Stepping back from the wall, Aldous’s eyes fell on the one headstone he could never ignore. He knew the inscription and dates by heart, even though Alexandra Underwood had lived her entire life in his absence. But this time he found the epitaph changed. It was the other one. The unripe apple slipped from his hand as he read the familiar words and dates.
ALDOUS UNDERWOOD
BELOVED SON AND BROTHER
1934 – 45
It had happened again. When, he had no idea. Not that it mattered. Not really.
Friday: 4
Naia hoped she wouldn’t meet anyone she’d have to talk to: morning breath, no mints in her pocket. But she needn’t have worried. She seemed to be alone in the world: a blessing of the hour. She didn’t even see the old man, even in the distance, which she found a little unsettling given her plan to inspect his habitat. He might be somewhere nearby and return while she was poking about in there, have a fit and fly at her furiously. She wasn’t to know that Aldous had passed Withern’s main gate as she left by it, and they hadn’t been even slightly aware of one another because, half a dozen paces back, he had walked out of her reality while contemplating last night’s dream.
Crossing the long bridge, from water to water, she started along the opposite bank. The water was distinctly lower here, but the unofficial footpath was still covered. Reaching the thicket she hesitated, as at a door.
‘Hello?’
No reply. Not that that signified much. But she decided to chance it.
She had to bend to enter, and then pass through a complex of branches, twigs and barbs that seemed intent on snagging or wounding her, every cautious step of the way. As she stooped and dodged her way through, jabbed at from all sides, water slurping around her ankles, she became aware of rising birdsong. She paused, in a crouch, listening, and the song increased until it sounded as if there were dozens of birds in there with her; yet she couldn’t see one, hear the flutter of a single wing. She pulled herself closer to upright, stepped forward, and she was through to the little clearing in which Aldous had made his home.
The birds stopped singing, as if switched off.
Friday: 5
Aldous called them ‘other lives’. There were three in all, besides his own. It was never his intention to enter them, it just happened, usually when he was distracted, or day-dreaming, or feeling a bit weary. One evening he returned to the thicket as usual and found all trace of himself gone, even the hammock. His first thought was that he’d had a visitor who’d pitched his things out, but then he realized that at some point in the past few minutes he’d crossed into one of the other lives. There was no telling when it would happen. There was never any warning. Take the other day. First day after the rain stopped. Sunday? Monday? He wasn’t sure; the days were all much the same to him, each a joy in its own way now that he knew who he was. He’d been wading around the village and was passing the church when he felt the tiny jolt in the pit of his stomach that told him he’d crossed over. There was so little difference in his surroundings that he simply continued the way he’d been going, knowing that in minutes, or an hour – there was never any telling or predicting – he would be back where he belonged. That day, Sunday or Monday, he had just passed the old folks’ flats with the silly little balconies when he saw some boys larking about in the kiddies’ play area near the long bridge. As he drew near he thought he recognized one of them, though he couldn’t say where from, and he’d walked on by, just started up the bridge, when it happened again. He lifted his foot, and when it came down he was on the same bridge in his own life, and the boys were gone.
There was never much chance of mixing the lives up, though sometimes he was fooled for a minute, like the day Mr. Knight told him about Eric Hobb grown old. A red door on a house in one life might be blue in the others. Workmen might be fitting new windows in a bungalow in three lives but not the fourth. And people. Sometimes he knew them but they didn’t recognize him because he’d met another version of them previously, elsewhere. He didn’t often speak to anyone unless they spoke to him first, especially grown-ups. It was such a strain talking to mature people. He hadn’t the foggiest what they were talking about half the time. More than half.
The only people he really chatted to were the Mr. Knights. In two of the lives there were no Mr. Knights at all, unless he’d missed them, but that was fine. It was easier to separate two in his mind than four. He’d spoken at length to both Mr. Knights, because they were very friendly and didn’t talk down to him. Sometimes he’d told them the same thing. Sometimes, for the fun of it, he’d given one a different story altogether. He had to be careful not to make a mistake later on when he did that. If occasionally muddled about who belonged to which life, he never had any doubt which was his. All he had to do was go to the old cemetery. His was the only one without a gravestone with his name on it.
Friday: 6
It smelt foul in there. Like a public lavatory that hadn’t been cleaned or disinfected for months. Litter floated on the water and an open tin box containing cheap personal possessions hung from a branch. A small mirror and a pair of scissors lay in the hammock. She hadn’t thought of it before, but the old man wasn’t quite clean-shaven. If these were all the things he had, he didn’t possess a razor, merely trimmed his beard hair as close to the bone as he could with scissors. She didn’t feel right observing the relics and detritus of a man’s life, and was about to leave when she recalled the letters that she believed he and his counterpart in her true reality had left in the message hole of the Family Tree. They’d been written on a manual typewriter. So where was it? She poked about a bit, but couldn’t find it, and was obliged to conclude that he kept it somewhere else.
