Touching the Dark

by Jane A. Adams

  “And you? Did she feel she had to make it up to you?”

  Tally looked surprised. “I hardly noticed the difference,” she said. “Dad left when I was ten and didn’t even apply for access. Next time I saw him was at the funeral.”

  *

  It would be Rose Palmer’s Birthday the following week. Tally had bought her a Celtic knot work brooch, heavy silver, set at the centre with a cabochon of Lapis Lazuli. She had showed it to Simon before wrapping it carefully in a piece of handmade Japanese paper, folding it in a way he couldn’t quite fathom so that the package held together without need for tape or string.

  Her mother lived at the end of a terrace of four red brick houses in a quiet street on the outskirts of town. Tubs of winter pansies stood outside the blue front door, beside a welcome mat that spelled out the greeting in a dozen different languages.

  Inside was as cluttered as Tally’s place was sparse. Sport’s equipment – Carl’s presumably – dumped just inside the door. Brightly coloured rugs scattered at all angles across a dark grey carpet. Busy wallpaper and paint effects upon the walls and every available surface crammed with books and knick knacks and family photographs. There were pictures of Tally and of a teenager that must, thought Simon, be her brother Carl. Others too, group snapshots of Tally with other children, one with a sandy haired boy who looked a lot like her.

  Tally’s mother was dressed in a long blue skirt and a neat white blouse. She was past fifty, Simon knew, but still wore her hair long. It was silver grey, undyed and braided simply, tied off with a blue band and decorated with a copper slide at the crown. She wore no makeup, beyond a trace of lipstick and her skin was pale but as clear as Tally’s own.

  Looking at them both, Tally in tailored trousers and a blue silk shirt, a fitted jacket thrown casually around her shoulders and her hair tightly cropped, Simon could not have imagined two more radically different women.

  Only the pale skin and the eyes showed the family resemblance, he thought. Tally’s ice blue eyes were like her mothers, though the older woman’s seemed to have faded a little with time and the laughter lines at their corners gave them a softness that Tally’s never had.

  The two women hugged and Simon was introduced and scrutinised, but it was clear that their visit would not be a long one. For all her effusive greeting and the announcement that she “must make them some tea”, Tally’s mother kept them hovering in the small living room, standing awkwardly as though ready to make a bolt for the door while she fussed over Tally’s gift – and then shoved it into a drawer – and answered Simon’s polite questions about her health and the talents of her son.

  “We have to be going now, mum,” Tally said. “I’ve got to work later on and Simon has a story to call in.”

  Simon blinked at the blatant lie, but left it unchallenged, as glad to make his escape as Tally.

  “Oh must you?” her mother asked and Simon felt that he had slipped unnoticed into a well-rehearsed play. “Oh well, if you must my darlings.” She waved a hand vaguely towards the door, then hurried over and held it open for them. “Do phone me sometime, Tally dear and it’s been so nice meeting you, er...”

  “Simon,” he reminded her.

  “Yes,” of course. She beamed at him as though congratulating him for remembering and leaned forward to kiss Tally on the cheek. Just for a moment, Simon saw something pass between the two women as Tally’s mother lifted a hand and rested it upon her daughter’s cheek, saw Tally smile and her eyes grow warm. It was as though there were genuine feelings to be had between these two, but feelings that had been put on hold sometime and left there for so long that the line of communication had died for lack of use. It saddened him.

  The door had closed before they had even reached the car and Tally collapsed into her seat with a sigh of relief. She looked drained and Simon felt bewildered. He glanced at his watch. It felt as though they had spent hours at the little red house, so tired and confused did he feel, but glancing at the time he was amazed to see that less than fifteen minutes had gone by since they first knocked on Rose Palmer’s blue front door.

  *

  Alec was thoughtful listening to Simon’s account. It didn’t agree with the woman he had met, a woman who’d been open and friendly despite the difficulty innate in such a meeting. He said as much to Simon who agreed immediately.

