by Jonathan Coe
10
… the next thing I knew, I was sitting in the most comfortable armchair in the world, in a room flooded with natural light, where one of the walls was made entirely of glass and looked on to a beautiful, manicured, walled garden, filled with fountains and rose bushes. A lovely piece of gentle classical guitar music was playing in the background. Alison was sitting on a footstool beside me, holding my hand. On a little table next to my chair was a fresh mug of tea, from which I took a sip: it was strong and sweet and deliciously reviving.
‘Where am I?’ I murmured.
‘This is Phoebe’s studio. Great, isn’t it?’
I felt so tired, it was an effort to get even one more word out. ‘Phoebe?’
‘The Mad Bird Woman. Only I don’t think we should call her that any more. Her name’s Phoebe.’
I managed to turn my head and look around the room. It was indeed filled with canvases, easels, paint pots and brushes. There was also a dining table – about half the size of the one in the front room – at which the man from the cellar was sitting, wrapped in a blanket, still playing his game of Pelmanism.
‘Who is he?’ I faintly said to Alison.
‘We don’t know. But we think that his name’s Lu, or something like that, and he comes from China.’
A door opened and Phoebe herself came in. Glimpsing a view of the hall through the open doorway, I realized that the door to this wonderful, light and airy studio must have been the second one that I had tried: the one that had been locked. At this memory, images of my horrific descent to the cellar began flooding back for the first time. I drank some more tea eagerly.
‘How are you feeling now, Rachel?’ Phoebe asked.
‘OK, thank you,’ I said. Was this the same woman I’d been frightened of for the last few days? She seemed so gentle and kind.
‘You shouldn’t have gone down there, you silly girl. You must have given each other a terrible fright.’
I smiled. ‘Yes, we did.’
Over at the table, Lu gave what seemed to be a cry of satisfaction. Going over to look at the progress of his card game, Phoebe put her hand on his shoulder and said: ‘There you are – brilliant! Not a single card missing. You did it.’ To which she added a few broken words in (I suppose) Chinese. Lu turned and grinned at her. At least a third of his teeth were missing, but it was still a nice smile.
‘W zuòdào le,’ he said, in a harsh and cracked voice.
‘He’s been playing that game for more than a week now,’ Phoebe explained, drawing up a chair and coming to sit between us. ‘I gave it to him because he seems to have lost his memory and I thought it might help him to get it back. The cards are very old – they belonged to my parents. They’re kind of horrible but pretty easy to remember, at least.’
‘So … what were they doing in the woods?’
‘I can’t keep him here,’ Phoebe said. ‘I can’t hold him prisoner. That’s not the idea. It’s just supposed to be somewhere he can feel safe for a while. He’s free to come and go as he wants. So one evening he went off to sit in the woods, and he took the cards with him. He takes them everywhere, in fact. But I expect he got confused, and forgot them, and left them all behind.’ She smiled at us, and must have seen the confusion on our faces, because now she launched into a fuller explanation:
‘It was in the woods that I found him, about ten days ago,’ she said. ‘It was early in the morning and he was sitting up against a tree and he was so weak that he could barely move. He looked as though he hadn’t eaten for weeks. He wouldn’t come with me so I went home and fetched him some food. Even after that, he was still scared of me and it didn’t help that I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. But I wanted to get him to some sort of safety. I didn’t want to get the police involved because I didn’t think they’d be sympathetic. People in Beverley are pressuring them to crack down on vagrants and I thought that was the category they’d probably put him into.
‘After a while I realized that he did understand a bit of English, and by the end of the morning, I’d managed to persuade him to come home with me. I told him that he was welcome to sleep here for a few days – my guess was that he’d been sleeping rough, I don’t know how long for – but he didn’t want to be in any of the bedrooms, for some reason. The place he really seemed to like was the cellar so I fixed it up for him as best I could, put in a camp bed and a few rugs and chairs and bits and pieces to try and make it more cosy. He seemed happy down there. That was where he wanted to be. Maybe because it made him feel safe.’
‘Why was he so scared?’ Alison wanted to know. ‘What’s he running away from?’
‘Well, unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get much sense out of him,’ said Phoebe. ‘The language that he speaks is Mandarin, I’m pretty sure of that, so he’s come to this country from China. He’s probably come here looking for work, and my guess is that he has been working here, for quite a while. Working very hard, which is why he looks so worn out. I don’t think he’s anything like as old as he looks.’
I had a sudden inspiration. ‘Has he been trafficked?’
Alison and Phoebe both looked at me, equally impressed. I did feel rather proud of myself for being so worldly and knowledgeable.
‘I saw this programme on the television the other night,’ I explained. ‘Apparently there are slaves in England. Real slaves. Most of them come here from other countries and they have to work, like, twenty-four hours every day and if they try to run away they get beaten up or attacked by dogs.’
‘I don’t know if he’s been trafficked,’ said Phoebe, ‘but I think he has been doing some kind of forced labour. There aren’t many clues, because he doesn’t have a passport with him or anything like that. Probably his employer’s got it. But he did have this in his pocket.’
