by C F Dunn
“And he died of a heart attack, having had no previous history of coronary events?”
“People do all the time, Henry.”
“And when there is an unexplained death, in most cases – including your grandfather’s – an autopsy is carried out. These,” he said, flourishing the handful of typed sheets from the table, “are the notes made relating to your grandfather’s post-mortem.”
“Where did you get them?”
“He was referred for an autopsy because the cause of his death was unknown.”
“He had a massive heart attack.”
“No, he didn’t. His symptoms mimicked acute coronary failure, but the pathologist could find no sign of heart disease or anything that could explain the sudden and catastrophic heart failure from which he supposedly died.”
“So… what did he die of?”
“The pathologist’s report states that he probably died as a result of asymptomatic acute heart failure brought on by cause unknown and leaving no trace. In other words, he didn’t know. But do you know what I found most interesting?” I shook my head, but he was already continuing, his eyes so bright that I could almost imagine they were Matthew’s. He held up the notes. “In these is a toxicology report, and do you know what he had to drink shortly before he died?” I shook my head again, frowning. “Coffee. Large amounts of strong coffee.”
“But he didn’t usually drink coffee. He only drank it that day at his friend’s wake because he thought it churlish to ask for tea. Dad said he hated the stuff – couldn’t stand the smell or… or the… taste…” I trailed off.
“Like someone else we know.”
The clues are there if you know where to look.
“Emma, what are the chances of that happening to two people? Medical science has progressed so much recently that it is now able to identify causes of disease that just a decade ago were unrecognizable. Think how far it has come.”
“And people would have either not recognized the differences or would have hidden them so they might conform to social norms and not appear different.”
“Yes.”
“He was always muddy.”
“What?”
“My grandfather. In my memory he was always shades of brown – khaki, mostly. I thought it was because he was in the Army.”
“And what do you think now?”
I looked up at the ceiling above my head, where a missed cobweb, decorated in dust, waved a lazy salute in the rising heat from the stove, and ran back through shelves in my memory until I had my grandfather pinned in my mind’s eye. “Now?” I said, squinting as I thought out loud. “Now I think he was trying to hide something.”
Henry raised the sheaf of paper and let it fall to the table. “My father developed his special capabilities because of the coronal ejection, but he already carried the markers in his genetic sequence – just as you and I do – but in him, the aurora switched them on. That’s why we have some of his traits, but not all. Your children’s seem magnified because they have inherited the gene from both of you.” His mouth lifted. “It’s the D’Eresby gene, and you are the key, Emma – you are the key.”
Long ago, a lifetime away, my grandpa had laid a wasted hand on the handwritten transcripts in front of him. “The journal, Pipkin,” he had said. “The journal holds the key.” And he had laughed as if at some private joke, words which meant little then, but came rattling in on my memory now. He had been so close to the truth, yet had not seen what lay before him in his granddaughter: through my D’Eresby heritage, I was the key.
CHAPTER
25
Rags of Time
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time
John Donne
Easter was late. The pears were in full bloom, the first apple blossom blushed pink and white in the orchard, and the last long-necked daffodils drooped in the lengthening grass. Goosegrass sent sticky-leaved envoys from under the hedges, and magpies, emboldened by lust, cracked twigs from greening branches for their nests. Theo and I picked cowslips and wisps of ivy, while Rosie sourced stones and moss. Then, taking Mrs Seaton’s rusty tray, together we went to the church and made an Easter garden under Christ’s benign eye, and left it on the altar as our offering. At the foot of her grandparents’ tomb, Rosie ranged jam jars of cowslips, scarlet stems of dogwood, fluffy buds of pussy willow, and she kissed her father’s broken image. There we sat for a while under the family window, as close to Matthew as we could, colours descending the columns as the sun climbed, and casting across the floor. Holding my children close, I prayed for Matthew, wherever he might be, and thanked God for our children, for our family, for bringing us home. Because that is what this place felt like and only the darkness squeezing my heart was a constant reminder of Matthew’s absence.
