‘Of course I do,’ she said with mock indignation. ‘How long have you known her?’
Alex knew his ex-wife. She wasn’t going to let it go. Better to get it over with. He’d have to tell her sometime.
He looked out of the window and muttered. ‘About seven weeks.’
When his eyes returned to her, she was frowning. ‘A whole seven weeks. Phew! You always were a slow worker, Alex.’
He shook his head in patient reproof, sighed. ‘She lost her job not long after we met and she was having difficulty with the rent. I suggested she move in with me – temporarily. OK?’
Liz pursed her lips. ‘How convenient for her! How kind of you!’
The obvious sarcasm took him by surprise. This wasn’t like Liz. After three years apart he didn’t think she’d be too bothered about his domestic arrangements.
‘Come on Liz,’ he said. ‘I expected you to be pleased for me. You and I—’
Seeing Liz’s eyebrows knit together, he took it as a sign not to continue down that road. As the silence between them deepened he found himself wishing it had never come to this. If only it was possible to turn back the clock. Once again, he had to remind himself that it was his fault they were apart. His ambition to make something of himself, though the motivation had been to make life better for all of them, had become obsessive. Their parting had been a heavy price to pay for his success and deep down he knew it hadn’t been worth it.
‘All I’m bothered about,’ Liz said, an irritating edge to her voice, ‘is that the father of my child doesn’t make a fool of himself.’
Alex’s anger flared. Did she think he was a child who couldn’t handle his own life? Words came uninhibited into his mouth.
‘Maybe you could have stopped it ever reaching this point,’ he snapped.
A mystified look froze on her face and her body stiffened as though rigor mortis was setting in. Her reaction and the fact that he had surprised himself with his outburst prevented him saying more.
The silence stretched unbearably. When it grew to embarrassing proportions Alex broke it. ‘Forget it, Liz. Just forget it and leave me be.’
Recovering her composure, she didn’t let it go, ‘What a strange remark to make. You’re living with a woman and you can talk about me stopping it. Don’t you care about this woman? Are you suffering a mid-life crisis or something, or are you just being shallow?’
He could detect a coolness in her voice that made it difficult to find any emotion that could be under the surface. She was right of course. His words were inappropriate and really badly timed. What was he thinking?
‘Slip of the tongue,’ he muttered. ‘Feeling sorry I don’t see more of my daughter, I suppose.’
Grimacing, she said, ‘An understandable lapse, then.’
To Alex’s relief Ann chose that moment to rush downstairs and enter the room. She signed to her father that she’d forgotten to tell him it was her school sports day the following week. Would he be coming to watch her race?
‘Of course,’ he said, facing her so she could read his lips. ‘Your mother and I will come together like always, won’t we, Liz?’
‘Of course,’ she repeated. ‘Like always.’
He kissed his daughter goodbye and Liz walked him to the door. They paused at the threshold, both still a little embarrassed. When he looked at his ex-wife now he knew that his unrehearsed outburst had reflected the feelings for her he’d managed to suppress so well these past few years. But he’d done the damage to the marriage himself, would have to make the best of it. He’d never asked her to take him back, his sense of guilt weighing too heavily. He vowed today’s slip of the tongue would be the last.
‘How’s the prison?’ Liz asked. ‘Captivating?’
‘It’s OK, especially if you’re agoraphobic,’ he said, laughing. ‘The clientele get sick like everybody else. As you well know, it’s a doctor’s job to do his best for every patient no matter what they’ve done.’
Her eyes focused on his with concern. ‘Do you never feel threatened, Alex?’
He shook his head. ‘Some of them are just poor misguided creatures, others are – well – just pure evil. But those evil ones, they pass us every day on the street without our knowing. In prison at least they’re controlled, so generally I see the best of their character.’
‘Rather you than me,’ Liz said.
‘In the end, I’m a doctor. I focus on helping the sick just like you did in Iraq.’
