“That’s just perfect, after all the money I pay you people…”
“Well, if you gave me the person’s first name…”
“I shouldn’t have to,” Rupert said with mock distress.
“Look, if you want to…”
“…Too right I want to make a complaint.”
The woman just gaped at him.
“If it’s such a big problem for you to let me visit after travelling this far.”
“I didn’t say it was a problem.”
“Do you own this place?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Okay, so maybe I should talk with the manager, I’m sure he’ll be much more helpful.”
What the hell are you talking about?
“I already told you, we could try to make an exception but for that I’m going to need a name,” the woman repeated.
“I told you, it’s Marshall.”
“And I told you that nothing’s coming up under that name. Maybe you’ve mistaken us for somewhere else.”
“There’s no mistaking the direct debit you’re taking every month from my bank account.”
“Okay, so why don’t we try that?” The woman asked with another of her impatient sighs. “Maybe we’ll have better luck with that. Why don’t you give me your full name,” she looked at him, expectantly, once more.
“Mine?”
“Yes, yours.”
Panicked, Rupert said, “Marshall.”
“Yes, I know that. What’s ya’ first name?”
It wasn’t lost on Rupert that the more impatient she was becoming, the more her Estuary English accent was shining through.
“Ashley,” Rupert said tentatively, half expecting the woman to burst out laughing, but she didn’t. And, after tapping more keys, said, “Right. Here you are.”
Rupert nodded.
“Well, no wonder we couldn’t find him.”
Him? Father? Uncle? Brother?
“…it says here, his name is Burton, Andrew Burton.”
Burton?
The woman looked up at Rupert, who could feel his face flushing as he searched desperately for something to say. Eventually, he said, “Of course he’s registered under another name. That was the whole point of him coming out here in the middle of nowhere. He wanted the anonymity.”
There is no way she is going to swallow that. Oh, what the heck, nothing to lose now. “That’s why I didn’t want to give you his first name. I was just making sure that nobody could just walk in here, and find out about him. And could I just say that I was very impressed with the way you dealt with me.”
Rupert beamed a smile and leant closer to the woman who, despite her icy demeanour, could not help but notice those lovely brown eyes.
Her lips creased slightly, as if forced with a pair of pliers, and she asked, “Why wouldn’t he want anybody to know his real name?”
“What?”
“Why doesn’t he go by his real name?”
Rupert had to think fast, he shook his head in mock disapproval, as he thought of what to say next, “What is the point? If you don’t know then what’s the point,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, and shaking his head in mock exasperation.
The woman leant forward. “I’m sorry, I haven't been here that long,” she offered, now curious about the enigmatic patient’s résumé.
Excellent!
“Well,” Rupert began, looking around the room as another holler drifted its way to him from the second floor. “He was dubbed as one of the greatest literary geniuses of our time.”
“He was a writer?”
“IS a writer.”
“And was that before or after the accident?”
“Accident?”
Rupert looked up at her as the wailing from upstairs continued.
Five minutes later, the carer, whose name tag introduced her as Alison, was walking Rupert into the bright room.
Turns out it wasn’t a conservatory, but a large lounge with picture windows, overlooking a green hill that sloped down to the grey, still river.
The sun lounge, as Alison called it, was carpeted in faded brown that looked as if it had been laid in the seventies. It clashed with the flowered wallpaper seemingly from the same era. The furniture was dark, and it too had seen better days.
The room was empty.
“As I told you, all the other residents are eating their dinner. He doesn’t like to eat with them and, no matter how freezing it may be, he prefers to sit outside most of the time. You’re his first visitor since I started working here, over three months ago.”
It could have been his imagination, but it seemed as if she was trying to make a point with the way she delivered the last part of that sentence.
“Yes, I try to visit more often, but you know what it’s like with work and everything,” Rupert said, following her out into the cold.
They walked down a footpath, through a rose garden, passed a pond and then a hedge. Behind it, a man in a wheelchair sat with his back to them.
“Andrew,” the carer called and then, as if she had suddenly had a personality transplant, beamed a happy smile, as one would to amuse an infant, “You have a visitor.”
The man did not turn, and Rupert noticed that Alison had to stand in front of him, in order to get his attention. Therefore, he followed.
Andrew Burton was a thin man in his late sixties. He was wrapped in a thick black overcoat, complete with woolly hat and large dark sunglasses. A blanket was draped over his legs, on top of that rested long bony hands.
Although, what drew Rupert’s attention, was the welted scar that slashed from left to right, down the man’s face. It began in his eyebrow, travelled down his cheek and across his mouth, where it curled his lip into a snarl.
He appeared to be staring out to sea.
“Andrew?” Alison prompted, crouching down to the wheelchair. “You have a visitor; your son is here to see you.”
It took a few seconds, but this comment appeared to conjure some kind of a reaction. The man’s gaze seemed to shift to the woman in front of him, and then up to the man standing nearby, prompting Rupert’s heart to skip a beat.
