by L. P. Davies
“A lot better than last night. Bert—” Small white teeth nibbled on her lower lip. “Do you do much reading?”
“Not so much these days.” He took the empty glasses over to his tiny sink.
“Clive Heston. Do you know the name?”
“Heston—” He picked up a towel. “Thrillers with a touch of sex?”
“That’s the one.”
“Yes,, I reckon I must have read most of his books in my time. Didn’t he die four, five years back?”
“That’s what I thought,” Louise said.
* * *
After a seven o’clock meal that was neither high tea nor dinner but a heaped-plate something of each, Axel, tired again, dozed in the lounge until Louise came to rouse him.
“I’m sorry—you looked so peaceful. But it’s almost ten.”
“I’ve told Bert that we’ll be leaving later tonight,” she added as they made their way outside. “He didn’t ask any questions, bless him. I think he has an idea something’s going on.”
The night was warm black velvet.
“Meet Daisy.” Louise patted the roof of the tiny black saloon. “Uncle Vince bought her second-hand, because he figured it would work out cheaper than hiring a car. As old as the hills, but goes like a bomb.” She opened the door. “Do you drive, Axel?”
“I don’t know.” He motioned for her to get behind the wheel. “This is no time to try to find out.”
“Where I come from”—she pressed the starter—“driving is a rough-and-ready affair. No niceties like driving licences on St. Anatole. I really ought to apply for one now. If the police happen to stop me, I’ll be in hot water.” She grinned companionably. “It all adds zest to life.”
The car moved away.
“You’ll have to direct me once we’re through Bridford,” said the girl, busy with the gears. “How do you feel about going back to the house again?”
“I’m not looking forward to it. I wish to God I’d thought about the files when I was planning my escape.”
“Is it likely they’ll be expecting you to go back?”
The cottages had slid by. Now they were going along the avenue of trees.
“I don’t know,” Axel replied.
Louise braked gently and looked out of her window. “The entrance to the farm. This must have been where I picked up my tail this morning. The gate’s open, but I can’t see anything.” She reached up to adjust the mirror. It stayed empty of following lights.
“Just to make sure , . .” She stepped hard on the accelerator. “If anyone does show up behind I’ll give him a run for his money.” Judging by her expression she would have welcomed the opportunity of showing what she could do with a car.
But no lights came to dance in the mirror. The main road, when they reached it, was almost as empty of traffic as the lane had been. Axel looked for landmarks and found none. But then he had drowsed through the latter part of the bus journey.
“About five miles to Bridford,” Louise observed, her attention divided equally between minor and road. She swung out to pass a huge, ribbed-steel lorry. Minutes later a distant cluster of lights showed ahead. An open space followed by a clump of trees was familiar to Axel. He laid his hand on her elbow, warning: “We’re almost there.”
“We are?” She leaned forward as she braked, looking from one side of the road to the other. Houses appeared, slid by, were replaced by shops that were all in darkness, Sunday blinds drawn. And for Axel, some distance ahead on the other side of the road, a landmark that was even more familiar than the trees.
“Pull in here,” he said.
She drew in to the side of the road, applied the brake, switched off the engine. “Now I’m confused, Axel,” she said “I thought this was Bridford.”
He smiled at her bewilderment. “A change to have the tables turned. Like I told you before, I don’t know all that much about Grenfelle, but I do know my own home when I see it.” He pointed through the wind-screen. “There, about a hundred yards along on the other side. That’s the Barkley Mews opening. I thought it best to pull up here and walk the rest of the way.”
Opening his door he stepped out on to the pavement. There were few passers-by. The girl wriggled across the seat to join him and look about her again, still perplexed.
“As Carla once said,” Axel told her, “when you’ve seen one market town suburb, you’ve seen them all. Especially at night.”
“I suppose so.” She was still doubtful. She shivered, for all the warmth of the evening. “Everywhere looks so—lonely.”
“Do you still want to come in the house with me?”
“Now more than ever.” She took his arm as they crossed the road. No houses or shops on the other side. Instead, the gaunt ugliness of towering buildings—warehouses, perhaps, or factories. Behind the rusty bars of a line of windows the glass was too filthy to hold reflections. A pair of huge wooden gates had a name painted across them in faded and peeling white letters: Greystone Metals Ltd. Then came grey wall. In it, a door, an impressive-looking door after the gates, of polished red wood and with white marble surrounds. A door that touched a chord deep in Axel’s memory. His gaze lifted to the wall above. A large metal-framed oblong was filled with segments of bright colours, not unlike the stained-glass window of a church. It could have been some misguided architect’s idea of flamboyant decoration. Axel knew that it was a trademark. And he had seen the name before, the sloping metal letters that spelled out “Mosaic.”
Entrance, multi-coloured trademark and name were all familiar to him. And there could be no other reason than that he must have seen them countless times before, seen them without paying all that attention. London lay in the other direction; he had never had to pass this way on the way to the city. But when one is in a car, settling down for the short journey ahead, it is natural enough to glance to the left as the car swings out of the mews. And that glance would fall on the grey building with its ostentatious trademark and mausoleum entrance.
