Outside the gulls battle on, the fish slowly disembowelled between their talons, and Morag says nothing more. This silence should please me, as all silences usually do. Silence either means that I am alone, or that I have succeeded in striking dumb whichever poor soul has taken the ill-advised decision to engage me in conversation.
But it does not please me. I find it suffocating, as if each second of it drains the air of oxygen.
When I can stand it no more, I rush to fill it.
‘What about you, then? What’s your story?’
‘My childhood wasn’t much fun either. I won’t go into details…’
‘Good.’
I adopt the aloof tone of somebody trapped in unwanted small talk, but inside, Christ, the relief at hearing her voice. It’s like morphine.
‘…I suppose sometimes people just aren’t very kind. I left home and drifted, met with people I shouldn’t have met and did things I shouldn’t have done. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Nope.’
What is this? It’s certainly not attraction, or anything as explainable as base lust (her creamy pallor, sloth-like gaze and gossamer voice would no-doubt appeal to all manner of navel-gazing twenty-something bedwetters, but really, no, not my type at all). Nevertheless, I’m craving her attention like a lovesick puppy.
She takes a deep breath.
‘Anyway, I wasn’t happy, that’s for sure, but it wasn’t my circumstances that were to blame. I wasn’t happy because I’d always known that I was different. I didn’t know how or why; I just knew that, somehow, I knew things that others didn’t.’
No, not craving her attention. Just desperate not to lose it, like a child afraid to be ignored in case he disappears altogether.
‘Like what?’
‘I didn’t know at the time.’ She smiles. ‘Then I bumped into Heathcliff.’
I grunt and glance over my shoulder at the pale apparition still asleep in the back, his cheeks stretched by the gaping maw through which he snores.
‘And how did you two lovebirds meet?’
She frowns, a scolding look.
‘You know very well it’s not like that.’
‘Hmm, you have this connection, right?’
She brightens, her smile quivering.
‘That’s right, we do. I’d been moving about for so long, squat to squat, city to city, shelter to shelter. It felt like I had to keep moving, just keep going until I found whatever it was I was looking for. And then, one night, I found him. I turned a corner and we literally bumped into each other.’
‘How utterly terrifying.’
‘No, it was wonderful. From that moment, I knew, I…’
‘What?’
She fixes my gaze, her eyes wide.
‘I remembered. There’s always a moment, you see? A…’
‘Trigger. So you keep saying.’
‘That’s right, just like your photograph. You know, he showed me a picture too. It was almost eighty years old, of three boys in the sea.’
‘Why?’
‘He knew I would recognise it.’
‘And I suppose you think one of them was you.’
‘No, I think I was the one taking it. I know it, in fact.’
‘Can’t you hear how ridiculous that sounds?’
She frowns.
‘You can see inside people’s heads, Elliot. Isn’t that just as ridiculous?’
I look away. Funny, isn’t it? This thing, life, existence — all of it feels perfectly normal, even when, clearly, none of it is.
‘Anyway,’ she sighs, ‘it’s the truth. I know it just as surely as I know that Heathcliff needs my help, and that we’re connected, me and him, like Zoe and I. And you, Elliot.’ She leans close and places a hand on my arm. ‘You and I are connected too. Can’t you feel it? Surely you can. You must believe…’
I pull my arm away.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t believe it.’
Her face falls, and slowly she shrinks back into her seat.
‘So, what do you believe, Elliot?’
‘Nothing.’
My gaze travels the water to the grey horizon. Outside the gulls have vanished and the entrails of the murdered fish are churning somewhere in the tide.
I turn at the sound of a shuddering breath and see Morag glaring back, angry and wounded. Her voice is a broken whisper.
‘Elliot. What happened to you?’
A single tear spills down her cheek. It chills me to the bone.
‘Who the hell are you?’
I jump at the sudden rap at the window next to me. Zoe’s there. I wind it down and she pokes her head in.
‘The school’s closed for the holidays, but the caretaker’s there. He’s going to open the gates for us.’
‘Why?’
She shrugs.
‘I told him we were from the council.’
Marshfields-Upon-Sea primary school: a Victorian building behind a tall wall of railings, instantly recognisable from the photograph, perhaps with a few new windows and a touch-up job on the brickwork. Zoe and I are standing in the playground, having left Morag in the van with Heathcliff.
‘Here.’
She hands me a clipboard she grabbed from the van (yet more cunning disguise) into which she has fastened the photograph from the Cherry Tree.
I hold it up, mentally imposing the scene onto reality and trying to put myself, the boy from a century ago, in the correct position. I get flashes — the photographer prowling up and down, the heat, the teacher fanning herself, the May Fair throngs in front.
I find the spot where the boy was standing and stare at a point in space a few feet from the ground, imagining his hand pointing. I follow an imaginary line and hit a small building standing against the railings. It is a shed of some kind with a green door, flaking paintwork and a cracked window.
‘There,’ I say. ‘That…’
‘What’s this all about, anyway’ says a voice to our left. It’s the caretaker, a tufty-haired man in a blue-braced boiler suit leaning on a brush, and the first person I’ve made contact with since the café. I bury myself in my baseball cap and glasses, but I’ve caught his eye so I get a brief flash of him. He is nothing to write home about, apart from a vague nagging that suggests ancient, unrequited love.