  “Sure,” Simon said. “That wasn’t Rose, not that first time I met her. That’s Rose with Tally around. That time, after I came back from meeting Nat in London and I was so mad with Tally for...having Jack there, I suppose. I went to see her and it was like I was meeting another woman. Tally and Rose...they have a bond that I don’t begin to understand but they have something else. It’s as though they’re afraid of one another in some way. As though they’re both afraid of what the other knows. That was the first time I knew anything about Zechariah. She’d never told me. Never even mentioned him.

  *

  Returning from that first meeting with Nat Sullivan, impulse had taken Simon away from his route home and he went to see Tally’s mother. He had thought that she might not be there, maybe at work, maybe shopping, realizing that a major part of him did not want to ask the questions in his mind.

  She was surprised to see him, surprised and a little confused. Simon reminded her of their meeting and suggested that Tally might have left her scarf there when they had called.

  “I’ve not seen it,” Rose told him, “but come along in and have a look around.”

  To his surprise she made him welcome, had him sit down in the tiny living room and made tea. Set it on a tray with ginger biscuits and the little chocolate rolls Simon hadn’t eaten since childhood. It seemed that when her daughter was absent, Rose could relax and allow herself to enjoy company. It was, Simon thought guiltily, not a difficult attitude to understand if you knew Tally.

  They did not even make pretence of looking for the scarf.

  “What do you see yourself doing in the future?” Rose wanted to know. “Do you think you’ll keep with the provincial papers or try for the nationals?”

  Simon was astonished. Last time he had met Rose she seemed barely to have noticed him, yet clearly she remembered more than he thought.

  “National paper, definitely,” he said. “And maybe sideline into television if I can find the opening.”

  “Ah, television,” Rose laughed. “Carl has one in his room but frankly I don’t have time to watch. I’m out almost every evening and I work four days a week. When I have the time I’d rather read a good book.”

  Simon grinned at her, suddenly intrigued. Tally had given him the impression of a rather defeated woman with little interest in life. Rose was telling him a different tale. “What do you do?” he asked. “In the evenings, I mean?”

  She smiled back and then crossed over to the sideboard where Tally’s brooch had been stowed away. She came back with a bundle of papers. Play bills from the local YMCA theatre and the church hall.

  “I’m an Am-Dram Queen,” she announced laughing at herself. “I act, I make costumes and I help out with the tea.” She waved a careless hand in Simon’s direction. “Oh dear, I’ve no illusions about my lack of talent but we have a damn good time. I’ve been kitchen maids and an undertaker’s assistant and even a corpse. Then there’s my painting classes and I’m learning to speak Spanish. When Carl goes off to University next year I’m giving myself a Spanish holiday.”

  “Good luck to you!” Simon applauded. “Where in Spain?”

  “Oh, Seville, Toledo. A grand tour I think. I might even take up flamenco.”

  She struck a pose still sitting in her arm chair and Simon felt himself warming to this woman who was so unlike her daughter. As if Rose could feel his thoughts she asked, “how’s Tally? Is everything going well between you two?”

  He hesitated a little taken aback that she’d brought the subject up first. “I’m not sure,” he admitted finally. “Sometimes I feel we’re really close and others...”

  Rose nodded
thoughtfully. “It’s always been like that with Tally. Blows hot and cold. You want her enough, Simon, you’ve just got to learn to hang in there.”

  “Yeah. It’s just knowing if she wants me enough to let me.”

  “Oh?”

  Simon shrugged, “Rose, do you know of anyone called Jack. A close friend of hers, only...” He broke off. Rose had stiffened and the openness of her expression become guarded and enclosed.

  “Jack,” she said. “You don’t know about Jack.”

  “I know about Jack, I mean I know he’s a friend, but, Rose, if he’s more than that then why doesn’t she tell me?”

  Rose shook her head sadly. “I thought that was all over,” she said and Simon felt his heart sink.

  “She’s always found it so hard to let him go. But Simon, how can you have problems with memories. You’ve no rival in a dead boy.”

  “Dead? But...”

