For a while he stared at the ceiling, trying to reconcile the impossible. His computer had switched to screensave mode by the time he pulled a pad towards him and tried to structure his thoughts on paper.
Crash tattoo = Saxon tattoo. Not a shadow of a doubt.
?possibilities? What the f...
1. two men with same tattoo. Yeah, like how many men had he ever seen with stags on their faces?
2. must have seen newspapers after crash. Stayed in subconscious. Some kind of retro-fit into memory. But he couldn’t even pick up a newspaper for six weeks. Television, then. There were TVs over the beds in the ward. But surely he’d have remembered?
3. Hallucinated or saw a ghost.
At that he ripped the sheet off the pad, screwed it into a ball and binned it. Look further. There must be another explanation. He woke up the laptop again and ran another search. Allingley.
More web pages. The White Hart Pub. Local history and attractions. Car crash – woman killed. Strange how things creep up on you, buried between an estate agent’s site and yet another press article on the Saxon. It was like reading his own obituary. A woman was killed and a man seriously injured in a road traffic accident near Allingley last Tuesday, 1st November. No other vehicle is thought to be involved… Three column inches and a photograph of Kate, laughing at the camera, sunlight on her face, dressed for a wedding or the races with a fascinator in her hair. Where had they found that one? Family, probably.
“That’s her, right?”
The chinos stood beside him, their crotch at the level of his shoulder, intruding into the sphere of unreality. Fergus pulled his screen shut and looked up. The set of the shoulders within the starched shirt spoke of a confidence that crossed the border into arrogance. This man owned the space he moved in, even if it was somebody else’s workstation. Fergus forced a smile and ignored the question.
“They tell me you’re good.” The Rock Star spoke slowly so his drawl sounded more Texan than Californian, and Fergus stifled the urge to laugh. Strap a Colt .45 on those razor-pressed slacks and the man could have been a gunslinger squaring up to a potential rival. Fergus demurred in an excessively British fashion.
“We’re making a sales pitch together on Thursday.” He named the customer. “This is the biggest deal on the prospect list and we’re down to the wire. Close it and we not only make our March quarter target, we’ll be half way to June’s.”
Which means you stand to make an obscene amount of commission.
“I’ll send you the files. Dry run Wednesday.”
“Awesome,” Fergus muttered at his retreating back. Bloody Swing Dick.
The pitch didn’t go well. They had no chemistry, no intuitive interaction. He and Kate had been a polished team, a double act, feeding each other the lines confident in their partner’s ability to run with the ball, add value, and pass it back. The new man only wanted someone to push a computer keyboard to illustrate his solo performance. In any case, Fergus’s patter was four months rusty, and after one fumbled remark, Swing Dick talked over any further attempt Fergus made to speak. Fergus’s mind started to drift, and then at a crucial moment when his contribution was needed, he was staring out of the window.
Two worlds, Eadlin had said. And tramps with very specific tattoos didn’t fit in this one. Beware, she’d said, you have touched the shadow world, you are between the worlds. So how could he have felt so intensely alive at the end of that riding lesson, with the vitality sparkling within him? Beyond the customer’s office windows was a line of trees, their bareness no longer dead but latent with spring. Within a few feet of the window leaf buds were waving in the breeze, swelling from the stalk in a pure, water-drop curve that reminded him of the way Eadlin’s arse filled a pair of jodhpurs. Earthy, somehow. Ripe with promise. Tactile...
“Fergus?”
Fergus’s attention returned to the room. They were all looking at him, their expressions ranging from amusement to annoyance to the salesman’s pleading desperation. Fergus smiled back, with the gentle smile of someone who doesn’t give a damn.
They lost the deal. The Sales Director called a postmortem review in his office, glaring at Fergus across the acreage of his desk while Swing Dick presented the case for the prosecution.
