Ferney

by James Long

  She went to the front door, heard an engine, but it turned into a blue and yellow truck that passed the end of the entrance to the close and went on its way. It was hard to stay there, leaving it all to Mike, wondering what was happening on that carpet battlefield inside, fearing he would be feeling deserted. A stronger instinct kept her outside – an instinct that said she had to protect both Ferney and her baby.

  Her heart jumped when another approaching engine note slowed and a white vehicle crawled round the corner into the close, but it was just a van. It stopped almost opposite and a man in a white coat climbed out with a plastic basket of bread. She had a sudden urge to tell him. Surely he should know that there was a man dying in here? Surely he shouldn’t just go on his baker’s way not knowing? He left his bread on the doorstep of the bungalow next door, nodded to her and left. No one else was about in the neighbouring houses. Time crawled fretfully by and then across the distance there was a far-off two-tone siren, blowing like the wonderful bugles of a rescuing force rushing to lift her siege. She hurried inside to the study doorway. ‘They’re coming,’ she said. Mike waved an acknowledging hand in the air and kept at it.

  The ambulance swung into the close and drove straight to where she stood waving. A man and a woman jumped out, capable-looking. The woman came straight inside with her and the man brought a large pack of equipment in behind them. Mike, drained and pale, surrendered his place to them.

  They bent to examine Ferney in silence. ‘You’ve done well,’ said the woman. ‘Go and have a sit-down.’

  Gally hugged Mike and started to lead him away but Mike turned back, picked the drum up off the table and brought it with him. She fought down an urge to shy away from it.

  ‘We’d better not leave it there,’ he whispered and she took that for a sign that he believed at least one small part of Ferney’s story.

  ‘Bring it through here,’ she said, and led the way to the bedroom. He tucked it out of sight behind a chair and she closed the door firmly on it. They went into the front room, away from Ferney’s danger zone, where they looked at each other and she knew that the last ten minutes of desperate activity had given Mike a shared interest in Ferney’s survival.

  ‘What have I done?’ he said miserably.

  ‘You’ve saved him.’

  ‘I caused it. I brought it on.’

  ‘You couldn’t have known and you’ve kept him alive. Thank you,’ she said.

  She could feel the change in him. All the pain he’d felt, all the raw anger and all the sense of betrayal was buried under a mountain of concern and responsibility. They sat together on the sofa, holding hands in silent tension, listening to the activity down the corridor. The man went to the ambulance and brought back a stretcher. Mike jumped to his feet.

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘It’s okay. We’ve got him stabilized for now. He’s breathing.’

  Mike did help, for all that, moving furniture out of the way while they carried Ferney on his stretcher out through the hall. An oxygen mask was over his face and a monitor was strapped to him.

  ‘You go with him in the ambulance,’ suggested Mike.

  ‘No . . . I don’t want to. Would you mind going to get the car? I’ll lock up here.’

  ‘It’ll take me five minutes,’ he said, puzzled.

  She just nodded.

  The ambulance went on its urgent way and now there were people in the close. Mike told them briefly what was going on as he passed and Gally looked up to see the broad figure of Mary Sparrow stumping down the path.

  ‘Hello, my muffety,’ she said. ‘Here’s a business, then.’

  ‘He just fell down,’ said Gally.

  ‘He’s still kicking, though. It’s a blessing you were here.’

  It wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t been, thought Gally miserably. ‘I was just going to close the house up,’ she said.

  ‘He won’t want anyone in here,’ said Mary, looking round the hall. ‘There’s the key, see? Why don’t you take it and look after it for him?’

  Gally nodded and picked up the key. ‘I’d better just make sure everything’s switched off,’ she said and walked quickly down the corridor, checking each room. She came to the bedroom, crossed the room to the chest of drawers, picked up the envelope and put it in her pocket. She longed to know what was in it, but this was not the time to look.

  She was halfway back to Bagstone Farm when Mike appeared in the car. He was gentle with her on the way to the hospital.

