The Overlooker

by Fay Sampson

  Suddenly the significance of seeing all four of them in front of her struck home.

  ‘Suzie! They’ve got you back! I know Nick told me over the phone from the police station, but . . . well, I could hardly take it all in. But here you are safe and sound, thank the good Lord!’

  She threw her arms round the younger woman and hugged her.

  ‘And Millie! What have you done to your hand? You’re hurt!’

  ‘I had four stitches,’ Millie said proudly.

  ‘And I thought you couldn’t stand hospitals . . . What am I doing, keeping you all on the doorstep? Come along inside, the lot of you.’

  Tom’s low voice came from behind Nick. ‘Dad, you can still see it.’

  Nick turned. In the valley below, one small area of the town was unnaturally brightly lit. Within it, fire still glowed like a red flower.

  ‘I wonder what happened to Dominic,’ came Millie’s voice.

  ‘Shouldn’t think he stood much of a chance, with the force of that explosion,’ Tom said.

  ‘But the police will be looking,’ Nick told him. ‘Come on. We’ve kept Thelma waiting long enough.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  ‘You’ll want to go back and see Dad this afternoon,’ Thelma said at breakfast. ‘All of you.’ She cast a penetrating look at Millie.

  Millie blushed. ‘Of course I will. It was just . . .’

  ‘Well, you’ve come a bit nearer to death than you expected. I dare say you can spare a thought for someone who’s a lot closer to it than you are.’

  ‘He’s not going to die, is he?’ Millie exclaimed.

  ‘Of course he is.’ Then Thelma softened. ‘We all are, pet. Sooner or later. But Dad’s ninety-three and he’s had a nasty stroke. He’s closer than most. You want to make the most of it, while we’ve got him.’

  Nick ran his hands through his hair. ‘There’s so much I still want to ask him. I’m kicking myself that I didn’t come back here sooner. I know that sounds kind of selfish. As if I only to want to talk to him to get some more family history out of him. But when we saw him yesterday – gosh, was that only a day ago? – he seemed like he’d been storing up everything for all these years and he couldn’t wait to tell us.’

  ‘You’re right there. He was tickled pink when he heard you were coming, and that you wanted to find out about the old days and all the people he used to know. He was tired of talking to me about it, I suppose. As far as I was concerned, it was just the same old stories I’d heard for years. I didn’t pay proper attention. Not like you, with your family trees and your computer files. I think it’s marvellous the way you’ve got it all down, like a book.’

  ‘There’s a whole lot more I need to find out,’ Nick said. ‘He was born just after the First World War. But he’d have heard the older ones talking about it. And what about the Depression in the twenties and thirties? Did he have a job then? Was he ever on the dole?’

  ‘Far as I know, he went into the mill at thirteen, and stayed there. Same as everyone round here did in those days.’

  ‘He must have been called up in World War Two.’

  ‘In the Lancashire Fusiliers. There’s an old cap badge somewhere. But he never would talk much about it.’

  Nick played with the crumbs on the table. ‘It was the same with most of them. They saw too much. Didn’t want to inflict it on their families. I feel a bit guilty now. I was so keen to find out about our family in the nineteenth century. I didn’t think enough about the twentieth. I couldn’t believe that he actually knew people who were on the censuses in the 1800s.’

  ‘Like Millicent Bootle?’ Millie supplied.

  ‘Yes. So I didn’t spend enough time asking him about his own life. Well, I had other things on my mind at the time. Never mind. We’ll do that today.’

  ‘What will you do with yourselves this morning?’ Thelma asked.

  Nick grinned across at Tom. ‘I’ve always wanted to take the kids up Skygill Hill. It’s sort of family mythology. My dad always used to talk about family expeditions up Skygill.’

  ‘You’re on,’ Tom said. ‘How high is it?’

  ‘Five hundred and fifty metres. That’s eighteen hundred feet in old money.’

  ‘There’s just one problem. It’s all right for the rest of you. You brought spare clothes. All I had for the weekend was what I stood up in. And the police took them off us.’ He looked down ruefully at the regulation issue tracksuit. ‘But I guess I can make it up there in police trainers. I just hope they get our stuff back to us before I have to go back to uni.’

