The Four Last Things

by Taylor, Andrew

  He thought he heard a door opening. Without looking back, he broke into a run. His coat flapped behind him. The cold air attacked his face, his neck and his hands, its sharpness making him gasp; in his mind he saw a curved, flexible knife with an icy blade.

  The word blade reminded him of the scissors. Had the screaming stopped? He was not sure. He thought he could hear screams, but they might have no basis in reality now; they might simply be echoes trapped within his mind. But he was certain of one thing: he could not go back to the house.

  While he was running, he risked a glance behind him. No one was there. Angel wasn’t following him. He wasn’t worth following.

  Panting, he slowed to a walk and buttoned his coat with clumsy fingers. Even if she did come after him, it wouldn’t matter. He would just walk on and on and on. It was a free country. She couldn’t stop him. He crossed the access road leading to the council flats.

  ‘You all right, then?’

  Eddie stopped and stared. Mr Reynolds waved at him. The little builder was about to open his garage door, on which someone had recently sprayed an ornate obscenity.

  Mr Reynolds hugged himself with exaggerated force, as if miming winter in a game of charades. ‘It’s bitter, isn’t it?’

  Eddie opened his mouth but could think of nothing to say. Panic rose in his throat.

  ‘The odds are shortening for a white Christmas,’ Mr Reynolds remarked. ‘Heard it on the radio.’

  The silence lengthened. Mr Reynolds’s face grew puzzled. Eddie’s limbs might be temporarily paralysed but his mind was working. First, Mr Reynolds would do anything for Angel. Second, why was he spending the coldest Sunday afternoon since last winter standing outside his garage? Conclusion: he was keeping his eyes open at Angel’s request. He was spying on Eddie.

  The paralysis dissolved. Eddie broke into a run again.

  ‘Hey!’ he heard Mr Reynolds calling behind him. ‘Eddie, you OK?’

  Eddie ran to the end of the road and turned right. He had no clear plan where he was going. The important thing was to get away. He did not want to be a part of what was happening behind that door. He did not want even to think about it. He wanted to walk and walk until tiredness overcame him.

  He crossed a road. Two cars hooted at him, and one of the drivers rolled down his window and swore at him. He walked steadily on. Why was there so much traffic? It was Sunday, the day of rest. There hadn’t been all those cars when he was a child. Even ten or fifteen years ago the roads would have been far quieter. Everything changed, nothing stood still. Soon the machines would outnumber the people.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he told himself. ‘It really doesn’t matter.’

  The world was becoming less substantial, less well-defined. A bus rumbled down the road, overtaking him. The red colour spilled out of its outline. The bus’s shape was no longer fixed but swayed to and fro like water in a slowly swinging bucket. You could rely on nothing in this world, and what other world was there?

  Eddie remembered that he had a temperature. He might be very ill. He might die. A great sadness washed over him. He had so much to give the world, if the world would only let him. If Angel would let him. His mind shied away from the thought of her.

  He was surprised that he was managing to walk so far and so well. It was not that he felt weak, exactly. His legs were as strong as usual but they did not seem quite so firmly attached to the rest of his body as they normally were.

  ‘It’s just the flu,’ he said aloud, and the words – in blue, lower-case letters, sans serif – seemed to hang in mid-air beside him; he watched the wind muddling up the letters and whipping them away. ‘I’ll feel better in the morning.’

  What if he felt worse? What if there was never any getting better?

  Eddie forced himself to walk faster, as though the faster he walked the further he left these unanswerable questions behind.

  The important thing was to get away. It was some time before he noticed where he was going. He crossed Haverstock Hill and zigzagged his way up to Eton Avenue. On either side were large, prosperous houses occupied by large, prosperous people. At Swiss Cottage, he hesitated, wondering whether to take the tube into town. It was too much of a decision: instead he kept walking, impelled by the fear that Angel might, after all, pursue him and by the need to keep warm. He drifted up the Finchley Road to the overground station for the North London Line. He went into the station because his legs were becoming weary and because it was starting to rain – thin, cold drops, not far removed from sleet. A westbound train clattered into the station. Eddie ran down the steps to the platform. The train was almost empty. He got on, grateful for the warmth and the seat.

