Flash 1
October night. Rain hammering the windscreen. Naia was thirty-one and driving home to revive a lapsed tradition: to give birth to an Underwood at Withern Rise. Her curses for the dark, the weather, everything, everything. So much to curse these days. Where had it all gone wrong? When? So many split seconds when her life might have spun in a different direction; probably had, elsewhere, over and over again. She’d long since gotten out of the habit of trying to pinpoint those critical instants when her life, her future, swung in the balance. Better that way. Saner.
The rhythm of the sluggish wipers carving bright fragments of roadway scrambled her thoughts; returned her to that other October, fourteen years earlier, when the second major upheaval of her life occurred. Those fateful few days. The days of two more Alarics, the man who called himself Aldous U, and the multiple realities of The Underwood See.
Part One
PERIPHERAL VISIONS
1: 39
Sometimes there were whispers in the night, and no one there when she opened her eyes or looked round corners. She’d stopped believing in ghosts when she was ten, and at seventeen considered the very idea of them absurd; so, even with her very uncommon awareness of the way things were, she tried to shrug off such incidents as the products of an over-developed imagination.
But even she was spooked by the business of the tap.
She’d woken early, crawled out of bed after a lingering embrace with the duvet, and, shivering because the heating wasn’t yet on, padded barefoot to the window overlooking the river. Condensation blurred the view. She cut a swathe with the edge of her hand. So still out there. State of pause before the world came alive. She tugged her dressing gown on and after a visit to the bathroom, headed downstairs. A bundle of white fur was waiting for her on the half-way platform. ‘Can’t bear to be alone, can you?’ she said, stepping over it. The little creature followed her down, step for step, trying to keep pace. It still wore the tag around its neck, but since June she’d found it hard to use the name she’d assigned to it. It had been fine as long as she thought she would never see Alaric again, but then she had seen him, and afterwards it felt wrong to address the cat by his name.
Next stop, the kitchen. And that was when it happened. She was about to fill the kettle when the tap turned itself on. Water spurted, spattering her. She jumped back. The tap continued to run for about seven seconds, then the handle turned again and the water stopped. She put the kettle down very smartly and left the room without looking back. The cat followed her.
Across the hall, in the Long Room, she drew the curtains back from the French doors and leant there, trying not to think about the self-turning tap. She already had a theory about it, but did her utmost to put it from her. She was trying to be normal, for God’s sake. Normal people didn’t have ideas like that. She picked the cat up, cradled it the way it liked, and her mind wandered with her gaze to the enormous willow over to the right. No doubt Aldous was still asleep within that great inverted bowl of branches decked with
lanceolate
leaves. She worried about Aldous. Tried not to let it show when he was around, but she did worry. There was ground-frost some mornings now. The days were getting cooler. At the weekend the clocks would go back. Shorter days, longer nights: much colder nights soon. It must be bad enough for him already in there, his only light a lamp they’d rigged up for him; but how would he fare in the dead of winter, when the leaves were gone? He’d be so exposed.
She thought back to the day Aldous moved to the willow from his enclosure across the river. He’d tried to fix up his cruddy old hammock, but the willow’s boughs weren’t right, so she and Kate had bought a camp bed from the Army and Navy store in Stone and a padded sleeping bag from the sports shop to put on it. They would have kitted him out more comfortably, but Naia doubted that Aldous would take any but the humblest of offerings, and she was right. He accepted the canvas bed with a sniff of disdain, but was suspicious of the pristine blue bag.
‘Looks new,’ he said.
‘I bought it a while back to go camping with friends,’ Naia lied.
‘It’s still in the wrapper.’
‘Yes, well, the trip fell through.’
‘You might need it another time.’
‘I won’t. I was only going because I was asked.’
‘You might be asked again.’
‘If I am I’ll say I can’t, because my sleeping bag’s being used. If you don’t take it I’ll give it to a charity shop, where someone’ll buy it for next to nothing, but if you have it, it will at least get some use and I won’t feel my money’s been wasted.’
‘Well…’ he said slowly, and so it became his, as a personal favor to her.
At first the shufflings of the great willow’s network of branches kept Aldous awake at night, but he got used to it. It was nothing anyway. What counted was that he was back in the garden where his mind told him he’d played so recently, beside the house he was born in; and up there, at a glance, he could see the side window of his old room: Naia’s room now. He was grateful to be here after a lifetime away. More grateful than he would ever let on.
Aldous still went walking around and beyond Eynesford and Stone most days, but he hadn’t crossed into any of his ‘other lives’ since taking up residence in the willow. This did not dismay him, but it puzzled him. Was it because he knew who he was again? He wished there was someone he could talk to about it, but he feared people would think he was off his chump. Even Naia might think that. Even Mr. Knight. He was glad there was a Mr. Knight here. Glad he helped in the garden. Sometimes they shared a pot of tea made from water boiled on the little camp stove Naia and Kate had brought him. He liked Naia and Kate too, but he wished they wouldn’t keep giving him things. Made him feel beholden. Maman always said that presents were for special occasions. Maman had been suspicious of presents that came at other times. She was even suspicious of flowers from Father, but Father had given them anyway. Beautiful flowers. He missed Father. Missed him terribly.