  ‘Did you find it too upsetting?’ he asked.

  ‘It wasn’t that. I felt . . . I felt I was killing him. I don’t know.’

  Is it her guilt again, he wondered, her ever-present guilt that she didn’t save her father? Is that what froze her into inaction? It wasn’t, but anyway he didn’t press the point.

  They waited a long time at the hospital sipping plastic-tasting coffee out of soft, floppy mugs. It was an hour before there was news and the news was that Ferney had suffered a major heart attack, but that, thanks to Mike’s first aid, he was still alive and was now in intensive care. A young female doctor told them he was likely to be in hospital for some time because there were some indications of other problems, too, and that they should phone later to see if he was well enough for a visit. Gally knew that visiting was the last thing she should do.

  On the way back to Penselwood, Gally expected more questions, but Mike was in no mood for them. He was obviously worried.

  ‘It was my fault,’ he said.

  ‘Because you were angry?’

  ‘It must have been the tension. That was what triggered it.’

  ‘Don’t keep saying that. If it was anyone’s fault then it was mine,’ she said softly. ‘It was me that made you go there.’

  ‘But if I hadn’t watched him in the wood, none of this would have happened.’

  ‘Look, Mike, I know you were only doing what you thought was the right thing.’

  ‘Where does this leave you?’ he said, turning his head to look at her for much longer than she felt was safe on the winding country road.

  ‘About as confused as ever.’

  ‘If he doesn’t make it . . . that leaves a lot of things unresolved.’

  She knew he wanted reassurance, but the letter, hot in her back pocket, held a promise of resolution and she knew it was unlikely to be in a form that would reassure him. It was clear to her that she must read it alone.

  ‘I’m sorry if it’s made you unhappy, Mike, I really am. It hasn’t been fair to you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said and they each felt closer than they had been for weeks.

  Back at the caravan it was harder. The house pulled bits of her away from him. Time passed in their separate bubbles of disturbance. After a long period of vacancy, Mike pulled a folder out of his case.

  ‘I forgot,’ he said in a weary voice. ‘I haven’t done my notes for tomorrow.’

  She knew what that meant. He needed to spread himself out, undisturbed, across the caravan table and that could be the best thing. ‘I might go for a walk,’ she said.

  The top of the hill was the right and only place to go and it was an unexpectedly poignant moment when she saw the stone seat was empty. She sat down on it and did nothing for a long time except to stare out over the landscape. Glastonbury Tor was clear on the horizon twenty miles away. The letter felt like a turning-point, as though she would be forced after reading it to divide her life up into before the letter and after the letter. A letter was not something Ferney would ever write lightly. In the end, as a compromise, she pulled it from her pocket and spent a long time looking at the envelope. His handwriting spelt out PRIVATE across the top left-hand corner and then

  Please Deliver To: Gally, Bagstone Farm, Penselwood

  as though he couldn’t bring himself to write ‘Martin’ down as her surname. Maybe he couldn’t remember it, she thought. Surnames couldn’t mean much to a man who had accumulated so many.

  She held it in her hand for perhaps fiv
e minutes before carefully opening the flap and even then it was another minute or so, holding the letter still folded, before she started to read.

  My Dear Gally,

  If you are reading this then it must be presumed that the next stage of our journey has begun. I am writing this letter because, thus far, I have not found the moment to tell you something of great importance to us both. It is my dearest wish that this letter will never reach you – that I will have done this task with my voice, not my pen, and then perhaps I shall be writing quite another letter.

  I have tried to talk to you about the dangers we face in this modern world which will, all the time, do its best to separate us. The old stone wasn’t put there in a time when such dangers could be imagined. I know very clearly how painful it is to be separated by accident of birth from this place of ours and from you. I cannot judge whether we would always be able to find each other again as we have done these few times but I fear that will not be the case.

  Now I must come to the point and you may be cross with me if I tell you that this was your idea and it is at your insistence that I tell you this. About sixty years ago, before Cochrane took you so brutally away from me, you and I were sitting up on top of the hill, where I am quite sure you are sitting now to read this.