  At first, all went well. He closed his eyes and tried to rest. But the memory of what he had left behind in Rosington Road shouldered its way into his mind. Eddie tried to distract himself with the usual techniques – making his mind go blank; remembering Alison on the swing and in the shed at Carver’s; imagining himself as Father Christmas in a big store, with a stream of little girls queuing for the honour of sitting on his knee, a long line of pretty faces, sugar and spice and all things nice.

  Today, nothing worked. As the train drew into Brondesbury Station, Eddie opened his eyes. He fancied that some of the other passengers were staring at him. Had he been talking aloud?

  He stared out of the window at rows of back gardens. He was almost sure that someone was whispering about him. The words hissed above the sound of the train. He thought the whispers were coming from behind him, but he couldn’t be sure without turning his head, which would betray to the watchers that he was aware that they were watching him and that someone was talking about him.

  They reached another station. The whispering stopped with the train. A handful of passengers left and another handful boarded. As soon as the train began to move, the whispering started. It was a female voice, he was sure; probably a teenage girl’s. Now he knew what to look for, he quickly found evidence to support this theory: the smell of perfume masking, but not quite concealing, the smell of sweat; and a sound which might have been a high-pitched giggle. Mandy or Sian? Of course not. They were no longer teenagers at Dale Grove Comprehensive.

  Eddie could bear it no longer. At the next station he tensed himself. A man boarded the train but no one left. At the last moment, Eddie leapt to his feet, opened the door and jumped on to the platform.

  No one followed him. The train moved away. Eddie stared into the windows as they slipped past him. There were no teenage girls behind where he had been sitting: only an old man, his eyes closed. Of course it proved nothing. The girls – he was now convinced that there had been at least two – could have ducked down beneath the sills of the windows just to confuse him. It would not do to underestimate their cunning; that was a lesson he had learned from Mandy and Sian.

  It was only then that he realized where he was: Kensal Vale. He did not find this surprising. His feet had guided him along a familiar path while his mind was otherwise engaged. He knew the station and the area around it well because of the research he had done in the months before Lucy came to stay with them at Rosington Road. He had often taken the train here.

  Eddie went out of the station. It was still raining. Usually Kensal Vale made him uneasy. Its reputation for violence was enough to make anyone wary. Today, however, Eddie felt almost relaxed. Because of the weather, and because it was Sunday, there were fewer people on the streets than usual. The buildings were innocent: only their inhabitants were evil.

  Automatically, he made his way towards the squat broach spire of St George’s, walking quickly because of the cold. The church, the Vicarage and the church car park occupied a compact site surrounded on all sides by roads, a moat of wet tarmac. The car park, once the Vicarage garden, filled most of the space between the church and the Vicarage. High brick walls and iron railings gave St George’s the air of a place under siege.

  By now it was early afternoon and services were over, at least until the evening. Eddie re
ad the notice board outside the west door of the church. Sally Appleyard’s name leapt out at him. Rainwater streamed down from a leaking gutter. The church was crying.

  A bus passed, travelling further west. Eddie was growing colder now that he was neither in the warmth of the train nor generating his own warmth by walking. He looked up at the church, whose details were fading against the darkening sky. He would have to make a decision soon. He couldn’t stay here for ever. He walked slowly onwards. As he drew level with the door of the Vicarage, he noticed that it, like Mr Reynolds’s garage, had been defaced by a graffito. He stared at the capitals marching across the gleaming paint of the door. The letters huddled in a dyslexic tangle. For a few seconds his mind was unable to decode them.

  IS THERE LIFE BEFORE DEATH?

  Eddie stared at the question, uncertain whether to laugh or to shiver. Well, he thought, is there? At that moment the door opened. Eddie walked quickly away.

