Instead, I stared out of the windscreen, listening to that book on tape. Images got processed, filed away. Interminable grass verges. Median strips and corrugated girders. Newly planted saplings on the banks like headstones. Daisies, buttercups, and bracken. Patched-up tarmacadam. Overpasses hewn from bunker-grade concrete. The ridged grey backs of road signs on the right, the bright green squares of road signs on the left. Ragwort on the central reservation. Wheat fields, corn fields, onion fields, cabbage fields, potato fields. Telegraph poles and bellying wires. A million and one traffic cones. The ghostly jetsam of collisions gone before us: shattered brake-light plastic, broken hubcaps, tyre tracks that streaked off-road. Suddenly, a lone tree in a meadow. Clouds like mountain ranges. Slip lanes. Hay fields scored by tractor wheels. Pylons getting more and more enormous, linchpins of the earth.
Today, I live an entire ocean away from the A1, and yet I stalk it daily. Its nothingness pervades my thoughts in lonely moments as I ride the subway into work. I wish that I could drive a car without hearing the voice of Maxine Laidlaw. I wish that I could be in anybody’s passenger seat without my fingers twitching on the door handle. But I’m part-marooned on roads like these and always will be.
[. . .] On a cold bright day in late October, the Artifex appeared to save his life. He was racing through the backwoods of his family’s estate with his two sisters. For once, he was ahead of them, and it meant so much to be out in the lead that he ignored the burning in his chest when it began. But soon the pain got worse. They overtook him in a flash. He watched them bounding on, mud splashing up in chunks. His lungs were shutting down. He kneeled in the mush of leaves and dirt to rest, hoping it would pass. His sisters did not hear him wheezing. Not once did they look back. He knew their minds were on the finishing post: that ancient sycamore deep in the woods. One of them would get to notch a victory upon its trunk again, but it would not be him. It would never be him. Albert Bloor, eleven years old, was gasping in the dirt, alone. His eyes started to close. The world was drifting out of sight, further and further away. But then, with an intake of breath, she appeared.
He did not know from where. One moment he was staring at the tips of evergreens tilting above him, the next she was lifting his head and pressing a cup to his lips. ‘Drink up, little one. You’ll be all right,’ she said. He slurped warm tea until the tightness in his chest relaxed. When he looked at her for the first time, it made him shake. How ugly and unusual she was: her catkin hair in the half-light, her toothless mouth, the scars across her brow, her chapped and blistered skin—and those white eyes, as pale as clock faces. But he was not afraid—not for a second. He trusted in her kindness from the start.
It was she who helped him find the air again. It was she who scooped him up and carried him through the pines and brambles. It was she who steered him past the snatching tree limbs without slipping. It was she who hauled him up the muddy hummock to her camp. At the top of that hill, she scraped a patch of mulch with her bare hands, exposed a rusty cover in the ground. She threw it aside. ‘Hold on around my neck now,’ she said, and twisted him across her shoulders. ‘We’re going down to my compartment.’ He was lowered, rung by rung, into the dark.
She put him on a bed of hay and burlap, turned a handle overhead: a rush of soil came flooding in and brought a shaft of light. There was a metal crate for cooking on, holes punched in the sides for ventilation. She prepared a salve to soothe his chest. Three parts kardlach, two parts grish, one part mesckital. He would come to know this recipe by heart one day. The only asthma medicine that ever worked for him.
She mixed the powders in her flask and added cold water, shook it. Testing a drip of the slack gum with her finger, she nodded—‘Perfect!’—then tipped it on his clavicle. ‘We’ll let that do its work,’ she said. ‘You rest.’ From a flask, she poured out steaming tea. ‘Another dose of ranyan to relax that chest and you’ll be fine in a few hours.’ She steeped a clod of leaves that looked like mistletoe in the hot liquid. ‘It’s a bitter flavour, but it makes you feel brand new, I promise.’ So he gulped it down.
‘Thank you,’ he muttered, feeling his eyelids closing again. ‘Thank you for saving me.’
