by David Mark
I thought back. Had John told me? Had Chivers mentioned it? Did I even ask?
‘Aye, he’d taken a late lunch and was heading back for the afternoon shift. Saw the car there in the middle of the road, windscreen smashed. Got out in the middle of the gale and found Fairfax on the road. Sorry sight, so I heard. Went right through the windscreen after he hit the tree.’
I closed my eyes. Couldn’t help but picture it. The Spadeadam road was a desolate place; a curled grey rope dropped into acre upon acre of forest and bog.
‘He got some of the men down from the base soon as he found him,’ said Pat, pushing herself further back into the wall as the rain redoubled its efforts. ‘He was already gone. They called Chivers from the base. Harland came and towed the car. Ambulance came from Haltwhistle. You’ll be looking after the arrangements, I presume.’
Would I? Had that already been assumed? I supposed there was nobody else. I was the closest thing to family that Fairfax had.
‘Was the car damaged though? I mean, if he went through the windscreen …’
‘Knowing the details won’t bring him back,’ said Pat, looking down the road in the hope of seeing the sturdy, familiar shape of the bus. She sighed and checked her watch. ‘I’m starting to worry about getting back.’
‘You haven’t got there yet.’
‘The bus will come. But what if there’s no bus back? I’ll have to stay over with Meg and that’ll lead to blood on the walls.’
I managed a smile. Pat and her sister had never seen eye to eye, though when I said as much to John he told me it were due to the fact that Pat was a wee thing and Meg was a tall, long-limbed creature. We would have never said it in company but there was always a few suspicions about whether their mam had stayed entirely faithful to her old fella when he was away in the merchant navy before the first war.
‘Who you got today?’ I asked.
‘Mr and Mrs Dolan at Talkin. He’ll pick me up in Brampton but said he wouldn’t come all this way. Thinking of the mud on his Rolls Royce if you ask me.’
‘Is that what he drives?’
‘I don’t know. Looks posh, though. Not as posh as the brothers drive at the hall, though. He hasn’t got their manners, neither.’
I didn’t push her on that. Nobody asked what went on up at Kirklinton Hall but it was fun to tilt your head and put an ear to the wind and snatch the few whispers that drifted east. The hall had been a stately home and a private residence for the gentry during its long life. A hotel during the war and then flats that nobody wanted. Then some Londoner with plenty of money got his hands on it. He put in a glass-floored ballroom and turned it into a private casino. Spent a small fortune filling it with the sort of luxuries you would find in a sultan’s palace. Rumour had it there were dancing girls who wore nowt but feathers and that there were no shortage of local farmers had gambled away their children’s inheritance while lasses with lips like a folded quilt whispered in their ears. I had no wish to see the place but I’d have washed all the dishes in Denton to know which locals had crossed the threshold. Rumour had it that the two well-dressed brothers from the newspapers were regular visitors. It was only a couple of years later that the brothers got locked up and the place went out of business. Turned into a wreck within three or four years. Last I heard about it, some lad from Longtown was on the wireless, remembering how he and his mates used to break in and steal the furniture when it was all boarded up. Got a phone-in going on Radio Cumbria. All these reformed bad boys telling the world how they used to use priceless old antique wardrobes as rafts on the Eden.
‘Wonder if Fairfax’s book will be published now he’s gone,’ mused Pat. ‘Would be nice to see what he’s actually been working on all these years, though I feel like crying knowing he’ll never see it on a shelf.’
I shivered. Felt somebody walk over my grave. Held my elbows in tighter and clutched my handbag tighter, as if I’d seen a stranger on a country road.
‘The house is full of old papers and scribblings,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘If there is a book among that lot it will be the size of a sideboard when it’s typed up. Loads of notes and mile after mile of handwriting. I don’t know what will become of it all.’
‘Be sad to see it on the fire,’ said Pat.
I shook my head, hard. ‘That won’t happen. I’ll read every word, given time.’
‘Make sure you only glance at my boring old stuff,’ said Pat, laughing. ‘Honestly, it will put you to sleep.’
‘He interviewed you?’
