Some time ago—well, there must have been kings and queens and therefore a date, but was it bad King John, or Richard the Lionheart, or Alfred the Great?—but a very long time ago, England was a great deal more wooded than it is now. If you look over the estuary, towards the castle, you’ll see a patch of forest. That’s not a planted forest, not one grown in the last fifty years for paper, but the last scrap of an ancient forest. Round here, round where Hanmouth is, it was once all forest. If you went into the forest and lost your way, you’d maybe never come out again. Nowadays, of course, there’s nothing in the forest bigger than foxes and the odd grumpy badger, but years ago—at this time—there were other things. There were bears living in there—they got fat, the bears, on honey from the bees. And there was one old grey wolf.
Hanmouth was here, then. It was smaller and there wasn’t a ring-road or any Dutch houses or any little jewellers’ shops on the Fore street. But there was a church—not the church on the spit we’ve got now, that’s only Victorian, but on the same place, there was a church. And there was a quay, because there’s been a quay and there’s been trade in Hanmouth as long as there’s been Hanmouth. The quay came before anything else. There was a castle—the lords over there, we know they were there before the Conqueror, because one of them married one of the Conqueror’s knight’s daughters. He was clever, the lord, like that, the only one who ever did that. And he hung on to his lands and built the first castle that ever stood there on the ridge. And there were houses—dwellings, huts, whatever they might have been. Nobody knows what they would have looked like.
The old grey wolf lived in the forest. He always had. He went back beyond the memory of even the oldest people who lived in what would one day be named Hanmouth. He hunted around half of the county, never coming far out of the forest in his hunt. He lived on small animals and the infants of larger animals; he lived on chickens and rabbits and red squirrels. ‘Were there rabbits as long ago as that?’ a well-informed listener might say, going on to suggest that he supposed there were potatoes and tobacco in the villagers’ gardens, too. ‘Of course there were rabbits,’ the teller would say. ‘There’s always been rabbits in England.’
Only very occasionally, in the middle of a winter that froze the ground and the estuary to the same white hardness, did the wolf venture out into the little huddled settlements, and seize, if he could, a baby. The villagers accepted this, more or less. It was foolish not to guard a baby against the wolf, but the wolf had to eat too. But one year, the spring came, and a mother set her baby out in its swaddling in the sun, and the wolf came for it. A high thin scream, quickly silenced; the great haunches of the wolf sidling off into the forests where it never grew light.
The lord said that the wolf had got a taste for human flesh above the usual diet the abundance of the forest provided, and it must be hunted down. They set out, with torches and improvised weapons. They blocked off the wolf’s known runs; the lord and his cronies, they mounted on their horses, three hands smaller than any hunter today, and at the end of the day, the wolf, tired, hungry, and bewildered with rage, found himself just there, where the Strand now runs out, and the path goes on, up towards the mouth of the estuary and the open sea. That path, it had always been there, and it never had a name, until the wolf ran from the hunters, ran along the Wolf Walk. It came to an end, and there was nowhere for the wolf to go; the orchard wall to one side, the estuary on the other, and it was at its fullest. There were rushes then, wild rushes, and the wolf plunged into them to escape the fall of arrows hailing down on him. ‘After him,’ the lord would have said, but before the serfs and the villeins could jump into the mud and the rushes, they all saw an astounding thing: the wolf running, his head held low and pointed, across the mud flats towards the other side of the estuary, and then, skimming across like a flat stone that’s thrown on a lake, across the surface of the estuary itself, across the water. They didn’t follow him then; their bows, they let drop, and watched the wolf go. He disappeared into the rushes on the far bank, and they watched them ruffle and move as if with a wind, and then he was into the forest, and lost to them. They watched the wolf go, with their bows lowered. A sort of respect. That is the story of the Wolf Walk, the walk the wolf took. And what happened to the wolf? people would ask. Well, it went back into the forest, and occasionally stole a baby, just as before, but the people of Hanmouth never went after it again, and it died at a good old age. One of the last wolves in the west of England, and after that, the path that goes down to the very end, it has always been called the Wolf Walk. And why shouldn’t it be true?
