by Morag Joss
Michael emerged from the pool pavilion that evening at around eight o’clock. He pulled off the boots and stripped, and wearing only underpants, walked straight into the pool. He did not swim, but simply stood twisting his hands in the water, scooping it up over his shoulders and torso, rubbing cupped handfuls of it over and over his face. He plunged his head under for a few moments and when he brought it up again, he was shivering. Still he stood with his arms clasped round himself, his eyes clamped tight shut and teeth clattering. It was early July, but when the sun had set it had taken all the heat from the air, leaving a coolness in the sky that claimed the evening for itself. He tramped out of the water and back to the house, looking pinched; a stooped, walking ache, Jean thought, watching him through the kitchen window. She handed him a towel at the door, because he would not come inside.
And still he was not finished. He went back to the poolside through the greying light, and got dressed. He once again put on the gumboots and then unhooked from the wall the hose that was used for cleaning the pool, and took it into the pavilion. Inside, he snapped on the lights. A brash yellow glare spilled through the windows onto the grass outside, and as he moved around, daggers of light and shadow lurched and split on the surface of the pool. In the bathroom he ran sharp jets of water up and down the walls and ceiling, and over and around the sealed bags on the floor. He lifted the circular drain cover, and then he shot blades of water into every corner of the bathroom, every surface and angle, until he had sliced and whipped every crumb of salt, every hair, every shard and unnameable remnant of Gordon Brookes down into the drain, and watched them disappear. Then he returned to the poolside and replaced the hose, pulled off the boots and clothes and waded in again, where he lay, floating, shivering and weeping with cold and shock. This time when he came back to the house Jean demanded that he go upstairs and get in a hot bath. Afterwards he tried to rest, but could not sleep. Later Steph tiptoed in with a tray, but he could not eat. Jean picked up his soaked, stained clothes from the poolside and put them in a bag to burn later.
It was about one o’clock in the morning when Michael backed the Mercedes out of the stable garage and across the drive to the edge of the side lawn that led down towards the pool. Through the dark the sound of the wheels on gravel was confiding but dismissive, like the gentle rustling of paper being scrunched carelessly in large hands. Next he drove his own van into the stable garage and locked the doors. Silently he made his way across to the pool pavilion, and under the private light of a slice of moon he began the solitary ferrying of bags from the bathroom to the open boot of the car. He could not help counting them. There were thirty-one of them, a fact that he found strangely helpful. Michael’s memory of the man was beginning to seem implausible now; any idea that Gordon Brookes had until very recently been a living, talking person now seemed unreliable. In fact it was difficult even to sustain the thought of him as a dead, silent person any more. It seemed like some trick of perception, too dislocated from the ponderous, overwhelmingly physical and troublesome fact of these thirty-one filled bags to be true. Gordon Brookes had, in the course of events since yesterday, been receding in the way that Michael now imagined must happen when an animal goes for slaughter. For how else could it be done? Since he had been living here he had seen them on the road now and then, those lorries with slatted sides whose interiors clattered with caged life, and he had overtaken one once on a slope, glimpsing as his van strained past a tender nose pushed up against the slats, trailing strings of slime, and one silk-lashed, fearful eye. How could anyone go about the task of transforming that into a number of pink rolled joints on polystyrene trays, unless some human mental law came into force, some benign slackening of the logic that bound the two states together by the act of killing?
So it must be with Gordon Brookes. Gordon Brookes must now be thought of as a packaging, transport and disposal operation. The separation of the man- alive, talking, gesturing- from the stuff he was made of- lumps of gristle, bones, offal, cords of muscle and fat- was essential if Michael were not to go mad. He was still aghast from the discovery of just how much stuff there was and how in all its appalling quantity it had split and spurted, and how parts of it stank, too.