She showed us a slip of paper. It was a handwritten payment slip, scribbled out on cheap blue headed notepaper. The name of the company at the top was ‘Sunbeam Foods’.
‘Sunbeam Foods?’ said Alison. ‘Who are they?’
‘I did some research on the internet,’ said Phoebe. ‘They’re a food-processing company, based down in Kent. Outfits like this send cheap labour to farms all over the country. So it looks like Lu’s been working for them. And I’ve got a pretty good idea what he might have been doing. There was one word that, when I mentioned it to him, completely freaked him out. It was chickens.’
At the mere sound of the word, Lu turned sharply towards us, panic etched on his face.
‘Chickens?’ he said. ‘No. No chickens.’
Phoebe got up and comforted him, rubbed his shoulders, soothed his brow. ‘No chickens,’ she kept saying, until his agitation had subsided. ‘It’s all right, Lu. No chickens. No chickens for you.’
‘What’s his problem with chickens?’ Alison asked.
‘We did factory farming in school, don’t you remember?’ I said. ‘It was horrible. Some of the class had to leave the room. Isabel and Anunya have been vegetarian ever since. Was it something like that, do you think?’
‘Considering that Sunbeam Foods is one of the suppliers for the Brunwin Group, yes, I think it probably was,’ said Phoebe. (But she did not explain what ‘the Brunwin Group’ was, and I did not – at this stage – know.) ‘They market themselves now as being free range and humane and all that sort of thing but … well, that can cover a multitude of sins. And it still means there are people like Lu working some way down the supply chain in terrible conditions.’
‘So what are you going to do now?’ asked Alison, drawing the conversation back to practicalities.
‘I don’
t know. Just wait and see, I suppose. I got some Teach Yourself Mandarin tapes from the library, so every day we understand each other a tiny bit more. And every day he seems to be remembering a little bit more, as well. He keeps saying this one thing, which for a while I thought was a word I didn’t understand, but now I think it’s somebody’s name: “Xiang”.’
At the sound of these two syllables, Lu turned again, and stared at Phoebe intently. His eyes blazed with urgency.
‘Xiang,’ he repeated. ‘Xiang!’
‘That’s right,’ said Phoebe. ‘You want to find him, don’t you? I’m going to help you.’
‘Find Xiang,’ he answered, nodding furiously.
‘My theory is this,’ Phoebe explained. ‘And it is only a theory. But: supposing he and this Xiang came over from China together – either legally or illegally, but in any case probably paying some dodgy character a small fortune to help them. At some point they get separated, maybe before Lu starts working for Sunbeam Foods, maybe after. Perhaps they both worked there together. Who knows? But obviously, if the company is based in Kent, and Lu has ended up here in Yorkshire, he and the other workers were being driven long distances all over the country to work on different farms. Supposing Lu decided he couldn’t take any more of this. So one night, maybe they were parked in some lay-by and getting a few hours’ sleep or something, he just slipped out and ran away.’
‘But he wouldn’t have gone without Xiang,’ I insisted.
Phoebe thought about this for a moment. ‘No, you’re right,’ she agreed. ‘They must have got separated ages ago. Maybe when they first arrived in the UK.’
‘Well, I do hope that he’s all right,’ I said, sitting up and finishing the last of my tea. There was a clock on the wall of the studio and I’d noticed that it was almost 2.30. Gran and Grandad would be home by now, and would be wondering where on earth we had got to. ‘Thank you very much for the tea, and for looking after me so well. But Alison and I should really be going home.’
Phoebe saw us to the front door.
‘Call again if you want to,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot. I didn’t mean to scare you in the woods, only I was a bit paranoid about finding those cards. I don’t think it would be a good thing if the police worked out that Lu’s here, so … do keep it to yourselves, won’t you?’
‘Of course we will,’ said Alison.
And then, just before leaving, I thought to ask: ‘What happened to your kestrel, by the way?’
Phoebe seemed taken aback. ‘How did you know that I used to have a kestrel?’
‘I saw you flying it once,’ I said, ‘up on Westwood. A few years ago.’
‘Tabitha …’ said Phoebe, musingly. Her eyes were briefly glazed with sadness. ‘I used to keep her in a shed out in the garden. But one night somebody got in. I never found out who it was. They strangled her.’
We both gasped. ‘Oh, that’s awful,’ Alison said. ‘Why would anyone do something like that?’
‘I don’t know. They were angry with me, I suppose, because Mrs Bates liked me, and left me this house. People are strange, very strange.’ She smiled now, and held out her hand for us to shake. ‘But now you’ve met me, and you know that I’m not as bad as people make out. Tell your grandparents I’m not this mad scary woman who goes round murdering old ladies. Spread the word.’
‘We will!’ I promised.