“I think,” I spoke into Rosie’s ear, “that Easter Bunny might have paid the orchard a visit.”
“Yay!” she squealed and, wriggling from my arms, jumped to her feet.
Pat was adding the finishing touches to their elaborate deception. “Bunny tail!” Rosie whooped, spotting the wisp of cotton wool snagged on a branch. “Easter Bunny’s been! Ooo, loo-k – there’s his ears…” and, diminutive willow basket in hand and Puppy at her heels, she raced off towards the glossy laurel where a pair of oversized rabbit ears twitched at the wall head.
“They’re rather effective at a distance,” I observed to Pat.
“Do you think she’s guessed? She’s such a quick little thing.”
“Possibly, but she’s enjoying believing it, nonetheless. Don’t we all? That’s the art of deception.”
Pat laughed. “It’s what we do best, sweetie.”
Henry appeared, tucking the cardboard ears under his coat. “I think we deserve a slice of simnel cake and a cup of tea for that sterling effort.”
I laughed. “I think you do. I’ll come and help with the veg when the children have finished hunting for eggs. And that’s a pretty good Canadian accent, if I might so observe.”
“Why, thank you, ma’am,” he drawled, with a shallow bow. “I’ve been working on it.”
Bleeding Heart: what a strange name for a beautiful plant. Its delicate candy-pink hoods throbbed with bees in the warm shelter of the wall where I sat. Picking delicate weeds from the crevices between joints where the mortar had crumbled, I watched the children scour the nooks for tiny, shiny Easter eggs, which Rosie carefully collected. Before long, Theo grew tired of wobbly walking and flumped into the grass with Bear in one hand and his basket of trains in the other. He looked like a stripy ground beetle in his colourful dungarees, while his sister flitted backwards and forwards, dropping eggs into his basket. Early insects hummed among the apple blossom against a bluebell sky, petals releasing a fragrance delicate as air. And a memory – translucent as glass – wound itself into my being. I had been here before. Not today, not last month, but years ago, when about Rosie’s age and before life imposed the condition of knowledge on my nascent mind. We must have been visiting the manor, and Nanna and Grandpa rested where I now sat, and Beth and I had danced in the long grass under the apple trees, catching petals. It had been a perfect moment of happiness, captured in memory, encapsulated in glass. I felt my eyes burn, and a tear escaped, and then another, and I found myself laughing and clapping as Rosie chased Puppy, at this new-found happiness, this sense of utmost peace, my garden of innocence.
Growing tired of the game, Puppy’s ears pricked up and she dashed off under the arch of hazy wisteria and towards the courtyard, leaving Rosie to settle by her brother. I joined them, crouching in the grass. Theo had chocolate smeared around his mouth and an expression of puzzled disgust as he chewed a piece of foil. “I’ll have that,” I said, hooking the gluey mess from his mouth. “Look, Theo, put an egg in the truck.” I showed him. In the distance, Puppy started barking.
“Mummy, did parasolophus like choc’late eggs if they were herb-e-vors and chocolate is
made from beans?”
“That’s it, darling, in the truck – good boy, well done.” Puppy was now producing a high-pitched yip. Pat must have started preparing lunch. “Um, I doubt it, Rosie. What do you think?”
“Well, if parasolophus did ate choc’late, and velociraptor ate parasolophus, would that mean velociraptors ate chocolate, too?”
“Uh, well…”
“And if velociraptor ate them, then doesn’t that make them oni… omi…”
“Omnivores?”
“Yes, omivores. Them.”
“The egg is in your mouth, Theo, that’s right. Omnivore? No, not really, in the same way a cat is a carnivore even though it consumes mice, which eat seeds, among other things.” I craned my neck towards the gate. “What is Puppy barking about?”
“I think velociraptor likes parasolophus and choc’late.” She crammed an egg in the plastic dinosaur’s mouth. “Gobble, gobble, gobble.”
Puppy’s barking had risen to a crescendo and, for the first time, I felt the hairs on my arms prickle. “Wait here,” I said, rising. The barking suddenly ceased. Ripples of tension crossed the surface of my skin. “Rosie,” I said in an undertone, “take Theo and go and hide in the bothy. Go. Now!”