‘We’re sorry to bother you, Mr Edmonds,’ says Zoe.
He shrugs, takes his brush and begins to sweep at a spot near the gate.
‘Not bothering me. I’m just cleaning up some bird shit.’
‘We’re doing safety inspections,’ says Zoe. ‘External and disused structures. Nothing to worry about. What’s that building over there?’
She points at the outhouse.
‘That old thing? That’s just a store shed. Hardly use it anymore.’
‘Can we take a look please? We like to do these inspections when the school’s empty. Less disruptive, you see.’
He frowns between Zoe, me and the patch of white gull shit on the ground.
‘It’ll only take a second, Mr Edmonds, I promise.’
He shrugs.
‘All right,’ he says. ‘Wait here.’
With that he rests his brush against the railings and trudges off round the back of the school.
‘Safety inspections?’ I say.
‘Trust me, I’ve blagged my way past security gates before. Generally all you have to do is be nice and ask.’
A few moments later he returns with a set of keys jangling on a large hoop. He files through them, muttering, and leads us across the playground.
‘Don’t you lot normally wear suits?’ he says.
‘We’re a progressive department,’ replies Zoe.
He raises his eyebrows at this, and shakes his head.
‘Right.’
As we near the store shed, I expect to feel something — some kind of spark or giddiness perhaps. But nothing happens. The rush I first felt at seeing the photograph is waning, as if the distance from the epicentre of that moment was making it s
tretch and lose its substance like putty. With every step it becomes harder to ignore the fact that I am in a shitty town wearing shitty clothes and walking towards a shitty shed.
Mr Edmonds opens the door to the shitty shed and we step inside.
‘Nothing much here,’ he says. ‘Few old tools. Can’t see that there’s much to worry about. It’s all perfectly safe.’
The room is about the size of a potting shed. The stone walls are a faded, muddy whitewash. A metal bucket stands in one corner with a broken mop sticking out of it — the old-fashioned kind, with a head that looks like an English sheepdog’s face. Along the walls are gardening tools that look like they haven’t been used in some time. Cobwebs bridge the forks of a rake, long-dried mud cakes a blunt shovel, and a collection of wood-handled, rusted trowels leans in a neat huddle against the corner. Taking up one short wall are two shelves scattered with plant pots, bottles and cardboard boxes. It is all lit by one small mesh window.
I stand in the middle of the room, trying to feel something. Trying to remember something, I realise.
Zoe looks at me expectantly. I close my eyes and — I am ashamed to admit — turn my palms outwards, as if I am attempting an act of clairvoyance.
Nothing happens; I feel nothing, remember nothing.
‘Everything all right?’ says Mr Edmonds.
I shed my ridiculous pose.
‘Yes, quite all right,’ says Zoe. ‘What’s in these boxes here?’
Mr Edmonds puffs.
‘I dunno. Like I said, I haven’t been in here for a long time.’
He reaches up and begins taking down the cardboard boxes one by one, throwing them at me. I catch them in a rapidly precarious pile.
‘Lightbulbs, fuses, candles, paintbrushes…’
He turns and faces us with his hands on his hips.
‘Now then, if you’re done with your little…inspection…then I’d like to get back to my work.’
‘Of course,’ says Zoe. ‘Thank you.’
‘And you can get back to your…council, can’t you?’
He brushes past and holds the door open for us, watching us coldly as we leave.
‘Has that always been a store shed?’ asks Zoe, as Mr Edmonds locks the school gates behind us.
‘Far as I know,’ he says. He spins the key loop on one finger and then clips it to his belt, like a pistol in a holster. ‘Long as it’s been there. Fifty years or so.’
‘Did you say fifty years?’ I say.
‘Yiss. Fifty years is what I said. They extended the school in the sixties to put in the mobile rooms round the back. Moved the railings about thirty feet and built the store shed in the extra space.’
‘So that building wasn’t there before the sixties?’
‘Nope.’
Mr Edmonds picks up his brush and goes back to work on the guano stain.
‘What was?’
He stops and points past the store shed and through the railings at the street that ran along the shore.
‘Nothing. Just a grass bank leading down to the pavement. Those shops weren’t there back then, course. It was just a small road and then steps down to the harbour beach.’
He gives the ground one last brisk scrub and stops.
‘Thank you for your time, Mr Edmonds,’ says Zoe. He grunts and leans on his brush. I can feel him watching us as we walk away.
THE BENCH
A COLD WIND BLOWS up from the seafront as I follow Zoe down the hill from the school. She marches ahead of me, hands thrust into her pockets, head down.
‘That’s it?’ I say, striding behind. ‘Is that what you expected? That?’
‘I don’t know what I expected.’
‘Well presumably more than a tour of a fucking shed!’
She spins around as we reach the corner of the main street.
‘You really felt nothing? There’s nothing more you remember?’
I search for the words.
‘It was a fucking shed!’ I yell, hands above my head. There are more people on the street now. Shop fronts are opening; a few cars drift by. Zoe looks around, her arms crossed against the biting wind and the feeling that we are being watched.