  “Jack was a nickname,” Rose went on. She spoke swiftly as if to get things over with. “She couldn’t say Zack, short for Zechariah, that it, not when she was a little thing so she took to saying Jack. And it stuck.”

  She got up and fetched a photograph from the sideboard. The sandy haired child that Simon had guessed was Jack.

  “This is him,” she said. “Tally’s brother Zechariah.”

  “Tally’s brother! But I thought....Carl...”

  “No,” Rose insisted. “You’re not hearing me. Zack was Tally’s older brother. There was only just over a year between them. She looked away as though suddenly upset. “He died the year before Carl was born.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Nat Sullivan had come to Ingham on the Saturday at Simon’s invitation. He and Simon drove with Naomi to the spot where Adam, Tally’s first serious boyfriend, had been killed in the car accident. Quite why they had come out here none of them could rationalise. It was as if they needed to get in touch with the incidents in Tally’s life that had so much impact and coming here was a way of doing that. Thanks to Alec they now had the accident report and the transcript of the inquest though it told the little more than they already knew.

  The site of the accident was out towards Stamford about a quarter mile past a place called White Gate Farm. One of the boys had struggled back there to raise the alarm the night it happened. It had, said the accident report, been raining and the evening gloom must have been heightened by misty drizzle along the unlit road.

  “It was about here,” Simon told Pat and Naomi. “The other side of that bend.” They had pulled their car onto the verge beside the high plashed hedge. A line of trees on the far side of the road, behind a hedge and deep ditch marked the line of the next bend. It was drizzling with rain, cold and miserable. They left Napoleon in the car keeping warm and Simon took Naomi’s arm. The road felt slippery, greasy underfoot, and she knew from her memory of driving that road that it was a deceptive one. It would run straight for miles and then just when you’d settled into lethargy, throw a fierce right hand bend in your path and follow through with a left.

  They walked to where the accident had taken place, Simon remarking on the points mentioned in the accident report. “Opposite the farm gate,” he said. “The car swerved across the road and rolled. It landed partly on its roof, sliding down into the ditch. They think it hit that line of trees, he gestured with his free hand and Naomi instinctively turned to look as his body moved.

  “Then it was bounced back onto the verge. One kid got out and managed to get back to the farm before he collapsed. By that time other drivers had stopped and tried to help.” He shrugged. “Seems funny to think that no one had a mobile phone, but this was what, fourteen years ago?

  “Two died outright, one was in hospital in a coma for months. The other kid got off with a broken arm and concussion.”

  “Luck of the draw,” Pat murmured. He glanced around him taking in the sharp bend and the farm gate, the thicket of trees. “What about this person who was supposed to have run across the road?”

  Simon shook his head. “Never traced and it wasn’t mentioned at the time, it only came out later. The boy who got out, Phil Bryce, was sitting in the back and says he didn’t see a thing. The one in the coma, Graham Connors, he swore that he saw someone run across the road from the trees and disappear over the farm gate. He said that the driver, Adam, he swerved to avoid him. Blond haired, Graham said. Tall, but that was all he could remember and his doctors stated at the inquest that it could have been a false memory following the coma. Phil Bryce remembered Graham shouting at Adam to look out but he said he thought that was after they began to swerve and that it must have been when Graham realized they were going to hit the trees.”

  Pat nodded. “Satisfied?” he asked. It was getting colder and the iron grey clouds threatened heavy rain.

  “Yeah, I guess so. Thanks for indulging me.”

  “Any time. Hey, I know what it’s like when an obsession comes and bites you on the bum.” He grinned, “and I think Ms Palmer’s bitten you bloody hard.”

  “Yeah I guess she has.” He paused for a moment and then asked. “Pat, what happened at Mamolo?”

  “Mamolo? You’ve read about it, you tell me?”

  Simon shook his head. “Pat, that’s the only thing you never talk about. Every time I ask you slide off in another direction.”

  Pat looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know,” he said, “and that’s the truth of it Simon. Something I can’t explain, and neither could Jon O’Dowd.”