I’m screwed!
Burton shifted his hand, and Rupert noticed that it was curled up in a claw-like fashion, as if he had been the victim of a stroke.
The claw slowly shifted up the man’s body until Alison intervened.
“No, Andrew, you know the sun irritates your eyes when you take off your glasses.”
But Burton wasn’t listening and, slowly, he pulled off the shades to reveal large ocular cavities. The iris, in his healthy right eye, was a cloudy grey, whilst the other was albino white, as if the eyeball had rotated to the back of his head.
Rupert tried hard not to flinch, as the good eyeball observed him with suspicion, making him think that, despite the cold, he had broken out in a sweat.
What the hell am I doing here anyway? What am I expecting to learn from this man? What happened to him?
Rupert forced a smile, “Hello. How are you feeling?” he asked, kneeling down next to the wheelchair. But the man did not respond.
“He doesn’t say much our Andrew,” Alison chimed in and then, with a big smile for the old man’s sake, added, “except for when he’s hungry that is.”
So, is this Ashley’s father?
He didn’t know. And that was exactly it. Now that he had snooped through Ashley’s things and driven out here on a knee-jerk reaction, was he any the wiser? Of course he wasn’t. He couldn’t exactly rush back and talk to her about it. She wouldn’t exactly be thrilled to learn that he had launched his own amateur investigation into her life.
He felt guilty.
So Ashley had some secrets, many people did. Not everyone was prepared to bare all in a relationship. If anything, it was a reflection on him. If Ashley felt compelled to keep all this a secret, then he hadn’t done a very good job of earning her trust.
Alison’s voice broke through Rupert’s thoughts, and he noticed that she had bee
n joined by a bright young girl in a blue smock.
“I’m sorry, Andrew, but you should come inside now. It’s getting chilly out here and you haven't had anything to eat today.”
The man’s impassive face seemed to somehow darken as the girl took her place behind the wheelchair, removed the brake and carefully manoeuvred it away.
It was as she was doing this that Rupert’s blood froze, for as the chair turned, so did the old man’s eyeball, it watched him with an expressionless gaze, but one that unsettled him nonetheless.
Rupert and Alison slowly followed the chair from a distance, as if they were following cortege.
“He seemed very pleased to see you,” she said, suddenly.
“Yes, he did. I was happy to see him too.”
“Not happy enough to give him a hug, though,” she added quickly.
They both stopped walking and she turned to look into his eyes.
“I was told that Andrew hasn’t received visitors since he arrived here, years ago. Who are you?”
Rupert considered the question, and was about to continue with his charade, but decided against it. The truth was just too obvious.
He shrugged and squinted at her in what was left of the setting sun. “My name’s Rupert Harrison. I guess you could say I’m an acquaintance.”
“The Rupert Harrison. As in Harrison publishing?”
Rupert nodded, coyly, as if used to his celebrity preceding him.
“I thought you looked familiar. I read an article about you in one of the Sunday supplements. I’ve also read a lot of your books. I’m reading one now.”
Rupert smiled. Not sure what to say. If the woman was star struck, she was doing a good job of hiding it.
“So, Mr Harrison. How well exactly do you know Andrew?”
Rupert shrugged. “To be honest, I don’t know him at all. That’s why I’m here. I was hoping to learn more about him.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“My fiancé is the one paying for his care and I’m trying to find out why she is doing that.”
“Why don’t you ask her?” the carer asked, flatly.
Rupert smiled. That was a good point. “I don’t know why. It wasn’t exactly something we discussed, I sort of found out by accident.”
Alison nodded.
“Look, I know you probably can’t tell me, but I would really appreciate any information you may have.”
She hesitated. “I told you, he hasn’t had any visitors except you. At least not since I’ve been here.”
“Do you know where he came from? Where he lived before?”
“No idea.”
“What exactly is wrong with him?”
She paused and Rupert continued, “Please.”
“I could get the sack.”
“I appreciate that,” Rupert said and then added with a sigh, “I’m not interested in getting you into trouble, but you are the only person who can help me.”
The hesitation continued as the carer sized him up, as if considering that he was, after all, some kind of celebrity. That, and the fact that his deep brown eyes appeared to be glistening with sadness, or was that shame?
“I can only tell you what I’ve heard.”
Rupert nodded.
“Most of it is hearsay anyway. You could pick it up from anyone here,” The carer added, as if justifying what she was about to share. She leaned in closer, “There’s a seal on Andrew Burton’s identity.”
“A seal?”
“Yes.”
“What does that mean exactly?”
“It means that somebody somewhere has asked that his real identity be concealed.”
“You mean a relative?”
“No, I mean a court.”
Rupert frowned. “You mean he’s under some kind of witness protection program?”
Alison shrugged, “I don’t know if it’s anything as dramatic as that. All I know is that normally we would have access to all of his medical history, but in his case we’re only aware of the essentials.”
“Which are?”
“That he was the victim of some kind of vicious knife attack. He was stabbed multiple times.”
