His stupid, stupid face peered down.
‘Hey, Joe, you stuck? Won’t be a minute. Try that.’
With hands that absurdly wouldn’t stop shaking, I got myself out of the mess.
‘Where the hell you been? You said ten minutes!’
‘Met that vicar mate of yours in the shop. That Morris. Least he reckoned he was a big mate of yours. All over me he was.’ Billy wriggled his brawny T-shirt-covered shoulders uncomfortably; I knew how he was feeling. ‘He said he had something for you, back in his office. Something you’d want more than a pint o’ lager. He was so persistent I went back with him for it. Then he began going on about was I a Christian? I couldn’t get away from him.’
His face was such a study, I couldn’t help forgiving him. There was never any harm in Billy; just too easily led. I laughed, and it helped.
‘What you got for me, then?’
‘Oh, yeah.’ He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and produced a folded, very bent piece of paper that looked like a photocopy.
I unfolded it; it was. A photocopy from some old book; a crude engraving of the west end of Muncaster cathedral, with a pair of pointed towers. The only snag was that one of them, the south-west tower, was busy falling down, in a most spectacular way. I mean, not only was the tower falling down, but heavy, bulging clouds filled the sky, and they were stitched together with jagged bits of lightning. Lots of little people were standing pointing, or running away, and there were houses and they were all old half-timbered things. Three separate bits of lightning were hitting the tower, and the label underneath said,
‘The fall of the south-west tower, 1257’.
Billy looked over my shoulder. ‘That’s cheering. I hope they got it right second time round.’
‘So do I. Let’s jack it in for the rest of the day.’
We just got down the ladder before the heavy rain really started. I was wondering if somebody was really trying to kill me, and who it was. The tower, or the Reverend Mr Morris. Or both.
I had the dream again, that night. Our Kevin screaming on top of the tower, and the tower door locked.
But I didn’t wake up screaming. Barbara wakened me up, tugging frantically at my shoulder.
‘Joe. I looked in on Kevin. He’s not in his bed.’
Barbara’s the restless one in our family; up once or twice to the loo every night, or she’s not happy. Kevin and me always sleep right through, like logs. All my family do.
‘Gone to the loo?’ I asked dopily, trying to get the dream out of my head.
‘I’ve just been to the loo, stupid. He’s not there.’
‘Gone down to the kitchen, to grab a cheese butty?’ Our Kevin likes to carve himself a cheese butty when nobody’s looking. Cheese half an inch thick, and bread double that. Then he eats half of it and chucks the rest under his bed till later. Barbara finds the fossilized remains when she cleans his room at the end of the week; thick with dust. Good pull-in for mice, our Kevin’s room.
‘Joe, I’ve checked everywhere. He’s nowhere in the house. And the front door’s wide open . . .’
I said something unprintable, and whacked out of bed stark naked. Ran through and felt Kevin’s bed. It was stone-cold. He’d been gone a bit.
And his clothes were still lying where Barbara had picked them up and folded them neatly on to a chair.
‘He’s in his bloody pyjamas.’ You have to come to blows with Kevin to get him to change out of his usual T-shirt and jeans, even to go to his granny’s for Sunday afternoon tea.
‘Joe, he must be walking in his sleep.’
‘Don’t be daft, woman. Our Kevin’s never walked in his sleep. None of our family have ever walked in their sleep.’
‘Well, where is he? Why don’t you do something, ’stead of standing there arguin’?’
The clock on the dining-room mantelpiece suddenly struck three.
‘He could’ve been gone for hours. Where’s he gone?’
I thought wildly. With a three-hour or four-hour start, he could’ve been anywhere. Except . . . and it hit me like a bolt of lightning . . . there was one place I was afraid of, beyond all others.
The south-west tower.
Suddenly, I didn’t care if he was lying in some ditch, or lost in some wood. He’d meet nowt worse there than a fox or a badger. I ran upstairs and shoved on a sweater and a pair of jeans.
‘Where you goin’, Joe? You can’t leave me wi’ this.’
‘Ring the bloody police, Barbara. Ring round the neighbours.’ But don’t stop me.