He took out his keys and used the light of a street lamp to sort out the one for the front door. Better to have it ready than have to waste time fumbling in the semi-darkness of the mews.
They were almost there. Another massive gate, a short stretch of blank wall, and they had reached the corner.
“The house is only a short way down on this side,” Axel said in a low voice. “It’s the only one on this side.”
They turned the corner.
There was no house on the right-hand side, no sign of one, nothing but bleak towering wall with neither window nor doorway to relieve its stark ugliness. And there were no trees on the other side of the mews, no tall, old yellow-fronted houses to be glimpsed through their branches. And this was no cul-de-sac, no narrow, dimly lighted mews. This was a wide modern thoroughfare with glaring overhead lights that reached far away into the distance.
Louise’s voice came from far away. “I was afraid it might be like this…”
In a nightmare he walked a few paces, ran a few paces, stopped to face the wall, looking at it, looking up where it towered high into the night sky, touching it, knowing that here, just here, had been his front door. Here, on the right, the railings. Here and here, windows.
Where his home had been was nothing but stark, unbroken brick wall. Barkley House and Barkley Mews had vanished as if they had never had existence.
6
Louise touched his arm. Axel looked at her without seeing her.
“I think we ought to go,” she said gently, pity on her face and in her voice.
The keys were still in his hand. He held them up, staring at them. “My house—”
She took his elbow, urging him along. “We can talk about it in the car, Axel. Perhaps you mistook the turning.” But she knew this was the only turning; she had noticed that when they had crossed the road from the car.
He allowed himself to be led back to the main road. There were more people about now, more traffic. At the corner he stopped to look back.
“It was here. This is the place.” Shaking himself free of her grip he pointed. “The bus was coming from there, slowly, just as if it had only just started.”
And one was coming now, gathering speed, the engine sound rising and falling to the rapid changing of the gears.
“Just like this!” Axel almost shouted. “I started to run. I caught it—just there.”
The bus rumbled by. The conductor, standing on the platform, about to go inside, saw Axel, stopped, leaned out to grin and raise one hand in what could have been nothing else but a salute of recognition.
“It’s the same bus!” Axel cried. “The same conductor. Didn’t you see? He knew me again.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Louise said, taking his arm again. She led him along the pavement. A woman with two black spaniels, leads entwined, passed them and then turned to look back, smiling and nodding as if they were old friends.
They crossed the road. Two elderly men walking slowly side by side broke off their conversation to smile, one of them reaching to touch the brim of his hat.
Louise held the car door open for Axel to climb inside. Settling herself at his side she checked the traffic before moving off to reverse into the road that had once been Barkley Mews. She had to wait for a small string of vehicles to pass before she could swing out into the main road again.
The road seemed clear. The big dark-green limousine came from nowhere. It swerved towards them, brakes screaming. Louise braked, steering towards the pavement. The car tilted as it mounted it. Then they had come to a shuddering halt and the other car was racing away into the night.
The near escape had left the girl unshaken. “That was a close one,” she said conversationally, her hands steady on the wheel. “There are some people who should never be let loose on the roads.”
A man’s face came to peer anxiously in at the window, asking: “Are you all right?” It was thrust aside before Louise could reply, its place being taken by a policeman’s head and shoulders.
“Did you manage to get his number?”
“I had other things on my mind,” Louise told him.
The policeman spoke into the transmitter attached to the breast pocket of his uniform, giving brief details of the incident. Then, notebook out, he leaned forward, asking: “Did he actually touch you?”
“I managed to get out of his way in time.”
“If I could have your name and address, madam—”
She gave him the Littledene address. Looking up from writing, another request hanging on his lips, his gaze slid past her to Axel. His face lost its look of cold, self-confident authority, transformed into schoolboy delight by a beaming smile of delighted recognition.
“It’s Axel Champlee!” he discovered.
A crowd had collected. “I’m afraid we’re blocking the pavement,” Louise said. The policeman, transformed, stepped back to wave her on. As the car moved away he brought up one hand in a smart peaked-cap salute.
“Thank God for observant policemen,’’ Axel said in a low voice.
“Not only did he know you,” the girl said without looking at him, “he knew your name. A name that obviously means something. An important name. Important enough to make him change his mind just as he was about to ask to see my licence. So that part’s real—”
“About the only part that is. Louise—my home?”
“You saw for yourself.” She concentrated on her driving. “I think I knew it was going to be like that. But we had to make sure. At least we know the worst now. Axel—” She grimaced. “We can’t talk like this.” Drawing to the side of the road she stopped the car and switched off the engine.
“How are you taking it?” She studied his face. “I can’t even start trying to imagine what you must be going through. It must be like living a nightmare.”
“He knew me,” Axel said. “He knew my name.”
“The woman with the dogs recognised you too. And those two men. Hang on to that, Axel.”
“I am,” he told her bleakly. “There’s nothing else left.”
“That’s what we’ve got to talk about. We’ve got to try to sort things out so that you’ll have something solid to cling to, a foundation to start building up on. It means sifting out reality from fantasy. Maybe it’s the wrong thing to do. Maybe it’ll do more harm than good. I don’t know—” She shrugged her utter helplessness. “I just don’t know.”