15.
At the end of the Wolf Walk, on Tracy Wood’s bench, three people sat. It must be one of the last fine days of summer—an Indian summer, everyone said. Mauro had thought of making a comment on Tracy Wood’s bench, the same one that everyone always made, but he saw just in time that it would not be a good idea. Catherine had cried when he had embraced her, on the railway platform; she had cried again in the flat, as they were sitting having a cup of coffee. A walk had been suggested, and Mauro had taken them up on it. He felt that in the open air, he could escape any suggestion that he should stay the night. The thought came to him that he could, perhaps, make an excuse once they had had their conversation out here. He need not, perhaps, even go back to their flat, but just say goodbye here, and go back to the train. It seemed bizarre to travel for two and a half hours, spend half an hour with David’s parents, and then go back again, but—Mauro’s thoughts shuffled rather—nothing, no effort was too much for Catherine and Alec. He didn’t mind coming down one bit. But all that would be wasted if he mentioned Tracy Wood, dead at thirteen in 1978 and a bench put up to her. Catherine would cry for a third time, and his departure would be put off for an hour at least.
‘It’s really lovely here,’ Mauro said, referring to the elaborate view, out to sea and over a wooded slope on the other side of the estuary.
‘It is nice,’ Catherine said. ‘Sometimes I come down here at twilight—you can see the lights of the towns on the other side. Look…’
She gestured at the birds, gathering now at their feet. They seemed to be expecting something, all looking upwards in their callous way.
‘We should have brought some bread,’ Alec said quietly. ‘They like it better when it’s wet, the ducks. After a dry spell, there’s not much for them to eat, I suppose.’
Mauro felt in his pockets, as if he might have some food there to offer the ducks. But he had nothing to offer anyone; just chewing gum.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t been down before,’ he said impulsively. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t come to the funeral.’
‘Well,’ Catherine said. ‘Well, we understand. It was really very hard for everyone, that day. I don’t think it’s for us to say what you should do.’
‘I should have come,’ Mauro said.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Alec said. ‘We’re glad you’ve come down.’
Mauro looked at him out of the corner of his eye. He never felt that Alec liked him in the slightest—actually, he had felt from something or other David had said during that argument in the car that Alec was on to him, didn’t think him at all authentic. In his dry way, Alec had now said something authentic. He wondered why he had. Mauro saw, too, that Alec’s face was thinner, that whatever he had been through in the last few months had stripped the flesh from his face and handed him his grey old age.
‘You see,’ Catherine said, ‘we don’t know so many people down here. We only moved a year ago, after all. We have friends.’
‘We have friends,’ Alec said.
‘But, of course, none of them knew David,’ Catherine said. ‘It’s hard to talk to them about David.’
‘So we’re glad you’ve come down,’ Alec said again.
‘That’s all right,’ Mauro said. He was, after all, a good person. He had come down here for no reason of gain; he was a link for them with their dead son, and he could provide that, he thought.
‘Do you think�
�’ Catherine said, and now she was surely going to cry again ‘—do you think David was happy? I mean in general.’
‘You don’t think he was?’ Mauro said. ‘I mean—what do you think?’
‘It was the way he was found,’ Alec said. ‘That was a shock. That didn’t seem like a happy person, happy in general. It’s been hard for us.’
‘Maybe I think you don’t have to think about that, not too much,’ Mauro said, aghast. He saw how implicated he was in these details.
‘We try not to,’ Catherine said. ‘But I can’t help wondering whether David was happy or not, and if we did enough for him.’
‘Perhaps some people don’t have the gift, the talent, for being happy,’ Mauro said. ‘I’m sure you did enough for him, you did everything you could for him. Maybe it was just in him, he couldn’t be happy, whatever you two did.’
‘No,’ Catherine said. ‘When I said “we”, I didn’t mean just me and Alec—I meant you as well. Don’t you ever wonder that?’