‘Interviewed every bugger. Spent plenty time with me and my Keith. Must have been ten years ago he got round to me. Asked questions he already knew the answer to, like where I went to school and where I lived and where I met Keith. His pencil was a blur. I don’t know what he got out of it. I talked to him about both wars though I felt uncomfortable about it. He was off fighting in the first one and his son died in the second so why he’d want to remember, I don’t know.’
‘What else did he want to know?’ I asked, and the query sounded unfamiliar on my tongue. It suddenly struck me as odd how rarely I asked such honest questions.
She scratched her head. ‘Wittered on about the drama society during the war. The athletics team from the camp. They built the first 400-metre track in this country, did you know that? Some of it’s still there. You ever go up the castle? You can see the old buildings. Old cells, too.’
I realized I was chewing my lip. Did it matter? Was it in some way connected to the words beneath the church floor?
‘Why did he ask you about it?’ I said.
Pat screwed up her face. I swear, her lower lip almost touched her forehead.
‘I think I were just there to make it chatty,’ she said. ‘You know my Keith. Ask him how he is and he’ll tell you “fine” – even if there’s an arrow sticking in his forehead. I get him talking even if it’s just by correcting the bits I get wrong.’
‘And what did he want to know about from Keith?’
‘Well, you know as well as I do that his father was a master mason and afore the sickness, Keith was no slouch. They did a lot of the work on the big buildings around here. Manor house, castle, vicarage, churches.’
‘Churches?’
‘Of course. Magdalene and yon church at Denton. Out Longtown way, too.’
‘What was he asking?’
‘Designs. Whether he still had old draftsman’s sketches and whatnot. Then he got onto talking about the camp.’
‘The POW camp?’
‘O’course. Keith and his father were among the contractors who put the place together. ‘Twere just a field, if you remember it. Next thing it had to accommodate thousands of men and not all of them were happy to be out of the war. Some wanted to keep scrapping. Fairfax was asking Keith about what he saw. About the men who came. Where they were from. What countries. What languages. What uniforms. Honestly, this went on an age.’
‘And this was years ago, was it?’ I asked, unsure of the relevance.
‘Aye, well, Fairfax started his research around the time the Romans left but there were never a time when he weren’t pestering us for little bits we might have forgotten.’
I stared at the stream that gurgled in the gutter. Watched a clump of leaves spin and twirl on the current. My brain felt like that – as if all I could do was give myself up to the direction of the wind.
‘Did he ever mention a Frenchman?’ I asked, and the words were away into the air before I could suck them back. ‘Ever ask questions that made no sense …?’
Pat changed her face. Hardened it a little. ‘What you asking for?’ she snapped.
‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘Not asking. Just wondering. Some of his papers mentioned a little place in France. Seemed important to him but who’s to say? And Fairfax never interviewed me, y’see. Just wondered why not.’
‘Oh,’ said Pat, and the tension went out of her. ‘Well, you’re as best being in the group of lucky ones. There’ll be no shortage of folk worrying abou
t what Fairfax did with their words.’
‘It was just a local history book,’ I said, shivering as the rain finally found a route from the tip of my spine to the bottom of my left leg.
‘Aye, but there’s some history you probably shouldn’t speak on. Nobody wants other people reading what they did in the war or what they thought about the prisoners working their land or those who stayed and married the locals. They’re personal thoughts. And Fairfax did push, God rest him.’
As she spoke, I felt, rather than heard, the approach of somebody behind me. There was no sun to cast a shadow but I suddenly felt somebody at my back. Then I smelled him too. Dogs and dark places – like a bleeding Alsatian at the back of a cave.
‘Hello Felicity,’ said Pike, as I turned.
He wasn’t smiling. Pike never smiled. He was saving up for new teeth, so he said, and in the meantime he preferred to hide the black stumps that were stuck in his gums like bits of charcoal pushed into rotten fruit. His nose was halfway across his face, like he were trying to sniff his ear, and his eyes were sunk deep in his head beneath the sort of brow that made me think of a shark. He was wearing his camouflage coat and his ginger hair had gone black in the rain.
‘All right, Pike,’ said Pat. ‘How’s Mam?’