“We should have asked him how he knew me.”
“I almost did. But with all those people standing round, listening— It might have made things worse.”
“Worse …” He tried to smile. “What could be worse than a house that vanishes into thin air?”
“It hasn’t vanished, Axel.” She put her hand on his knee. “That’s the first thing you must understand. It’s where it always was—in your mind. It never had any existence in fact. It’s just part of a false background that has been implanted in your mind in place of the real one. You must accept that.”
He shook his head. “You’ll never convince me that my home never existed.”
“I’ve got to try, Axel.” Pity was back on her face again. “It will be bad, but it’s the only way. Don’t you see—so long as your mind is filled with unreality there’s no room for reality. We’ve got to get rid of one before we start putting the other in its place. If I can prove to you that at least one part of your background is impossible, will you take my word for the rest?”
“You can try.”
“That dinner party then. Only a year ago, you say, and Clive Heston was one of the guests. But he died five years ago.”
“It happened,” Axel said doggedly. “He was there. I’m as positive of that as I am of sitting here now.”
“A blank wall.” Louise sighed. “Whoever worked on you made a good job of it. And you have been worked on, Axel. Your real past was taken away and a false one put in its place. We don’t know when, we don’t know where or why. But someone—” She broke off at his expression, leaning forward eagerly. “Have you remembered something?”
“The White Room.” He stared through the wind-screen. “No.” He shook his head. “That was only a dream.”
“A dream? When, Axel?”
“Last night. A nightmare. I was in a strange room where everything was white. The walls seemed to be closing in on me. There were voices. Carla’s was one. You are going to kill—” He turned to look at the girl. “A man’s voice said that. And I must have repeated it after him. I could hear my own voice when I woke up.”
“Going to kill who?”
“It didn’t say. There was a gap. I’ve heard the same voice before, saying the same thing. Before I left Barkley House. Just as I was falling asleep in my bedroom.”
“That must have been when they did it to you!” She nodded, excited, certain she was on the right track. “They took a whole day. The day you lost.”
“I heard the voice before I fell asleep, just as I was dozing off.”
“You only thought you did.” Her eyes were shining. “We’ve made a start. Now we know where and when. What else do we know? Two things that don’t make sense. They wiped your real self away, but they left you with your real name. And they left you in the same place where you must have lived before it happened. It has to be that way for those people to have recognised you. So we know that you live in Bridford.”
“Grenfelle,” he corrected.
“Bridford.” She shook her head impatiently at the interruption. “Grenfelle is part of the fantasy. What else do we know? They’ve tried to make you look older than you really are. They may have tried to make you look like someone called Adrian Wolfax. Anything else? Your clothes, Axel— any tailors’ tabs?”
He unbuttoned his jacket and held it open. There was a silk tag over the inside pocket: James Dalby, Bridford.
“Which doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know. Anything in your pockets?”
He emptied them for her. Handkerchief, bunch of keys— he sorted them out. “This fits m
y front door, this, the study, the library—”
She waved them aside, more interested in the contents of his wallet. But it contained nothing but a wad of money.
“That’s odd. You’d have thought they’d have put something in to further the illusion. A lot of notes—must be about a hundred.” Louise held one up. “I’ve not seen any like this before. Are they all the same?” They were. “The money they gave me at the bank is different from this.” She frowned.
“Must be an old issue.” She replaced the wallet. “Anything else?”
Only the list of holdings.
“Carla’s writing,” Axel said. “Only, according to you, Carla doesn’t exist.”
Louise took her handbag from the glove compartment, opened it, took out a pen. “Write something.”
He wrote his name in his usual old-fashioned flowing script, a totally different handwriting from that of the list.
“No harm in making sure.” She put her pen away again. Axel had spread the list on his knees and was poring over the names. “Something else?” she wondered.
“I’m not sure.” Preoccupied, he answered in terse sentences. “One of the buildings we passed. I knew the name. Mosaic.”
“Mosaic—” Then she remembered. “An office block with a weird motif on the wall.”
“That was the trademark.” He had come to the end of the list. “I thought it might have been one of my companies. It’s not down there. It could be a subsidiary—”
“Worth following up, Axel?”
He folded the paper and tucked it away. “I knew the entrance the minute I saw it. I remembered the name and the trademark.”
“We’ll cheek tomorrow.” She glanced at the dashboard clock. “Time’s getting on. I told Bert we’d be back in under an hour to collect our luggage.” She pressed the starter.
“Do you still have to leave the Swan?” she asked as the ear moved away.
“Nothing’s changed.” Axel gazed through his window at the hypnotic rise and fall of a dark line of hedgerow. “What happened back there has made no difference to anything. I’m still Champlee of Barkley House. The house, my house, is real, it does exist. One day I’ll find it again. Carla, Romaine, Kendall. They’re all flesh and blood, as real as you and I. Tomorrow—” He patted the pocket that held the list. “You’ll see that the rest of it is real too. I can manage with what information is on this paper. But it will take much longer. I can make estimates of the extent of most of my holdings. The others—” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Til get by.”