Mauro hesitated. He felt so little involved in this. And that was unfair—if she knew that he was not drawn to David by desire or, much, by liking, she would surely see how enormously unselfish he, Mauro, had been from beginning to end. David’s search for happiness had dragged him in, and somehow turned him into David, with all the demands and exhaustion that misery made of you. For no very good reason, Sumac came to mind, and the fact that he had phoned in sick this morning, from Paddington station, ignoring the telephone ringing back all the way to Hanmouth. He just couldn’t have stood to go in there today, not after what Oswald Bond had said to him yesterday. He knew he was going to get the sack when he went back there tomorrow. That was David’s fault; by involving himself in David’s concerns and by trying to make an effort, he had somehow dragged himself down into the circumstances of David’s life, as if to take his place. Mauro thought about it: he was overwhelmed with a sense of his own selflessness.
‘I tried, I think,’ Mauro said. ‘I think he was happy for a time, with me. I don’t know. I would have tried to make him happy, I would.’
‘That’s nice to hear,’ Catherine said, but Mauro did not know what else he could have said. ‘Maybe he didn’t have a gift for happiness, like you say. He was quite an unhappy little boy, even. I don’t know what else we could have done.’
‘Me, I don’t know, too,’ Mauro said.
‘We’ve been dealing with all the business,’ Alec said, quite briskly. ‘There’s a surprising amount to get through, what with the inquest and winding up David’s affairs—of course, he hadn’t set his affairs in order. He had no reason to at his time of life, but that made a little more work for us, as you can imagine. We’ve sold his flat in St Albans—we thought about it, but it seemed the right thing to do, when the property market seems to have peaked and just started a downward slide. We’ve put all his stuff into storage for the moment.’
‘We paid some removers to do it,’ Catherine said. ‘I honestly didn’t feel I wanted to deal with it. But it’s all in storage, all in boxes.’
‘If there was anything that you wanted—something to remind you of David—anything at all…’ Alec said.
Mauro thought: he had no idea. He had never been to David’s flat in St Albans. He had no idea what was there, what his furniture was like, whether there were ornaments or pictures. All he knew was what he saw David in. For a moment he thought about asking them if he could have David’s car, but something suggested to him that that would not do as a keepsake. Surely David had had a CD player, a television, a sofa. But then he saw that he had better play safe. ‘There was a belt he used to wear,’ Mauro said. ‘It was a black belt—he always wore it. And there was a silver bangle, too. I often think of him wearing that.’
Catherine and Alec visibly relaxed. They shared a look. ‘That’s easily done,’ Alec said. ‘If that’s all you want, of course.’
‘I can see you only want something to remember him by,’ Catherine said.
‘Yes, just that,’ Mauro said, lit up by his own selfless nobility. Just a black belt and a silver bangle; that would do, that would be the request of someone of great style and dignity. And he remembered that nobody seemed to know about the £2,400 David had lent him.
‘We’ve just sold the flat in St Albans, as I say,’ Alec said. ‘It’s not quite come through yet, but once the authorities have done their worst with it, there will be something. David didn’t leave a will, you know, so I’m afraid it all comes back to us as his next of kin.’
‘That’s all right,’ Mauro said, and again that look was exchanged between Catherine and Alec.
‘We don’t think it’s quite fair,’ Catherine said. ‘We’ve been talking about it, and we think that we’d like to give you a present. After all, you were David’s friend at the end of his life, and you might expect…’ She trailed off.
‘We thought ten thousand pounds,’ Alec said bluntly.
Mauro was a Roman, and at this, a Roman response came: ‘That’s all right,’ Mauro said. ‘I don’t want any money. To remember David—just his belt, and his silver bangle.’
Catherine and Alec both breathed out; a heavy, relieved breath, and Mauro immediately thought of withdrawing his noble statement. I don’t want any money, he had said, I don’t want any—that nobility had risen up from somewhere, he had no idea where, and turned down ten thousand pounds. He could have done anything with that. Just at that exact moment, surprised by a statement of money, the temptations of nobility, of selfishness, had struck him, and there had been no resisting them. Now it was Mauro who wanted to cry, to say, ‘No, I was only joking,’ or even ‘You insult me with your ten thousand—I want fifty thousand.’ But it was all impossible, and he would have to live with his terrible unaccountable whim.