Then we both shook her hand vigorously, and I knew for the first time that I was not frightened of the Mad Bird Woman at all. But I also knew that I would never get used to the piercings all over her face, or the tattoos all over her neck and throat and around her eyes. Why would you disfigure yourself like that? What had inspired her to do it? I had a vague but deep-rooted intuition that it had something to do with the painting in her front room, that wild stormy wasteland and the menacing black house that overlooked it. But I was not brave enough to ask her, either then or later.
11
In fact we only ever saw Phoebe one more time.
When we got back to the house that afternoon, Gran and Grandad were already home, and didn’t even ask us where we’d been. I had never seen them looking so happy. Only now did we learn of the cloud that had been hanging over them that week. But all was well, in any case: Gran had been given the results of her brain scan and the doctor had told her that she did not have cancer after all. She had something called a meningioma, apparently: a benign tumour that was not too difficult to operate upon. The sense of relief, of thankfulness and light-heartedness, that pervaded the house from that moment onwards was so sweet and strong that we felt we could almost touch it with our fingers and taste it on our tongues. The house and garden seemed drenched in light.
On Thursday afternoon, our last full day in Beverley, all four of us went up to Westwood with a picnic. Gran and Grandad sat on the wooden bench that encircled the foot of the Black Tower; Alison and I laid out a couple of rugs in the sunshine, and gorged ourselves on fish paste sandwiches and Gran’s homemade chocolate cake. Afterwards, Alison lay flat out and closed her eyes and seemed to have fallen asleep. I sat upright and let the thoughts course through my head. I was looking forward to seeing my mother again, but also felt prey to a gentle, pressing melancholy at the prospect of leaving this place, which had come to feel so welcoming and familiar, so much like home. I remembered the first time I had sat here with my brother, some years ago, on a cold and grey afternoon in late October, the same afternoon on which, as dusk descended, he had played that nasty joke on me in the Minster. And then, just as my memory was calling up images of Phoebe pushing Mrs Bates’s wheelchair across the moorland, with her kestrel Tabitha perched on her arm, Phoebe herself appeared in the distance; approaching us, it seemed, from exactly the same spot, but now waving cheerfully in recognition. She came and crouched down beside us on the rug and I introduced her to Gran and Grandad, who (having already been given a carefully edited account of our visit to her house) half rose from their bench with instinctive politeness, and extended their hands to give hers a cautious shake, but never stopped looking uncomfortable in her presence.
Phoebe had come to say goodbye, but she couldn’t stay for long. She had something on her mind.
‘Lu disappeared,’ she told us. ‘I’m not sure when. I went down to find him yesterday morning and he was gone.’
‘We have to find him,’ I said. ‘Alison and I can help you. He won’t have gone far, surely.’
Phoebe shook her head. ‘I spent all of yesterday looking. I took the car out and drove for miles. But it wasn’t any use. There’s nothing much I can do now. I don’t think he would have gone unless he felt ready for it. He has some money, and he’s a lot stronger than when I found him last week. We just have to hope for the best.’
‘We’re going home tomorrow,’ Alison said. ‘You will write and tell us, won’t you, if you hear from him again?’
‘Of course,’ said Phoebe. But she never did.
Strangely enough it was Alison, out of the two of us, who kept in occasional contact with her after that. Phoebe’s paintings – in fact not just the paintings but the studio, the atmosphere in her house, her whole way of life, everything about her – seemed to have inspired Alison and from then on art became her passion. When her mother came back from holiday the next day she brought a new boyfriend with her, and before long Alison and her mother had moved down to Birmingham in order to live with him. From then on, of course, we hardly saw each other at all: but the events of that week in Beverley had created a bond between us which was not easily broken. I had begun by feeling indifferent towards Alison; then at one time, briefly, I had hated her;
finally, we had come to be friends, and that friendship has strengthened and endured, now, over many years, despite absence and distance, despite the ways in which we have grown up and grown apart, and sometimes misunderstood each other.
Those few, intense and mysterious days in the early summer of 2003 continue to haunt me. The memories are strong. I remember how the discovery of David Kelly’s body was reported on the news, how it had shocked and angered my grandparents, and how it made me realize something about the finality of death. I remember the shadow of death that hung over their house during that time, and the tingling euphoria that seized us all when it miraculously lifted.
There is another thing I have no trouble remembering. I have no trouble remembering it because I have it in front of me, right now as I write these words: the Pelmanism card with that loathsome picture of a giant, brightly coloured spider. The afternoon of our picnic, Phoebe had the pack of cards with her, and she gave me and Alison a spider each, as a souvenir of our adventure, and as a token of our friendship, which she told us we must never neglect because it was one of the most precious things we would ever possess. I never spoke of the cards to Alison again: I don’t know whether she kept hers, or whether she lost it. But mine has always stayed with me: first at home, in a special drawer of my bedside cupboard; then at Oxford; and now …
Now it sits in front of me on my desk. It has never been a pleasant thing to look at it, it has always filled me with dread, and tonight, in the deathly stillness of this house, it poisons my mind once again with strange imaginings, and I can’t help walking over to the window, one more time, pulling back the curtain and looking into the garden. Peering into the shadows at its furthest depths.