Again about to depart, she remembered that this overgrown tract of boggy land had once belonged to Withern Rise. She stood at the heart of the two hundred yard stretch that Grandpa Rayner had leased way back to safeguard the view from the house. The Council had planned to clear the osier beds and develop the land for public use. If Rayner hadn’t leased this wild stretch, the view from the mid-1960s to at least the early nineties would have been right across Withy Meadows, with its benches and new trees, its neat little bridges, its picnickers and joggers and running dogs. Rayner leased his preferred view for thirty years – just long enough because, by the end of that time, the Meadows were obscured almost all the way along from the river, the greenery having been allowed to grow back and flourish as it wished.
She stepped out of the thicket onto the bank, for a look at the house. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen it from this side and it was almost a shock to see how dull it looked from here. Not nearly as attractive as she always thought of it. She might have a word with Kate about this. Kate had been at Withern Rise for just four months, but she often said how much she loved it. If she really loved it, she would surely be open to suggestions for ways to improve it.
Naia returned to the thicket and started back the way she’d come. She didn’t see Aldous again that day, or even pass him, invisibly.
Friday: 7
Alaric needed information, and there was only one person likely to be able to supply it. ‘You want to know about the Underwoods who lived here in the nineteen forties?’ Alex said, with some surprise.
‘Yes.’
‘Why? You’ve never shown the slightest interest in other generations before.’
He shrugged. ‘We had to do something at school about life after World War Two, and I’ve been wondering what it was like here then. For my grandparents.’
‘Your grandmother didn’t live here then. She was a child in Minnesota.’
‘Grandpa Rayner’s side then. Didn’t you look into that lot a while ago?’
‘You know I did. For the family tree I can no longer lay my hands on, along with the album I put it in.’
‘Album’ was uttered with mild emphasis and a sharp look. He managed not to give any sign of noticing the veiled accusation.
‘So what can you tell me?’
‘Nothing right now, I’m busy, someone has to do this.’
She was cleaning the brass, of which there was an abundance, here in the River Room and throughout the house.
‘No one would have to do it if you didn’t buy so much of it,’ he said.
‘I buy it because I like it.’
‘So don’t complain about cleaning it.’
‘You sound like your father,’ Alex said.
‘Oh, insults now,’ he said. They had a small chuckle about that. Then Alaric said: ‘Can’t you tell me about them, even though you’re so busy?’
‘There’s not much to tell. I made some notes, linked some names, dug up a few dates, but I don’t carry it all in my head. I kept most of the material, though. You could look through it yourself.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Box room. Suitcase.’
‘There’s more than one suitcase in the box room.’
‘It’s an old brown job, near the front. I stuffed everything in an A4 envelope. Buff.’
‘Buff?’
‘The color.’
He went up to the box room and found the suitcase. When he lifted the lid an odor lifted with it, the musty, antiquated smell of a very small museum that only opens on Sundays. There were a great many things in the case that held no interest for him. One thing that did, marginally, was a newspaper clipping which, by its casual displacement, looked as if it had been tossed in as an afterthought.
RAIL VICTIMS TO WED
Two survivors of a rail disaster of February 2003 are to marry in Stamford today. Ruby Patton, 27, and Bernard Waters, 32, were unknown to one another when their train came off the tracks, claiming the lives of six. They fell for one another in post-crash counseling. ‘It was meant to be, I guess,’ said Waters, an accountant.
The envelope he was looking for was attached by a thick red elastic band to a slightly smaller cloth-bound book. He set the book aside and opened the envelope. There was a batch of papers inside: notes and diagrams mostly. The notes were hand-written, in Alex’s usual capitals. Easy to read as they were, the information he sought was elusive. The names of family members from the eighteen thirties to the present day had been listed and circled, with arrowed lines linking some of them. A few of the lines had been crossed out because the connections had subsequently proved false. There were also numerous memos on scraps of paper, envelopes and postcards, such as…
GERTRUDE CALDECOTT, ORIGIN UNKNOWN, BIRTH-DATE 1867/8, MUSIC TEACHER, NOTHING ELSE FOUND BUT MARRIED TO ELDON. CHECK FOR DATE OF MARRIAGE, ELDON’S MIDDLE NAME.
Alaric’s interest picked up when he came across the names Aldous and Rayner, along with their sisters’ and parents’ names. When he saw the date of Aldous death he could only stare it. He knew it well enough already, but seeing it written down a shock.
Turning to the cloth-bound book that had been attached to the envelope, he found it to be a diary, two-thirds full of small, precise handwriting. If the entries had been in English, he wouldn’t have had the patience to read a page; as they were all in French he didn’t attempt a word. But inside the front cover he found several sheets of neatly word-processed text, in English. Even these didn’t really interest him – much too much to wade through – and he was about to put them back when Alex said, over his shoulder: ‘Translations of some of the entries by my friend Maureen.’
He jumped. ‘How long have you been there?’
‘Just came in. Thought you heard me.’
‘Well, I didn’t. Who’s Maureen?’
‘French tutor at the College. I have to assume her French is okay, seeing as she teaches it, but her English ain’t so hot, so...’