‘Well, you certainly worked to get there, Alex.’
For moment he wondered if there was an implied criticism in her last words but decided not. She had always encouraged him in his struggles to qualify, even after the split, knowing what it meant to him to make something of himself after the army career was finished.
‘Couldn’t have done it without you,’ he called back to her as he went down the path. ‘I’ll never forget that.’
Chapter Three
On his way home Alex stopped the car and parked above the cliffs at the small North Yorkshire coastal resort of Saltburn. He found a bench facing the sea and tried to relax as the breeze played against his cheeks. Out on the horizon a small boat hardly seemed to move, while below waves advanced and retreated in a gentle but implacable rhythm. He watched families strolling on the beach way below, children paddling in the sea. Memories returned, of himself and his parents on that very beach so long ago when life had seemed less complicated.
Without warning, as though from another dimension, a jet plane roared overhead, the noise a giant’s snarl declaring antipathy to the peaceful scene and his attempts at relaxation. He closed his eyes, endeavoured to shut the noise out but it swept him up, transported him back for a moment, away from the present and the peaceful sands of Saltburn to the deserts of Iraq and the Gulf War.
As quickly as it had come the plane was gone. Alex forced his mind to banish nightmarish memories, opened his eyes and focused on the vastness of the sea. Thank God he’d survived that other life as a soldier. His wounds had been severe enough to invalid him out of the army. Liz had not only been his nurse; she’d been his inspiration. She and the doctors who’d worked on his body and tortured mind had given him a glimpse of a better way of living, mending lives instead of destroying.
An old sense of shame welled up inside him. That soldier had been so naïve, so self-centred. All he’d wanted in those days was adventure. The army had been a way of finding it. But the day he’d pulled his mates out of the burning Land-Rovers, their screams echoing in his head like banshees as he dodged enemy bullets until one finally put him down, had been the catalyst which had begun the change in him. The burning vehicles, funeral pyres for so many of his young comrades, the smell of charred flesh in his nostrils, the agony of those who lay at the wayside screaming for God to help them, had shaken the foundations, the certainties of his little world.
Out on the water he noticed that the small boat had made a little progress. He watched it for a while, so small and fragile out there in the blue expanse. The picture was serene but he was well aware that, like the desert, the sea could so easily turn, vent its spleen. Since that day out in Iraq he’d been too conscious of how the whole world could turn in the blink of an eye. That experience had made all the difference, had brought him to where he was now, had fostered his desire to be a healer.
When he’d been invalided out and married Liz he was determined to make something positive of himself. Right from the start of the marriage he’d pushed himself to his limits and beyond in his studies, especially when Ann had been born and he’d wanted to do it for her.
Sitting there alone, watching the families on the beach, he wondered if he’d just messed up again, if it had all been worth it. Trying to do right, you could do wrong. Liz had gone away with his child knowing he needed to be alone if he was to finish his studies, because Ann had been a handful, her silent world a prison for her emotions and frustrations, so that when she could no longer contain them there was no peace in her vicinity. L
iz, realizing his nerves were in tatters, had made the sacrifice for him, no matter how much he had protested against it at the time. Then, somehow, they’d just drifted, sailed along in their own channels. After he’d qualified as a doctor he’d realized his selfishness in failing those he loved. Embarrassed, he’d let things drift and Liz, in her own routine, had said nothing.
A gust of wind swallowed his long, regretful sigh. He knew it was that deep-seated guilt that prevented him from asking Liz to try again. How could he just dismiss those intervening years apart? He felt it would be insulting to her. He’d gained a purposeful career, his motivation to benefit himself and his family, but he’d lost them in the process; his single-minded attitude was to blame.
Angry with himself for dwelling on the past, believing that that could only do him harm, he pushed himself off the bench and, with a last look at the darkening sea, walked back to the car.