  A shiver passed through her and she looked around as if someone might be watching. There was no one and she read on.

  You told me then that we could only be happy if we made quite, quite sure that we would be born close to each other both in time and space – that the only lives worth having were the ones when we could be young together and grow old together. We both know that the end of a life is not so dreadful. What is dreadful is beginning a life in the growing knowledge that the other is not there.

  You made me solemnly swear on that day that we would agree a course of action from that moment on and that if one of us was to forget then the other would have to remind them. Your idea, to which we agreed solemnly and jointly, was that when in the future one of us were to die – the other would rapidly choose to follow by whatever kind means were at hand.

  Rapidly choose to follow. Gally groaned and looked up at a dizzying sky full of rolling cumulus. The letter went on.

  On this occasion, you will be aware that there is a big difference. When I die, I am quite sure that I will be born again as your coming child. It must therefore be after the birth is complete that you follow me. Do not think this would be cruel to your new child. It would be a greater kindness.

  There was a break in the letter where a slightly darker ink took over and Gally guessed that time had elapsed in the writing.

  You have a husband, I know, and that will make it very hard for you. That was not anticipated. I cannot guide you in that. All I can do is to repeat your words. Better still, as a letter is no powerful witness, you may perhaps be able to hear your own words. I recall exactly what you said on that day and perhaps if you repeat it right, you will hear yourself say it and know that it is true. If it helps you remember, I was wearing a brown jacket. You were in a cotton dress, pale blue with pink rosebuds in the pattern and in that time you had long fair hair. You said, ‘We can do it. We can if we set our minds to it. No more of this hit and miss,’ and then you said, ‘If both of us forget, maybe that will just have to be that – but we won’t, we mustn’t. Other folks have God. We’ve only got us.’ Try to remember that, Gally, because you would be your own best witness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A week of broken, screaming sleep brought Gally and Mike to the brink of a joint precipice. For Gally it was the worst it had ever been. Every day she did her duty by walking up to Ferney’s house, checking the post and making sure all was well, then came back home without lingering there. Although there should have been nothing in the least frightening about his clean, light bungalow, she used the stratagems of a child walking through a dark wood, refusing to look around her, concentrating on the moment when she would be out of it. It wasn’t the house, it was the drum lurking behind the chair in the bedroom. She wouldn’t even go far into that room, simply opening the door for a quick glance, just enough to see that all was well, and even then she wouldn’t look towards the chair for fear that the drum might have the power to make her nightmares into flesh and bring the monsters racing at her from the shadows. She lived in a state of hidden tumult for every moment of that week, constantly surprised by how fast or how slow time was passing in equal measure, feeling afraid of everything and personally responsible for every part of the mess that surrounded her. Mike, unsettled by his own matching guilt, seemed hardly to notice except when he was shocked awake twice or three times every night by her repeated nightmares. When they talked he continued to blame himself for Ferney’s collapse so that she praised him constantly for saving him and tried to camouflage her own off-key responses to everything around her in the ripples of his unease.

  At first the news from Yeovil Hospital was minimal and not encouraging. Ferney was in intensive care and no one was making predictions. Visiting was out of the question for any except direct family and there was of course nobody who fitted that conventional definition. Gally was inwardly grateful on two counts. She had a strong idea that she should avoid Ferney’s immediate physical presence while his life teetered on the edge in case she tipped the balance, and she was still quite sure that it was too early for the stability of the new life growing in her. There was something else. She was angry with Ferney, angry that he held all the cards, crushing her into a corner with the heavy words of his letter. His claim that it was her idea, that he was only following her own instructions, made that worse, not better. At times it almost seemed to stop her breathing when she thought about it. It gave her no space.