‘I thought you spoke French.’
‘Only enough to manage bits of menu, street signs, but that’s about it. Maureen would have done more, said she found it fascinating, but then she very selfishly went on maternity leave.’ Alex dropped to her knees. ‘This was written by Marie, the French wife of your great-grandfather, who kindly lent you part of his name.’
‘He needn’t have bothered. Anything interesting in here?’
‘Depends what you’re looking for.’
‘Anything about 1945. June, say.’
A quizzical glance. ‘Suddenly specific, aren’t we?’
He hedged. ‘It just rings a bell. Something I heard. From you maybe.’
‘I don’t remember mentioning it,’ Alex said, ‘but in June 1945 there was a great tragedy in the family.’
‘What tragedy?’
She took the pages of translation from him and began riffling for a reference that had come to mind. Finding it, she read it out.
‘“Monday June 18. Four days since it happened. The house is silent. The children keep to themselves. L says she will be leaving next week. Good riddance, I say. Alaric sits in the River Room hour after hour, or stands beneath the wretched tree, in the last of the water. How will he get over this? How will any of us?”’
‘Doesn’t she say what happened?’ Alaric asked when she paused.
‘No. Probably couldn’t bring herself to describe it. But my researches turned up the information that her eldest son died in an accident of some kind. His grave is in the old cemetery. Against the wall if you want to see it.’
Against the wall, he thought. Just like yours.
‘Can I borrow these?’
He took the translation and left her, still kneeling, picking through things in the suitcase. He went to his room and closed the door. Tossing the pages onto his bed he crossed to the side window overlooking the south garden. He couldn’t see the Family Tree. His eyes were too full of tears.
Friday: 8
Naia slipped the photo album from beneath her bed and turned to the back cover expecting to see the Underwood family tree. There was no family tree. It must have come unstuck, she thought, and turned back a few pages, hoping that someone had slipped it between them. Instead, she found blank page after blank page, preceded by picture after picture of Alaric instead of her. Disappointment that it wasn’t her album vied with fresh bafflement as to why it had been in the tree of the 1945 reality. She turned to the beginning and went through it methodically, page by page, fascinated by all the photos that she’d only seen herself in till now. But how sad, coming to the end. No hint in the final pictures, as there couldn’t be, that a world of smiling faces would end at the turn of a page. She thought of her own album. Mysteriously missing as it was, she still had the pages she’d removed from it; pages containing pictures of an Alex who, to everyone here, had died before they were taken. Alaric might be glad of those pictures. If he had them, and added them to his album, he would no longer have to hide it away.
She felt under her bed for the folder. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she went through the loose leaves to which, a few days before they parted forever, she’d seen her mother attach the most recent crop of prints. If she let Alaric have them she would never see them again, and how fair would that be? But… but she could always scan them. If she scanned them she would at least have a reasonable facsimile of them. She jumped up, went to the tiny room Ivan called his office – barely more than a cupboard really – and in twenty minutes she’d scanned all the pictures she needed to and also copied them to a password-protected file on Ivan’s hard drive. Even then she was reluctant to part with the originals, but she steeled herself and put the pages in Alaric’s album. This done, she removed all six of the photos in which she herself featured. He might have a problem explaining the gaps, but better that than try to stump up a believable reason why, in some pictures, he had such long hair, wore lipstick, a dress, or worse still, in one, a bikini.
Even though she’d copied them, parting with the photographs was no easy matter. True, her mother, her dear, lost mother would get her pictures back, but there would be nothing of herself in them; no hint of Naia. Nothing to jog a memory, cause Alex to think for a moment of the daughter she had brought into the world and been so close to for over sixteen years.
&nb
sp; But then she had another idea. It wasn’t much of one, but it went some way toward easing her sadness at giving up the pages. On half a dozen self-adhesive Post-It notes she wrote a message to her mother, just three short lines, same message on each, which she stuck in the spaces where the photos of her had been. She knew that Alaric would see them first and when he did he was bound to remove them, but the act of writing the words and putting them in the book that was destined to rest in her mother’s hands warmed her a little. Of course, there was a risk that Alaric would think the message was for him – what a joke! – but she couldn’t predict everything. All she had to do now was return the book to the 1945 reality, where Alaric would surely come looking for it very soon. Assuming, of course, that he’d been the one who’d left it there. But it had to be him. No one else could have had it.
It started raining shortly before she was ready to leave: a soft, light drizzle of a kind she rather enjoyed as a rule; but she’d not long washed her hair and rain would make it frizzy, so she put on her cagoule and tucked the album inside. Tugging up the hood she hoisted herself over the window ledge and down into the water.
Friday: 9
Alaric had avoided going out all day, but by late afternoon he could resist no longer. Starting at some distance, he waded round and round the tree in slowly decreasing circles. He had no intention of touching it today. Certainly not of climbing it. If he climbed the tree it might send him back to the day following Aldous’s death. The body would have been found and cut down by then, but there would be things going on there that he wanted no part of.
The Realities of Aldous U Page 26