  ‘You’ve a grand day for it,’ Thelma said. ‘How about you, Suzie? Are you up to it, after all you’ve been through?’

  Suzie smiled at Thelma. ‘I’ve just about got the use of my legs back. I’d be glad of a breath of fresh air to blow the memories away.’

  The morning’s brightness darkened for Nick. All her life, Suzie would carry the memory of those hours imprisoned underneath the loom. The captive of a madman obsessed with his apocalyptic vision of hastening the end of a sinful world. Armageddon.

  He had his own nightmare fears to contend with, but those dark hours he could not share with her.

  ‘Come on, then,’ he said, with enforced cheerfulness. ‘We have to make the top of Skygill in time to be down at the hospital for Uncle Martin.’

  ‘What about Harry Redfern?’ Suzie asked. ‘He was unconscious when they took him in. Do we know if he survived the night?’

  Nick was silent for the moment, aware of the others’ eyes on him. ‘I’ll ring the hospital. If he’s come round, maybe we can see him too.’

  He flinched from the pain in his bruised shoulder. In his imagination he saw the gouts of flame, the debris raining down on the crimsoned water. How easily any one of them might not have been taken out of the canal alive.

  The morning on Skygill Hill was everything Nick had hoped it would be. A soft blue October sky, with low sunshine that lit the flames in the autumn woods. The higher they climbed, the wider the towns and countryside of the north-west spread below them.

  The path Nick had chosen was steeper than he remembered. Or else, in his forties, he was not the agile boy he had been when his father brought him up here. His damaged shoulder ached.

  Millie, her bandaged hand in a sling, was lagging behind. Nick stopped and turned to enjoy the view, giving her time to catch her breath.

  ‘Having a cut hand shouldn’t make it harder to walk, but it does,’ she explained.

  ‘I guess the sling is throwing you off balance. You can’t swing your arms to help, the way you usually would.’

  Tom, predictably, was almost galloping up the hill ahead of them. To Nick’s joy, Suzie was purposefully following behind him. There seemed to be no lasting physical effects from her ordeal of yesterday.

  The wounds lay deeper. He had come so near to losing his wife and children. His own death was of little importance. The thing that mattered was that they were all here, where he had meant to bring them. He felt an enormous thankfulness as he drank in the keen air.

  ‘It’s a pity Thelma wouldn’t come with us. I did try to persuade her. But she said she had the weekend shopping to do. I told her we were definitely treating her to a meal out tonight, but she’s still set her heart on providing a slap-up Sunday lunch tomorrow, when Uncle Martin comes home.

  A celebration of their safe return. And Great-uncle Martin’s. The Fewings family reunited.

  Nick surveyed the town far below them, misted in the soft autumn light. The haze was no longer the pall of smoke that would once have lain over it, when a hundred boiler houses spewed their breath from tall chimneys.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about James Bootle, brewing his herbal remedies when nobody wanted the fine cloth from his hand loom. Do you wonder if he ever wished he could concoct a bomb to blow all those mills that were stealing his living to kingdom come? But he didn’t. Instead of that, he reinvented himself. Making stuff to heal people.’

  ‘You’re thinking about t
hat Dominic nut.’ Millie glanced at him sideways.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m with Harry Redfern. I think Dominic’s read the wrong bits of the Bible. The gospels are all about loving your neighbour, not blowing them up. Do you think he’s going to be OK? Mr Redfern, I mean?’

  ‘When I rang the hospital, they wouldn’t tell me much, because I’m not a relative. But they did say he’s on Arkwright Ward.’

  ‘So he’s still alive? Thank goodness for that.’

  ‘We’ll look in on him this afternoon, shall we?’ He cast an anxious glance at Millie, but there was none of the rebellion of yesterday. ‘Look, we don’t have to climb all the way to the top. It’s a grand enough view from here.’

  ‘Try and stop me.’

  She set off up the path in pursuit of Tom. Nick followed. They caught up with Suzie and Tom on the summit. Nick threw Suzie an admiring grin.

  ‘You fairly steamed up here. We couldn’t keep up with you.’

