The Living and the Dead in Winsford

by Håkan Nesser

  I didn’t do so, of course, but I knew that beyond all doubt there was something about this man and his restrained sorrow that attracted me. When we said goodnight outside The Royal Oak shortly after ten o’clock, I found it difficult not to give him a hug.

  But I didn’t do that either, and now, a few hours later as I lie in bed with Castor over my legs and am about to put a full stop after the evening, I think about how I talked so much about me and my life. I must have had a great need to do so. The story about his son and that tragic accident was still lingering on inside my mind, of course, but I also realized that we hadn’t discussed something we had talked about on the previous occasion. His ability to see what was hidden. The missing husband, the shadow, the sun-drenched house in the south and all the rest of it.

  Once again it had become quite stormy during the evening. The wind was howling around the eaves, and there was a hint of snow in the air. I felt a little depressed, more depressed than I had been for several days, I don’t know why.

  THREE

  24

  I left the Samos material untouched for over a week. I also wondered whether I ought to get rid of it all, take it out onto the moor with a can of petrol and burn it up somewhere; but I decided that would be a bit overhasty. Perhaps it would be useful eventually, even if I wasn’t at all sure what was meant by ‘useful’ and ‘eventually’. Another couple of concepts had been robbed of their usual meaning, but that’s the way things seemed to be going. I was now living within the framework provided by the hours of the day and the borders of Exmoor. I carried on reading about John Ridd and Lorna Doone, and I went for walks with Castor for three or four hours every day, all over the moor, but especially in the region of Simonsbath and Brendon, where heaven and earth kissed. At least, that’s what it said on a little memorial stone where I parked the car one day: Open yer eyes, oh, ye lucky wanderer, for near to here is a playce where heaven and earth kiss and caress.

  The weather was consistently pleasant, several degrees above zero, relatively gentle winds and hardly any rain. I made my own dinner every other evening, and every other evening drove down to The Royal Oak Inn. There was no sign of Mark Britton, and even if that made me a little disappointed every time, there was nothing I could do about it. I exchanged a few words with Rosie, Tom and Robert about the weather and about Castor, but that was usually about all. When I got back to Darne Lodge I lit the fire and played four games of patience. Switched off the bedside lamp before eleven and slept until I was woken up by the dawn. Castor would be by my feet, under the covers.

  No more dead pheasants appeared in front of the door, and I had gradually got used to thinking that we would go on living like this until one of us had an attack of thrombosis during the night and died in our sleep. Either me or Castor, but preferably both of us the same night. Why not? Why was it necessary for one of us to outlive the other? Would it be possible for me to convince Mr Tawking that I could rent this modest dwelling indefinitely?

  But on the twenty-fifth of November I visited the Winsford Community Computer Centre once again. Something had told me that it was high time. Over a month had passed since that remarkable walk, but it could just as easily have been a year. Or several, it seemed so far away in the past.

  Everything that wasn’t here and now seemed to be so far away in the past, and I suppose that’s how it must feel for anybody who only takes account of hours that pass and walks that are undertaken. I hadn’t even realized that it was Sunday when I stood rattling the door of the centre, but I was duly informed by Alfred Biggs when I took him at his word and knocked on his red-painted door just round the corner a few minutes later.

  That was no problem, no problem at all. Alfred Biggs unlocked the door for me, and helped me to set up links with the outside world. Then he apologized and said he had a job to do in the church, but he promised to come back again in about an hour. If I wanted to leave before then, all I needed to do was to switch off the lights and make sure the door was locked behind me. If anybody else wanted to come in and access the web, I should let them in so long as they signed their names in the visitors’ book.

  Before leaving, he naturally made sure that there was a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits on my table. And that Castor had a bowl of water and a handful of treats that his missus could give him as she considered appropriate. I thanked him for his kindness, and when he had left I sat absolutely still with my eyes closed for half a minute before opening our mailboxes.

  Mine first, that already seemed to be the routine.

  Just one message. I couldn’t pin down the precise reaction I felt. Relief or disappointment? It was Katarina Wunsch again, in any case. In three lines she apologized for upsetting me with her doppelgänger story, and hoped that I would enjoy a pleasant winter down in Morocco. I wrote an equally brief reply, closed the box and feeling somewhat uneasy I turned my attention to Martin’s e-mails.

  Ten new messages: I could ignore seven of them straight away. The remaining three were from that student about that incorrectly marked essay again, from Bergman and from the person calling himself G. After a little thought I decided to ignore the student as well, and instead looked to see what Eugen Bergman had on his mind.

  He said thank you for my (i.e. Martin’s) previous message, wished me all the best with regard to the work and the time down there in general, and he had a question. A journalist from the Swedish magazine Svensk Bokhandel was on a journey through north Africa and would very much like to call on me for an interview. Bergman didn’t think Martin would be interested, but had promised to ask. I wrote a response in which I (Martin) confirmed that we were totally uninterested in any kind of contact with journalists, and that work was going according to plan. Then I drew a deep breath and opened the message from G.

