“I’ve no idea. Why don’t you tell me.” Rather than this I said “I couldn’t say.”
I should have left it there, but my saddened gaze lingered. “Fucking what?” she cried.
“You might like to restrain your language when a child can hear.”
“Don’t you fucking tell me how to talk in front of my own fucking kid. What are you creeping round here for?”
“My wife’s in hospital.”
“Hope they treat her better than my dad.” I mistook this for sympathy until her rage became plain. “The cunts are doing fucking shit for him.”
As I grasped she’d been saying as much on her phone, my heart jerked, or something near it did. I was afraid I might be having an attack, if nowhere near as serious as Lesley’s, until I realised what I’d felt. I snatched out my own mobile to see I’d inadvertently muted the sound. A message from Toby said Come back.
I stumbled as I ran or at any rate limped as fast as I could to the entrance. I had to dodge around several paramedics and their patients waiting on trolleys on my way to the ward. More than one of the hospital staff outdistanced me in the corridor, and in a sudden acute hope of seeing them pass Lesley’s ward I managed to put on more ungainly speed. I was in time to watch them disappear into the ward. More ominously still, my son and his wife were outside. “What’s—” I croaked and had to clear my throat to revive my withered voice. “What’s happened?” I said too loud.
Toby looked as if he thought I might blame him and Claudine, and I was dismayed to wonder what they could have said to Lesley in my absence. Their silence alarmed me even once I realised they were waiting for me to come close enough to let them keep their voices low. “It wasn’t long after you went out,” Toby said. “She had a pain.”
“What kind of pain?” When neither of them answered I said so urgently that it left my throat raw “What did she say?”
I saw Claudine willing Toby to respond. With visible reluctance he said “She couldn’t speak.”
I lurched past him, but he closed a hand around my arm. “Dad, they said we’re to stay outside till someone comes.”
More like a child than I wanted to sound I protested “Did they say me?”
“They meant any visitors, Dominic. Our whole family, that is.”
No doubt Claudine wanted her second comment to placate me, but I couldn’t welcome it just now. I stared at the doors of the ward in the hope they would open to show I’d no need to experience the panic that was turning my hands clammy and speeding up my heart until it ached while my cranium seemed to grow as fragile as a shell. Too much time crawled by before I turned away in case willing the wait to be over was prolonging it somehow—my perception of it, at any rate. I felt isolated and afraid, and meeting my son’s eyes offered no reassurance. I saw he was keeping some thought to himself, and I suspected Claudine shared it, especially when she said “Dominic, I’m sure it won’t be—”
“We don’t know if it’s the end or not,” I said so as to cut her off. “I just hope we all mean the same thing.”
I felt ashamed at once, not so much of my outburst as of having flinched from being too precise, but this wasn’t the occasion to attack their faith, however much it disturbed me. I didn’t realise anyone had come out of the ward until a man said “Mr Sheldrake.”
“Yes.”
It was Toby who answered before I swung around. “I believe he means me,” I said.
“She’s mine as well.”
I wanted to believe that Toby just meant Lesley was his mother—that he had no more than that in mind, let alone worse. I could only appeal to the plump ruddy doctor who might have been advertising health if not the sort of shape that undermined it. “Who are you looking for?”
“Mr Sheldrake?” Since we hadn’t previously met, he seemed anxious for the confirmation. When I nodded he said more quietly still “I’m sorry, Mr Sheldrake.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know if you should have left when you did. I’m afraid your wife suffered a relapse.”
The staff who’d passed me in the corridor were emerging very quietly from the ward. I hadn’t time to decide whether the doctor was expressing regret at my absence or convicting me of thoughtlessness. “How bad?” I pleaded.
“Mr Sheldrake, your wife is no longer in distress.”
“You’re telling me she’ll recover.” Now I couldn’t mistake his regret, and despite the relentless heat I began to shiver. “No,” I found it necessary to say out loud, “you’re saying she never will.”
“Please be aware the end was peaceful.”
I fought to keep my voice steady, because if I lost control of it the rest of me felt poised to follow. “Did she say anything?”
“She was beyond that, Mr Sheldrake.”
Before my words could grow unsafe to pronounce I said “Can I go to her?”
The doctor stood aside and motioned me into the ward without speaking. When Toby made to follow, Claudine took his arm to detain him. A screen concealed Lesley’s bed, and nobody was talking in the ward; I couldn’t even hear any breaths apart from my own uneven attempts. As I paced between the beds, feeling as if I were venturing into a funeral home, a nurse beckoned to me and wheeled back a corner of the screen. He closed me in as soon as I reached the bed.
Lesley was lying on her back. Her eyes were shut, her hands were clasped together on her breast, and I felt as if the last time I’d seen her in that position had been an omen I’d failed to read. I laid a hand on hers, only to find they were already colder than the hospital. Lines had been subtracted from her forehead, and her face looked as calm as a dreamless sleep. When I kissed her brow it felt as empty as I did. “Be somewhere beautiful,” I whispered for only her to hear, if anybody heard at all.
2 - Ready or Not
Lesley used to believe that great art could help prepare you for the loss of the people you loved. When her parents died within months of each other she found solace in the requiems of Fauré and Duruflé, both of which she thought epitomised peace without end. For her Nicolay Levin’s protracted deathbed scenes in Anna Karenina were among the most truthful passages in literature, not least in conveying how long death could take to reach its end. In my case some films had conveyed that experience—La Gueule Ouverte did, for instance—while others touched me with the grief of loss: Pather Panchali, Tokyo Story, Letter from an Unknown Woman. Yet none of this equipped me for losing the person with whom I’d chosen to spend my life. Not even the deaths of my parents had.
