Then there are the gardens where the family pet uses the entire grass area as its toilet of choice, selecting, supposedly at random, areas to defecate in multiple times a day. Despite my request on the phone beforehand that an area is clear for the inflatable to sit, I regularly have to hose down and clean the base of a bouncy castle in Clifford’s yard, the foul smell caught in the water spray making me want to retch. I guess these people simply see life differently to me and have trouble dealing with words like ‘consideration’ and ‘respect’. I am not sure when or how a collection of garden gnomes or comical ceramic figures dotted around a garden can ever be classed as acceptable, but I have seen plenty of examples and many that are the main focal point of the entire space. This type of person breaks my mould of characterisation, as they cannot be collectively defined, but they do have one trait in common: they are all slightly odd!
But today, seven days after last seeing Cerys, I couldn’t tell you which type of garden I was standing in, or any detail about the owner.
I had tried to reconnect with Sally, but failed. A person has to be with you both physically and mentally for a relationship to work.
Hooking up the generator to the second bouncy castle of the day brought, as always, the excited cheer and expectant gasp from the birthday child and their closest friends – those selected few, the elite ones with special passes, the ones invited prior to the party, before the masses. But today I did not see the excitement in their eyes, nor sense their anticipation of wanting to jump, tumble and flip before the inflatable had reached its full height. It was the same with the earlier drop. I knew they had perfect weather for it, I could feel the sun on the top of my head and no breeze through my shirt, but I couldn’t register that this equalled clear blue skies above me and a hanging yellow sun for the remainder of the afternoon and evening; the time when the grown-ups enjoy their own party in the garden with the selected parents who have been invited to stay seated, as the day’s heat remains trapped in the air, sweet with the aroma of chilled wine, honeysuckle and the sound of children edging toward exhaustion.
With the generator breathing a steady stream of life into the inflatable, I headed for the van. My phone rang in my pocket as I slipped the keys into the ignition to head away.
Who was it, I wondered as I retrieved the mobile? Maybe Cerys – no, it couldn’t be, she didn’t have my number. Sally? Jennifer?
‘Mary?’ I answered.
Down the line, I heard the sigh in her voice and knew the reason for her call.
‘He’s gone, Eddie,’ she said quietly.
‘Mary, I am so sorry,’ I said. ‘Where are you?’
‘I am still here.’
‘Let me get there.’
‘No, I am going to head home. I need to bathe, I need to sleep, I need some space,’ she replied honestly.
I understood. Grief was attacking her in the way designed only for Mrs Mary Wilson, widow.
‘Come around later, Eddie,’ she added. ‘I just need a bit of time.’
She hung up, and I sat with the phone to my ear. My mind tried to reason it was for the best as I placed the phone in the door pocket. But it wasn’t for the best at all – he was gone, we were left; how could this ever be explained away as being right? This man who lit up a room with his presence and innocent excitement for life was gone. The hands that could almost hide a pint glass would never be fumbling for the correct change at the bar again. He would never be tinkering in his yard in his torn, stretched, ill-fitting navy blue jumper, or checking the ewes up on the hillside. Even though two summers had passed, there was always hope in my heart that I would again see him bouncing on an inflatable with flailing arms and his childlike giggles expressing his delight.
But with Mary’s call, this hope was extinguished. I would never again, when dressed as Clive the Clown, be requested by him to throw my hat and ginger wig high into the air and catch them on my head. I would miss his quick mind and his teasing of Mary, their jibes and bickering shown to be nothing more than playful banter, proven by his request to be with her alone at the end, showing how deeply he loved her. I would miss him; I would really miss him.
I picked up the phone and called Sally’s mobile; it went straight to voicemail. I tried a further four times, calling at three-minute intervals, but each time the result was the same. On the fifth time, I simply said, ‘Clifford is gone’ and hung up.
I jumped out of the cab and knocked on the front door of the house, hearing for the first time today the shouts and laughter of the children from the back garden. I knocked again, and when no one responded, I wandered down the side alley and into the garden. The girls played happily, ignoring me, the man who brought the bouncy castle barely fifteen minutes ago. They had made up a circuit, involving the use of a hula hoop to skip with, a scooter to traverse the garden perimeter and the inflatable to dive on as a finale.
Turning to the house, I knocked firmly on the slightly ajar kitchen door. Through the glass door, I could see party preparations in full swing: sausage rolls and chicken nuggets being placed in the oven, bread being buttered and bags of crisps being poured into huge bowls by a team of adults.
‘Would you get that, Trish? Bloody cheek, I didn’t think he wanted paying until pick-up,’ I heard the birthday child’s mother utter, not realising, I am sure, in her pre-party, slightly stressed state, that I could hear her.
‘Can I help you?’ Trish asked me, opening the door wide.
‘Sorry to bother you, can I borrow a phone directory please?’ I replied. ‘I can see you are busy, and I wouldn’t ask, but I urgently need to contact someone,’ I added as my explanation.