‘Still alive,’ said Pike, still staring at me. ‘Still bane of me bloody life.’
‘She’s tough as old boots,’ said Pat, and God bless her, she moved to stand beside me. Everybody knew that Pike was not to be left alone with a woman or a kiddie. ‘You’re a good lad to look after her as you do.’
Pike finally gave her his attention. He wasn’t a big man. Maybe that were his problem. He was always making up for the fact he wasn’t as big as the other blokes. But he had something. Some viciousness. He’d always been the same. Even at school he was uncontrollable. He’d say nowt at all for weeks on end then one day just go and bite the headmaster or start carving words in his bare legs with his pocket knife. Scared the life out of all of us. Parents too. His dad had run off when he were just a baby. Left him and his mam in a house that was already falling down a century before they moved in. They had animals but didn’t seem to know what to do with them. Sheep and cows and a family of ducks lived in the house with him, I swear to God. Great holes in the roof that the rain came through. Three different vicars tried to help them but they didn’t want none. Didn’t need charity and saw nowt wrong with how they lived. Pike poached. Took salmon, trout and deer. Made friends with the lads who built the air base and always seemed to know how to get his hands on cheap cigarettes or cases of bargain booze. Grew up to be a man to be feared and word had it that he knew people in Newcastle and Belfast who would be only too glad to hurt people if he asked them to. Not that Pike would ever ask. He preferred to do the hurting himself. We’d never had cross words and he’d never put a hand on me but I still remember what I saw him doing to himself the first time I went to put flowers on Mam’s grave. Curtains open, shirt off, watching me walk past his door to the church, big leer on his face as I held my carnations and skipped through the puddles. I’ve never told anybody that. Don’t know why I’m telling you.
‘I were sorry for Fairfax,’ said Pike, to me. ‘Sorry about his car as well.’
I suddenly remembered Fairfax telling me about that. He’d found Pike admiring the new vehicle. Had spent twenty minutes talking to him at the kerbside – a pleasant enough chat about tyre pressure and engine sizes and whether it were wrong to buy a German car.
‘There’ll be a funeral,’ I said. ‘Maybe at Denton.’
‘Don’t like funerals,’ said Pike.
‘Well, that’s up to you,’ I said, and suddenly didn’t care whether the bus came or not.
‘I liked Fairfax,’ said Pike, jerking his head. ‘Talked to me like a person.’
‘And how does the rest of us talk to you?’ asked Pat, and her body language suggested she was ready for a dust-up.
‘Who’s getting his machine?’ asked Pike, ignoring the question.
‘Machine?’
‘Tape player with the microphone. I saw him sticking it in plenty faces.’
I turned to Pat, confused. She nodded, understanding better than I did. ‘Aye, he were a menace with that. I never liked speaking into it. Like having a telephone conversation with yourself.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, colouring. ‘What machine?’
‘He had one of those recorders,’ said Pike, and I glimpsed the ruination of his mouth. ‘For recording stories, he said to me. Thoughts and memories. Asked me to say my name into it then played it back to me. I didn’t sound like I thought I would.’
‘I never saw it,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t I see it?’
‘Like you said, he never interviewed you.’
I looked from one to the other. The mulched leaves in my brain had come to a standstill, wedged against the kerb. I needed to push. Needed to make things happen.
‘Never mind the bus,’ I said. ‘I was daft to bother. I’ll leave it.’
Pike shrugged. Put a hand in his pocket and brought out a carton of Player’s Medium. ‘Your John still smoke these?’
I nodded. Took the pack and managed a smile. ‘Give my love to your mam,’ I said, and couldn’t look him in the eye. He nodded. Started trudging away up the road.
‘You really off?’ asked Pat. ‘You’re already soaked.’
‘I was daft. I’ll get home. Start on Fairfax’s place properly,’ I said.
‘Aye, well, if you find owt saucy just bin it off. After you’ve showed me, of course.’
We parted on a shared grin. I walked slowly. Saw one or two faces flicker at windows as I trudged up past the old vicarage and the clumps of Roman wall that stood out from grassy tufts like wrecked ships. Gilsland. The place I grew up and which, on that day, looked like a photographic negative – as though the whites and darks had somehow switched and all the colour had bleached into the soil.