Rupert’s eyes widened.
“Who…”
“As I say, we don’t know. What we do know is that one of the puncture wounds crippled him.”
“Jesus,” Rupert whispered. “And you don’t know anything at all about his family?”
“No, as I said, the file’s sealed; we don’t have access to that kind of stuff.”
“You don’t even know where he came from before this?”
The carer shook her head.
“What about time? How long’s he been here?”
Alison considered the question, and then said, gravely, “A long time. A very long time.”
40 Nowhere
By the time Rupert left The Whitehouse, darkness had smothered the land, bringing with it a thick blanket of fog.
For some reason, when he used voice command to call Ashley, it didn’t respond.
So he checked his mobile phone, and was surprised to find that there was no signal, yet he distinctly remembered using it on the way down.
He flung the thing onto the passenger seat.
It was getting late and there’s no doubt that Ashley would be wondering where he was and, like him, had probably left a collection of messages on his voicemail.
He couldn’t help but smile at the irony; only yesterday he was angry at her for disappearing on him yet today, he had done exactly that. What was worse, is that he could not even tell her where he had been, or could he?
He considered this as he turned up the heating.
What exactly did he know? What exactly had he discovered?
Not much really.
He had discovered a man in a nursing home who may, or may not, be her father. If he was her father then why did she hardly mention him, and why had she told him that he had died?
Who exactly was Andrew Burton? How exactly did he get those terrible injuries? And why had the man’s file been sealed by a court?
Once again, so many questions, to which only one person knew the answers.
Should I just talk to her? Just come clean, tell her about my trip down here, about what I found in her apartment. After all, I wasn’t snooping. Or was I?
His confusion was as chaotic as his guilt was heavy.
With everything that has happened in the past few days. What do I do? I take off from work and embark on my own amateur investigation into the woman I love and want to marry. What a fucking hypocrite! I’m so sorry, Ash.
The fog hung in blankets in front of the headlights, making the road ahead as clear as the conundrum in his brain.
The drive home felt miserable, in stark contrast to the drive out of the city, and he suddenly missed Ashley. He wanted to speak to her, tell her everything, and explain that the only thing he was interested in was her welfare.
He dialled the heating higher, as the chill from outside seemed to have taken up residence in the car.
He checked his mobile again.
No signal.
Bloody thing! Out of a so-called ninety eight percent coverage, I would have to drive through the 2 percent!
It was when he returned his eyes to the road that the shadow appeared, out of the mist, causing him to stamp on the breaks, and swerve to avoid it.
Tyres screeched, he yelled, and the car fishtailed a few times before it came to an abrupt halt, with its nose dangerously close to a ditch.
“JESUS CHRIST!” was all he could say when the ordeal was over.
He sat there, nerves taught, heart pounding, and breathing so heavily, he was on the verge of hyperventilation.
Seconds drifted by, as the engine idled and hot air hissed loudly out of vents.
Through the windscreen, the headlights illuminated part of a ditch and a field, before the view disappeared into fog.
He looked around the car; more fog.
He checke
d the rearview mirror and froze, when he saw that the shadow was actually a person.
He could see the outline of an individual, standing about ten feet back, at the edge of the road.
He or she stood, unmoving, as if watching him.
He glanced at his phone; no signal.
So, he took a few seconds to consider what to do next.
Eventually, he pulled the door handle and pushed the door open.
The sound of the engine rushed in, along with a crisp fresh scent of…
..Frost?
He instantly recognised the scent, as it always brought back memories of his childhood.
Reluctantly, he left the car and looked down the road.
That shadow had not moved.
“Hello?” he called, and waited for an answer.
Walk over there or just drive off?
Drive off!
It was obvious that, whoever was standing opposite him, was, for some obscure reason, determined to spook him, and it was working.
He glanced at the open car door and then back at the shadow, and nearly screamed; the shadow had moved, closer, much closer.
No more than five feet away.
Now, he could see that the shadow was actually a man. He was wearing a long back coat, with a hood pulled up, overhanging his forehead and concealing his eyes.
Rupert’s heart pounded in his chest.
He just wanted to get into the car and drive off at great speed, but common decency prevailed. He had, after all, nearly run this person down.
Yes, he could be a freak. and his behaviour was certainly substantiating this thought, but what if he wasn’t. What if he was just an innocent farmer whose tractor, or whatever, had broken down, and he was just trying to get home, out of the freezing cold...
…“I frightened you.”
The stranger’s voice, deep with no inflection, no discernible accent, was like an alarm bell in the still of the night, and it jolted Rupert’s tongue to life.
“Yes, you did.” he said, then added, “…just, with the fog... you appeared out of nowhere.”
The need to make eye contact was instinctive in the businessman, and his inability to do so made his skin crawl.
It was all he could do not to cock his head, and peer under the man’s hood.
“Can,” he croaked, quickly clearing his throat, “Can I give you a lift somewhere?”
Unspeakable Page 27
