The Cheesemaker's House

by Jane Cable

  He shakes his head, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “I don’t care. I’m coming.” If I do I might finally get to the bottom of what’s going on.

  I follow him up the garden and through the side door of the barn, edging around the hole where the skeleton is. To my surprise Owen kneels next to it, but I remain standing. Or rather I try to. He tugs on my hand so violently I find myself kneeling too.

  “Show some respect,” he hisses and a chill runs through me.

  And then he starts reciting Christopher’s prayer. Not just once, but over and over again, and, as far as I can remember, word perfect from the one time Christopher said it. From the dark corners of the barn I can smell the sweetness of the hay and hear the snuffling breaths of the animals close by. My head begins to spin with the brandy and my enforced kneeling upright and I feel I am going to topple into the grave, but somehow I stay rigid next to Owen, right until he finally says Amen. I am shaking so much it is all I can do to crawl outside and collapse face down on the cool, damp grass.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  I wake in bed when it is barely light and realise I am alone. I sit up sleepily and look around me. Owen’s clothes are not on the chair where he normally leaves them; perhaps he has decided to go home. But then I hear the patio doors slide open and closed beneath me and the sound spurs me into action; if I race downstairs and open the front door I can cut him off before he goes.

  I grab my dressing gown and rush from my room. But one look through the glass in the front door makes me stop; Owen isn’t walking away from the house, he is crossing the road from the green and walking towards it. But then he isn’t; he comes into my field of vision from the direction of the barn. It is a heart stopping moment. I open my mouth to scream but instead I watch soundlessly as Owen’s face becomes a mask of terror and he turns and runs for his life.

  I push open the door and race up the drive after him, then across the lawn. I am calling his name but he doesn’t stop and I lose valuable ground as we pass through the orchard. At the end of the garden he vaults the fence before setting off across the field.

  “Owen – Owen – please – come back!” I am screaming but I can’t follow him in my bare feet. All I can do is yell and watch him disappear in the direction of the Swale and the Moors.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I can’t make up my mind how early I dare tell Adam what has happened, but at least prevaricating about that stops me from thinking about anything else. I hunch on a kitchen chair, unable to take my eyes off the digital clock on the cooker as it clicks away each minute.

  It is 5.03 when I start watching the little green numbers and the hour until six is endless, but by the time quarter to seven arrives I have decided. My frozen muscles scream when I move, but I drag myself up the stairs and into the shower, get dressed, then set off up the road.

  As I ring the doorbell I am praying that Owen has made his way home and will answer. But I know it is a faint hope. The house is silent; no-one comes. So I ring and ring again, and Kylie starts to bark and finally I hear Adam grumbling as he makes his way downstairs. His face is like thunder as he opens the door, but when he looks down at me his expression changes.

  “It’s Owen, isn’t it? What’s wrong?”

  “He’s run away.”

  Adam stares at me, incredulous. “What d’you mean?”

  “When I woke up this morning his clothes were gone but I was in time to…to…see him run off across the field. I tried to chase after him, but it was no good…I…I didn’t have any shoes on.”

  Adam opens the door wider. “You’d better come in.”

  I follow him past the vase of walking sticks and up the hallway into the kitchen. Kylie unfolds herself from her basket to lick my hand in greeting. I sit at the table and fondle her ears while Adam runs water, fills the kettle and switches it on. Ponderously he reaches for the pot and spoons tea into it. He is moving as though he has a hangover – perhaps he does. He leans on the edge of the kitchen unit and watches the kettle as it boils.

  Finally he says, “I didn’t mean to push him over the edge, Alice. Never in a million years. But I was angry – so fucking angry...”

  “It wasn’t you – something else...”

  He cuts me off. “But it must have been me – those awful things I said to him yesterday evening…those awful, awful things.”

  I wait while he pours the water into the teapot and puts milk in the mugs. Then I ask, “What things, Adam?”