“Fergus, buddy.” The Sales Director rose to his feet, marched round his desk and paced the room, swigging water from a plastic bottle. The transatlantic ‘buddy’ was meaningless, merely a device to make whatever followed appear reasonable. “I’ve had to cut you some slack in recent months, but I’m beginning to wonder.”
“Excuse me?” Fergus noted that there was no invitation to give the case for the defence, even if he had one. “Just what slack have you had to cut me while I’ve been in hospital?”
“Well, precisely. I’ve kept your job open and carried your costs for nearly five months, and the team have had to pick up your work. At least I could fill the sales gap with a good guy.” The Sales Director paused his pacing and waved his water at Swing Dick.
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.” Fergus was bemused, almost as if he were starting to detach from the argument. Deep inside his mind, his self-control started to corrode.
“Look.” The Sales Director’s voice was now laced with anger, and he sucked water as if that was a means of keeping calm. “We’re all sorry about what happened. Of course we are. But your crash cost me a key sales resource…”
“Kate.” How mild and reasonable his voice sounded in his own ears, even as he teetered on the edge of the precipice. It would take only a word to nudge him over.
“… and badly dented our December quarter...” Flecks of saliva or water sprayed from the Sales Director’s mouth.
“Kate. Not ‘a sales resource’. Kate.” The strain was tightening his voice and Fergus rapped his stick pointfirst into the floor to emphasise his point, but it was a gentle blow and the carpeted false floor deadened the sound. The pacing continued. Fergus struggled to his feet during the silence of a swig, and saw the first flash of alarm on Swing Dick’s face. Good. Very good.
“… and I’m sure as hell not going to let you wreck my March quarter.”
The sense of losing control was quite liberating, almost as if Fergus was no longer responsible for his own behaviour. There was a distant echo of childhood tantrums as he hefted his stick at its mid-point and slammed it horizontally onto the desk, gunshot loud. A flake of beech-effect laminate shattered under the rootball handle and flew towards Swing Dick, who was already kicking his chair away from the threat. A cup danced and toppled, sending fingers of coffee reaching for the great man’s papers. Fergus stared at the desk for a moment. Did he really do that? Then he turned towards the Sales Director, relishing the shock on both their faces.
“Kate.” His voice was now piano-wire taut. “Her – name – was – Kate.” Any second now he was either going to be in a screaming rage or a blubbering heap. Beyond the Director the office door swung open and his PA looked into the room, scanning their faces, her eyes wide and questioning. Fergus dragged the stick from behind him, and an engraved glass ‘Top Gun’ sales award fell to the floor. The bloody thing didn’t break. Pity.
“She wasn’t just a ‘good sales resource’, she was a person. She was my friend. And she took two hours to die, impaled on the mess that came through the dashboard.” Fergus saw the shock on the PA’s face soften into compassion and he fought against collapse. Dear God, let it be rage. No way did he want these shits to see him weep. “So you can take your fucking sales targets and ram them up your arse. If Swing Dick here isn’t already in the way.”
Fergus lurched through them to the door, avoiding the PA’s eyes. One hint of tenderness now and he’d lose it. He braced himself against the frame, breathing heavily. In front of him the cubicle farm held regimented lines of heads, all facing towards him, like some smart-shirted herd of meerkats up on their hind legs with their noses twitching for danger. For a long moment they all stared at each other, until the silence was rupture
d by an angry bark of command from behind him. For some reason the bluster calmed him, perhaps even elated him. Fergus gripped his new stick firmly in one hand, grinned wryly, and shook his other hand in the burnt-fingers sign to make light of the moment. It didn’t work. He had broadcast his apostasy and the shock was written on their faces. A hand grasped his elbow, trying to pull him back into the room, but he shook it free. The office door slammed. Silently now, but with a sense of blessed release, he tapped his way through the staring faces towards his desk, trying to put as much dignity as possible into his step. It took him sixty silent seconds to collect his belongings and leave.
