the tube was much quicker. It was three months since I’d last seen Matt and I’d stopped jumping at sudden noises, stopped automatically looking over my shoulder whenever I left the house. More fool me. If I had glanced over my shoulder I might have seen him coming.
I don’t know how long he’d been watching me. Maybe only a day or two, maybe since Christmas. I don’t know either why he’d left it until now to act – maybe he hadn’t had the opportunity before, or maybe it was simply that crazy people don’t do things in a logical manner. On this occasion I didn’t even see his face. All I was aware of was the brief – very brief – sound of running feet behind me and a flash of movement in my peripheral vision. Then I heard a sharp crack and felt a searing pain that shot down from the top of my head, blacking out my thoughts as effectively as a bolt of lightning fusing a string of lights looped along a seafront promenade.
I woke up in hospital feeling as though my head had been split in two, weeping with the pain of it. For several minutes I was aware of no other sensation in my body, didn’t even know Alex was beside me, clutching my hand, until he leaned forward to gently kiss my cheek.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘come on, you’re safe now. I’m here. I won’t let anyone hurt you.’
‘My … head … hurts …’ I managed to tell him, and even though I was whispering, each word felt as though it was jabbing at the agonized nerve endings in my skull.
He gave me some pills to swallow, some water to sip, which again was agony, and then I drifted back into sleep. When I woke later he was still there, watching over me. It was dark in the ward now; people coughed and rustled, there was the occasional quiet groan.
I felt marginally better. The pain in my head was just about bearable. Alex smiled.
‘How are you doing?’
‘Great,’ I murmured and his smile widened, then diminished.
‘You do know who I am, don’t you?’ he said.
What a ridiculous question. It took me a moment to realize that they must have been worried the blow on my head would result in brain damage. ‘Course I do,’ I whispered, and curled my lips into a little smile to show I was joking. ‘You’re Dale Winton.’
The smile reappeared on his face. ‘Do you remember what happened?’ he asked.
‘Someone hit me.’
‘Matt,’ replied Alex. ‘He was seen. Positive ID the police said.’ He hesitated a moment, and then in a choked voice he said, ‘He hit you with an axe, Ruth. Fractured your skull. You could have died …’
His face struggled to conceal his tears and anger and disbelief. I squeezed his hand.
‘I’m OK,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll be OK.’
Alex rubbed his other hand across his face, recovering his composure. Quietly he said, ‘The police haven’t caught him yet, but if they don’t find him, I will. And if I find him I promise you, Ruth, I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him for everything he’s done to you.’
twenty
Suddenly I was looking up at the ceiling, with no memory of having travelled through the interim state between sleep and conscious thought. I felt drained and fragile, my limbs weak, as if I were trying to fend off a debilitating bout of flu. As my memory came back it was accompanied by a slew of emotions – confusion, shame, self-loathing, fear. Fear because I didn’t know what was happening to me. Was it simply that I was starting to seriously lose it? Was this what going mad felt like?
I sat up with an effort, my body feeling as though it belonged to someone else, and was unwilling to haul itself out of bed. I tried to piece together my last few memories, bu
t after finding the photos in the Fargo box there seemed to be nothing but fragments. Had I made love to Keith or to Liz – or to either? What had happened between being in Alex’s flat with Keith and waking up here? If I wasn’t losing it, what other explanation could there be? Perhaps I had been drugged, but how? I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything since …
Since Keith had fetched me a pot of tea when I’d met him downstairs earlier.
Was that the explanation? Had Keith, my brother’s boyfriend, drugged me? He’d had the opportunity, but if that was the case then it must have been a hell of a strong drug, because I’d only taken a couple of sips from my cup.
Yet now I came to think about it, how did I even know that the man I’d met had been Keith? I’d never seen a picture of him, so he could just as easily have been an imposter. The fact that he had keys to Alex’s flat and knew about the Fargo box didn’t mean a great deal. But if he wasn’t Keith, why had he drugged me and lured me to the flat? Just to fuck me? Was it really as banal as that?
I had the impression I was forcing the pieces into place, that none slotted in very neatly. Where, for instance, did Liz fit into all this? The way I remember her reacting to me it was as if I’d seduced her and then gone schizoid, flipped into another persona altogether. Or maybe she and ‘Keith’ had worked all of that scenario out together, simply to disorientate me. It was a hateful idea. The last thing I wanted was to regard Liz as an enemy, but in the circumstances could I afford to trust anyone entirely?
Still feeling as though I’d been through the mill (could it be the drug wearing off?) I reached for my alarm clock. From the dim, pearly quality of the light in my room I guessed it was early evening, that I’d slept most of the day away, but it was only when I realized that the clock was edging towards 7 a.m. and not 7 p.m. that it struck me I’d lost about sixteen hours! My God, what had happened to me in that time? Hopefully most of it had been spent here sleeping, and there had been nothing worse than I remembered. I crawled out of bed, staggered into the bathroom and sat down in the shower, hugging my knees to my chin.