  He swings around. “You mean he didn’t tell you?”

  I shake my head. “All he said was that he hadn’t brought Kylie because you fancied taking her for a walk yourself.”

  “Oh shit.” He brings the mugs over to the table and spoons sugar into them.

  I reach my hand across and grasp his. “Whatever you said, it wasn’t the final straw.”

  “Well if that wasn’t, then what was?”

  I look down at my tea. “It’s a long story. Well longish. Remember the night we went to The Black Horse? When I said I thought I saw Owen on the village green but you didn’t? Well, that wasn’t the first time I’d seen someone or something who looked very like Owen, but wasn’t.”

  “Someone or something? What do you mean?”

  “I don’t really know. It’s like the crying I’ve heard, and now I’m sure the two are linked. Owen heard the crying too and, well, never mind that for the moment, but this morning he came face to face with the other Owen and he just turned and fled.”

  “But I don’t understand, Alice. What are you saying? Is the other Owen a real person or a ghost?”

  It is typical of Adam to have put it in such plain terms but I cannot answer him. I don’t have to though, because the doorbell rings.

  Adam leaps up. “It must be Owen – he’s always forgetting his frigging keys.”

  I follow him as far as the hall. On the doorstep is a policeman and my world seems to go into slow motion – just like it does in the movies, only this is sickeningly real. The policeman is asking Adam if this is where Owen Maltby lives. When Adam nods, he asks if he can come in. He is not alone; a policewoman follows him. They always send one when there is bad news. I am rooted to the spot.

  As he draws level with me Adam says to the policeman, “I’m Adam James, Owen’s housemate. This is Alice Hart, his girlfriend.”

  “Have you found him?” My voice sounds squeaky and high pitched.

  The policeman sits down at the table and gestures to us to do the same. The policewoman takes the chair next to mine and I imagine her pockets full of tissues for when I cry.

  “So Mr Maltby is missing?” the policeman asks.

  “Yes. Since early this morning. Why – what’s happened?” Adam’s voice sounds brusque; firmer than my own, anyway.

  “We’ve had a report of someone fitting Mr Maltby’s description jumping off the old bridge into the Swale. The gentleman who phoned us seemed to know him quite well and was pretty sure about what he’d seen, but of course at the moment we only have his word for it.”

  “So, what are you doing about it?” Adam’s words eddy around my head, colliding with the memory of Owen swimming in the river.

  “...Miss Hart?” The policewoman is touching my arm.

  “Sorry?”

  “Any arguments or such like? Any reason your boyfriend might have taken his own life?”

  I force my brain back into real time and clear my throat. “Owen’s been under a tremendous amount of pressure recently...” But that is all I can say.

  There is a long silence.

  Finally Adam asks, “So what happens now?”

  “We’ll let you know if there are any developments, and of course we may want to ask you both some questions later on. Does Mr Maltby have any family who should be informed?”

  “None that I know of. He was brought up by his grandmother but she died last year.”

  I don’t hear the policeman’s reply. I am staring at the knots of wood in the ki
tchen table, trying not to think of all the years Owen has sat here drinking tea, just like Adam and I were before the doorbell rang. I want to go back to that moment again, but it won’t change anything. I want to go back to first thing this morning; if only I’d just kept running across the field, not letting him out of my sight. I want to go back to…but none of it would make any difference.

  Chairs scrape away from the table and Adam leads the police up the hall. On her way past the woman touches my shoulder but I don’t react. I wouldn’t know how to.

  When Adam comes back I gather up the mugs and put the kettle on to boil again.

  “The last lot went cold,” I explain, but he just sits down at the table and rests his head on his folded arms. I move across and put my hand on his shoulder. “Try not to think about it, Adam. It’s the only way.” He doesn’t answer, doesn’t move. I carry on making the tea.

  A few minutes later there is a tentative knock on the kitchen door. I rush to open it, struggling with the top bolt, only to see Margaret standing outside, wearing her Sunday best.

