by Harper Fox
The lounge door banged open. Mrs Harle appeared, flanked by two assistants, and allowed herself one brief shriek of dismay before snapping on her professional skin. “Oh, dear,” she observed, running to dislodge Gideon from beside his father’s chair. “Pastor Frayne... They all have to leave us sometime, but we thought he’d be with us for longer than this. Oh, Elizabeth, my love, what a dreadful shock...”
Gideon yielded the field to her. The doctor would be on his way, and he knew from his own years of experience that nothing more could be done. The old man had made his exit swiftly but absolutely. Gideon backed up, trying not to shudder at the slack mouth, the vacated features. He’d dealt with dozens of bodies. It shouldn’t be worse just because it was flesh of his own. He was a copper, for God’s sake...
“Yeah, right. Human, too.”
He gasped in relief as Lee caught him. There would never be another grip like that, another warmth. “What?”
“Human first, copper a very close second. I’ve got you, sweetheart.”
A death in the family, and my husband here to face it with me. Gideon was still getting his head around the differences between his old life and this new one. Half-heartedly he resisted. “Stop mind-reading me. Take care of Ma.”
“Mrs Harle’s checking her over. Come out of everyone’s way and sit down.”
Gideon did as he was told. His heart and lungs seemed to have drifted off towards the artexed ceiling and he fixed his gaze on Lee, a source of gravity he could borrow until the earth began to weigh him down again. “Sorry. We weren’t even close.”
“Take a deep breath with me. One, two...”
“For God’s sake, you big New Age yoga freak—”
“Just do it. One, two, three...”
Helplessly Gideon inhaled, through his nose the way the freak had taught him, and after retaining the breath for five seconds, let it go through his mouth, watching Lee mirror and guide him. In, and hold, and out...
“That’s the lad. Couple more and you’ll be ready for anything. In again—one, two...”
Lee’s smile of approval faded. His focus shifted from Gideon to a point at once far beyond Roseland’s walls and deep inside. His mouth opened a little—a look of astonishment Gideon had seen when he’d bashed himself on the thumbnail with a hammer and not yet found the breath to start swearing. “Lee? What’s up?”
“I don’t know. I... absolutely do not know.” He took hold of the edge of the table. “A pain of some kind, like an indigestion cramp but a billion times worse.” He shook himself. “Sorry. Great timing, eh? Shouldn’t’ve had that lunchtime pasty from Joe’s.”
“You all right now?”
“Yeah. It was only there for a second, then... Oh, Christ!”
He doubled up. Gideon forgot his own troubles and sprang to his feet. His mobile was ringing, and by some weird coincidence so was Lee’s, but both would have to wait—Lee had flushed as bright a fever-pink as he’d been pale before, and he was clinging to the table for grim death. Gideon felt his damp brow. “Bloody hell. What’s the matter, love? Food poisoning?”
“Must be. Never felt a pain like it.”
“Stomach?”
“Not exactly. Lower, like...” He cut himself off with a grinding moan that made the care workers and Mrs Harle look up from their duties in alarm. “Oh, Gid, it feels like my guts are ripping out, or...” He caught his breath. His colour deepened as he noticed everyone’s attention. “Sorry. Sorry. It’s gone.”
Gideon hadn’t worked out yet how to set his new mobile handset so the ringtone wouldn’t get louder and louder when ignored. He picked up distractedly, listened for twenty seconds to his elder brother’s voice, distorted as it was almost beyond his recognition by excitement. Ezekiel—of late months Zeke, childhood’s name and some childhood’s affection restored—never got excited. Never let a phone line ring and ring. “Okay,” Gideon said, when he found out why. “We’ll be there.”
Lee was staring at him. “What?”
Gideon’s ma couldn’t see him from this angle. He allowed the huge grin to blaze up, inappropriate as champagne and fireworks in this room of death. “Oh, mate. I know you pick up on people’s feelings, but do yourself a favour and don’t let it happen this time.”
“Oh, my God. Elowen?”
“They just rushed her into Trelowarren maternity ward. She couldn’t get hold of either of us, so she phoned Ezekiel.”