She told him not to mention it. ‘You sleep,’ she said. ‘Get your strength back.’
My father hit the pause button. ‘I need a break. This is making me carsick.’ He wound down the window on his side. A dirge of air pressed at my eardrums. I opened my window to get rid of it. ‘What do you think of it so far? Nowhere near as spooky as the show. The piano music and the mist: you don’t get that from a book, do you? And what about that good bit when she chucks her axe into the tree-trunk and it sticks? That’s one of my favourite parts.’
‘Maybe it’s coming,’ I said.
‘I thought it happened at the start.’
‘Yeah, but maybe they just added that part in for TV.’
‘To make it more intense, you mean?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You could be right. It’s better that way.’ He smacked his stomach. ‘Urgh. Too much coffee, burning up my innards. Can you get me that Drifter out?’
I did as I was asked. He unwrapped it with his teeth and took a bite. ‘I remember building the compartment for that scene, though—day one of the job, that was. They were going to use the barrel from an old cement lorry, but it cost too much. So we had to build it on a frame with sheets of ply. It was like a big half-section of a pipe, in the end, like something they ride skateboards on. We raced toy cars on it for a bit, until the scene painters got to work. That was a pretty good laugh while it lasted.’
‘Really?’ I said.
‘Yeah, we were just messing about to kill some time.’
‘No—did you really build Cryck’s compartment?’
Pride registered on his face: a smiling nod. ‘Of course. I’ve told you that before.’
I never tired of hearing it. Just as I never lost the impulse to run to the kitchen telephone after each new episode was broadcast to give my verdict, even if I could not reach him, even when the messages I left with housemates weren’t returned, even when we had no contact number for him at all. Because, on those rare evenings when the phone did ring, and I was upstairs dreaming, my mother would come to nudge me awake and say, ‘Your father wants a word,’ and I’d go drowsy-eyed downstairs and hear his voice rousing me: ‘Evening, Danno. Didn’t mean to drag you out of bed. I couldn’t sleep.’ There’d be a sound on the line like water. ‘So come on, then, don’t keep me in suspense: what did you make of the last few episodes? I’m not so keen on those delegate characters, personally. I think they’re a mistake. Way too much screen time for them. I’m more interested in what Cryck is building with that thing they found last week.’ His words would smudge together. While he spoke at me, I would endorse his opinions with yeses and mm-hms, and then he’d trail off and tell me how late it was and wish me goodnight. I craved these private moments with him, and their infrequency and imperfection only made them more addictive.
We had moved into the fumy wake of an aggregates truck with a bumper sticker that said HOW’S MY DRIVING? and offered a number to dial. ‘Think anyone ever rings that?’ my father said. ‘I always picture some old lady sitting in a portacabin somewhere, manning a hotline.’
‘What else did you make?’ I asked. ‘On the show.’
‘Almost everything.’ He chewed on his Drifter, edged us into the middle lane. ‘When we get there, I’ll show you. The only set I didn’t really work on was the Bloors’ conservatory.’
‘What about the conducer?’
‘As if I’d let them build that thing without me! There’s a hundred different pieces went into the shell alone, and I must’ve cut eighty of them by hand. It was like building a house. Then about a million tiny holes for the lights had to be drilled in.’
‘What’s it made of?’
‘Wood and polystyrene, mostly. Horsehair and plaster. Chicken wire. A few struts from a marquee. It looks like it’d weigh as much
as Nelson’s column, that thing, but you could lift the whole lot on your own without much effort. They had to load it up with sandbags for the shoot in case it blew away.’ He scrolled his window up again. There was an easing of his shoulders. ‘Shut that window on your side,’ he said. ‘I’m all right now,’ and pushed play on the stereo.
[. . .] When Albert awoke, it was pitch dark and raining. He heard the patter on the ground above. The candlelight was skittish and she loomed beyond it. ‘How are those lungs feeling now, eh?’
‘Much better,’ he said.
She came to mop his brow with a cool rag. ‘Time to get you home then, I suppose.’