I was running down the stairs and out to the van. I didn’t care where he was, if he wasn’t at that tower.
It’s seven miles from where we live to Muncaster. I did the first five in about four minutes; thank God the road was empty.
And then, after five miles, I saw something pale lying on the road, shining up in the headlights. I got out, and picked it up. But I knew what it was, before I picked it up.
Kevin’s pale blue striped pyjama trousers.
I pulled up in Cathedral Close. There wasn’t a thing moving, bar a solitary black and white cat. I ran to the tower door. I’d locked it when we finished work, and taken the key back to Taffy Evans.
But now the door opened to a touch.
‘Kevin?’ I bellowed up the spiral stair. ‘Kevin?’ There was no reply. I started up like all the hounds of hell were after me. My panting breath filled the narrow spiral up through the stone, and echoed, as if the tower itself was breathing.
On to the parapet in the moonlight. No sign of Kevin.
But the gargoyle stared at me, its hollow eyes full of shadow.
‘If you’ve harmed him,’ I shouted, ‘I’ll do for you. Slow. Wi’ a claw-chisel. There’ll be nowt left of you they can’t use as road-chippings.’
It just went on staring at me.
‘Kevin,’ I bawled. ‘Kevin?’
Was that something fluttering, something white, on the top platform on the spire?
Up I went, wi’ only thin trainers on. The rungs of the ladder bit into my feet something cruel.
I reached the top. No Kevin. The white fluttering thing was an old piece of rag that Billy must’ve tied on to the handrail to keep it handy.
Suddenly I was scared stiff. Had Kevin come up here and fallen? I looked down, terrified of seeing a tiny, still, sprawling figure on top of the nave roof or on the grass by the west door. But at that moment, the moon went behind a cloud, and there was pitch darkness. I could see nothing.
‘Kevin,’ I yelled, hanging on to the handrail with slippery hands and nearly overbalancing in my panic. ‘KEVIN?’
As if in answer to my yells, a car came round the corner into Cathedral Close. A police car with a revolving blue light on the roof. It pulled up at the very door of the tower. A policeman got out; I could just see his bulky foreshortened shape in the flashing of the revolving blue light.
I despaired then. Policemen came to tell you when somebody you loved had had an accident. They came to tell us when I was a kid, and my grandma got knocked down and killed by a lorry on the Whitegate Road. I clung to the rail with both hands, wi’ my eyes shut, to stop me throwing myself over. Barbara will need you, I kept telling myself. Barbara will need you.
I might have hung there for ever, if a carefully calm shout hadn’t come from the parapet.
‘What you doin’ up there, sunshine?’ Then, ‘Would you mind coming down careful-like, sunshine? I’d like a little word with you.’
It wasn’t the way anyone talks to a bereaved father. It was the way people talk to a crazy drunk, or a potential suicide. It gave me hope. I got hold of myself and got myself down the iron ladder.
The fuzz took a very firm grip of my arms.
‘Now, lad, what you on, then?’
‘It’s all right,’ I said, ‘you can let go of me. I’m all right. I’m the steeplejack working here.’
They looked at me with disbelieving eyes.
‘Working overtime?’ said the
bigger one. ‘Or is it the night shift?’ I saw myself as they must see me, jeans and a sweater, and bare feet in trainers, tousled hair.
The smaller one sniffed my breath. ‘He’s not been drinking. Drugs, you reckon?’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry to have caused any bother . . .’
‘Any bother?’ said the bigger one. ‘Shouting your head off up the steeple in the middle of the night? You’ve got the whole of Cathedral Close aroused. The Dean phoned us his-self . . .’
‘Beginner’s Night, this,’ said his mate. ‘First that kid near stark naked, then this nutter . . .’
‘What kid?’ I shouted, my heart swelling big as a football.
‘Kid in only a pyjama top, walking across the close here an hour ago. We nearly knocked him down. Stepped right out in front of us. Reckon he was sleepwalking. Couldn’t get a word of sense out of him. Took him to Muncaster General.’
‘Lad about eight, blond hair?’ I shouted, wild with hope.
‘Yeah, about that.’
‘I’m his dad. I was looking for him, up the tower. Shouting his name.’