She scrabbled to her feet, taking Theo by the hand. He dropped his train and whimpered. “Come on, Theo.” She began to pull him, but he objected, opening his mouth to wail, and she hoisted him under his arms. I hunted around for a branch, spade, rock – anything I could use to protect us from whatever was beyond the wall. Rosie had made it to the gardener’s bothy with her protesting brother, when Puppy bounded back through the gate, followed by Henry’s tall figure. “Wait, Rosie, it’s OK.” I raised my voice. “Henry, you gave me an awful fright!”
He stopped in the shade of the arch. Why didn’t he come into the garden? He seemed surrounded by an opaque pall of uncertainty I couldn’t read, and something tugged at my consciousness: a warning? “Stay there and be ready to run,” I warned the children. I grabbed the garden fork leaning against the trunk of a tree and with a cautious step, advanced. “Henry…?”
He moved, stepping free of the shadows and into the sun, his hair exploding into radiant fire. A pulse of energy, vibrant, alive, shot between us and I gasped as the bolt hit me in the chest.
Matthew? Rooted, I could only stand and stare until he moved again, breaking the spell. I dropped the fork into the soft soil, my legs carrying me forward of their own volition, and I called out, not hesitant now, but urgent, “Matthew? Is that you?”
From behind me, small feet struck the ground, and Rosie passed me, reaching him in a flurry of limbs and colliding into his open arms. Even had she not already done so, the fire sweeping through my bones and burning my blood confirmed it. He knelt in the damp grass with his eyes closed, holding Rosie to him, her hands wound in his coat, securing him, while Puppy bounced around them, too excited to bark. He opened his eyes and sought me, and his voice cracked as he spoke my name. “Emma…”
But I couldn’t move, I couldn’t believe it was him.
“Da, da, da,” a small, excited voice called, ending in a squeal. Matthew looked beyond me to where Theo tottered through the grass towards us.
“Theo! You’re walking!” With Rosie’s arms still wrapped around his neck, Matthew crossed the patch of ground and swung him into the air with his free arm, hugging them both, kissing each child, his face alive. Laughing, he pivoted on one foot, searching, and saw me watching. His smile became almost cautious, and his voice softened as he tilted his head in query: “Emma?” Stumbling a little on the tussocks, I joined them, lying my head against his chest, my own arms joining his around our children. “My Emma, my love,” he said into my hair. “I said I would always come back to you.”
I searched his beard-roughened face, his skin grey, his eyes dark, and all I could find to say was, “I… I thought you were Henry.”
Rosie reached out and touched his eyes, his jaw. “It is my daddy.” And Theo copied her, patting Matthew’s mouth with his chocolatey hand. Their father laughed again, but it caught in his throat and his eyes glistened. He pulled us closer into his orbit. I felt him absorbing my energy, the bond growing stronger, melding, unbroken, until I was certain I could pull away from him enough to see his face without breaking the cords. Uncorked questions piled so fast they tumbled from my mouth.
“How did you get here? What happened? Did you escape?”
His face dimmed. “Later, my love.” He let go, putting Theo carefully on his feet and sliding Rosie to the ground. “And who’s this?” he asked, going down on one knee and folding the puppy’s ears. “She came to greet me in the courtyard and insisted I follow her.”
“Puppy,” Rosie responded. “She’s my puppy and Theo’s. Henry found her.”
His smile dissolved as he looked at me. “He’s here? Henry is here?” He stood, his expression one of longing.
“And Pat,” I said. “They’ve been here since Christmas. They’re probably in the great hall or the kitchen.”
Matthew bent to kiss me. “I must see him,” he said.
Rosie dragged at my hand, anxiety crowding her face as Matthew left us and made for the house. “Mum-my!”
“I know, darling, but Daddy won’t leave us again.” I picked up Theo and together we followed the path Matthew’s swift steps had made through the grass.
