The King of Spain

by Robert Ford

  Sam and Rachel managed to separate from each other, taking up positions on either side of the trolley.

  ‘OK,’ said Sam, just about recovering some semblance of composure. ‘On the count of three. One... two...’

  They were off, sprinting along the corridor, charging Hal and the trolley over the sleek stone floor as fast as they could.

  ‘Let go! Let go! Let go!’ cried Hal after around twenty yards.

  And let go they did, both slowing to a stop as the trolley sped off along the passageway, rattling furiously into the gloom.

  ‘Wooo hooo!’ screamed Hal as he was enveloped by the darkness at the other end of the cloister.

  Sam and Rachel froze, listening as the trolley ran on into the unknown, obscured. Then came a soft thud, an ungainly dismount, no doubt, and moments later Hal came trotting back, kicking the trolley ahead, infantile.

  Next up was Rachel, who at least made a better fist of getting on the trolley than Hal had done. Now it was for the boys to push, and this they did with great gusto, sending the trolley screaming off into the shadows at quite some speed.

  ‘Come onnn!’ came Rachel’s cry, her voice echoing through the night air.

  Just as Hal had done, she disappeared far off into the gloom, padding back moments later with the trolley in front, beaming.

  At last it was Sam’s turn. He stepped forward and lay down on the trolley, which now looked rather miniature next to his long thin limbs. Shuffling for a moment, he managed to find a more comfortable perch, aligning his arms straight back behind him, a self-conscious attempt at aerodynamics.

  From this new perspective the cloister ahead appeared to stretch off for miles, much further than it really was, an interminable stretch.

  ‘OK! One... two... three!’

  Hal and Rachel set off, sprinting with all the frantic enthusiasm they could muster. Then, with one final heave, they let go, the trolley racing off along the cloister with a rhythmical wooden knock and clank.

  Despite the simplicity of their endeavours, the time and the place, the light and the inebriation, all these things combined - it was an amazing rush, an unparalleled, febrile exhilaration scorching his soul as the trolley sped further and further, deeper into the darkness. As the light from the other end of the corridor gave way, Sam looked back over his shoulder along the passageway, expecting to be able to see the other two, but there was nothing, no one, a void.

  And still the trolley ran on and on and on, for miles it seemed. Sam had lost all bearings, any sense of time or space, of standard physical law; the universe unpicked.

  At last the trolley came to rest, or rather, it ran aground. Sam lifted himself up and off, startled to find grass suddenly under foot. Looking around, he began to realise certain details in the gloom - trees and bushes and above, through the leaves, a slender waxing moon. He was in a wood, he knew that much. But how and where and why?

  Such was the oddity of the situation that Sam knew, almost before he looked. Turning around, there next to him was the Black Bear, the Bear from his dreams, the Bear of his childhood. He looked up, dense black eyes glinting in the moonlight, liquid. Then, taking a couple of small steps forward, he laid a paw on Sam’s leg.

  ‘Alright, kid? Alright?’ said the Bear in a thick, northern drawl. ‘Alright, kid? Alright?’

  Sam stared down at him, observing his movements, which seemed to be subject to an anomaly in time. They slowed down, becoming elongated, graceful, only to then seamlessly change back to real time again, speeding up rapidly to maintain sync. And all the while the Bear chanted the same strange mantra. ‘Alright, kid? Alright?’

  The Bear shuffled further forward and hugged Sam’s knee. Immediately Sam’s chest was pierced with the most shocking pain, an unbearable sensation that made it almost impossible to breathe. Sam dropped to his knees, gasping.

  The Bear leant across and took him around the neck, whispering into his ear. ‘Alright, kid? Alright? Alright, kid? Alright?’

  Above the trees, the moon and the sky began to swirl, chaotic movements that hinted at disintegration, that transfigured and changed and finally shrunk until there was nothing, only an endless, vertiginous space. Sam bent low and put an arm around the Bear, feeling the soft brush of fur against his cheek. Tears welled in his eyes, streaking pink his pale cheeks. Slowly he felt his spirit fade, falling, splintering, tearing in two, a retreat of sorts, a disappearance.