  He was unable to resist the temptation to glance back at the doorway. There were two men on the doorstep. The one on the left, Eddie recognized immediately from the photograph in the Standard: the vicar, Derek Cutter, so pale he was almost an albino; the man who looked like a ferret in a dog collar. The second man was older, smaller and plumper. He had rosy cheeks, regular features and wispy hair. He was laughing at something Cutter had said. Eddie felt an unexpected and unsettling kinship with the unknown man: it was as if he, Eddie, were looking not in a mirror, but at the reflection of himself in twenty years’ time.

  The man glanced towards Eddie, who walked hurriedly away. It had been stupid to come to St George’s, and worse than stupid to run the risk of being noticed. The rain brushed against the skin of his face, a cruel reminder of the dry heat in his throat. He was very thirsty. Had he not known he had a temperature, he would have been convinced he was going mad. No one could blame him for going mad. Not with all he had to put up with. Of course, a temperature and madness were not incompatible with each other: there was no reason why a lunatic should not have flu.

  He looked over his shoulder, desperate for a bus, desperate for anything that would carry him away from St George’s, away from the man who looked like an elderly Eddie. There were patterns and correspondences everywhere; why did people so rarely notice them?

  Three black men spilled out of a doorway as Eddie passed it, and his insides clenched with terror. But the men ignored him, climbed into a car and drove noisily away. Perhaps I am invisible. He walked a little further down the road. Every step took him nearer to the centre of London. He did not want to go there. He wanted peace and quiet.

  A bus shelter loomed up ahead, of a type that in fact offered very little shelter, because the main purpose of the design was not to protect people from the elements but to discourage muggers and vandals. He leant against it. Now he had a headache, too. The wind and the rain lashed him. Would anyone notice if he collapsed here? Would anyone notice if he died?

  On the other side of the road was the long, high wall of Kensal Green Cemetery, a city of the dead. He noticed a black cab drawing up at one of the entrances and a tall, thin woman emerging from it. She turned back to the cab, her bright red lips moving. The noise of the traffic masked what she was saying, but Eddie knew from her movements that she was angry with the taxi driver. Abruptly she left him, stalking towards the entrance of the cemetery. The taxi swung across both carriageways of the road. Its yellow For Hire light came on. Eddie raised his hand and the taxi pulled over beside the bus shelter. Eddie opened the door, climbed inside and sat down heavily on the seat. The cab smelled strongly of a perfume similar to Angel’s, which was no doubt all part of the pattern. The driver looked expectantly at him. Eddie looked back.

  ‘Where to, then?’ the man demanded.

  Eddie stared blankly at him, remembering suddenly that he had only a handful of change in his pocket, hardly enough for a cup of coffee.

  The driver was frowning now. ‘Well?’

  ‘Rosington Road,’ Eddie blurted out, because he had no other answer to give.

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘NW5. Off Bishop’s Road.’

  The taxi pulled away. Eddie sat back on the seat.

  ‘That bloody woman wanted me to wait for her while she visited the dear departed,’ the man said through the open partition, tossing the words like grenades over his shoulder. ‘Didn’t want to pay for it, though. Oh no. “Look, lady,” I said, “I’m not a fucking charity, all right?” Jesus Christ.’

  The man continued to complain for the whole journey, the angry words running as a counterpoint to Eddie’s thoughts. Questions without answers flowed through his mind. Everything would depend on how angry Angel was when he reached the house. He wondered whether to ask the driver to wait while he went inside to collect his wallet. But then where would he go?

  All too soon the taxi turned into Rosington Road. Eddie pointed out number 29. They drew up outside the house. Eddie stared at its blank windows.

  ‘You getting out, mate? Or are you going to stay there all afternoon?’

  The front door opened. Angel ran out to the taxi and opened the rear door. He smelled her perfume and it was identical to the perfume in the back of the taxi. Her hands stretched towards him.

  ‘Eddie. Eddie, dearest. Are you all right?’