Behind the wheel of his car, still in the car park, Fergus started to shake. He’d never behaved like that before. Still shaking, he punched at the stereo and skipped through the CD changer until he found soothing music. He exhaled, feeling his shoulders drop, as sweet strings calmed him with a sense of innocence, hinting at a very English peace. Butterworth, ‘Banks of Green Willow’ the CD cover told him before he flicked it onto the passenger seat and relaxed into an aural massage. It made him wonder what the countryside around Allingley would be like in high summer. As the track ended he pulled out his mobile phone and dialled Eadlin.
Her warmth and pleasure at his voice was like a lifeline to a drowning man.
“That offer of a job,” he said, “is it still open?”
Chapter Fourteen
“ARE YOU SURE this is OK? The job, I mean?” Fergus stood in the office at Ash Farm Stables, competing for Eadlin’s attention with the office phone and the whines of a teenage girl who couldn’t find some piece of tack. He felt pleased with himself; two weeks after he’d thrown away his crutches, he’d walked from the car park to the farmhouse without putting his stick to the ground. He’d limped, for sure, but it hadn’t hurt much. It was just the way his legs worked, these days. A punishing exercise routine was working.
“OK? You’re doing me a favour. The schools have broken up for Easter, I’m swamped by Pony Club children, and half my normal helpers have gone away on holiday with their parents. I’m running ragged.”
“Maybe for a couple of months, until I get myself sorted out?”
Eadlin’s reply was interrupted by another call, and she inhaled before picking up the phone. She handled the enquiry with brittle competence, running her eyes over his clothes as she spoke. As Eadlin replaced the receiver she lifted an eyebrow at his designer jeans and expensive trainers.
“D’you mind getting dirty?”
Fergus shook his head.
“Then let’s get started.” Eadlin looked pointedly at the stick in his hand, and he dropped it with a theatrical flourish into a rack of riding crops by the door. As she came round the desk he crooked his elbow at her, grinning in a way that he hoped was not too flirtatious.
“Sod that. If you can’t walk without a stick you can stay behind the desk until you can. Could you manage a wheelbarrow? Let me introduce you to your new charges, it’s time for their feed.” She was already ahead of him, calling over her shoulder. “So what changed your mind?”
“There’s nothing like a touch of mortality to give you perspective.”
Outside she started stacking a wheelbarrow with rubber feed bowls, each about the size of a small car tyre and filled with an unappetising muesli mess.
“So you resigned?”
“Sort of.” Fergus told her about the row as she led him down a line of stables, dropping a bowl of feed over the door of each one. The wheelbarrow proved easy to manage, almost as if the weight was anchoring him.
“Were you and Kate very close?”
“Just good friends, to use the old cliché. We were comfortable with each other, flirted a bit, nothing more. But if I’d ever needed real help she’d have been the one I’d have called. I think she felt the same.” He found it easy to talk in Eadlin’s company. “You know, I think in a strange way I hadn’t really accepted that she was dead until last week, not at a very deep level. It was as if the crash was only a bad dream and I would wake up and go back to normal life in the office. Kate was still part of normal life.” His voice caught and Eadlin looked back at him as she hefted a feed bowl.
“Keep going. I think you need to talk about it.”
Yes, he needed to talk, but he wished he didn’t feel so emotionally incontinent when he tried. Fergus continued more quietly, ready to stop at the first sign of a crumble. “I cleaned out my car before I went back. There were two long, blonde hairs snagged in the passenger head rest. Sometimes we went to meetings in my car rather than hers. For some reason those hairs broke me up.” His voice caught again. “They’re still there.”
Enough. Down the line of stables, horses’ heads were stretching over their gates, all looking towards them. One or two started kicking their doors impatiently, eager for their feed. Fergus recognised Trooper further down the line, whinnying at them.
“I think Trooper is pleased to see us.” Fergus had never thought his spirits would lift at the sight of a horse.
“Sorry to disillusion you, but he’s pleased to see food. You won’t get any sense out of any of them until their bowls are empty.” Trooper proved her point by dropping his head into the feed, showing no sign of recognition. “So why did you come back here?”