  KIRKHAM

  Another week passed at Edge Hill, the mild and mellow autumn days shortening as winter began to take hold, constricting the countryside, repealing the last remnants of summer’s fullness.

  It was early morning, anaemic light spilling in through the smeared windows of the staff kitchen. Sam, Hal, Rachel and Ted sat at the small table drinking tea, engaged in the identification of what exactly it was that Mrs Skeets had prepared for them.

  ‘I seem to have a claw and a tentacle?’ said Hal, looking around the table in the hope of some corroboration, but finding none.

  ‘Maybe Daniels has done a runner,’ muttered Ted in between lusty spoonfuls of breakfast, a fair amount of the strange brown gruel already clinging to the white whiskers that fringed his mouth.

  ‘And shell. There is definitely shell in here. Eggshell, I hope. Is this egg shell, Mrs Skeets?’ Hal called across to the cook who sat knitting in the corner of the kitchen. Pausing for a moment, she pulled down the rim of her glasses and peered back.

  ‘Egg, dear, egg.’

  Hal stared back down at his bowl, less than convinced.

  ‘I don’t think he would do that. Not Daniels,’ Rachel offered.

  ‘What do you think, Sam?’ Hal grumped, waving his spoon about.

  ‘Egg. I hope.’

  ‘Not this. That. Daniels.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh,’ mocked Hal.

  ‘Sorry, your highness, your highness, your highness...’ Sam countered, adding an elaborate seated bow to finish, much to the amusement of the table.

  Across the room Morris ducked in through the doorway.

  ‘You OK?’ asked Rachel. ‘You look kind of...’

  ‘Yeah, fine. I guess. There’s to be an assembly. Over in the atrium. Get over there for half past, OK?’

  Hal opened his mouth, about to interrogate, but something in the sombre tone of Morris’s instructions demanded restraint and so he and the rest of the handlers made known their complicity with low level nods and shrugs and yups.

  ‘Half past. Thanks, guys.’

  With that, Morris stalked out through the tiny kitchen door, off on his rounds.

  ‘Maybe Daniels is dead?’ said Ted, suddenly rather camp.

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Idiot.’

  ‘He wouldn’t.’

  ‘He should be promoted if you ask me,’ said Hal, finally making a remark that everyone agreed upon - the group were nothing if not partisan. And soon they fell silent, watching the clock advance towards half past, whilst in the background Mrs Skeets clicked away, metronomic.

  The atrium was alive with chatter as the group joined the rest of the handlers, the entire staff, some one hundred and fifty in total, corralled towards the foot of the main staircase. Above them, on the flat approximately halfway up, stood two men in smart blue suits.

  ‘Who are they?’ asked Sam, glancing round to Hal. But he had no idea either, shaking his head in response, intrigued as were the rest of the staff.

  After several minutes Morris entered the room at the rear and signalled the two men. The slightly older, slightly taller man stepped forward and raised an arm, quietening the room.

  ‘Good morning, Edge Hill’ he began, his voice clear and authoritative. ‘My name is Mr Langdon, and I am hear today as head of the TWL Leisure Group Incorporated, the owners of this retirement facility. It is with a degree of sadness that I must inform you, as staff members, that Mr Daniels has this week tendered his resignation as
Managing Director. His decision is due, I believe, to personal reasons.’

  A babble broke out below, among the staff.

  ‘Well, he’s not bloody dead, then?’ said Ted, still hoping for scandal.

  Next to him, Sam and Rachel shared a look, while behind them Hal moved away from the group, a sulk towards the corner.

  Langdon called the room to order, the flat of his palm outstretched, as if he were trying to halt an imaginary train. ‘Yes. Thank you. Yes. OK.’

  The room fell silent once more.

  ‘As one door closes, another opens. Looking to the future, it is my great delight to introduce to you this morning, the new managing director here at Edge Hill. So please join me in welcoming Mr Harold Kirkham.’

  Langdon began to clap his skeletal hands as he stepped back, making way.