‘We’ve got the belt and the bangle, I know,’ Catherine said. ‘If it’s the ones you meant. He was wearing them at the end. If you come back, we can wrap them up and give them to you now.’
‘No,’ Mauro said. ‘I think I’d like to go home now.’
‘I know,’ Alec said. He actually reached around Mauro, sitting hunched on the bench, as if to embrace him, but instead clapped him awkwardly between his shoulder-blades. ‘It takes it out of you, all this.’
‘We’d like you to have this, too,’ Catherine said, and from her bag she produced a paperback book. She gave it to Mauro who, puzzled, took it from her. ‘It was the first thing—the very first thing—David wrote. In his job, you know. I thought you would like to have it.’
‘Yes,’ Mauro said, turning it over, not understanding in the least. What had Mr Poppers written? When had he written a book? But it did not have David’s name on the cover, and Mauro didn’t feel he could enquire any further. ‘I’m very happy to have this,’ he said in the end, though the book was an ugly thing, bright pink and with an amateurish drawing of a sort of landscape. ‘Thank you.’
‘Do stay in touch,’ Alec said, and now the pair of them got to their feet. ‘Shall we walk you to the station? You did say you wanted to go home, didn’t you?’
‘This is called the Wolf Walk,’ Catherine said. ‘There’s an interesting story behind the name, I believe.’
They were just in time for the half-hourly train into Barnstaple, and they waved him off. His face at the train window had a puzzled aspect. Theirs, they suspected, a relieved and unburdened one. They stood and watched until the train was quite round the wooded bend.
‘That’s one thing,’ Alec said. ‘They didn’t marry, or anything like that.’
‘No,’ Catherine said. ‘I don’t know why you thought they might have, but they hadn’t. And he doesn’t want anything from us.’
‘That’s a relief,’ Alec said. ‘I couldn’t have borne any more engagement with the legal profession.’
‘I know,’ Catherine said, and as the level crossing raised, she took his hand in hers, and they walked down the hill homewards, two small figures in a posture of shyness.
16.
In the train to
Bristol, Mauro looked at the book. He had not read a book from beginning to end since he was at school. He had no idea Mr Poppers had written one at all. He turned the ugly object over, and read what was written on the back cover.
‘One day,’ he read, ‘hope and love enter your life, with a special smiling face which seems meant just for you. And you know that happiness is your destiny, embodied in the sweet loving expression of someone who adores you. Maybe they were waiting for love and saw it in your face too. Like two beautiful people looking through a window at each other, sometimes they think it is a mirror. Love is the only thing which matters in this world, and we make it for ourselves by not thinking of ourselves, but of that special smiling face which maybe hasn’t come along yet. And love is what survives of us, somewhere, in the special magical garden after rain we call our heart.’
Mauro read it from beginning to end twice. It seemed to make no sense at all. Then he felt in his pocket, got out his wallet, and saw that he had a ten-pound note. Shortly, there was an announcement that the buffet car was open for the sale of snacks, sandwiches, hot and cold drinks and light refreshments. Mauro thought he would risk an English cup of coffee.
17.
All summer, since the disappearance, it had been hot and dry—a proper picnic summer, people said, and once or twice they did take a picnic out, with a sense of occasion. A barbecue summer, the Met Office said, and that was more like it; the blue smoke of burning pigs’ meat, the crack and ear-fizz of bottles and glasses being dropped and smashed hung over the patched-up gardens of Barnstaple all summer long. The flesh of Hanmouth was given an outing; and whether in gentlemanly knee-lengths with sandals and a short-sleeved shirt, or—their sons—cut-offs and flip-flops, or spaghetti-string tops, cystitis-tight shorts and high-heeled shoes, the flesh of Hanmouth and Barnstaple flushed angry red before subsiding into a country brown, a ploughman’s tan.
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