They looked at each other, doubtfully. Then the big one said, still full of suspicion, ‘We’ll run you to the hospital. You can give us a few names and addresses while we’re going.’
It was an Indian doctor I talked to. A Doctor Kumar; nice bloke, half-worried, half-fascinated.
‘A strange case. We have examined him physically. He has come to no harm, though his feet are cut and bleeding. But he is in some sort of . . . mental state. He does not see when I hold up two fingers in front of him. He will not answer questions. And three times he has tried to get out of bed and escape from the hospital – the sister just caught him as he was leaving, the first time. Now we are watching him all the time. You say he walked from Joynton? With bare feet? Just like we found him?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Can I see him? Can I ring my wife? She’ll be frantic.’
‘Yes to both of those things, Mr Clarke. If you will come with me . . .’
‘He’s all right,’ I told Barbara. ‘He’s in Muncaster General. Don’t drive in till you’ve calmed yourself down.’
‘Marge is with me. She’ll drive me in. Is he . . . hurt?’
‘Only his feet, bleeding.’ I didn’t want to upset her more, till she got there.
Our Kevin lay on his back, in a little side ward with only two beds, and the other one empty. A bloke in a coat that I took to be a hospital porter was sitting by his bedside. He got up as we came in.
‘He’s quieter now, Doctor.’
‘We have given him a strong sedative,’ said Dr Kumar.
‘He’s been talking again, though. Can’t make head nor tail of it . . .’
I bent over Kevin. He looked angelic, with his face washed and his hair brushed. I shook him gently by the shoulder.
‘Kevin, Kevin, it’s Dad. Dad’s here, you’re all right now.’
‘I don’t think he can hear you, Mr Clarke.’
‘Wait,’ I said. Kevin’s eyes opened; then his lips parted, as if he wanted to say something.
But all that came out were long ugly words, that I couldn’t understand, and that Kevin could never have said when he was himself.
‘What you done to him? What you done to him?’ I shouted.
Dr Kumar put a gentle hand on my arm. ‘We have done nothing but give him a sedative. Come away, Mr Clarke, you will only distress yourself, and not help Kevin.’
‘But what’s he saying?’
‘I do not know, Mr Clarke. But from my little experience of the classics, back at my Bombay school, I would say he is talking in Latin. Only a very strange kind of Latin.’
‘But he doesn’t know any Latin. They don’t do it – only a bit of French . . .’
‘That is what makes it so puzzling, Mr Clarke. But rest assured, he will get the very best possible care . . .’
Just then Barbara arrived, and I won’t go into that.
The hospital staff were very good. They let us stay by his bedside the rest of the night, if we were quiet. I dozed a bit, and so did Barbara beside me. It was the effects of shock, I reckon. You sleep, once you know the worst is over.
Barbara and I hung around that hospital all the next day. I had no thoughts of going to work; I rang Billy at the workshops and he was very sympathetic. I sent him with one of the other lads, whose mate was on holiday, to demolish a little chimney at Lippington. It was standing alone on the site; there was no chance of anything being buggered up; I reckoned they could manage on their own, for once. Billy was a sensible sort of lad.
At the hospital, they kept on taking Kevin away for tests, in case he’d suffered some accident while he was on the road to Muncaster. EEG, ECG, I don’t know. But everything they did drew a blank. They couldn’t find anything wrong with him. Except the moment they turned their backs, he’d start to try to get away from them, out of the hospital. They said it seemed to come on him in fits; I saw one of them start, while he was actually lying in bed. He made a flat dive for the window, without warning, and it was on the first floor and all. It was me that grabbed him; he fought like a devil, tried to bite me on the arm. Mumbling those strange ugly words. His eyes were open, but he didn’t know me. I wasn’t even a person to him; just an obstacle. I looked in his eyes, and it just wasn’t our Kevin at all, but some mad thing. It near broke my heart. I couldn’t believe it was happening to us. I couldn’t touch a bite to eat, or even drink. They kept filling him up with sedatives, and talked about sending him to another hospital, a hospital for nutters.