  Kirkham was perhaps fifty years old, short and chubby, with sparse brown hair swept keenly from left to right in a vain attempt to conceal a shiny pink pate. His round face looked forlorn, and in its own way quite childlike, small features grouped tightly together so that they seemed to jostle for position plum centre.

  ‘Fellow Edge Hillians,’ he said, arms outstretched, his voice high, strained, lost somewhere between the evangelical and the plain anxious.

  It was unclear what reaction he was expecting from such an opening - had he thought, rehearsing the line elsewhere, that the staff would counter with sustained, fraternal applause? That the atrium would shake with the sound of a great communal joy and acceptance, whooping and hollering and such like? In reality the silence was appalling, aggressive even, quite a reaction after only a few short words. Kirkham dropped his arms to his sides and gave a sideways glance to Mr Langdon, whose nostrils flared back by way of encouragement.

  Clearing his throat he began again. ‘Fellow Edge Hillians. It is my great pleasure to be joining you today as part of this fine ship as we set sail together on a voyage of discovery, across the wide-open seas of geriatric care and beyond. And what an exciting trip this will be.’

  At the back of the room Hal turned around to the others, rolling his eyes, aping about.

  ‘And like all good ships,’ Kirkham continued, ‘ours must be one founded on the principles of discipline, respect and, of course, the appropriate applications of the guidelines set out in the TWL staff manuals pertaining to residential care practices, and with particular attention being paid of course to the strict implementation of health and safety procedures. We wouldn’t want any more stampedes, now, would we?’ Kirkham said, tooting irregular bursts of nasal laughter.

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said Mr Langdon, tapping the banister beside him, a gesture that together with his stern features, made him appear oddly vampiric.

  ‘And while I’m sure that Mr Daniels did a quite wonderful job over the course of his tenure here at Edge Hill, I’m sure that you will all agree things have been allowed to slip.’

  Kirkham cast an eye over the faces of the staff, a wild, nervous grin painted across his features as he sought corroboration.

  ‘This facility, in my opinion, is in desperate need of modernisation, of refurbishment and significant renewal. And I can honestly say that I’m looking forward hugely to the prospect of working alongside each and every one of you over the coming weeks, and months, and even, perhaps, years.’

  Kirkham wrapped up the speech with another of his stifled little laughs as Langdon stepped forward, applauding the new man with relish. ‘Well done, you. Well done, you.’

  The introduction was over, and so the handlers began to disperse, moping off along the cloisters to their various shifts, talking as they went, speculating as to their future, as to what would become of their lives at Edge Hill.

  SNOW AND ICE

  It was cold, the first really cold day of the winter, snowflakes drifting earthbound from an ashen sky. As the year staggered on towards its end, the fields and hills around Edge Hill looked lean and unloved, now bereft of much of their foliage, stripped by so cruel a season.

  Sam and Hal sat together on a low brick wall, wrapped in the rough wool of their greatcoats. Hal rolled a cigarette while Sam flapped his arms, folding and unfolding them in an attempt to conjure some warmth.

  ‘Bloody freezing,’ he announced, blowing hard into his hands.

  Although the bruising around Sam’s eyes had long gone, he still looked tired and pale, not to mention dishevelled, what with his hair growing into an ever more haphazard clump, a nest for slovenly birds.

  Hal handed Sam the cigarette before embarking upon another, teasing the papers with a certain studied care.

  The wall on which they were perched lay some two hundred metres away from the main house, away from the back service areas, not far from the infirmary. In front of them, across a small unkempt lawn, was Daniels’ house, or rather, the house that now belonged to Kirkham. It was a fairly anonymous redbrick building from the 1960s - two up, two down, with rampant guttering along its every edge. At that moment the house and its immediate surroundings were a hive of activity - removals men laboured past with furniture and boxes under the ever-watchful eye of Kirkham, who could occasionally be heard squealing directives from his precarious perch, halfway out of a first floor window.

  Sam and Hal sat and smoked and watched the chaos unfold, watched the snowflakes falling onto the grass around them.

  ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this, really I do,’ Hal said.

  ‘About?’

  ‘This bloke here.’

  They both looked up towards the window.