  “I saw the police car,” she ventures. “I came to see what’s wrong.”

  “Owen’s…Owen’s...” but I can’t bring myself to say it.

  Adam looks up, his big round face blotchy and streaked with tears. “Owen’s killed himself. He jumped off the old bridge into the Swale.”

  The colour falls from Margaret’s face. “No,” she whispers.

  “We don’t know that, Adam,” I find myself saying. “He might still be alive, he’s a very strong swimmer, he might just have fallen...”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Alice.” Adam buries his head in his arms again.

  I pull a third mug off the shelf and pour some tea for Margaret. “I’ve only just made it,” I tell her.

  She sits down at the table and pats Adam’s arm. “Alice may be right, you know. Owen’s the last person in the world who would take his own life – his Christian faith would never allow him to. Adam, you should know that.”

  I find myself gratefully clutching at the straw Margaret has offered, but then Adam mutters, “But what if he was beyond reason? What if he’d lost it completely?” And I think of Owen in the barn, endlessly reciting Christopher’s prayer over the little skeleton. We fall silent.

  After a while Margaret asks what the police are doing and Adam tells her they’re looking for him. Then she asks what we’re going to do. Adam and I look at each other blankly. Finally, and somewhat desperately, she asks if there is anything she can do.

  “There is one thing,” I hesitate, “When you go to church, can you ask Christopher to say a prayer for Owen? Not a public one, because we don’t want anyone else to know what might have happened until we know what has, but just a prayer to himself. Owen is a great believer in Christopher’s prayers.”

  “Yes of course, Alice, and I’m sure it will help.”

  After she leaves Adam asks me if I really believe in all that mumbo jumbo. I say that I think I do, but it doesn’t matter what I believe, but what Owen does. So I tell him about our drink with Christopher and Jane on Friday night, and then what happened in the barn just hours before Owen disappeared.

  When I’ve finished Adam looks at me bleakly. “So he had totally lost it then?”

  I nod. “I think so, yes. Even before he saw the other Owen; even before your argument; so you needn’t start blaming yourself.”

  “Alice, I will always blame myself. You see, I told him I wanted out of the café, out of his life. I threw every good thing he’s done for me over the years back in his face. And d’you know what? He just stood there and took it. I wanted him to fight, to yell back at me, but he didn’t. He just waited until I’d run out of steam and then he asked me to give him another week or so, just so he could work out how to unravel it all. And then he went upstairs to get ready to go to see you.

  “But I couldn’t leave it there. I was even angrier that he didn’t seem to care I was leaving so I stormed after him. But when I got to the top of the stairs I could hear him sobbing. Like a little child – like he did when his gran died – and if I’d been any sort of friend I’d have gone right in there and hugged him. But I didn’t. I just grabbed a beer and went to watch television.”

  I want to say to him ‘There are always things that we think we should have done’ but somehow I can’t form the words.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  I use William as an excuse to go home. Adam and I are not doing each other any good; he is drowning in guilt and grief while I am trying to pretend this isn’t happening. Although he looks forlorn, alone at the kitchen table, I sense his relief when I leave.

  In total contrast William jumps up to lick my hands before racing across the lawn. I follow him half heartedly, and all I can do is wonder why I didn’t just keep running after Owen. Surely tearing my feet to shreds would have been nothing compared to the way his world was tearing apart. After a very short while I can stand it in the garden no longer, and lead a reluctant William back to the house. I can’t even look at the barn.

  Being inside isn’t much better. I wander around like a ghost. For a long time I stand at the dining room window, gazing at the village green, willing at least one of the Owens to appear, but of course no-one does. A few cars whizz past, blatantly ignoring the thirty mile an hour limit like they always do, and then a couple of cyclists, but no Owen.