Jean and Steph prowled round between the car and the lighted kitchen doorway, trying to help Michael without looking at or touching the bags. They loaded his food, backpack, blankets and torch into the car, went back for a spade, a pickaxe and the maps. Jean hovered, thinking, and added another sweater, two long raincoats and boots, a box of Charlie’s baby wipes, a bottle of brandy. Just as Michael was ready to go Steph tore back to the house and returned with a photograph of herself, Charlie and Jean. Michael looked at it and tucked it in the top pocket of his shirt.
It seemed somehow too cheery, even profane, to wave at the departing car. Jean and Steph walked alongside as Michael edged it round to the front, and then they stood, each raising a hand, as they heard from the sudden silence that the car’s wheels had left the gravel of the courtyard and reached the start of the drive that threw its black ribbon down into the night.
***
What I remember thinking most about the day before Michael set off with the bags was how ordinary it must have looked on the surface. Steph and I kept well clear of the pool, and that was all, really, apart from the smoking bonfire that we went out to see to in turns, every now and then.
Once again it was the house that rescued us, with its demands and its rewards. I found things to do: dusting as usual, flowers to arrange, the hearth to sweep, bathrooms and the kitchen to clean. One of the tiebacks of the drawing room curtains had lost one of its tassels, so I sewed it back on. Oh, it’s never-ending, the upkeep of a house like this. A house like this claims a number of one’s daily hours no matter what, and it’s a pleasure to surrender them to it. Because when the flowers are freshened up, the silver cleaned, and the whiff of beeswax and the faint, delicious oil smell from the Aga mix and spread themselves through the rooms, it feels like a reward, or rather, a contract honoured. What a rich repayment for one’s willing attentions to a house, to be given a home in return. With Michael so conspicuously absent and the noise of the saw going on in the background, I thought this on and off during the day, until it seemed to me that we owed it to the house itself, and not only to one another, to keep strong. It may sound silly but it was as if the house would be hurt, too, if we were to neglect it now, or fail to see things through. I worried too, of course. Towards evening I got busy with things that I thought Michael might need, and that kept me occupied until it was time for him to go.
We were grateful for an uneventful day that day. Steph managed to sleep in the afternoon but I could not, for thinking of Michael. She took Charlie back to Sally’s as usual, and when she returned she reported that Sally had been absolutely the same as ever. This was as we had hoped. Steph still seemed to be existing in this half-sleep, taking in things, responding and reporting back as if her brain were some patient machine. There was no question of panic. All in all, things were going well. But that night, after Michael had left, I was reluctant to go to bed. Tired out though I was, I stayed up and walked round the house, going from room to room, slowly and quietly, so as not to wake Steph. I believe I was seeking comfort. Eventually I went to bed and lay awake, praying that Michael would be all right.
For two weeks nothing happened. With Michael away, the grass grew. Jean felt she walked through the lawn, rather than across it. She would go slowly, with eyes down on her way back from cutting flowers, and ache for Michael’s return. Life had become more modest; an air of quiet waiting descended, befitting a household that is observing a period of formal mourning.
One evening in the middle of July Steph entered Sally’s house with Charlie to find Sally sitting red-eyed in the kitchen. She took Charlie from Steph’s arms unceremoniously, with none of the singsong endearments that Steph considered phoney in any case. The silence was uncomfortable so for once Steph, who expected Sally to initiate the talking, started fi
rst.
‘All right, Sally?’
Sally answered by sinking her head into Charlie’s neck. When her face reappeared she said, ‘There’s a problem with Gordon. Or there might be, they don’t really know.’
‘Gordon?’
‘You know, Mr Brookes, Charlie’s granddad. They don’t know where he is. The police, I mean.’
‘But he’s on holiday, isn’t he? Didn’t he go off walking or something?’
‘He was meant to be back a week ago. His church lot just thought he must be taking a few extra days, but now the police have found his car. It was abandoned.’
Steph swallowed. ‘Oh, no!’ She could not for a moment remember what she was supposed to know and what she was not, so she sat down hard in a chair. What did the police know? Had they found Michael? Sally’s face disappeared back into Charlie’s clothes again and she began to rock gently. Steph looked round and forced herself to think. ‘Want me to put the kettle on?’ she said.