  ‘Yeah, he seems a little -’

  ‘A little? A lot. A storm is gathering, make no mistake. Edge Hill is a funny old place. It’s fragile. Daniels knew that, understood that while things were a little chaotic, what we’d managed to make here was, I don’t know... rare.’ Hal exhaled, thinking. ‘Plus, this bloke has the look of a fascist about him.’

  Sam shook his head, smiling. ‘Of course he does. Complete fascist. Obviously. No doubt these boxes all contain Nazi bullion. How long have you been here again?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Well...’

  Hal looked down, kicking a stone away over the patchy grass. ‘To be honest I’m not sure. Fifteen, twenty years maybe.’

  Sam sat up, a little surprised to have got anything approaching a serious response. ‘Right. And before that?’

  Hal shot Sam a sideways glance, drawing on his cigarette. ‘Things get a little hazy. I seem to remember having attended university - although I can’t be sure. And then I was driving a large truck. Heading north - but I’m not sure why. It’s become a little tricky to think of anything other than this place, to be honest. Institutionalised, isn’t that the term?’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it, yes.’

  ‘And you, I suppose, have spent the last ten years holed up in some kind of rank hormonal chrysalis, only to emerge here at Edge Hill a fully formed nonce?’ Hal sniped.

  Sam laughed. ‘Funnily enough you’re not far off.’

  Hal shrugged a half grunt, Sam leaning forward so as to glance back up towards the house and the goings-on there. And it was then that something caught his eye; something significant. Kirkham, it seemed, had a daughter.

  She looked a little older than Sam, around twenty-five, with a slight frame and fine brown hair cut short into a sleek bob that ended just above her shoulders. Dressed in jeans and a thick woollen jumper, she helped repatriate the boxes, directing the removals men towards various rooms with an easy charm.

  Sam was entranced. Instantly.

  ‘You wretch!’ exclaimed Hal, following Sam’s gaze over towards her. ‘You hound! You ape! You fool! How could you? To covet another man’s wife? Dickie!’

  ‘She’s not his wife. Must be his daughter. I guess.’

  ‘So you’re not denying it. You love her,’ said Hal, relishing the opportunity to make Sam squirm.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You love her. You’ll marry her. And then you’ll have lit
tle fascist children together.’

  ‘Piss off.’

  ‘Hey! You there!’ Hal shouted over, causing her to turn towards them. She had a strong jawline, well drawn, and yet her face was delicate, feminine, with a button nose and large hazel eyes.

  Seeing them perched on the wall, she smiled and waved, a little hesitant, not knowing who these two draped lumps were.

  Hal waved back with great enthusiasm, Sam next to him, quietly imploding.

  ‘Ha! There. See. Mussolini’s bride. Waving at you, Dickie.’

  Sam blushed bright beetroot, waving back from the shoulder as if his right elbow were conjoined to the round of his ribs.

  ‘Piss off,’ Sam said through gritted teeth.

  And Hal laughed, and smoked and laughed and laughed and laughed.

  The main house was teeming with activity as they made their way through the atrium and into the East Wing. As part of Kirkham’s strategy for the improvement of the facility more handlers had been employed, together with a construction firm whose builders had already started on some general refurbishments. Indeed, the corridor that led to the library had already been lined with scaffolding to attend to some of the peeling paint and plaster on the ceiling.

  However, the sight that greeted them as they walked into the library was something else altogether. The walls had been cleared, the broad, ancient shelves torn apart and the books piled high in sorry heaps at the back, while here and there stomped thickset workmen carrying materials, erecting scaffolding or eyeing plans, sawing and banging and drilling.

  For what seemed like an age, Hal stood and stared, leaning back somewhat as though physically repelled by the sheer force of this particular revelation.

  ‘It’s... it’s...’ Hal began as he walked around the room.

  Sam began to consider more closely the works. The builders seemed to be installing some sort of frame around the perimeter, a round steel-and-concrete structure emerging.

  ‘There you are,’ said Morris as he approached them from the doorway.

  They turned to face him. Hal looked wretched, his eyes almost to the point of tearing.