Fergus watched Eadlin’s jodhpur-covered rump as she bent, lifted, and dropped a food tray over a stable door. Some of his reasons could stay private.
“Well, I looked up your dead Saxon on the internet. There are pictures of the tattoo on his face. I know this sounds weird but I’m sure I saw him in the wreck. It’s left a few loose ends in my mind that I want to explore, even if I don’t know where to start.”
Eadlin turned towards him with another feed bowl in her hands and a look of surprising intensity on her face.
“I think there are some things we’ll never understand, but where we might get hurt trying to find out. I’d let that drop if I were you.” The steel in her warning surprised Fergus. He opened his mouth to ask a question but she spoke over him. “Remember what I said about you being between the worlds, about being vulnerable. There are some doors you, of all people, shouldn’t try to open.”
Eadlin moved on briskly to the next stall. The set of her shoulders dissuaded him from voicing his scepticism about her palm-reading predictions.
“Actually, there was something else.” Truth time. Fergus parked the wheelbarrow and hooked his elbows over Trooper’s stable door, glad of an excuse to rest his legs. The horse looked up briefly before dropping his head to chase the remaining feed around the bowl. Fergus did not know quite how to put his next thought into words. Eadlin rested with him, giving him time to come to the heart of his answer.
“I had a glimpse of something, here. Something peaceful.” His words were coming out slowly, spoken softly towards the horse. “Last time I was here, all I wanted to do was to get back to my old life, as if I could wipe away the crash and the hospital months. Then when I went back I kept on thinking about a moment in the sand school, with you and Trooper. I sensed something there, just for a moment. An instant of calm that was so powerful that it frightened me and I dropped it.” The silence was comfortable between them, until Eadlin touched his arm in encouragement. “But back in the office, surrounded by all those egos, all that frantic pressure, finding a way back to that point of calm felt more important than any sales target could ever be. Am I talking complete drivel?”
Eadlin lifted her hand and laid it on his back. “You’re probably talking more sense than your office mates will ever know.” She smiled at him warmly, as if he had said something profound, and again he glimpsed wisdom behind her eyes. They reminded him of a Buddhist monk he had met on his gap year travels, a man whose serenity had seemed ageless, and before whom all the stresses of the world were but the petty squabbles of children. Then her smile became a grin and she was once again a freckle-faced young woman with her hand resting on his back, and he was sorry when she straightened and let it fall.
“This
is good. You’re asking good questions. You’re like someone tuning in one of those old dial-faced radios, hunting for a signal. At least you’re hunting, and when you find it you’ll be receptive.”
Eadlin started to move away but Fergus stayed, staring at the way the horse was snuffling and licking at the scraps in his bowl. Trooper had given no sign of recognition, no indication that for an instant, once, they had connected at an almost primal level.
“But my mind is all over the place.” His truths were surfacing. “I swing from crying in public to childish euphoria over a pint of beer. I’ve just chucked in a good career in a spectacular flash of temper that I never knew I had, and I’m even starting to believe in some mental communion with a horse. I’m afraid I’m going gaga, that some of the damage to my skull has changed me.”
Eadlin turned to look back at him, and he hoped his face did not look as lost as he felt. Outside in the yard, the repeater bell for the office telephone started to ring, but she ignored it.
“Has anyone mentioned Post-Traumatic Stress to you?”
Fergus shook his head. No, but he’d wondered about that.
“Because I think you’ve got it. And whatever label a shrink would put on you, you’re going to feel a bit screwed up after that kind of experience. It’s bound to change you, but not all change is bad. Come on; let me show you the office routines. How’s your telephone manner?”
In the yard it was turning into the kind of spring afternoon when sunshine is a surprise and delight at an hour that used to be dusk. When the phone stopped ringing the silence was deeper, inspiring Fergus to stop and breathe. Beside him, Eadlin squinted at the sun, lifting her face to its rays.
Saxon's Bane Page 8