Sally nodded, her head still buried. Steph rose, filled it and switched it on. As she was washing mugs- every mug in the house seemed to be in the sink- she said in a worried voice, ‘So the police- what is it they’re saying, exactly?’
Sally presented her exhausted face again. ‘They’ve found his car, or what’s left of it. It was miles and miles from here- in a lay-by someplace near Chepstow, all vandalised and burnt out. They don’t know how it got there. It’s miles and miles from where he’s supposed to be. He’s supposed to be up north.’
‘You mean, he isn’t, then? Then where is he?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Steph, that’s what I’m telling you! They don’t know. They say he won’t have left the car there. They say it was probably stolen and dumped there and set alight.’
Steph drew in a shocked breath. ‘Oh, Sally! They’re not saying he- he wasn’t, you know, in it, was he?’
Sally seemed slightly surprised. ‘No, of course not. They don’t know where he is. That’s what I’m saying. They don’t know if the theft of the car’s got something to do with where he is, or if it’s a separate thing altogether. But the police want to find the people who took the car. Obviously.’
‘But are they… I mean they must be… are they looking for him? Up north, I mean?’ Steph asked, picking up the kettle. It was easier, she was finding, to ask questions casually when she was doing something else at the same time. She filled their coffee mugs and brought them to the table.
Sally shook her head. ‘They won’t even say he’s definitely missing, they say he could have left the car somewhere to go off walking, assuming it’d be safe for days and days. I think they’re making enquiries up there, along the Pennine Way, but they’re not even sure he went. Nobody would steal a car up there and bring it all the way down here, according to them. So they think it was nicked from round here, and he never went up north. They said he could’ve changed his plans and decided to do his walking down south instead of going all the way up there.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know exactly what they’re doing. They don’t know what they’re doing, if you ask me.’
‘Maybe he did change his mind. You said he used to go up north and walk there with his wife, didn’t you? Maybe at the last minute he couldn’t face it on his own and went somewhere else instead. Here, I’ll take Charlie while you have your coffee.’
Sally looked at Steph with respect and interest as she handed him over. ‘That is possible,’ she said, nodding. She drank some of her coffee but as she put down her mug her face crumpled. ‘But those awful people… the people that took the car, you don’t think… I mean maybe they… you know, they might have… you know, hurt him… and just left him somewhere. Oh God!’
‘But what for?’
‘Oh God, Steph, I don’t know! That’s what the police are for, isn’t it? And there is such a thing as motiveless crime, you know.’ She blew her nose on a paper tissue from her sleeve and looked up. ‘That’s not the only thing, anyway. The point is I had to ring Simon in Nepal to tell him. I’ve rung the place he’s in anyway, it’s just this tiny hospital. I couldn’t actually speak to him. I was going to tell him he should come home, only he can’t. He’s ill.’ Her eyes filled with tears again. ‘All this time, for over a month, he’s been really ill. That’s why he hasn’t phoned. And he can’t travel yet, so I’ll have to go and be with him and bring him home. I’ve got to go to Nepal.’
‘What about Charlie? You’re not taking Charlie, are you? Shall I… I mean, it’d be better, wouldn’t it? It’d help, wouldn’t it, if we had him at the manor?’
Sally looked gratefully at her, as more tears ran down her cheeks. Charlie, interested, began mimicking her sniffles with little grunts of his own. ‘Would you, Steph? Could you, I mean if it’s no trouble? I haven’t got anyone else he’s so happy with. He’s so good with you.’
‘Of course! Of course I’ll look after him. And of course it’s no trouble. Is it, Charlie?’
‘And look, as long as you don’t need to… I mean, I’ve been a bit outspoken about Simon and his dad. Not that it’s not all true but it’s been a difficult time, you know? I mean, I’ve told the firm I’ve got to go to Nepal, and I’ve told Philip. They’re OK about it and so’s he, but I suppose everybody wants to know where they stand. I can understand it.’