  *

  Back in the car, Napoleon greeted them as though they’d been missing for centuries instead of ten minutes. Naomi sat in the front for the drive back, Nat taking the rear with the dog, chatting to the animal as though they were old friends.

  “What now?” Naomi asked.

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe, if the two of you agreed, we could go and talk to Rose again. The accident report is formal and gives the bare facts. I wonder if Rose was told anything at the time that might add to that. And I want to know what effect it had on Tally.”

  In the back of the car Nat guffawed. “First rule of journalists,” he said. “Don’t ask the ‘how do you feel question’. So Mr Smith, your legs just been blown up and your wife’s left you. How do you feel?”

  Naomi laughed with him. “If that’s a rule,” she commented. “It must be the one most broken.”

  “I still think we should go.”

  “I’ve no objections,” Nat provided.

  “Ok, then Rose it is.”

  They talked about the party. It was painful for Simon to be reminded of that night and seeing Tally, but Pat had been ringing round to people he knew were there, trying to get details about Tally’s companion. So far he’d drawn a blank.

  “Jack or Jason something, most of them didn’t take any notice. He was an outside you see. No advantage knowing him. These parties are a chance to network for most of them. Me, I don’t give a fuck, but when you’re starting in the business building contacts tends to be paramount.”

  “Alec talked about getting interviews done and a photo fit,” Naomi commented.

  “Yes, that’s right. I’ve agreed to stay on ’til Monday, give them what I can.”

  “It’s good of you to take the time.”

  “Truth is I’m curious,” he said. “You know though, the one thing was said to me a few times is that they’ve seen Tally with this man at parties, but never at official events. Ninety nine times out of a hundred her agent goes as official escort and when friends invite her to dinner she generally goes alone.”

  “That’s a little odd,” Naomi agreed.

  “Less odd than you may think,” Simon commented. “I don’t know if you’d agree, Nat, but my feeling was always that Tally pigeonholed her life and I think she did the same with the people in it.”

  “Is that sour grapes talking?” Nat questioned.

  “No, at least I don’t think so.”

  “Happens in the police force,” Naomi commented. You have work colleagues and they�
��re often drinking buddies as well but most officers keep their private lives pretty private. The stresses of the job mean you need somewhere to escape to so, there’s a certain amount of what you’d call pigeonholing. I can’t think of more than two or three colleagues Alec and I would meet socially on more than a drink after work basis.”

  Simon was silent as he thought about it. “Maybe,” he admitted finally. They had reached the edge of town. Simon pulled up outside of Rose’s door.

  *

  Rose Palmer was surprised to have visitors but made them welcome. Simon introduced Nat as a colleague of Jon O’Dowds and Rose surprised him by saying she already knew. “I saw you at the funeral,” she said. “I went with Tally. I liked Jon and wanted to pay respects. You spoke about him. About the risks you’d all run. I think it was the first time I realized just what dangerous ground Tally had been walking upon.”

  Rose listened as they talked about the accident scene and why they had come to see her.

  “Was anything more said?” Simon asked her. “Anything that wasn’t in the accident report?”

  Rose did not reply at once. Instead she leaned across from her chair and took Naomi’s hands. “He frightened you very badly, didn’t he? I’m sorry for that. I’d regret that any friend of Tally’s would choose to do harm and I’m certain she would never condone such a thing. That Inspector Friedman said he thought Jack was worried about Tally’s mental health, well, I think though Tally may not be entirely stable or even completely sane, should you wish to use such labels, she has found a way of coping with the world which seems to work and I don’t believe does anyone any harm.

  “This Jack though. He sounds obsessed. Simon, what do you make of all this.”

  “I wish I knew,” he told her, “but you see, Rose, I’ve never actually been introduces to Jack.”

  “Never? But you and Tally....Well, that is strange.”

  She fell silent, considering and then she said. “My daughter has always been the secretive kind, I suppose. Always live so much in her own head. Preferred it there I think and looking at the state of the world; the state of Tally’s world sometimes, I can’t say I blame her. I’ve never met Jack Chalmers either, as it happens.