by David Mark
He hadn’t said it accusingly but Felicity had heard it as such. She’d given in to more tears. Shuddered and wailed and said it was all her fault.
‘The body,’ I’d said. ‘He went to go and see the body we told him about. And now the body’s not there.’
‘This is the body in the crypt, then,’ said John, and his expression was hard to read. ‘Don’t think on that now. Can’t have been nice. Must have been a shock.’
I hadn’t known how to respond. I think I looked a little petulant, like a child about to stamp their feet. What did I actually want? What would I have asked for if given the chance?
‘The body’s gone,’ I said. ‘There are old bones and scraps of clothes and bits of coffin under the branches of the laurel but the body we saw – it’s been moved.’
He’d shaken his head at that. Flicked a finger at Felicity, as if to tell me to say no more that would upset her. I’d wanted to shout at the ceiling. Wanted to start smashing things. I think he saw that in my eyes. Saw that I wasn’t going to be pacified with tea and the warmth of the kitchen.
Chivers never came to my door. I sat in the kitchen all night, waiting for the lights of his car to illuminate the blackness beyond the glass. Nobody came. The silence was absolute. I angled the chair so as to be able to hear the telephone if it rang in the hallway but it stayed maddeningly silent as the evening wore on. I had changed out of my damp clothes when I finished my long, soaking trudge back up the hill. I’d wanted to put on nothing more than a bathrobe or to simply wrap myself in a blanket but I had expected Chivers, and perhaps even a detective or two. I’d expected questions. Gentle probing. Conspiratorial glances and intelligent eyes. So I dressed smartly: a person to be taken seriously. White woollen polo-neck sweater and a black skirt. Even found my wedding ring at the bottom of the cutlery drawer and slipped it on. It was too big. Slid around on my finger like a hula hoop. I kept it on nonetheless. I was a married woman. I’d been to university. I’d suffered bereavement and I’d seen more of the world than any of them. If I said I’d seen a body then I was damn well to be believed. Nobody came. Nobody came the next day either. I rattled around the house, floating aimlessly into rooms I barely remembered having visited before.
It would have been a perfect home for somebody who actually wanted it. Three storeys high, with five acres of land, sitting halfway up a hill with a view across the tree-lined valley and the sound of the River Irthing occasionally bubbling up through the silence to soak into the old stone walls. It had stood for a hundred years and bore the mixed tastes of each of the previous inhabitants. Some of the rooms looked little changed from Victorian times with their high ceilings and dusty chandeliers, picture rails and ornate fireplaces. Others were homely, as if a smaller, cosier residence had been crammed into the interior of the stately shell. I had made little impact. The books that had threatened to overwhelm my living space at college took up barely one shelf of the colossal library and the framed pictures of the Parisian jazz bands that had looked so sophisticated when I was nineteen seemed faintly ridiculous hung against floral wallpaper in the master bedroom with its sagging four-poster bed. Cranham had bought the place at auction. Took it lock, stock and barrel. Paid over the odds, no doubt. Stuffed handfuls of cash into the pockets of locals and told them to make it habitable. Probably held their handshakes a little too long; that little smile twitching in the corner of his eye. It was wrong of me to think of him in anything but affectionate terms. He had saved me, though by God I resented him for that. Took a woman who was carrying another man’s child and offered her a home and an income. Had no interest in what I got up to or who I got up to it with. Just needed a wife and child and a cover story so his family and colleagues would stop questioning him about when he was going to find a wife. Needed one, if he was going to become a parliamentarian. Couldn’t let the truth get out. Couldn’t tell the world that he had as much interest in women as a fish does in aeroplanes. He liked men. Rough, dirty-faced, hard-skinned men. Kept one, almost as a pet, in the Knightsbridge flat where he slept on the nights he wasn’t reclining on soft sheets in some luxurious hotel or another. He was a kind man, in his way. Did right by me when he really didn’t have to. But we both knew what our marriage was for. He would have come to the funeral, had I given him the chance. There was no service. Just the cremation and my own mumbled words as I scooped up handfuls of what used to be my son and tossed them onto the breeze.