  Your last e-mail made me more than confused. Did you have a stroke or are you just trying to avoid the issue? I’m coming down. What is your address? G

  I just sat there for a minute or more, trying to absorb the implications. My last message had obviously not calmed G down at all. He was more than confused. Trying to avoid the issue? But what was the issue that Martin was trying to avoid? What was so important that he needed to meet Martin?

  And who was he?

  I realized of course that Martin must have told G about our plans for spending six months in Morocco, and presumably also that the purpose was to write something involving Hyatt and Herold. Something to do with the years before her suicide. And that this had disturbed G so much that he felt he must put a stop to it. Isn’t that the case? I asked myself. Surely that’s the way the land must lie?

  Unfortunately I was unable to dig out the message Martin must presumably have sent him, and as I nibbled away at my biscuits and sipped my tea I wondered how hard it would be to sort out something like that. My knowledge of computers and IT had always been as limited as my interest in such matters, but I could see that it shouldn’t be too difficult for anybody with a bit of competence in the field.

  But I was also only too aware of the fact that I would never be able to bring myself to take that step. It was not certain that Martin’s old message would in fact throw any light on the matter, and in any case it was distinctly possible that I would find the key anyway. Surely it must be somewhere in the remainder of the material from Samos and Morocco, the two-hundred-and-fifty pages or however much it was that I hadn’t yet got round to reading. If there was something as important as G was alleging, it could hardly escape my notice, provided that I could raise enough strength to sit down and read the stuff. It seemed highly likely that G himself would feature in the material, but if he wasn’t in fact the Russian Gusov, I didn’t think I had come across him yet. Where I got that feeling from was not something I could answer for.

  On the other hand, wasn’t it possible that there would be no risk involved in simply ignoring G? I had already tried to give him a reassuring reply, which had obviously not worked, and if I now simply ignored him, what might the consequences be? Why sho
uld he be so important? What was it that shouldn’t see the light of day? In any case, so long as he didn’t have our address in Morocco he couldn’t very well go there looking for us. What other possibilities were open to him? Contact Bergman? That couldn’t be excluded, of course, but I needn’t worry about such an eventuality as in that case Bergman would certainly be in touch with me.

  Wouldn’t he? I sat there for quite a while, trying to think up various strategies and assess their validity, and in the end I chose a sort of middle way. I wrote a brief reply to G, thinking that it ought to calm him down a bit at least temporarily – there is nothing that annoys hot-tempered individuals as much as not receiving replies to their questions, that was something all my years at the Monkeyhouse had taught me. Any reply at all was better than no reply, and my impression of this unknown G was that without doubt he was an impatient devil.

  My dear friend. When I tell you not to worry I mean it.

  There is absolutely no reason for us to meet. Best, M

  That would have to do. I sent it off, closed Martin’s mailbox and spent a few minutes glancing through the Swedish news. There was nothing of interest, and nowhere did I find any reports of a missing professor or the discovery of a dead body on the Polish Baltic coast. With a sigh of relief I switched off the computer and left the centre.

  We went for a short walk through the village, and as we walked through the thin drizzle, stopping every ten metres or so for Castor to give himself a good shake, it occurred to me that I hadn’t read a single e-mail from Morocco. Wasn’t that a bit odd? I wondered. Martin had said that he had contacts down there, and it was these contacts that would help him to arrange our accommodation for the winter. Hadn’t he made any preliminary arrangements before we left Sweden? Hadn’t he contacted anybody at all, somebody who by now ought to be wondering why we hadn’t turned up and hence been in touch with a question or two? This was surely very odd, and perhaps something that ought to have occurred to me some time ago? Despite the fact that I had so much more to be thinking about.

  But so what? I thought when we had both installed ourselves in the car next to the war memorial. So much the better if there wasn’t a Moroccan complication to keep an eye on and take into account.

  Apart from that old one, that is – that Taza business which it seemed was lurking inside a suitcase in a wardrobe in Darne Lodge, and which by now had been lying there undisturbed for over a week. I started the car and began the now familiar drive up the road to Winsford Hill. There seemed to be enough daylight left for us to undertake a fairly substantial walk, but I was well aware that afterwards, during the long evening hours when darkness held sway over the moor, I would have to sit down once again with those confounded notes.

  Those summers that had long since disappeared from a life that didn’t concern me, and never had.

  25

  It took me nearly seven hours to go through the rest of the handwritten material from Samos. The week that still remained from 1978, and the whole of the summer of 1979.

  It was turned one by the time I was finished, and when I snuggled down into bed with Castor, exhausted and with my eyes aching, I said a silent prayer hoping that I would remember enough to write a summary the next morning.

  My prayer was answered. After Monday’s morning walk (plus six degrees, quite a strong northerly wind, a greyish-white sky and only thin streaks of mist) I sat down in the rocking chair remembering and noting down what I considered to be the most significant things. As I did so I had a distinct feeling of being watched. That I was performing some sort of task that I had been instructed to carry out, and that the instigator – whether it was Martin or somebody else: Eugen Bergman perhaps, or the elusive G, or why not the two dead main characters, Herold and Hyatt? – was sitting like a raven, or even more than one, on my shoulders, making sure that nothing was overlooked.