‘What should I call you?’
‘Cryck,’ she said.
‘I’m Albert.’
‘You must be from the big house, are you?’
‘Yes, miss,’ he said.
She winced. ‘I told you my name, boy. Use it. I’m not one for formalities.’
‘Sorry.’ He sat up and stretched. ‘I don’t know how to repay you.’
‘No need for that,’ she told him. ‘I’m glad to’ve sorted you out. You’ve got a better colour now.’
‘What sort of name is Cryck?’ he asked. ‘Are you foreign?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’ Her giant nostrils flared. ‘We’ve got one thing in common, you and I. We’re both a way from where we ought to be.’
‘Are you a tramp?’ he asked.
‘Ha! No, not as such.’
‘Don’t worry. I won’t tell my father that you’re on his land.’ He had an anxious thought that Cryck might be flushed out of these woods some day, mistaken for a poacher, punished. ‘And if he finds you here, I’ll say what you did for me. I promise. You’ll always be welcome.’
‘That’s good of you, boy,’ she said. ‘But your father wouldn’t notice me—your people have no sense for it. You’re the first who’s ever seen or heard me.’
‘How long have you been hiding here?’
‘Oh, I’m only passing through. Not hiding.’
‘Passing through to where?’
‘Aoxi,’ she said. ‘You have a lot of questions for a little one, if you don’t mind me saying.’
‘Is that where you come from? Aoxi?’
‘Your pronunciation isn’t right, but yes.’ She moved in closer then and took him by the chin, turning his head left to right. ‘You’ve really got me wondering now, Albert,’ she said, softly. ‘How is it you can see me? Are you a different species?’
‘No.’
‘Hm. You’re probably a malagh.’
‘What’s a malagh?’
‘A mongrel—a mix of things.’
‘I’m not a mongrel!’
‘You have to be. The best ones often are. It’s the only explanation I can think of.’ She scratched her hair with stumpy fingernails. ‘Are you hungry yet?’
‘Yes. Starving.’
‘Could you eat a bird?’
‘I don’t like quail or partridge, but chicken would be nice.’
Her pale eyes tightened. ‘How about a magpie?’
He stuck out his tongue in disgust.
‘I’ll heat up a pot of goade, then. Everyone likes goade.’
‘Never tried it,’ he said.
‘Well, you’re in for a treat.’ She stepped further along the compartment and retrieved something from a box on the floor. It was a roll of cloth, which she unravelled. Laid out on the fabric, dried and curling, were countless green leaves like stinging nettles. ‘Goade. This forest is full of it. Tasty and good for you. Trust me.’
And he did. He sat and ate the dish of goade she made for him. It had the texture of cooked spinach but the flavour of chestnuts roasted on a bonfire. Odd yet familiar. He could have eaten three more bowls of it, but he stopped at two. She seemed amused by his appetite for it. ‘Told you, didn’t I?’ she said. ‘We have it with everything on Aoxi. It makes very fine soup in particular.’ She inhaled so deeply that her skin cracked. ‘Yes, you have to be a malagh,’ she said. ‘You must have Aoxi in your blood. An ordinary child wouldn’t feel a breeze if I were near. But you—not only do you see me, you aren’t even revolted. And it leads me to believe that you’re the only person on this rotten planet who can help me.’
The dirty red phone box where he placed the call was on the junction of Main Street and Boat Lane, set off in a lay-by near the boundary wall of a church cemetery. I would imagine it’s still standing there today. Perhaps his thumbprints linger on the door glass. Perhaps some vestige of his spittle clogs the perforations of the mouthpiece. Sometimes, I’m plunged into anxiety that everything my father touched during our trip needs to be revisited and cleansed with bleach, in case his madness is contagious. That phone box in Sprotbrough would be the place I’d start, because it’s where the first clear signs of his disturbance were presented.