From the open door to the great hall, I heard Pat’s sudden exclamation, and we arrived to see Henry slowly stand, the newspaper he had been reading falling forgotten to the floor. For a moment, the two men contemplated each other, then Matthew took several strides towards him as Henry’s face crumbled, and embraced him. “My son,” he said, as Henry’s shoulders shook.
“Come on,” I said to Rosie, quietly. “Puppy wants some lunch. Let’s leave Daddy and Henry to talk.”
“You look so tired.” I touched the lines around his eyes; they were deeper than before – etched with weariness. He captured my hand and held it to his cheek, breathing in my scent, anchoring himself in reality. Light from his family’s memorial window struck lines of blue and red across his ashen skin.
“It took me some time to get here. I couldn’t risk a direct route – not until I could be certain I wouldn’t lead them to you.”
“What happened? Who took you? You escaped?”
“No, not exactly. I…” He removed his hand from mine and his mouth clamped shut; it was as if words had become stuck and he struggled to release them. I took a deep breath and willed myself to patience. He uncurled his fists, forcing them to relax. “I don’t know who held me; they remained faceless, nameless – part of their bag of tricks, I suppose. They bound me, placed a hood over my head, and took me to a facility somewhere in the north – Alaska, I think – it was difficult to tell. I must have been underground – the temperature remained constant and the only lighting was artificial. And the air was stale – recycled – and I felt trapped and disorientated. It reminded me of a Cold War bunker, and perhaps it was lined in lead, something like that, because I couldn’t feel you, sense you. And they left me there, in a windowless room, with a camera trained on me day and night – or I assume so, since I couldn’t measure time. They took my wedding ring, Emma, and my watch – Ellen’s watch – and all forms of identity. Even my signet ring that I’d worn every day of my life since my father gave it to me. They stripped me of anything that might remind me of who I was, of my home, my family.”
I repossessed his hand and held it firmly. “You’re here now.”
“Yes.” He exhaled slowly as if he didn’t quite believe it, looking at the distempered walls of the church rising above us. “I don’t know how long it was before they started the interrogation. By then I suppose they thought me sufficiently depersonalized. I was taken to another room and left there alone without chair or table, and then they switched off the light. Then the questions started: Who are you? Where do you come from? On and on and nothing but the floor to tell me which way up I faced, to let me know I was
still alive – just this… toneless voice coming at me out of the darkness. But they couldn’t take you; they couldn’t erase the memory of my family, and I clung to that hope – that you had managed to get away, to find your way here – home – where you might be safe, feel rooted.”
“We do,” I said. “We love it here. The only thing missing was you.”
“I’m glad,” he smiled, a tired smile worn thin. “I knew your family would help you if need be, and then there was the nutmeg…”
At that I smiled. “You taught Rosie a different version of the rhyme. I think she rather wanted the diamond herself.”
“I’ll make it up to her.”
“She has everything she really wants, Matthew, and it isn’t a diamond. Go on, tell me what happened.”
“I hadn’t spent a lifetime avoiding detection to be so easily tricked by psychological interrogation.”
“So?”
“So they hauled me off to some laboratory or other… I didn’t make it easy for them; I’ve lived in fear of such things for so long that I wasn’t going to give up easily. But there’s only so much I can do – I have physical limits to my strength, and they found them.” Without thinking his hand went to his eyes.
“They tortured you,” I stated, covering my mouth as my gut contracted, making me want to throw up.
“Well, what they did certainly wouldn’t have been allowed under the Geneva Convention. But then they didn’t see me as human – not even an animal – I was more of a machine to be explored and tested. I grew weaker. I had no recollection from my youth of what it is like to feel such weakness – I was like an engine running out of steam.” With a quizzical expression, he held his hands in front of him, flexing his long fingers, seeing the muscles contract in his arms, as if looking at them for the first time. And for the first time I noticed small puncture wounds, faint but there, discolouring the surface of his skin.
“They hurt you.”
He rested his hand on mine, lacing our fingers. “They didn’t see it that way.” We sat like that for a time, the yew tapping out the minutes on the memorial window, the sun now striking at an angle through the glass.