  No one could be kind like Angel. She had the power to make you feel as if you were the centre of the universe. What she did was quite ordinary: she paid off the taxi and drew Eddie into the house; she made him sit on the sofa in the sitting room and covered him with a blanket; she brought him a cup of sweet, milky tea and a digestive biscuit; she felt his hands and told him that he had been foolish to go out with such a high temperature. She endowed all these trivial actions with enormous significance. Eddie knew he was honoured. He was very happy, all the more so because he realized that in the nature of things such happiness would not last.

  ‘Ah – Lucy?’ he asked, when he was safely tucked up on the sofa.

  ‘What about her? She’s fast asleep.’

  ‘She’s all right?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t she be?’

  ‘She – she –’

  ‘Her tantrum? That soon passed. She was as right as rain five minutes afterwards. Children are like that, Eddie.’

  ‘But she was so upset.’

  Angel smiled. ‘If you’d dealt with as many overwrought children as I have, you’d know that sometimes you have to be firm. It’s the only way. Believe me, if you give in to them, they turn into little monsters.’

  ‘What’s she doing now?’

  ‘She’s asleep. It was time for her medication. But what about you?’ She paused for a moment, waiting for an answer which did not come, and then went on: ‘I’ve been terribly worried. What did you think you were doing?’

  Eddie turned his face towards the back of the sofa and smelled the ghost of his father’s hair oil. ‘I needed to get out,’ he mumbled. ‘I needed fresh air.’

  There was a short silence. Then Angel sighed. ‘Least said, soonest mended. I think the best thing is we draw a veil over the whole unfortunate business.’

  ‘She really is OK?’

  ‘Of course she is.’ A hint of irritation had entered Angel’s voice. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  Eddie closed his eyes. ‘I think I might rest. I’m very tired.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. Anyway, what were you doing in Kensal Vale?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to go there. It was an accident. I didn’t know what I was doing.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as accident,’ Angel said.

  ‘I saw the vicar. I don’t think he saw me. In any case, he wouldn’t have recognized me, would he?’

  ‘No. Now go to sleep.’ She smiled at him and slipped out of the room, closing the door behind her with a soft click.

  Eddie fell into a doze. He slipped in and out of an inconclusive dream in which he was playing hide and seek with Lucy in a darkened church which he knew was St George’s. In the dream, he never caught
her. Once, however, he came close to it when she ran round a pillar and found him unexpectedly blocking her path. In the past, he had only seen her back view. Now she was facing him. Except that she had no face: the dark hair had swung in front of it, covering it completely, so that the back of her head was identical to the front of her head.

  While this was going on, Eddie was aware of sounds around him in the house – not from below, of course, because the soundproofing prevented that. He heard Angel’s footsteps in the hall and on the stairs. He heard her putting out the rubbish for the dustmen, who came on Mondays. He heard water rushing into the bath and Angel’s footsteps moving to and fro in her bedroom, and the sounds of drawers being opened and cupboards closed.

  He dozed again. When he woke, the room was dark, apart from light from the streetlamps filtering through the gap between the curtains. Now the house was silent. He lay on the sofa, his muscles aching, and tried to summon up the energy to go to the lavatory. Then the doorbell rang.

  Automatically, he got up to answer it. The sudden movement made him dizzy and he swayed like a drunk as he crossed the room. At the doorway, he switched on the light and immediately regretted it. He didn’t want to see anyone. If it was urgent they could telephone or come back later. But now it was too late: by switching on the light he had revealed his presence. Not answering the door would seem strange. It was one of Angel’s rules that when they had a little visitor in the house they should be especially careful not to act in any way abnormally.

  He went into the hall and, supporting himself with one hand on the wall, reached the front door. He peered through the spyhole. There was a small woman outside, staring towards the road, presenting her back to him; she was wearing a dark coat and a hat like a squashed cake. A memory stirred. Eddie had first seen Angel through this lens and she, too, had been staring at the road. He opened the door.