CORDELIA
It was gone six when my patience snapped. I wasn’t going to sit and wait for a knock at the door any longer. Wasn’t going to stare at the telephone. I wanted answers. People should want to ask me questions. I had things to say.
The pub the locals called Samson’s stood just beyond the railway bridge on the Northumberland side of the village. The geography of the place still makes my head spin. Gilsland is split in two by a boundary line that deposits half in Cumbria and half in Northumberland. The two sides have different councils. Different rules. Different attitudes, if you can believe such a thing. The Northumberland half thinks of Haltwhistle, Hexham and Newcastle as the nearest big towns and cities. On the Cumbrian side it’s Brampton and Carlisle. Families divided from their neighbours only by an adjoining wall can pay different taxes and receive different services. And cutting across that invisible boundary line is the remnants of Hadrian’s Wall – a risen scar, a lesson in the brutal efficiency of conquerors who reached Gilsland and decided they had probably gone as far north as anybody really needed to. It was a place on the edge of things – fragmented, disjointed. More past than present.
I had been in Samson’s once before. A friend from university came to stay when I was seven months’ pregnant. She wore a lemon-yellow raincoat and a tartan beret and in the sweat and cigarette fug of the bar we had felt like something from the circus as we sipped our pints and bathed in the silent glares of men who had no desire to see two young lassies in their pub and who resented having to hold in their farts for the sake of two silly girls. We’d found it funny at first. Drunk an extra pint just for bad. But the fun of it didn’t last long and we were both pleased to leave, closing the door on the roar of angry words that followed our departure.
I was shivering by the time I reached the front door. The rain was still coming down in waves and my umbrella blew itself inside out as a military vehicle on its way from the RAF base tore past me and sent a puddle up my legs as far as my waist. I looked bedraggled and pitiful as I pushed open the door and walked into the main bar with as much bravado as I could muster.
The little man who pushed past me did so while doffing his cap. He was one of the few I was likely to recognize. His name was Parker and he lived in the house next to my own. He was an unsightly little fellow, with a hunched back and lips like lugworms. His wig looked like a squashed cat. Stefan had laughed at him without malice the first time he spotted him in the neighbouring field. I’d shushed him, but not with any gusto. Parker was a vile little imp: all twisted limbs and mottled flesh. He’d been there beside me when Stefan died. Trying to help. To be kind.
‘Your pardon, Mrs Hemlock,’ he said, knuckling his cap. ‘Are you well?’
I was a bit startled by his closeness. I had a sudden memory of the past winter, when Stefan first fell ill. The Parkers knocking at my door. Could they help? Could they hold my hand as my son breathed his last? I swear, if I’d had a gun I would have killed Parker and his mousey little wife for no other reason than temper.
‘There’s a stag,’ he said, and I heard the trace of his accent. ‘We’re looking for whoever hurt it. Left to bleed, it was. A terrible thing. Terrible.’
I looked past him at the other drinkers in the bar. Parker had been sticking a reward poster to the wall beside the counter. It was offering a tenner to anybody who could help find whoever had butchered a stag and left it to bleed to death on the forest floor out at Greenhead. That was typical of Parker. He saw himself as somebody important. A toff – that’s what he’d have called himself. He had nothing a
gainst hunting and wouldn’t have objected to a pack of hounds tearing into a fox, but he disliked the notion of somebody sticking a knife in a stag and letting the poor bastard bleed away.
‘If you need anything,’ he said, and his wormlike lips stuck together like wet jelly sweets as he spoke. ‘Audrey and I – we’re there for you. Whatever you might need.’
I gave him a little nod, my own lips unconsciously pressing together as I did so. He saw me mimicking the action and he looked sad for a moment, as if he had looked in a mirror and it had laughed. My heart softened at once and I was about to invite him to stay: to say an overdue thanks for the help he and his wife had given last year. But he was already shuffling past me. I reached for his arm and he turned to look at my eyes with such intensity that I feared my thoughts would be visible on the back of my skull.
‘You don’t have to be lonely,’ he said, quietly. ‘Not when there’s people who would do anything to be your friend.’