“Seriously?” Lee straightened up, his smile answering Gideon’s, releasing another burst of firecracker excitement across the hidden sky. “Poor Zeke—he’ll be having a litter of his own.”
“Just as long as you don’t.”
“What—you think that pain was...”
“A contraction, not a pasty? Only you can know for sure. But like I say, you might want to try and block it.”
“You’re not kidding.” Lee gave a low whistle and laid a hand to his stomach. “How do they stand it?”
“They’re stronger than we are.” Gideon turned to his mother, who was pushing up out of her armchair, scenting new developments. “Aren’t you, Ma?”
“Oh, yes,” she said solemnly, evading her carer’s grasp. “Very much stronger. We have to be. Why?”
“Elowen’s gone into labour.”
“Oh. Oh, my dear boys.” She lit up like a Christmas tree, dead husband or no dead husband. “Gideon, is your car outside?”
“Yes, but—”
“Stop fussing over me, Jennifer! Fetch me my coat and scarf.”
The doctor had arrived. He and Mrs Harle were unbuttoning enough of old Pastor Frayne’s clothing to perform the last checks. Both looked up, equally scandalised. “Elizabeth,” Mrs Harle said in horror. “You can’t possibly go rushing off. You’ve had a great shock, and your husband—”
“My husband is dead,” the old lady cut her off. “I did all I could all my life for him, but he’s gone. Now my granddaughter is coming, and she has one of my names. Jennifer, please help me to the door.”
Gideon paused by his father’s chair. He didn’t know how to take leave of him, how to do it respectfully, with this bustle of life in the room and his heart reaching out for the future. He wished he had the impulse of love to instruct him. But the pastor’s policy of distancing his children had worked too well, at least on his younger son. “Sorry,” he whispered, then decided his apologies were better addressed to the living. “Sorry, Mrs Harle. I know we’re dropping you in it. I’ll be at Trelowarren—you’ve got my number.”
She tried for a reproving look but spoiled it with a grin. “Is this it, then? This baby I’ve heard so much about?”
“Yes. This is it.”
“Well, go on with you, then. The undertaker’s coming, and all your father’s arrangements are in place. Is that all right with you, doctor?”
“Yes, yes.” The Roselands GP tucked his stethoscope back into his bag. “Old chap’s gone, all right. I’ll note his time of death as ten past five.”
There was a bottleneck in the corridor. Mrs Frayne’s carer was muffling her in as many layers as she could carry, and some of her friends had emerged from their rooms at the sight of the doctor’s car and were standing around in bewilderment, unsure whether to offer condolences or congratulations. Gideon thought about issuing a sergeant’s bark—move along! Nothing to see here!—then heard the echo of the doctor’s voice in his head. Ten past five. Not a precise time, but good enough for an unsuspicious death. Good enough as an answer to his patient other half, who’d been here making small talk with the in-laws for hours... “Lee,” he said softly, drawing him aside. “Why did you come here today? Did you know?”
“No, but I think your father did.”
“He died just after you asked me the time, didn’t he?”
“Yes. Eleven minutes past five.” Lee met his eyes across the narrow corridor. “It’s okay, love. Whatever’s scaring you, just ask.”
Gideon could. From the day he’d met Lee Tyack, he’d told him his fears—sometimes wit
hout meaning to, sometimes in the painful relief of exposing an old wound. “That time... It’s a year to the minute since old man Fisher died next door.”
“Too much of a coincidence, right?”
“Yes, although living with you has raised my threshold for weird. And I’m just afraid that Tamsyn deciding to arrive now...” He paused. Lee had taught him not to fear alternative views of reality, but still he thought of himself as the prosaic one in their relationship, the man with his feet on the ground. “That doesn’t have anything to do with the pastor, does it? Or Fisher?”
“Oh, God, no. None of these old men’s dark spirits can touch Tamsyn. Listen, Gid—your dad was a gate-keeper, just like mine. The veil can get thin around the anniversary of a death, especially at solstice. He was just keeping the watch.”