2: 36
Four months after the event, Alex was far from over Alaric’s death. Whenever she stood by the river she saw the body they’d pulled out in June. Wherever she went in the garden or the house, he was absent where he should be present. She could hardly bear to enter his room. His now silent, unchanging room. To remain at Withern, where she believed he’d spent his whole short life, would be a never-ending torment for her. There was nothing of him here now but memories. There wasn’t even a grave to visit; they’d scattered his ashes on the water from the landing stage. When she told Ivan of her wish to move away, he did not protest. His loss was greater than any he’d ever experienced, but for him there was something more: regret that he hadn’t, as he remembered it, shown his son more than passing affection for the better part of half-a-dozen years. There was shame, too, that he would be the one to sell the house built by an Underwood; the house which, apart from a sixteen year interlude way back, had been in the family for a hundred and twenty years. If they moved away – as they must – he would also have to sell the business. The years he’d put in at that shop, struggling to make it pay! In the weeks and months following Alaric’s death, he had continued to go in six days a week, and on Sundays wished he was there. It was his refuge from the oppressive silence that now permeated every room, every corner, every niche of Withern Rise.
Unlike her husband, Alex had nowhere to hide and few distractions. For one of the few times in her life she hadn’t a creative thought in her head. Half-term didn’t help. No College, no animated chats with her students. Apart from shopkeepers and the odd friend who popped in, the only person she saw was Mr. Knight, and he was only there part-time. Until the tragedy she’d often pottered outside with him. They hadn’t spoken a great deal while they worked, but she’d found him comfortable to be around. He’d carried on working in the garden after Alaric’s death, a day here, half a day there, and some weeks had passed before she realized that she hadn’t paid him in all tha
t time. Appalled, she’d rushed out to apologize.
‘Oh, haven’t you?’ he said, as if it were news to him.
‘You know I haven’t. Why didn’t you remind me?’
‘Because it’s not important, Alex. I can manage.’
‘That’s not the point. We made an agreement and I haven’t honored it. Look, I haven’t much cash in the house. Can I write you a check?’
‘You can write it,’ he said.
Picking up on the sub-text – ‘But I’ll not cash it’ – which she put down to pity, she said: ‘I’ll have the cash for next time.’ But it was curious. After that brief conversation about money they were friends, where previously they’d merely been acquaintances with a garden in common. When she next saw him, a couple of days later, she handed him the overdue wages and he pocketed the notes with ill-concealed embarrassment. From that day she invited him in more often than before, for elevenses, a bread-and-cheese lunch, a cup of fruit tea in the afternoon, and he would linger, not saying much, but comforting her with his solid, uncomplicated presence.
It was because of her liking and respect for Mr. Knight that she had showed him the peculiar letter she’d found under Alaric’s bed after his death. An odd thing, not really a letter at all, signed ‘Aldous U, Withern Rise’, which she could make no sense of. He had read the typed pages carefully, but when he finished could offer no explanation for it other than ‘Something some imaginative chum cooked up?’, a possibility that she had no desire to investigate but which covered the matter and allowed her to file it away, in its crude envelope, with her late son’s other possessions.
Mr. Knight had also been there the day she and Ivan had agreed to put the house on the market. His expression on hearing the news had come across as a mixture of interest and dismay.
‘Where will you go?’
‘We haven’t decided. We’re not tied to anywhere. If we sell we’ll be quite well off for a change.’
‘Yes. Property this size, right by the river. But your purchaser might not have the feeling you do for it.’
Alex shrugged. ‘We can’t impose our wishes on future owners.’
‘So it’ll come down to money. The best offer.’
‘Isn’t that the way it usually works?’
‘I believe so. Usually.’
This seemed to sadden him rather.
3: 39
When Naia started along the path from the side gate on returning from an errand in the village, she saw Mr. Knight raking dead leaves into heaps over in the south garden, watched by Aldous sitting on the side of the old wheelbarrow. Cozy scene, rich in cliché: crisp pale sun in a clear blue sky, woodsmoke unspooling from a corner of the veggie patch, gardener raking leaves watched by an old chap on a wheelbarrow. Times like this she could forget that she didn’t belong here; almost believe that the life she’d lived until February was nothing more than an array of self-indulgent daydreams.
Mr. Knight stopped work as she approached. ‘Just the gal,’ he said.
‘Why, what’s up?’
From a pocket of the faded check jacket he wore on all but the warmest days, he drew an envelope. A particular kind of envelope, hand-made, the flap sealed with a blob of red wax impressed with the letter ‘A’. Her name was hand-written on the front, in capitals.
‘Where did this come from?’
Mr. Knight nodded toward the Family Tree. ‘Sticking out of that.’
Aldous smirked. ‘Love letter?’
‘Some hopes,’ Naia said.
She stuffed the envelope in a back pocket and walked as casually as she could to the front door, which in her haste she opened too sharply, bumping Kate, tidying shoes behind it. She muttered an apology but did not stop; hurried along the hall to the River Room, whose door she closed firmly behind her.