  Because something was afoot. Something was happening down there on that Greek fairy-tale island: one didn’t need to be a raven to understand that.

  Nothing sensational happened during the rest of the 1978 stay. Martin describes the final week in his usual restrained manner: Hyatt and Herold are only mentioned in passing, Halvorsen and Soblewski rather more often. The day before Martin travels back to Sweden he and those other two go for quite a long walk along a ravine in the mountains, and Martin really does his best to record his impressions. The recurrent theme is that it is strenuous and terribly hot. And that Halvorsen has chafed feet and has to be more or less carried the last part of the homeward trek.

  By the following summer, July–August 1979, the situation has changed somewhat. Martin is no longer living with the so-called collective. Instead he is lodging in a small house just a stone’s throw away from Herold’s and Hyatt’s villa. He lives there for five weeks with various different people who come and go, but Soblewski arrives after a week and is still there when Martin goes home, and not long after Soblewski somebody called Grass turns up. I guess that he might well be the person hiding behind the pseudonym G – well, I suppose in fact I decide that is the explanation, and for some reason it comes as a relief. He is a writer and media researcher, originally from Monterey in California, but currently based in Europe.

  The house they share seems to accommodate up to eight people: couples or women live in two of the rooms, and after Soblewski’s arrival he and Martin share a room for the rest of their stay. There is a kitchen, a toilet and outside shower: on the whole the place is an improvement on where they lived in previous summers.

  The fact that they are closer to Hyatt and Herold is obvious, and it is not just Martin skewing matters to give that impression. By this time the couple are famous and worldwide celebrities, and the main reason for this is Bessie Hyatt’s debut novel. Her second (and last) book, Men’s Blood Circulation, has been edited and proof-read and will be published in the English-speaking world in October. Martin writes that all kinds of journalists and paparazzi ‘are crawling around the pine-clad hillsides like cockroaches,’ but that Tom Herold in particular makes sure that ‘not so much as a bloody autograph-hunter crosses over the bridge.’

  Grass turns out to be an old acquaintance of Bessie Hyatt’s. They evidently come from the same part of California, went to high school together, and there might even be closer ties although Martin doesn’t succeed in uncovering them. In any case there is a lot of socializing with the hosts: I gather that there is a group of six, in addition to Hyatt and Herold, who generally spend the long evenings on that famous terrace ‘with views over the pine trees, the cypresses, the beach, the sea, the setting sun: if it is true that human beings are the creatures the Creator produced so that they could observe and admire one another, this is the right place and we are the chosen people’ (sic!). The half-dozen comprise: Martin, Soblewski, Grass, the German women writers from the previous year (Doris Guttmann and Gisela Fromm) and the inevitable Russian Gusov. Occasionally also Bruno, who is still playing the role of a sort of caretaker and hence seems to be degraded to a kind of second-rate citizen. That is not something stated by Martin, but a conclusion I have reached. Other people occasionally also appear on the terrace, of course: for two evenings the icon Allen Ginsberg is a house guest, and a week later Seamus Heaney joins the party – the Irishman who is awarded the Nobel Prize sixteen years later.

  And these lengthy sessions, with Greek snacks served up in a never-ending stream by the housekeeper Paula, with boutari wine and retsina, with ouzo and tsipouro and beer, with witty discussions on Existentialism and hermeneutics, on Kuhn and Levinas, Baader-Meinhof and Solzhenitsyn and the Devil and his grandmother, with guitars and bouzoukis, these orgies in hyper-intellectual exuberance and Gauloise cigarettes with or without extras – well, as far as I can judge these happenings take place every evening, week after week, and usually end up with a group of participants trudging down to the beach about an hour or so after midnight for a session of skinny-dipping. For Christ’s sake, this is heaven for a streber like Martin Holinek, a twenty-six-year-ol
d research assistant from Stockholm in the backwoods of ultima Thule. For Christ’s sake.

  And on the heavenly throne the couple themselves: the British poet that everybody was talking about, and his fifteen-year-younger American wife. ‘If anybody around this table might be considered to have come from Olympus, if any one of us were a reincarnated goddess,’ writes Martin in a moment of poetic inspiration, ‘she would certainly be the one.’

  Whence Tom Herold had been reincarnated was less clear: Martin found it difficult to describe him in words. It is quite obvious that this is connected with almost histrionic respect, but it is three weeks later before a note suggests that something is not really as it should be.

  ‘There is something about Herold that makes me pause and think,’ he writes on the thirteenth of July. ‘There is no doubt that his temperament is a handicap, both for Bessie and for himself. Last night he stood up and left the table in a fit of anger – it was after something that Grass had said and that I didn’t catch on to, and afterwards Grass was reluctant to discuss. Bessie remained in her seat and tried to keep up appearances, but I could see that she was upset. After a while she apologized and withdrew: Soblewski and I took the opportunity of doing the same. This was the first time since I’d been on the island that I’d got to bed before midnight. Every cloud has its silver lining.’