A wheezing sound approaches us from behind and Heathcliff lumbers past with Morag in pursuit. He’s already halfway across the road by the time Morag reaches us.
‘Heathcliff, come back!’
‘Where’s he going?’ says Zoe as she dashes past.
‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ I say.
‘Maybe there was something in there you didn’t see, a hint or, I don’t know a…clue, or…’
‘A what?’
‘I meant…’
‘Did you say a clue? What are you, Agatha-shitting-Christie now?’
‘You know what I mean. Something that would show you what you were pointing at.’
‘What I was pointing at? I wasn’t pointing at anything. I weren’t even born when that picture was taken. This is —’
I shut my eyes, hands on hips, breathe a sigh.
‘I’m done.’
I turn the corner and stop by an old bench, trying to get my bearings. Zoe follows me.
‘But you remember it.’
‘It doesn’t matter, it’s over,’ I say, looking left up the street. Two uniformed officers are leaving a café, holding coffee and making for their car.
‘I’ve played along, come along on your little treasure hunt, and it’s bullshit. Whatever this is, I’m dealing with it my own way.’
‘How?’
The officers are in their car now, pulling away.
‘By going home, popping some pills and sleeping it all off, just like I should have done in the first place. I should have known never to trust a junkie.’
I point to her arms, pacing in front of her.
‘Christ, I bet you just got into all this when you were on the smack, eh?’
‘You don’t know anything about me. ‘
The police car drives towards us. They’re not far away now, but as I prepare to flag them down, something makes me glance at the ragged stretch of beach behind me.
‘Too fucking right I don’t, love, and I tell you what…’
My eye catches sight of the coastline.
‘Elliot?’
My heart trips. The view is nothing special — just a broad curve of sand and a rocky promontory beyond — but I know what it is. My legs fail and I fall to the bench to stare at the grey morning tide as the police car rolls past.
May 8th, 1945. It’s a warm day with thundery intent and black clouds that seem strange against the sea of grinning faces filling the streets of Marshfields. Victory in Europe. The war is over. Children stream everywhere, flags flying, dogs barking, women leaning from the windows of the harbour-side houses. There is a brass band playing. And I’m smiling too. I am sitting on my bench with my stick, though I’m not yet fifty, smiling as I am supposed to smile.
A little girl runs up and skids to a halt by the bench. She hands me a flag and runs off again with the crowd. I hold it in my trembling hand, watching it flutter in the warm breeze. The colours are bright and clear, as everyone believes their future now to be, but my eyes drift to the dark clouds out at sea, like rumbling memories afraid to leave their horizon.
I have been back less than six months. The sound is still screaming in my ears, louder than any brass band, and the hue of that blood brighter than any flag. The terror in that young man’s face, more vivid than any little girl’s smile. I let the flag fall…
I don’t know how long we sit there. Eventually we’re disturbed by the sound of Morag’s voice, scolding Heathcliff as he follows behind her, grumbling.
‘You could have been hurt, you silly old man,’ says Morag as they reach our side of the road. ‘What’s gotten into you?’
She stops in front of me, catching her breath.
‘What’s gotten into you, more like?’
She gives Zoe a hopeful look, then peers at the rusted plaque screwed to th
e bench and reads from it.
‘In memory of a dear father and husband…’
‘Stanley Mordant,’ I say. ‘His name was Stanley Mordant.’
PART THREE
HELP
Cornwall, 1940
OVER THE NEXT FEW days, the four children steadily brought Schmidt food and water whenever they had the opportunity. They took it in turns to run packages down in secret — James and Billy one time, then Rupert and Lucy another. The two that stayed at the farm kept watch for the adults, with a suitable excuse in case they were quizzed on the other ones’ whereabouts. They were never gone long — just enough time to drop whatever they had, collect any empty cups or pots, stand and watch for a minute or so, and run back.
‘What’s gotten into you four?’ said Mrs Sutton one morning, head askew as they busied themselves with the breakfast plates. ‘That’s the third time this week and I’ve never had to ask.’
Lucy carried a bowl and spoon to the sink, pausing to rest her cheek on her mother’s hand.
‘I’m helping you in the house, Mummy.’ She scowled at Rupert. ‘Like women do.’
She took the bowl to the corner, where Poppy sat waiting for leftovers. The dog whined as it watched Lucy crouch and scrape dollops of dry porridge into her pocket instead of the dog bowls.
‘Sorry, Poppy,’ she whispered. ‘None for you today.’
At dinner, they stifled laughs as Mrs Sutton banged cupboards and drawers, trying in vain to find whatever pot had been lost and swearing that she was going mad.
They took what they could, when they could. Although it was still cold, the weather was clear with no wind or rain. Schmidt stayed in his blankets, with the parachute still tight across his legs and torso.
One morning before school, James and Billy ran down with some crusts, with Poppy following. They stopped at the riverbank and looked up to see a thin plume of smoke rising from the trees. When they arrived at the tree, they saw that Schmidt had made a tiny, crackling fire of twigs and bark pulled from around the clearing. He was lying on his side, warming his hands and staring into the meagre flame.
The Other Lives Page 15