  She gave him a half smile, though her eyes were clouded.

  ‘Yes, well. I needed to work it out of my system. I was angry. This is the day he didn’t want us to see. Look at it! All this is what he was going to take away from us.’

  ‘He’s dead now, love,’ Nick told her quietly.

  ‘I’m angry that I let myself be frightened of him. When he came up behind me in the shopping precinct he said he’d hurt Millie if I didn’t come with him quietly, and I believed him. I didn’t understand how he knew so much about us. It didn’t occur to me about you dropping your business cards. It made it seem there was something . . . supernatural . . . about him. I went as quietly as a rabbit. I should have screamed and shouted for help.’

  ‘I felt the same. It was uncanny. When I knew he was following us, nowhere seemed safe. You thought I was behaving like a madman with the Redferns.’

  ‘He went looking for Dominic, didn’t he? Harry Redfern? He wasn’t just going to be a passive victim. He really wanted to change him.’

  ‘And nearly died for it.’

  ‘We’ll see him this afternoon. And meanwhile . . . we’ve got this.’

  She stood in silence, turning slowly to take in the ranks of the Pennines, the distant peaks of the Lake District, the glint of the sea in Morecambe Bay.

  Nick followed the circuit of her eyes. His home country, on his father’s side. Where generations of them had come to breathe the clean, keen air, far above the taint and smoke of the cotton mills.

  On the way down, he was trying to think of all the questions he wanted to ask Uncle Martin this afternoon. He ought to take a notepad, write the answers down. After lunch tomorrow they would have to set off for home. This would be his last chance to ask.

  Nick paused at the hospital entrance and glanced at Millie anxiously.

  ‘You’re all right? About doing this?’

  ‘Of course. I want to see if Mr Redfern’s come round. I like him. And there was no need for Mum to stand guard outside my bedroom door. I wasn’t going to run away again. Well, I didn’t know, did I? Nobody told me there was a madman trailing us.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry about that. We didn’t want to scare you. It didn’t occur to me that you needed to know.’

  They asked at the desk and found their way to Arkwright Ward. Nick felt a cloud of apprehension at the door. He still did not know how badly Harry Redfern was injured. He had taken a massive blow to the head from the falling masonry. He might still be unconscious. He might have taken a turn for the worse.

  Nick’s eyes raked down the ward. He was afraid of seeing closed curtains around the Baptist minister’s bed. He was just about to ask a nurse for directions when Suzie gave a low cry at his side.

  ‘There he is!’

  Harry Redfern was propped up on pillows. His plump face was dwarfed by the huge swathe of bandages round his head. Nick’s joy at seeing him awake was tempered by the fact that he was not alone. Bethan Redfern sat beside him. Of course, he should have realized Harry’s wife would be at his bedside.

  ‘We won’t stay long,’ he told the others. ‘Just say hello. I don’t know if they have a limit on the number of visitors. We don’t want to look like a congregation.’

  He led the way towards the bed. Harry Redfern looked up. Under the bandages, the brown eyes twinkled with warmth. But when Bethan Redfern turned her head, the expression on her hollow face was anything but pleased.

  ‘You again! What do you want here?’

  Harry laid his hand over hers. ‘I’m sorry, love. I’ll explain it all to you one day. When I’ve got less of a thumping headache. It’s a long story. But don’t be too hard on Nick. This is the man who saved my life.’

  ‘Dad!’ gasped Millie. ‘You didn’t tell us that!’

  ‘It was nothing much. I just wanted to get us all across that canal as fast as I could.’

  ‘And the police tell me that meant towing me, after I was knocked unconscious by a piece of the mill. Under the circumstances, you could have left me to drown.’

  Bethan Redfern blushed. She held out her hand. ‘I’m truly sorry, Mr Fewings. I had no idea. When you came storming after Harry that day . . . and after we’d been through all those threats from Dominic . . .’

  ‘Harry told me you’d had hate messages. It just never occurred to me that ours had come from Dominic too.’

  ‘He threatened the children. That’s what really scared me.’

  ‘Well, he’s out of it now, poor boy,’ Harry Redfern sighed. ‘God rest his soul. He’s got the short cut he wanted to Kingdom Come, but only for himself, thank God.’