‘Hang on,’ she said, and slipped inside. ‘He wants a phone book,’ she relayed.
‘What?’
‘I don’t know, said he needs to contact someone.’
‘Hallway table, Trish.’
She returned, phone book in hand, and flashed a half-smile in acknowledgement of my gratitude before heading back inside.
‘I’ll leave it by the front door,’ I called into the kitchen.
But my words were not heard, or possibly quite simply ignored.
‘Kirsty, do you want equal jugs of orange squash and blackcurrant?’ pondered Trish loudly from inside the kitchen.
Chapter 16
Everything Changes
I pulled up outside the address taken from the phone book, looked out of the passenger window and surveyed the handsome detached Victorian house. It had the look of a ‘proper’ house about it, the kind a child would draw, with symmetrical windows left and right, top and bottom, and a front door plumb centre of the brickwork front. A prunus tree sat to the left, casting shade over the gravelled frontage. All that was missing was smoke rising from the single chimney to complete an image that could take pride of place on any refrigerator door.
I walked across the gravel, enjoying the satisfying crunching sound each footstep made, and pressed the doorbell for a single long tone, noting as I stepped back my reflection in the jet-black glossed front door.
As I waited for an eternity for my call to be answered, I noted the absence of any other vehicle and suddenly questioned why I had come here. I felt foolish, not prepared to draw attention to myself by ringing the bell a second time. I turned to go, to retreat to the van, the gravel under my feet once more, when I heard the sound of a lock being opened from within. I turned back and witnessed the door open and a slight, bespectacled man, markedly older than I was, standing on the threshold. He wore a dress suit, but no tie. In his vision, I felt drawn back, and as I walked to the house, I realised he wasn’t as old as he had appeared. It was the hair that caused him to seem older; it was pure white, cut smartly, but pure white nonetheless. Stood now in front of him, his glasses, though probably needed, were worn equally as a fashion statement. They fitted the image of a Germanic corporate professional type.
Not that I had actually seen any in my time, my knowledge being drawn entirely from TV and magazine advertisements for performance cars or audio equipment.
‘Mr McKenzie? I asked.
‘Yes, can I help you?’ he replied.
‘Sorry to bother you, but is Sally Dungiven with you?’
‘Who?’
‘Sally Dungiven, she comes here every Saturday – changed to afternoons lately,’ I stated.
Ignatius McKenzie looked at me thoughtfully and calmly for a while.
‘Mrs Dungiven, you say?’
I nodded in response.
‘She hasn’t been here for a while now, months I believe,’ he said. ‘Why, is there something wrong?’
My head started to spin; all the doubts and signs I had ignored crashed into my mind at once: the never-ending negotiations for her honey contract, those hours spent with her brother working on ‘Eco-Lites’, and now the absence of her car, the final fatal sign. I had to get away.
‘I apologise; I must have been mistaken. I am sorry for troubling you,’ I said, and turned on my heels.
‘Wait! Please stop!’ he commanded.
And I found the sound of his voice made my feet stop dead involuntarily in the gravel. The fact Sally was not here, and had not been for some time, slip away and seem irrelevant. involuntarilyI turned and walked back toward the front door of the perfectly proportioned home of Ignatius McKenzie, not knowing why I was doing so.
He looked at me intently, his stare boring into mine. I tried to avert my eyes, but his mind seemed to command them to respond to a message I could not hear and I met his gaze once more.
‘You seem deeply troubled. I can see a sadness walking with you. Come in for a chat?’ he said, trying, I felt, to pull my soul out through my eyes.
‘No, no, I am fine,’ I eventually said.
His expression changed from one of intense concentration to one of concern.
‘Please, I think I can help you,’ he insisted quietly.
And with these words I felt myself stepping in through the door frame.
‘Come in, come,’ he instructed with an open palm and a smile as he closed the door quite some time after I had entered and then bolted it shut, an action that left me feeling wary.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but inside the house was conventional. No stuffed ravens, skulls, piles of leather-bound books, dark wood panelling or gloom in sight. Instead, natural light flooded the space in which I stood through a floor-to-ceiling gable-shaped window, through an open door at the far end of the hallway and through a lesser-sized, but still substantial window located at the top of the stairs. The walls were painted in natural, light colours and the wooden floor was covered with a terracotta rug. A single oak table was pushed to the wall, topped with a marble sculpture. The whole area seemed peaceful and serene.
‘We’ll go in here,’ he indicated, opening a door halfway along the hallway.
I stood, looking into the room opening before me.
‘Please, after you,’ he added, raising his hand again in welcome and direction.
I entered the room. Again, natural light filled the space, this time from French doors, which looked out onto a mature, well-loved garden. Inside the room, the walls were a cool green; a cream carpet lay on the floor. I quickly glanced at a bookcase that ran the entire length of the wall opposite, but I could not recognise any of the books on display, nor fathom their subject matter.