  She knew, but did not wish to recognize, that he had anticipated she would feel this pressure and that in giving her the clues to take her mind back and live through it for herself, he meant to pass the responsibility over to her, but at the moment it wasn’t a responsibility she was prepared to take. For a brief minute at the top of the hill, with the letter in her hand, she had tried repeating the words he had given her in her head, but her recoiling mind was racing with adrenaline and there was no silent space available to let the words take root. Then she had lied to herself, choosing to take that as a sign that he was wrong, crumpling the letter in her hand in a childish wish to pretend it didn’t exist. Later, though, she had straightened it out, unable to throw it away but aware that it held all the dangers of an unexploded bomb and that she must make quite sure Mike would not find it accidentally. The caravan was too small and the house was too exposed with busy builders to provide a hiding-place and after long indecision she found a hollow tree down in the thickness of the valley at the end of the sloping garden and tucked it away out of sight, inside the trunk, wrapped in a plastic bag.

  Underneath it all she knew she needed to see Ferney. He held the knowledge that would untie the knot of the Boilman, the Burnman, Monmouth and the burning car. She wished he had explained the dreams to her when the question first arose and every night she paid the penalty for that omission.

  Mike was coming near the time when he would have to go back to the faculty and start preparing for the approaching term. At the end of ten days, during which the work on the house seemed to have made enormous strides, the phone rang and it was Gally who answered.

  ‘Mrs Martin?’ said a brisk female voice. ‘It’s Yeovil District Hospital here.’

  For a second her heart turned over. Was Ferney dead? Wouldn’t she have known?

  ‘Yes, hello,’ was all she could manage.

  ‘You asked to be kept informed about visiting?’

  ‘Oh . . . yes?’

  ‘Well, Mr Miller is quite a bit better and he’s moving to a general ward tomorrow, so visiting is now possible.’

  ‘He’s better,’ she found herself repeating.

  ‘I couldn’t say he’s better, but he’s a lot better than he was. I’m afraid he is likely to require a long period for full recove
ry at his age.’

  ‘Yes, of course, but we can come to see him?’

  ‘From tomorrow – just for short visits.’

  The caravan creaked as Mike stepped up into it with a screwdriver in his hand. ‘I never want to see another flat-pack kitchen unit,’ he said. ‘If you get killed in a kitchen collapse, just remember I’m an academic. I’m not meant to be practical. Who was that?’

  ‘Yeovil Hospital.’ She saw his immediate look of alarm. ‘He’s okay. In fact they say we can go and visit tomorrow.’

  ‘Really?’ He considered. ‘Maybe you should go by yourself. We don’t want to overpower him.’

  ‘Coward,’ she said and tried to smile. ‘I’m sure he won’t blame you. In fact, I’m sure he’ll be very grateful that you saved his life.’ Will he, though, asked an inner voice? Isn’t he looking for the quickest way out? No, he’ll want to know for certain that I’ve read the letter and he’ll want to know I agree.

  ‘Well, let’s see.’

  He went out with the car early the next morning to collect more of the rolls, the packs and the boxes whose contents were quickly turning the simple walls of the finished kitchen into a complex marshalling yard for pots, pans, plates and gadgets. Gally, trying to hang on to the simplicity, had little enthusiasm for this, apart from a feeling that if Mike really needed digital egg timers and suction wine-bottle sealers it was better that there were drawers to hide them away in. She was too weary to argue. As he drove off she knew she had a brief opportunity and a decision to make. It was already quite clear he would do anything to get out of the hospital visit and it was also clear that if Ferney was well enough to talk he would ask her about the letter.

  What were her choices? Refusing to discuss it, she knew, would not be an option once those all-seeing eyes of his were fixed on her. It came down to a simple choice. Either she would try piloting herself back along the trail left for her to some lost North-West Passage of memory and deal with the consequences of what happened, or she could refuse. That was her right. She could make a deliberate choice to tread the safe path and live in the present. That way was fairer for Mike, better by any normal assessment and yet she found she could not take it, not while sitting there on the caravan step as living summit to the triangle whose rooted bases were the Bag Stone and the house. She went down to the tree, making sure none of the builders were watching, and took the letter out.