It was a long drive home. He took the moors road to Whitby, turned off when he saw the sign for Danby. The road twisted and turned from there on but there was little traffic, the main occupants of the landscape being sheep, which occasionally wandered on to the road. In the evanescent light, with nature around him, birds winging their way on solitary missions, he felt his soul lift a little. The world was a mysterious, magical place and amidst the hurly-burly of human life it was easy to forget that. It was wrong to feel too sorry for yourself.
He drove into Fryup Dale, passed a few farmhouses, the isolated bastions where his neighbours lived, then saw the sign for Hope Farm, his home. The long half-mile track to the building was rough and ready. He negotiated it with care, then drove on to the gravel car park at the front of the house and parked next to Gloria’s Toyota. For a moment he studied the six-roomed stone building and the old barn a little way off from the house, which he had yet to find a use for. Though the barn was run down the house was a sturdy habitat which had stood up to severe Yorkshire winters for a century and more. He was a lucky man to have such a place, in spite of what Liz had said about its solitary location.
He went through the back door into the kitchen. Gloria was seated at the table, a woman’s fashion magazine in front of her. She looked up, tossed back her mane of red hair and smiled at him. As usual, her appearance was immaculate. With her well-pressed white blouse, creased trousers, expertly manicured nails and carefully applied make-up, she looked as though she’d just stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine herself. He had to admit that her image was incongruous in the rustic kitchen. But this was not a working farm and Gloria was far from being a farmer’s wife.
‘Good day?’ he asked.
‘Been to see an old friend,’ she replied.
He thought of Eddie. ‘Old friends are the best.’
Gloria examined one of her nails. ‘Useful too,’ she said. ‘In my position you’ve got to keep up contacts.’
‘Any luck?’
She flipped a page of the magazine. ‘She’s offered to take me out with her – unpaid, of course. There’s a vacancy coming up in her company sales department. If my face is known. . . .’
Alex took off his coat, started to make himself a sandwich. ‘Always best to have an edge,’ he said cutting into a loaf.
Not long after they’d met Gloria had lost her job, was talking of going anywhere to gain employment because she couldn’t keep up the rent on her flat. She’d accepted his offer of accommodation gratefully. It had worked out quite well but the truth was he’d hardly seen her. She always seemed to be going somewhere. He supposed she’d had things to sort out and eventually it would all settle down.
‘You allowing me to stay here has been a godsend,’ she said, interrupting his thoughts.
He grinned. ‘Ulterior motive, Gloria. Didn’t want you running away as soon as I’d met you. Bad for my ego.’
She averted her eyes coyly. ‘You certainly didn’t know me that well, Alex. Hope I haven’t been a disappointment. Could have been one of those girlfriends from hell for all you knew, messed up your life!’
Alex cocked his head, pulled a grotesque face, ‘And I could have been a mad doctor conducting inhuman experiments in a lonely house.’
She laughed at his antics, then went back to her reading while he put the kettle on. For all his joviality, her remarks had struck a cord, reminded him of Liz’s cynicism about the speed with which he had allowed her into his home. Strangely, he didn’t know Gloria much better now than when he’d first met her. She seemed to spend so much time away, arriving back late at night. She was a little distant with him too, rarely exchanging intimacies. He put it down to the suddenness of their coming together. With time, she might overcome her reticence. He was hardly the gushing type himself.
Chapter Four
Charles Bridge walked amongst the other protected prisoners who were down for visits that day. Two officers shepherded them through the numerous doors, one man opening them and counting them through while the other brought up the rear and locked up again. Tedious wasn’t in it.
‘You could sue, Mr Richards,’ Charlie declared to the officer at the back as he turned the key yet again. He was a grey-haired individual with hooded eyes that suggested permanent boredom.
‘How’s that, Bridge?’
‘Then you could escape, invest your money and live off the interest,’ Bridge continued. ‘There is another life out there, you know, even for blokes like you.’
The officer yawned, fixed his bloodhound eyes on him. ‘What are you prattling on about now, man?’