‘How long are you going for?’
‘That’s what I’m saying, I don’t know. I’ve got to get some jabs first anyway, and I can’t get a flight for another ten days. And I’ll be away three weeks. Minimum, it might be longer. Simon’s got this recurrent thing, he might be all right to travel soon or he might not. Why, is that a problem?’ Having got the favour sealed, Sally was now ready to defend her right to ask it.
‘No, of course it isn’t,’ Steph told her smoothly. ‘We’ll be fine. You can stay away as long as you like.’
***
If we needed encouragement to feel that what we were doing was appropriate and somehow meant, was perhaps even being surveyed and assisted from beyond by some approving deity, we got it, with this news of the car being burned out and abandoned. Over the next few days, as Sally got her trip to Nepal organised, Steph heard new snippets from her. The vicar’s depression and recent erratic habits did us no harm to start with. More and more of his parishioners were adding to the picture of a man with a skewed sense of proportion, a man making a terrible fuss over one lychgate, a man brooding about trouble with his bishop over a recent church theft, as well as his wife’s death and the break-up of his son’s marriage. Sally stopped short of mentioning suicide, at least to Steph, but the thought hung in the air between them whenever Gordon was spoken of.
But for the car not simply to be discovered (as we assumed it would eventually be) where Michael had left it, but to have been stolen, in all probability by joyriders, then vandalised and set alight somewhere just over the border into Wales, was a minor miracle. Because it muddied the picture. Should the police be combing the Pennine Way for an accident victim? Tracking down the brats who had stolen the car and establishing what they might have done with the car’s owner in the course of their thuggery? Dragging rivers? Alerting the ports? The Somerset police now had to work with the Welsh police and two different police authorities up in the Pennines, which was requiring additional layers of effort.
The day after Sally left for Nepal, the police came. A uniformed officer, with the words liaison and community in his title, I recall. We were ready, of course. He seemed particularly anxious that he wasn’t disturbing us and said he wouldn’t take very long. There was concern about the whereabouts of Mr Brookes, and he merely wanted to corroborate, if he could, what was already known about the day Mr Brookes came to see his grandson. He opened up his notebook. Mr Brookes, according to his information, had told his daughter-in-law on the telephone the previous evening, and remarked to the parish secretary that morning, that he was going to visit his grandson before heading up north on holiday. Could he start with our names? Yes, I confirmed, I was the house sitter, and did he want Town a
nd Country’s number? No, he didn’t think that would be necessary. Steph was my niece, staying with me for the time being. (We decided that we should be quite open about the house sitting, in case the police knew of the Standish-Caves. It was wiser also to stick to the aunt and niece story that Steph had told Sally right at the beginning, just in case there should be any cross-referencing.) When I said this I watched him look at Steph, playing on the drawing room floor with Charlie, that lovely hair swinging over her face. She looked up, pushing back her hair and smiling at him with her strange, green-gold eyes.
He had more questions, which we answered. Yes, Mr Brookes had kindly brought them down here from Sally’s house that morning. His mood? Difficult to say, as we had not met him before, but he had seemed a quiet sort of man, pleased to see Charlie but in a muted sort of way. Perhaps a little preoccupied. You might think, Steph said hesitatingly, and she hoped it didn’t sound cheeky, you might think that vicars would be happier than other people, believing in Jesus and all that. The policeman said he supposed vicars had their fair share of problems like everybody else, and in fact several members of Mr Brookes’s parish reported that he had been a changed man in the months since his wife passed away. We paused at this point for long sympathetic murmurs, which for myself were quite sincere. Yes, the police officer said, quite chatty now, Mr Brookes was always known to have been a workaholic, but had lately been driving himself even harder, throwing himself into things. We told him that Mr Brookes had left here at some time between twelve and half-past, after refusing an invitation to lunch. Yes, the policeman said, the man who ran the shop in the village believed he might have seen his car. That must have been quite soon after. The policeman pulled the rubber band back over his notebook and thanked us.