At five o’clock, I had a call from Billy. The chimney was down safe; no sweat. He sounded cock-a-hoop. It was the first one he’d laid on his own. I said well done, but I couldn’t have cared less.
When my mind wasn’t on Kevin, it was on that tower. The tower was after our Kevin all right. If that police car hadn’t have grabbed him by accident, he’d have gone up it. Beyond that, I couldn’t think what might have happened; I couldn’t bear to. I didn’t say anything to our Barbara; she was going through enough without her thinking that I’d taken leave of my senses too. To her, I suppose, I’d just gone looking for our Kevin, and then rung up to say I’d found out where he was. She didn’t get round to asking me any questions; but maybe she would, later. Well, cross that bridge when we come to it.
In between his fits, Kevin just lay as if he was asleep. I tried to read the paper a nurse had fetched me, but I couldn’t make any sense of it; kept reading the same thing over and over again, in between going out into the corridor to stare at the fire hydrant.
It finally happened about midnight. I was dozing, I think, dozing over that stupid newspaper. Suddenly I heard our Kevin say,
‘Mum? Dad? Where am I? What are we doing here?’ He sounded muzzy, half-asleep, but it was our Kev all right. Our Kev come back. Barbara grabbed him and hugged him, and I went out to get the nurse and she fetched the doctor. When I got back in the room, Barbara was just sitting on the bed and hugging him, with tears streaming down her face.
The nurse and doctor did all the usual things: pulse, temperature, shining a little pencil-torch first into Kevin’s left eye, then his right. You could see they were totally baffled. But they made such a glad fuss, I knew they’d been bloody worried; they just hadn’t shown us how worried they were.
Then Kevin started demanding something to eat and drink. They fetched him a mug of Ovaltine and some chocolate biscuits the nurse had bought for herself. They were that chuffed. Barbara was all for taking our Kevin home, but the doctor said they’d keep him in for a few days. And I agreed with him. Only he was going on about the delayed effects of shock and concussion. And I was thinking about that damned tower. Maybe the tower was just letting our Kevin go, for a bit, so we would drop our guard . . .
Still, I slept that night, on a very uncomfortable couch in the corridor, while Barbara dozed on the spare bed in Kevin’s ward. In the morning, Kevin wakened up his old self, bright as a button.
So I left them there, and went back to work at the cathedral, feeling dog-rough. Still, it was a nice cool bright morning, as Billy and I climbed our fixed ladders to the steeple; and I’d managed to shake most of the cobwebs away.
‘We’d better get the weather-vane down first, Billy.’ The weather-vane’s not easy like the weathercock. It can be a right bastard. Its four arms, north, south, east and west, tend to catch on everything as you’re lowering it to the ground, and it’s quite a weight. Anyway, we got to it, and got it out of its stone socket, and were just working it out through the scaffolding when Billy says, suddenly, ‘Jesus Christ, what’s that?’
I felt him let go of the vane; the weight of the vane nearly broke my back, trying to tear itself out of my hands and down . . . I couldn’t hold it; it was pulling me after it.
I let go.
It flung itself loose like a bronze bird, dwindled away down the slope of the spire till it hit near the bottom. I saw the yellow scar grow in the black Keuper stone, saw the cloud of yellow stone-fragments fly. Saw the vane leap outwards towards the ring of spectators with upturned white faces who were standing on the grass of the cathedral green.
Just in time the ring of faces parted, scattered. With a thud that floated clear up to us, it embedded itself in the green turf.
I turned on Billy. ‘You stupid bastard, you coulda killed somebody.’
But he wasn’t looking at me. He was pointing with a shaking finger at something that lay behind the parapet of the nave roof, far below.
A tiny sprawled figure in pyjamas. It coulda been our Kevin, for its blond hair lifted in the morning breeze; the hair was the only thing moving in a splatter of blood that lay like splashed ink across the green lead of the nave roof.
It couldn’t be our Kevin. I’d left him safe in hospital, eating his breakfast, and driven straight to the tower and started work. I’d have heard him come, seen him come . . .
And the pyjamas were the wrong colour, a pretty forget-me-not blue, whereas I’d left our Kevin wearing washed-out grey hospital things with stripes . . .
The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral Page 4