We had taken a detour to get there. As we were coasting down the A1 in the thrall of Maxine Laidlaw’s soft narration, my father said, ‘Shit, is that the time already?’ It was 11:02. At the sight of the next slip road, we veered off course. The track he’d plotted on the map for us continued on to Doncaster and Pontefract, all the way to Leeds, but we branched off into some drowsy South Yorkshire town: an ordinary suburban strip divided by two lanes of traffic and flanked by car dealerships. He pulled into a bus stop, turned off the stereo. ‘Give me that a sec, will you?’ he said, and took the atlas, spreading it upon the wheel.
‘What are you looking for?’ I said.
‘It’s fine. I’ve got it.’ He tossed the atlas onto my lap. We drove on, crossed a viaduct over a canal, the water still and mirrored, anglers on the banks with landing nets. Then we emerged into the village, confronted by a church tower with a belfry not unlike the one I knew from home. The grounds of the church were similarly sculpted, a grey stone path skirting a lawn beset with tombstones, a phone box by the entry gates. ‘This’ll do nicely,’ my father said. ‘Let’s stretch our legs for a minute.’
He parked right up on the kerb. There was a small parade of shops across the street, fringed by trees. ‘What d’you reckon the odds are they’ll have Wintermans in that newsagents?’ he asked, stepping out. ‘A little country town like this, plenty of old men about—I think my chances are good.’ He walked around the bonnet, a passing cloud before the sun. ‘You coming, or what?’
I climbed out. As we headed for the graveyard, he put his arm round me. After half a circuit of the grounds, we paused at a memorial skinned with moss. I can’t remember what was carved into the stone, but it might as well have been: HERE LIE HARDESTY & HARDESTY. ‘Listen, you stay here. Have a run around the church or something. I need to make a phone call.’
‘Can’t I just get back in the car?’ I said.
He mussed my hair. ‘You’re a real outdoorsman, aren’t you?’
‘I don’t want us to be late.’
‘We won’t be, son. In fact, that’s why I need the phone.’
‘You said everything was organised.’
‘It is. This whole thing’s been arranged for months. Look, I just—’ He stepped forward, took me sharply by the elbow. ‘Let’s get you back in the car.’
‘Can I play my tape?’
‘Not until we’re moving again,’ he said. ‘You’ll drain the battery.’ He steered me by the shoulders, back towards the road. ‘Don’t you have anything else in that bag of yours?’
‘Figurines,’ I said.
‘That all?’
‘Top Trumps.’
‘That’s a game for two.’
‘Not always . . . I’ve got my camera, I suppose.’
‘Any film in it?’
‘No.’
‘Well, that’s useless then. I’ll get you some from the shop. You’ll want it for later.’
‘What time do we have to be there?’
‘It depends,’ he said. ‘I was told one o’clock, but I need to double-check that with my boss. The filming schedule changes all the time. And nothing pisses people off—I mean, ch
eeses people off—on a TV set more than someone interfering with the schedule. That’s why I need the phone. Might take me a while to reach who I need to, though.’ He was such a comfortable liar. ‘You’d better get those Top Trumps out.’
I sat in the car with the windows open, sun splintering behind the visors, shuffling my deck of World’s Best Aeroplanes. My father went into the phone box and shut the door. I dealt the passenger planes into two stacks, face down—one for me, one for him. Picking up his stack, I tried to plant myself inside his mind, guessing which of the planes’ attributes he’d value, his tactical approach, before flipping over my cards in the other pile. I lost twenty in a row this way on his behalf.
He was still in the phone box, smoking and talking. His body seemed to sway. His voice was only just perceptible, more a thud than a whisper. I lost the next ten cards, too, depleting my father’s pile. His voice got louder, more persistent. The temperature rose in the car. I took off my sweatshirt. What if I adjusted my strategy? Instead of playing as him, I’d play for him, use my own judgement. He won the next card, and the next, and the next, and I felt consoled by this, in better balance. He won the next card, too: nothing beat a Concorde. And then—pop pop pop from outside, three brisk punches to the phone box glass. When I turned my head, I saw there was a webbing in the door pane, a sudden opacity where my father’s face should have been visible. I got out of the car and went to him.
A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better Page 6