‘Trying to help you escape this place, Mr Richards. Every time you turn that key – well – your poor wrist. Repetitive strain injury they call it. You’ll suffer for it in later life. You could get compensation.’
The officer managed a smile, came straight back at him. ‘You should know, Bridge. All that straining for the verbal diarrhoea you produce can’t be doing you any good.’
Some of the others heard the exchange and laughed. Charlie joined in. Couldn’t let them see a screw could get to him.
‘My compensation,’ Mr Richards continued, encouraged by the prisoners’ appreciative mirth, ‘is that I go home every night – repetitively.’
They arrived at yet another door and the banter ceased immediately. It opened on to a courtyard. On all sides barred windows, rising to four levels, looked down on the prisoners. Charlie’s eyes drifted from window to window and he wondered about the occupants.
They walked across the yard, silent and solemn. The air around, as when a thunderstorm is brewing, seemed heavy with expectation. The fear was psychological, as though a collective force of retributive justice could seep from those surrounding edifices at any moment and descend upon them.
‘The monkeys are out,’ a voice filled with derision shouted from above.
In a second, howls and insults poured down on their heads from each tier of barred windows. Charlie sensed, more than scorn, their pent-up energies and frustrations seeking a target for release, that primitive need to find a creature lower than yourself in the human pecking order to rail against and revile in order to preserve your own sense of worth in this zoo for humans. He shuddered inwardly. Being classed as one of the untouchables in this place was surely as low as you could get. For a top man like him it was a come-down.
‘It’s Charlie Bridge,’ a disembodied voice yelled from a top window, like an announcement from the heavens for the whole world to digest and wonder at.
‘What’s he doing with the scum?’ a higher-pitched voice responded.
‘Charlie’s not one of them,’ another voice rejoined. ‘I know him.’
That third voice perked him up a little. You could walk with dirt and still keep clean. People knew him well enough, knew he was a top man on the out, a man who pulled the strings while others danced to his tune. His moment of self-regard was short-lived, however.
‘Bridge, you’re a dead man,’ a voice suffused with venom yelled. ‘Hide amongst those nonces all you like, your time is coming.’
Bri
dge lowered his head. As they went through the door at the far side those voices died away, as though they’d been ghost voices conjured in a dark place in the mind where conscience resided with its store of retributive nightmares. But Bridge made no such analysis, just focused on that last voice which confirmed for him that he was in danger as long as he stayed in the system.
As they marched along he wiped away the sweat beads forming on his brow. If he’d wanted confirmation that the course of action he was contemplating was the right one, he’d just received it loud and clear. The word was out on him from two families now. In this place a stranger could step up to him at any time, sink a blade into him, fulfil that prophecy he’d just heard from on high. Who could live with a threat like that over his head every day of his life?
The visiting area was a large room, austere, tables and chairs basic, the decor a dull grey. Bridge was reminded of the worst waiting area in the worst airport in the world, except there was no exotic destination to fly away to at the end of your visit, just that long trail back to the cell. After they’d undergone a body search the prisoners were allowed through. Expectant faces looked in their direction and he spotted his sister alone at one of the tables.
She was wearing a blond wig, one he had seen before. Her plain grey jumper and black trousers were hardly flamboyant. Her make-up, too liberally applied, seemed to hide her real features. She was clever, his sister, good at keeping up a false appearance so that hardly anyone, police or criminal, knew she was a player and almost as active as he was in their enterprises. The deception extended to her character. He’d seen her all sweetness and light, then, like a chameleon, switch to a hard-headed, ruthless person when she wasn’t pleased.
Really, it was from her he’d learned to distance himself from the dirty stuff, so that if the police investigated him for anything his own part in the matter would need intricate unravelling, if they could get near it at all in the first place. Thank God for the vixen that was his sister. Thank God, too, she’d been with him in all those orphanages: his only real family, the only one he could really trust to look out for him.
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