Gideon’s throat tightened. He couldn’t grieve any more than his mother could, but Lee’s words shone a light on what had been best in the old man—his courage, the unflinching rectitude that had kept him at his station until the threat was gone. He took Lee’s outstretched hand. The roadblock in the corridor was clearing at last, Jennifer opening the outside door to let in a wash of wintry seaside air. “Come on, then,” he said. “Let’s go get our solstice baby. But I’m warning you, if she’s born feet-first with eyebrows that meet in the middle, I’m taking her straight to the zoo.”
***
The traffic on the A39 began to congeal as the rush hour got underway. By the time Gideon had negotiated the queue as far as Treluswell, he was down to fifteen miles an hour, trying not to rev too hard into the gaps as the drivers ahead of him made their blind-faith dash into the double roundabout. He’d never been so tempted to slap on his lights and his siren, but that was strictly forbidden off-duty. He tried one of Lee’s calming breaths, drummed his fingers on the wheel. “All right in the back there, Ma?”
“Yes, dear. Although we’re going very slowly.”
“I know.”
“I think you’ll need to get a different car. This one’s very high. I won’t be able to get into it much longer, especially if I’m carrying Tamsyn Elizabeth.”
“I’ll get you both a set of little steps made.”
“And I’m not sure Lee’s Escort will be suitable, either. They were saying on Super Drive that other makes do much better in terms of child safety.”
“You’ve been watching Super Drive?”
“Gid, I think we’re gonna be late.”
Gideon shot Lee an anxious glance. He was bolt upright in the passenger seat, staring through the windshield at the rain-blossomed brake lights ahead, and Gideon feared his efforts to block Elowen’s labour pains weren’t meeting with complete success. “It’s okay. I’ll hang a left at the roundabout, take us over by the back roads.”
“Isn’t that a longer route?”
“Ten minutes or so. Much quicker in this traffic.”
“Okay. Sorry. I’m making a fuss.”
Gideon took a read of the emotional pressure building up in the Rover. Between Lee and his ma, he was surprised the windows hadn’t blown out. “Not by comparison with that old lady in the back seat. She just told me I had to buy two new cars.”
“Well, maybe we should get rid of the Escort. I saw that episode of Super Drive as well. Maybe we should...” He faded out, tugging at the seat belt across his chest. “Shit. Did Zeke say how far along Elowen was? How far she’s dilated?”
“Not really his area of expertise.” Gideon smiled wryly, flicking on his indicator and trying to edge across into the left-hand lane. “Not that it’s ours either, technically, but...”
“It bloody will be when he’s having one of his own.” Lee wound down his window, leaned out and waved his arm at the truck-driver refusing to give way. “Back up, you fucking idiot!” He caught Gideon’s look of amazement. “Sorry! Sorry, Mrs Frayne. I just don’t want our experience of being parents to start with us missing the birth. I know we’ve jumped through all these checks and social worker’s hoops, but what if we miss it, and they decide we’re not—”
“Okay. Go ahead.”
“What?”
“The blues and the twos. Hit ’em.”
“Are you serious?”
“Never more so. It’s that button there, and that switch.”
The old two-tone siren was a wail these days, but the effects were the same. The Rover came to brilliant, noisy life. The guy in the truck decided to quit blocking the lane. Up ahead, drivers began to inch their cars aside to clear a path. Lee sat back to watch these effects, suddenly less of an anxious parent-to-be than an excited ten year old. Gideon chuckled, finally getting out of second gear and into the roundabout. “Better?”
“I’ve always wanted to do that.”
“You should’ve said. We could’ve taken her round the village at home, chased Darren Prowse and his mates.”
“It’s for emergencies only, though, isn’t it? For when people really need help, not when some copper’s just late for his tea.”
“How do you think I always get home on time?” Gideon turned right onto the narrow back road that would lead them through fields and woodland to Truro. He gunned the Rover’s engine in satisfaction. “Besides, if this doesn’t qualify as an emergency, I don’t know what does.”