  The room is chill and I hug my arms around me. I am longing for my shawl; my grey dress feels thin and inadequate, and yet it’s the one I always wear. My hand reaches for my stomach, so recently bereft of the life inside it and the dark emptiness threatens to engulf me. I am not gazing at the village green, but at the farmhouse beyond. It is so achingly familiar with its low thatch, but its homely comfort is too far in the past for me to reach.

  I jump out of my skin when Richard’s van pulls into the drive. I feel disorientated, as though my mind slid off somewhere else. It must be shock, I tell myself, and stride through to the garden room to open the door.

  Richard looks as though he has aged about ten years. The lines around his eyes are not laughing, but are etched deeper into his tanned skin.

  “I came to say how sorry I am about Owen,” he says, looking down at his trainers.

  “How do you know?”

  “It was me who saw him on the bridge. Alice – I would have stopped him if I could, I tried to go after him, I...” He is twisting his keys round and round. What he says hits me like a bow wave; if it was Richard who saw Owen jump, then there can be no mistake.

  I grip the doorframe. William licks my hand. Richard continues to stand there.

  “Come in,” I say. “Then you can tell me exactly what you saw.”

  For about the hundredth time today I make a pot of tea and spoon sugar into the mugs. Richard doesn’t complain and we sit down at either side of the little kitchen table.

  “So – what happened?”

  “Didn’t the police tell you?”

  “Only in outline. Richard, please, I need to know.”

  “There isn’t much to tell. I was coming back from town at about quarter to six this morning. I’d…well, I’d bumped into an ex in the pub last night and one thing kind of led to another.” He pauses. “But anyway, I was crossing the new bridge when I saw Owen on the old one. I knew something wasn’t right straight away because he was standing on the parapet. I mean, I know he’s a strong swimmer but he understands that river – he’d never dive in from there – and besides, he was fully clothed.

  “As soon as I got to this side I stopped and shot out of the van. I called out, but maybe I shouldn’t have because it was then he just leant forwards and tipped himself into the river. It sounds fanciful, but for a moment, before he…he did it…he looked just like an angel. His arms outstretched, his fair hair and white shirt...” Richard swallows hard.

  “I absolutely pelted down the bank. I knew he’d be hurt, but I thought at least I could jump in after him and try to stop him from drowning. But by the time
I got there I couldn’t see him. Nothing in the water at all – not even a ripple. I guess the current’s quite fast under the bridge but I keep going over it again and again in my head; if there was anything else I could have done.”

  Richard paints good pictures with his words. I think of the funny stories he’s told me about his other clients; odd how you think of irrelevant things at stressful times. But something about the image isn’t right – I replay the scene in my mind and suddenly I hit upon it.

  “Owen wasn’t wearing a white shirt,” I blurt out. “He was wearing a brown fleece.”

  “What about underneath?” Richard sounds cautious.

  I think hard. Had Owen taken the fleece off yesterday evening? No – he’d put it on; when he arrived he’d been carrying it – and wearing his blue T-shirt.

  “A blue T-shirt.”

  “Perhaps he went home to change?”

  I shake my head. “No. Richard – he ran across those fields in such a state...” I stop mid sentence. “The shirt couldn’t have been cream, could it?”

  “Yes, very easily. Or any light colour. I didn’t really get that good a look; it was just the impression of an angel stayed with me.”

  “What you saw could very well have been an angel. To be honest, I don’t rightly know what it was, but it wasn’t my Owen.”

  So for the second time today I launch into the story of the other Owen and how I think it’s somehow linked to the crying we heard. Richard listens without comment, his big hands wrapped around his mug of tea.

  When I finish he says “So this other Owen, as you call him, he’s always wearing a cream shirt, is he?”

  “Yes. Not white – a really definite cream.”

  “Then I’ve seen him before. One night last week when I was driving home I passed him in the lane coming up from Scruton. I beeped my horn and waved but he didn’t acknowledge me. I just thought it was Owen being a miserable sod, to be honest.”

  It takes a moment for what he says to sink in. “So you’ve seen him too?”