  ‘You really think that?’ Tom asked incredulously. ‘That he’s on his way to heaven, after all he did to us? And not just us. He’d have made half London radioactive if he’d carried through his plans for the bomb.’

  ‘Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. Who am I to act as judge?’

  ‘That’s what he did,’ Millie said. ‘Judged everybody else.’

  There was a silence. Then Suzie said, ‘Look, we don’t want to take up your visiting time with your wife. We just came to see you were OK. I’m glad it wasn’t worse.’

  ‘So am I.’ Harry smiled. Then, more soberly, ‘You had the worst of it, I think. Tied up under that loom, with a bomb maker in the next room.’

  ‘Never mind that. Actually, you’re not the only reason we’ve come. We’re on our way to see Nick’s great-uncle. He’s in the next ward.’

  ‘Old Martin? Give him my love. I’ll be round to see him when they let me up.’ Harry looked up at Nick. ‘I haven’t thanked you properly, have I?’

  ‘There’s no need,’ Nick said awkwardly. ‘I’m only thankful you’re alive. When they pulled you out of the canal, I couldn’t tell.’

  ‘We were all lucky – except Dominic. Though we could have an interesting theological argument about what “luck” actually means.’

  ‘Harry!’ admonished his wife.

  He winced as he turned to smile at her. ‘Sorry, love. Maybe not this afternoon.’

  Nick felt tense with anticipation as he led the way along the corridor. It was only a short step from Arkwright Ward to Haworth.

  He felt self-conscious about the clipboard and notepaper in his hand. Would it have been better to bring a small portable recorder? He was new to this business of recording family history. He was afraid to trust his memory, or even the combined memories of the four of them.

  They reached the door into the ward. Nick’s eyes were going ahead, seeking the bed towards the far end with the frail old man. Would he be sitting up in the chair again, in his blue dressing gown?

  His view was blocked by a woman hurrying towards them. She was holding a tissue to her face. He almost collided with her as she reached the door. Shorter than he was. Grey, permed hair. A flowery scent of face powder.

  Suzie recognized her a split second before Nick’s preoccupied mind.

  ‘Thelma!’

  Nick’s eyes flew back from the line of beds to the woman
directly in front of him. With slowly registering shock, he took in his cousin’s face. The eyes behind her pink-framed glasses were red.

  A cold fear was knotting his stomach.

  ‘Thelma? What’s wrong?’ Though he knew.

  ‘They rang me. He’s . . .’ She gestured helplessly at the ward behind her. ‘He had another stroke.’

  The line of beds swam into focus now. The curtains around the one where Great-uncle Martin should have lain. He felt a bitter grief.

  Into his mind came the elderly man with his shrunken face distorted by the stroke. But, too, the sparkle in his blue eyes. The sense of the tall, upstanding man he must have been in his army uniform. The overlooker patrolling the mill with a keen eye for quality cloth. The boy spinning down the dales on his bicycle with the youth club.

  A handful of precious memories.

  ‘Is he dead?’ Millie’s wondering voice came to him from a great distance.

  ‘Are these friends of yours, love?’

  For the first time Nick became aware of the nurse following Thelma.

  ‘My cousin and his family.’ Thelma’s voice was surprisingly strong and steady. ‘They’re staying with me.’

  ‘That’s a good thing.’ The nurse turned to Suzie. ‘There’s a waiting room over there where you can get a cup of tea. Can I leave her with you? Come back when you’re ready and Sister will tell you about the arrangements. I’m sorry, but you know . . . the paperwork.’

  ‘We’ll handle it,’ Suzie said. ‘Come on, Thelma. You could do with a sit down.’

  ‘I always knew, of course.’ Thelma dabbed her eyes with a tissue. ‘After the first stroke. At his age. It’s not as if I wasn’t prepared for it.’

  ‘We’re none of us really prepared until it happens. It takes a while for the reality to sink in.’

  Nick’s voice detained the nurse who was hurrying away. ‘I wonder . . . Would it be all right if I had last look at him?’

  She looked momentarily uncertain. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Do you want me to come with you?’