I glanced around, wondering if we were being listened to. Everybody had their heads down. They were keen to see the back of Parker. He may have given plenty of money to the village but he was not really one of them. He read great big textbooks that he ordered from overseas and gave lectures at schools and village halls all over the neighbouring towns and villages. He liked the sound of his own voice, but more than anything else, he was difficult company. He didn’t like to talk about the football or what was in the newspapers or whether Big Jim Cotteril really had killed a bull with a shovel out at Cumwhinton. He wanted to hear about people. Their private lives. Their relationships. Were they happy? Did they regret their decisions? What did they want from the future? Talking to him was like a job interview and the men of the village found it uncomfortable.
A moment later the door banged. Parker was gone and I was alone with the handful of drinkers who had made the journey to Samson’s. The weather had kept the crowds away. Two men stood drinking at the bar and a fat man I recognized from the post office queue was seated at one of the square tables. He had a tube of glue unscrewed in front of him and was attempting to fix flights to a set of darts. He looked up as I approached the bar. Gave me a once-over. Decided I wasn’t more interesting than the task at hand.
‘Evening,’ said the man behind the bar. I found out later his name was Stubbs. He was tall and sixty-ish, with a ruddy face and an assemblage of risen, gnarled warts across his neck and forehead, as if he was in the habit of resting his cheek against a toad. He seemed friendly enough. A different man to the last time I was in.
‘I was looking for Sergeant Chivers,’ I said, and to my shame, I think I tried to make my accent sound more like the locals. I jerked my head a little too, like Felicity, pointing with her chin.
‘Be in if he can,’ said Stubbs. ‘Roads are bloody awful.’ He winced at his use of bad language in front of a woman. ‘Apologies,’ he said. ‘What’ll it be?’
I looked at the two other drinkers. Neither seemed remotely offended by my presence. The pub was no bigger than Felicity’s kitchen. The walls were that yellowish-white that bald men’s pillowcases go after a year or two. It smelled of cigarettes and mud; of wet clothes dried in damp rooms. Of spilled beer and burnt fat. There was a mirror behind the row of spirits behind the bar and the only other decoration on the walls were a collection of horse brasses, a picture of a ship that was hung so wonky it appeared to be trying to correct the waves, and a dartboard that seemed more holes than cork. Somebody had written ‘Macker’s a Puff’ on the blackboard beside it.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay. I’d got myself ready to talk to Chivers. Had my whole speech planned. I wasn’t ready to deflate yet. Wanted something more.
‘We have an American whisky,’ said Stubbs. ‘Nice with a drop of lemonade. My wife’s a fan.’
I found myself liking him. Gave him a smile that he seemed to like. Propped my elbow on the bar as if I had done this before.
‘Had a shock, I’ll bet,’ said Stubbs, putting a glass in front of me. It was filled to the brim. I took a sip. It tasted of vanilla fudge and I nodded my appreciation.
‘A shock?’ I asked, reaching into the pocket of my leather coat for my purse.
‘Yesterday,’ he said, nodding in the direction of Denton. ‘Put your purse away. There’s a dozen drinks in the till for you already. There was a collection when you had your sadness. Nobody knew where to send flowers so they just put you a drink in if you ever came down the hill.’
It felt like there was something blossoming inside me. I pictured closed roses opening to the sunrise. I just nodded. Something between a grimace and a smile gripped my features and I took another long swig of the sweet drink.
‘The wife was going to bring you something,’ he said, resting large hands on the bar top. ‘Wasn’t sure what to bring. We were all sorry to hear. Bad business.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, tightly.
‘What was the nipper’s name?’
‘Stefan,’ I said, blinking rapidly, nails leaving crescents in my palms.
‘You foreign, then?’ he asked, chattily.
‘No. I just liked the name.’
‘First Stefan for me,’ he said. Then he jabbed the air. ‘Tell a lie. There was a Stefan in Holland, I think. I drove a wagon in the RAF. Celebrated the end of the war in this tiny place in the middle of nowhere. Street party like you wouldn’t believe. Met a Stefan then. Trombone player, I think. Hard to remember. I’d had a few.’