***
Ezekiel was stalking the waiting room outside the maternity ward. His fiancée had done much towards humanising him, but under pressure he sometimes resumed his heron-like posture, hunching up his shoulders against the onslaught of the modern world. He was running his father’s Methodist ministry full-time now, and tonight would have suited clerical black rather than the smart shirt and trousers Eleanor had picked out for him. “Gideon,” he said, as soon as the doors swished open to admit his brother, Lee immediately behind him with the old lady clinging to his arm. “Elowen is fine. The nurses believe she’ll be in labour for some hours yet. She can have visitors, but only two at a time.” He put out a hand in warning. “And Michel Duroy is in there now.”
Gideon skidded to a halt. Zeke was growing increasingly tolerant of his unconventional family, which Gideon and Lee were about to make weirder still by adopting Lee’s niece as their own child. He was softening up in the pulpit as well, disappointing his congregation with lack of hellfire. Gideon was grateful that his first words had been the ones he and Lee had needed to hear, not a reproach for arriving like a blue-lit avalanche or for dragging Mrs Frayne out with them on such a night. He clearly still had something on his mind, though—something bigger than even than Michel Duroy. “Okay,” Gideon said, exchanging a glance with Lee. “Wow, he travelled fast. You go on in, love—Ma and I will see Elowen when you’re done.”
“No. I’ll wait and go in with you.”
“Lee, you’re gonna explode if you have to wait one more minute to see what’s going on in that room.” Gently Gideon detached his mother’s death-grip. “Let the man have his arm back, Ma. You come and sit down over here. Look, they’ve got some car magazines for you.” With a pang, he watched Lee dash off down the corridor. Then he braced up and turned to face his brother. “Sorry you got called out before we did.”
“That’s fine. I said I was happy to come, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you did. So what’s wrong?”
“The undertaker phoned me, Gideon.”
It was a rare sensation—that inward drop, like a lead weight into water. Cold pallor followed by a painful blush. “Oh, fuck.”
“Is no situation so sacred that your first reaction will not be to swear?”
“Shit! I’m so, so sorry.” Gideon was glad he’d left his cap in the Rover. He’d have knocked it halfway across the room with the mortified clutch of his brow. “You called me barely a minute after he’d gone, and...”
“And I told you about Elowen. I understand, although it was rather a large omission. That’s not what I want to talk to you about. Come and sit down.”
Gideon followed him to a pair of seats just out of Ma Frayne’s earshot. He was trying earnestly to
think of anything he might have done that could possibly be worse than forgetting to tell his brother that his father had died. “Seriously, Zeke. Forgive me. You must be gutted.”
“Must I? Why? I modelled myself on him because he was all I had. That doesn’t mean he was good, or that I was any good by the time I’d... finished my modelling.” Before Gideon could absorb this startling pronouncement, Zeke had caught his arm and drawn him down to sit beside him. “Were you expecting Michel?”
“Michel? Not specifically, no. At least, we knew he was coming to visit at some point to talk to Elowen about work, but...”
“He hadn’t arranged to be here for the birth.”
“No.” Unease stirred in Gideon’s gut. “It’s nice that he’s gonna be around for it, though—isn’t it?”
“Yes. Commendable, even, since he’s the father of the child.”
Gideon pressed his lips together. He was starting to learn that Ezekiel usually meant well, but his principles had been grating off Gideon since they were children. “The biological father. That’s an accident of DNA. Lee and I will be Tamsyn’s—”
“I’m not disputing that. I wanted to ask if you’d had the adoption papers formally drawn up.”
Gideon flinched. He and Lee had learned to handle their rare disagreements with grace and love over the last six months. Their quarrels had been trivial, the day-to-day frictions of newlyweds settling down for the long haul—except for one point of profound moral dispute, which Gideon had dealt with by failing to deal with it at all. Elowen was Lee’s sister. Gideon had only just met her, so who was he to lay down terms? “We were waiting,” he said gruffly. “We thought it was best for Elowen to make the first move.”
Ezekiel accorded him a sidelong glower which told him more plainly than words that he knew there’d been no we about it. That Gideon had wanted everything signed, sealed and recorded in the Civil Register, but had caved without question in the face of Lee’s distress. How can I ask her, Gid? It’s her baby. This is so difficult for her. “I’m not sure that was wise. Lots of women change their minds.”