Ignatius McKenzie ushered me to a seat, one of two opposite each other beside an unlit, open stone fireplace. I opted for the chair with a view of the garden and sunk down into its comfortable cushions. The white-haired man took the seat opposite me.
‘You must be Mr Dungiven?’ he asked, crossing his legs.
I nodded. I still didn’t know why I was here, but equally, now inside, I didn’t feel the desire to leave.
‘I don’t normally make a habit of this,’ he stated suddenly, ‘inviting a stranger into my home, but I think you were brought here today.’
I didn’t understand at all. I had driven here to find Sally, to tell her that Clifford had died, to share in that grief. She wasn’t there, she couldn’t release my grief, but still I sat in this tranquil room, not looking out onto the garden, but instead transfixed by this man’s blue-eyed stare. Or perhaps, in truth, I couldn’t face the fact that Sally had not been there.
‘Do you believe in an afterlife, Mr Dungiven?’ Ignatius McKenzie asked suddenly.
I was taken off guard and didn’t answer. He stared straight between my eyes.
‘What do you think happens when we leave our physical bodies?’ he pressed.
‘We die. We are gone. We no longer exist,’ I replied flatly.
Ignatius nodded. ‘That explains the physical aspect. What about the energy that was the person, the very essence of that person? Does that go? Does that no longer exist?’
A rushing sensation swept over me. My mind fell clear, I felt vulnerable and I no longer desired to be in the house.
‘I do not understand what you are saying, or why you are saying it. I only came to see if my wife was here. She isn’t, so I think I should leave,’ I said, standing up.
‘Please, please don’t go.’
I stood, trying to not react to his voice.
‘I can help you,’ he stated with a gentle smile.
I did not respond.
‘I am obliged to help you,’ he reasoned.
‘Obliged to help me?’ I repeated, drawn in by his words, though trying to ignore them.
‘Yes. This is my duty. It will not cost you anything, but it will give you something.’
And again, I felt rooted to the spot by the sound of his calming voice.
‘This sadness you feel, it doesn’t have to be there, it really doesn’t. You need to let it go, move forward, stop tormenting yourself.’
‘What sadness?’ I questioned, again managing to wrench myself from the spell of his voice.
‘The sadness only a parent can feel.’
I stared at him, trying to free my mind of thought, trying to protect myself, but I was left with the feeling again, the same I had experienced on the steps: that he was reading me, that he knew, despite my best efforts, what I would think next.
‘Please sit down.’
Unable to summon back the desire to leave the room, I chose again to take my seat and tried and failed once more to seek out the garden beyond the French doors.
‘What is your first name? It is so much easier when we are relaxed.’
‘Eddie.’
‘Good strong name, Eddie.’
‘What is easier?’ I asked.
Ignatius McKenzie ignored my question. ‘Eddie, I know about your loss,’ he said.
I said nothing, but wondered how on earth he knew about Clifford.
‘It’s the hardest thing, losing a child. We are wired to be outlived by our offspring. Our essence cannot understand when this doesn’t occur.’
I still did not respond; instead, I looked at the ground, suddenly angry that Sally had divulged our personal tragedy to this man.
‘Don’t be angry with Mrs Dungiven, she didn’t divulge much. She was here to make sense of her father departing,’ he said, again seemingly understanding my thoughts.
I still said nothing.
‘With you it is different, Eddie,’ Ignatius suggested, looking fleetingly to my right-hand side. And then he went quiet.
‘Different?’ I eventually asked.
‘You weren’t alone when you entered here.’
‘Sorry?’
‘When you came in, you weren’t on your own.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I don’t wish to alarm you, but there isn’t an easy way to put this.’
He paused and took off his glasses.
Again, I reverted to saying nothing.
‘When I opened the door to you earlier, you had a spirit child standing beside you, a young girl, around ten years of age.’
I laughed in disbelief and shock.
‘Impossible,’ I reasoned.
‘It’s true, Eddie; she’s back again just now, in the room.’
‘Where?’ I asked, feeling uneasy and frightened.
‘Standing to the right side of your chair,’ he replied, nodding his head in that direction.
I turned my head and looked at the empty space to my right, then gazed back at Ignatius McKenzie.
‘I think she is the reason you are here. I don’t know if she is going to speak to me. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, I never know.’
‘And she is standing right here?’ I gestured with my hand.
‘Yes, right there.’
My focus returned once again to the empty space bedside my chair.
‘She does want to speak,’ he said, regaining my attention. Ignatius closed his eyes. ‘Say again, please,’ he said, a slight smile on his face.
I was transfixed, unbelieving but caught in the moment.
‘Rebecca? Is that correct? Your name is Rebecca?’
Sally must have told him this, I thought, and now he mocks the memory of our only child, but despite this, still I couldn’t move.
‘She says she likes the dog, she strokes him when he sleeps under the breakfast bar in the kitchen,’ continued Ignatius.
Chasing the Sun with Henry Page 23