I started running when I reached the Denton road. Didn’t stop until I had reached Fairfax’s place.
I was still panting, still soaked through, an hour later – sitting in an avalanche of paperwork holding the memories of people I had known since the cradle. My head was fizzing with secrets and stories.
Looking back, that’s when I accepted it. That’s when I let myself believe that somebody had killed my friend.
CORDELIA
Old age takes the veneer off people. The nice get nicer and the mean get meaner. That’s one of Flick’s sayings and she mutters it when I’m in one of my moods. She has the right to say it, given she’s been too bloody nice by half for the past eighty years. I’m not so comfortable with it. I don’t think I’ve ever been nice. I have kindness in me and then sometimes I have an impulse to do something absurdly generous. But I’d be the first to admit that there’s a mean streak in me. I know how to catch a person off guard. I can see somebody’s frail supports and weak joists and I always seem to know just where to insert the lever. I was only in my twenties back in ’67 and still hadn’t worked out how to use that particular skill in a way that turned the world in my favour. I just knew that more than a handful of people had referred to me as a nasty piece of work, and the nuns at school felt they had cause to bless themselves more often in my company than in anybody else’s. Wicked. That was the word I heard most. Wicked.
I was musing on wickedness as I tramped up the Featherstone road. Wondering whether or not I was bad all the way through. At school, when I suggested that the Good Book was so full of punishment and violence that it could as easily have been written by Satan, I was thrashed so hard that the scars are still visible on the backs of my legs whenever I flush pink.
I was their troubled case; their difficult charge. Me, with my big brain and my endless questions and my refusal to be fed their regurgitated scraps of wisdom like I was some sort of feeble baby bird. They were pleased to see me depart for the grammar school and they, in turn, rejoiced at my leaving for university. I had never had friends. No champion
s or trusted confidantes. So I never asked the questions aloud. I still chewed on them like gum. Still mashed them into a tasteless blob with the molars in the back of my head. What was I for? What did I matter? Why had I been made? Christ, but I was a tedious specimen back then.
It took me almost an hour to get anywhere near the castle. It was pushing four p.m. by the time the low-hanging clouds delineated into a child’s drawing of a fortress: a landlocked battleship of turrets and columns and pencil-shaded walls. I was still trudging up the winding grey road. The river surged to my right, already a couple of feet higher than the last time I had visited. Then it had been a spring day and Stefan had spoiled the trip by grizzling and sweating against me and refusing to walk even a handful of steps. He wanted to be carried. Wanted to loll against me like a roll of carpet. Wouldn’t eat or drink and refused to be comforted. Refused to be my little prince. The sunshine did not seem strong enough to have caused him such distress and I grizzled back at him for spoiling our adventure with his ungrateful mewling. We didn’t get to see the castle properly. Didn’t get to watch the rainbow trout in the shallows or drop sticks from the small stone bridge. I marched him home. Arrived angry and sweat-soaked, impatient and sore. He was dead four days later.
‘Watch it, lass!’
I turned sharply. A green farm vehicle had pulled up next to me. I hadn’t heard the tyres on the wet road for the sound of the raging river. The driver was leaning his head out of the window; the solitary windscreen wiper wagging like a happy dog’s tail. I must have looked at him sternly because he pulled a face and motioned with his hands for me to calm down.
‘Dint see yer till I were almost on yer. What yer daeing out in this?’
For a moment I saw myself through his eyes. A city girl in all the wrong clothes; soaked to the bone and shivering in the half light, trudging up a road towards a castle that offered no promise of warmth or welcome. I softened my face, grateful for the interruption.
‘I wanted to see the camp,’ I said. ‘I think I picked the wrong day.’
He smiled. He was maybe forty but it was hard to say for certain. Handsome, if you liked the sort of men favoured by Renaissance painters. He had pale skin and a full beard, pale eyes and long features. He had a woollen hat perched on top of his dark hair and was wearing blue overalls beneath a brown leather coat. I didn’t recognize him.