I wasn’t sure what to say. This was conversation. This was how grown-ups spoke. I realized how few such chats I had ever had; how few times I had spoken just for the simple exchange of stories and the passing of the time. I always wanted something, even if just to show off how much cleverer than them I was.
‘Bad news about Fairfax,’ he said, breathing out. ‘I heard you had a wee chat not long before. Up at John Goose’s place in Denton. Poor old soul, eh? Shouldn’t have been out in it.’
There was no reproach in his voice but I sensed the other two drinkers subtly shift position so they could hear. I recognized one of them. He was a well-built man with curly black hair and lips like slugs. The shoulders of his checked shirt were soaked a darker hue than the rest of it and a faint steam rose from him, as if from compost.
‘That’s what I wanted to see Sergeant Chivers about,’ I said. ‘I thought he might have been up to see me.’
‘Never rushes himself, our Chivvy,’ smiled Stubbs. ‘Takes an hour for a thought to reach his mouth, though that’s ’cause it has to travel the half mile from his arse, if you’ll pardon the language.’
I grinned. It might have reached my eyes. ‘So he will be up, you think?’
‘Don’t know, love. What you got to tell him?’
I took another drink. Gave it two breaths of thought. Shrugged inside myself.
‘When the storm hit a tree came down. Smashed into one of the old crypts. There was something inside. That’s what I told Fairfax. He went to see. Next I heard he’d had an accident.’
‘Aye, God rest him,’ sighed Stubbs, shaking his head. ‘Spadeadam road. The way that rain came down it’s no wonder he got himself turned around, though you’d think he would be able to find his way in pitch bloody darkness given how long he’s been here. Word is he was off to go and tell the vicar of Magdalene about the damage. Floods pushed him up the wrong road. Lost control going over the brow towards the base. Slammed on but skidded and went straight through the glass. Couple of lads from the base found him there. Bad state he was. Right mess.’
I closed my eyes. It was a horrible thought. I’d barely known him but I knew he would never have been out on the road had I not pushed him to go to the churchyard. Was he trying to impress me? He’d enjoyed looking at my legs. Had seemed a cheerful, playful sort of man.
‘It’s awful,’ I said, and nodded when Stubbs enquired if I wanted another drink.
‘Been through a lot, had Fairfax. Lost his son at the tail end of the war. Was a wireless operator who should have been mil
es from danger. His boy were a soft soul. Bad eyes and a weak chest but he signed up rather than be called up. RAF, same as me, though we were never anywhere near one another. Radio station he was in took a direct hit. Fairfax were broken up, you could tell that, but he kept it in, like you had to. Dealt with it the right way. Crying shame. Had a gift for words, did his son. Reckon he would have been a writer if he’d made it back. Fairfax would have been proud as you like. If you ask me that’s the only reason he took it up himself. Helped him feel close, if that doesn’t sound too feeble.’
I wasn’t sure what he meant. Told him so.
‘You must be one of the few he never talked to,’ said Stubbs, with a laugh. ‘Quite the scribbler, was Fairfax. Wrote a couple of little pamphlets on the history of Gilsland. Another on walks along the Roman Wall, which made him few friends, I can tell you. Last thing we need is even more people up here. We’re at capacity.’
I looked around at the empty bar. Raised an eyebrow.
‘Was he good?’ I asked.
‘At what?’
‘Writing.’
He scratched his chin. Shrugged. ‘Good at asking questions. Always jotting stuff down, like a journalist in a film. Needed a hat with the word “Press” on it to complete the look. Wanted to do a book on the people of Gilsland. Said it had a fascinating history, which I don’t suppose I can argue with. Always asking if he could pop over for an interview. That’s what he called them, his chats. Interviews.’
‘What was he working on?’ I asked, and while the snobbish part of me was eager to dismiss his efforts as the works of an amateur, I still found myself eager to read the results.
‘Something on the old camp,’ he said, sucking his lip. ‘POW place up the road. All gone now. Was a big old set-up in its day, though. Hundreds of Germans. Thousands maybe. You must know this, love, you can’t not have heard.’
I found myself embarrassed. Temper flashed, as it always did when I found myself not knowing the answer to something.