4: 47
Another Kate Faraday at another Withern Rise stood before that reality’s Family Tree, in which no envelopes had ever been found. Not having climbed or played around this tree as a child she had no feeling for it other than admiration for the look of it. But the old oak was far less grand this autumn than in previous years. Its leaves were withered and brown where they should be robust and golden. The ground was littered with these sorry specimens, curling on the lawn like small arthritic hands. Kate and Ivan had called experts in, heard the verdict, and were debating what to do for the best. If left standing, the tree could become brittle and unsafe, but if they removed it this part of the garden would be nothing but an expanse of flat grass whose one passably interesting feature was the strip of wild wood – traditionally ignored – along the southern boundary wall.
‘Problem?’
She turned. ‘I was wondering what we should do about this old thing.’
‘And?’
‘We may not have much choice. Would you mind very much?’
‘It’s just a tree,’ he said.
She suspected that it was more than just a tree to him, but he never gave much away. She considered the garden as a whole. She’d toiled here for days on end through the summer, but she was the first to admit that expertise in Victorian furniture and early 20th century collectables did not qualify her for the role of head gardener at Withern Rise. ‘We could do with help here,’ she said. ‘Too much for us alone.’ Too much for her, she meant. With a sigh, and a bleak, ‘Oh, well,’ she returned to the house.
Alaric watched her go. He’d approached her with the intention of getting some sort of dialogue going, and as usual hadn’t even got started. He’d lost count of the times he’d tried to tell her that he was pleased she was with them and ended up mumbling something else entirely. What must she think of him? Typical seventeen-year-old, morose, monosyllabic, resentful of all he surveyed and anyone older than himself? It wasn’t that she was hard to talk to. Not at all. She was warm, open, encouraging. It was him. No idea how to express himself, say what he felt. He wanted to be able to chat with her about trivial things, laugh at silly observations or something on the telly, like he used to with Mum. Above all he wanted to make her feel welcome. But he couldn’t manage it. She’d been here eight months, and he hadn’t come close.
From Kate and his failure, Alaric turned to the tree from which he’d kept his distance for most of the year. The memory of what happened when he touched it that night in February still disturbed his sleep on occasion. It was just two weeks since he’d finally found the nerve to approach it again, reasoning that although it might send him to a Withern Rise in which a terrible deed had taken place, it might, just as easily, send him to Naia’s. He had placed his hands on the trunk, as he had that other time, but nothing had happened. Nothing at all. He didn’t get a hint that anything could happen. He’d done this several times since, always with the same negative result, forcing the conclusion that whatever power the tree had possessed in February was not present in October. There might be a good reason for this, of course. In February the Family Tree had not been dying.
From the tree he drifted along the side of the house and down the steps to the landing stage. Seating himself on the bare boards, he gazed at the river. It was so quiet here, the only sound the clear water easing by, and so still, the sole movement a swarm of minuscule insects circling nothing visible to the human eye. Without exception it was the most peaceful place he knew, when there were no boats passing anyway. When he was younger he used to jump in from here, splash about, swim back and forth between the banks. Mum had always insisted that he keep within the extents of the landing stage, where it was known to be quite shallow, but occasionally – she would have had a fit if she’d known about this – he’d crouched down on the river bed to see how long he could go without air. That last-minute surge to the surface, that first huge gulp of breath, had been so exhilarating. He smiled at the memory. The things you do when you’re a kid, he thought, but imagined going just that bit further now that he was older; stepping off the landing stage and staying under past the point of safe return, floating to the surface, bloated, lungs full of water, to be foun
d, mourned, remembered tenderly forever.
As he sat contemplating death, glory and other inconsequentials, a feeling crept over him like a shadow, causing him to look up. What he saw was a world less tangible than it had been. Twisting round to take in what he could of the garden from there, he saw many duplications of it, each one slightly out of phase with its neighbors. More fascinated than alarmed, it seemed to him at first that each version was identical, but then he noticed tiny differences: some leaves cut back, a shrub in one but not the others, the same birds in the sky but in slightly altered formations.
He got up, slowly, hardly daring to blink for fear of losing all this. He faced the house. The walls were hazily transparent, and within them stood a much smaller building that looked as though it had been assembled in haste from a heap of clumsily-sliced boulders. He heard voices to his left, and turned his head. A group of boys, mooching. A little less distinct than they would be if actually present, they seemed unaware of him – until one of them glanced his way and stopped as if he’d hit a wall; stared back at him in astonishment as he and his pals, along with the peculiar building and the multiple views, faded clean away.
5: 39
In the River Room, Naia broke the envelope’s seal and drew out a sheet of paper on which a message had been typed with a manual typewriter that would have benefited from a change of ribbon. She knew who it must be from, but nevertheless checked the name of the sender, also typed, at the foot of the page. Back in June, when she found the second missive from this person, she was convinced that Aldous had written them – same name, after all – but her first real conversation with him had eliminated him as a suspect. As there’d been no others she’d tried to forget about the letters, stop wondering who’d put them in the tree, but here was a third, four months on, and she could not ignore it. She sat down on the chaise to read the following:
The Realities of Aldous U Page 31