By the morning of Lesley’s funeral I felt drained of tears and sleep, not much more than a walking husk of myself. Even the shower I took, having managed to rouse myself from reliving memories that led inexorably to regrets, seemed muted and remote, not quite able to engage my senses. My thoughts were so sluggish, unless they were painfully guarded, that I set about selecting a sombre outfit from my wardrobe before I recalled that Lesley hadn’t wanted anyone to dress that way at her funeral—that she’d told me and Toby years ago to make it colourful. At least I’d remembered to advise all the mourners, but now I found that since she wouldn’t see the result, acceding to her wishes only underlined her absence.
As I tried to choose clothes that wouldn’t make me feel offensively flamboyant, the doorbell rang. A pain like an omen of worse stabbed my heart while I stumbled to the window. I peered around the curtain to see my son and his wife on the garden path. Having fumbled my keys out of the heap of yesterday’s and indeed several days’ clothes on the floor next to the dressing-table faintly redolent of cosmetics—I kept thinking the array of jars and jewellery made it look like a memorial to Lesley—I rubbed my eyes with the back of a hand before opening the window. “Someone catch the keys,” I called.
Toby did with a deftness that made me feel clumsy with age. “Shall I make everyone breakfast?” Claudine said. “We waited in case.”
She sounded as bright as her outfit and Toby’s, and I had to tell myself that they were making the effort L
esley had requested—that they and their beliefs weren’t dismissing her death. “You may not find much,” I said. “Use whatever you like.”
By the time I decided on clothes I didn’t think too garish or too contrary to Lesley’s wishes, Toby and Claudine had laid out breakfast—toast, scrambled eggs, coffee, orange juice. I did my best to appreciate the gesture rather than see it as a substitute for how Lesley and I used to make it for each other. Toby gave me a prolonged hug, and Claudine’s came with a dry kiss. “We’ll be with you now, dad,” Toby said.
“As much and as long as you want,” Claudine said.
I had no idea how much that was or even any means of knowing. “Thank you both,” I said and transferred a sample of breakfast to my plate before either of them could undertake to load it on my behalf. “I’m fine,” I said when I was offered more, having succeeded in clearing the plate despite scarcely tasting the food my dogged jaws worked on. “That’s it for me just now.”
“Maybe you’ll be hungry later,” Toby said. “We’ll see you through the day. Whatever you need, we’ll be close.”
“And then you can start to let go, Dominic.”
Although Claudine’s mother Judith had died last year, I found the advice at the very least presumptuous. Toby gave a supportive nod, and the unspecific emphasis was more than I could stand. “You’ll be doing that, will you? You’ll be letting Lesley go.”
“That’s part of what today’s for, dad.”
“I know all about today.” This made me realise that I knew considerably less, and it dismayed me to hear myself blurt “You won’t be using her for whatever you get up to now.”
“We’ve gone beyond that, Dominic,” Claudine said. “We only use ourselves.”
I had an appalled notion that she fancied I would find this comforting. “Will you both promise you’ll never try to bring her back?” I said as though she hadn’t spoken.
“There’s no need.” When I stared at this Toby added “We promise.”
“We do,” Claudine said.
I might have ended the discussion out of respect for Lesley’s memory, but her death had given me the chance if not the responsibility to ask questions I’d avoided voicing while she was alive. “Just what do you do at this church of yours?”
“It isn’t really what you’d call a church, dad. It’s more a place for meditation.”
“Then why is it called the Church of the Eternal Three?”
“That started in America,” Claudine said. “Churches don’t pay tax.”
“What sort of meditation are we talking about? What is it meant to achieve?”
She glanced at Toby, and I saw them share an understanding. Toby parted his lips, but he hadn’t spoken when Claudine said “Here’s someone else.
I wondered if she was anxious to interrupt, having had second thoughts about letting me into a secret, until I heard footsteps on the front path. When the doorbell rang, so tersely it sounded imperious or else apologetic, Toby said “I’ll see who it is, dad.”
“I’ll go,” I said, standing up so fast I had to grab the table for support. “You two clear up.”
In the hall I passed the vase Lesley used to replenish with flowers from the garden. I’d put in fresh ones yesterday—the contents had withered days ago—but now the sight recalled a floral tribute. Answering the doorbell was no distraction from my thoughts after all. I blinked my eyes clear as I opened the door and saw Bobby and Jim.
They’d grown even greyer than me. Jim had developed a stoop that brought his head nearly level with mine, while age had pared down Bobby’s face, rendering her chin more indomitable still. I couldn’t help regretting that whoever had rung the bell hadn’t used our old code—two longish bursts—but perhaps they were afraid of sounding disrespectful, if the code had even occurred to them. Bobby gave me a hug so fierce I almost couldn’t feel how thin her arms were. “Dom,” she said.
Jim embraced me for the first time in his life. “I’m sorry it’s been so long, Dom.”
“I’m sorry it had to be now,” Bobby said. “I only wish I’d met your wife.”
“You’d have liked her,” Jim said.
Both of them immediately looked worried that they’d said too much, but I was reminded how seldom the Baileys had met my wife. She’d never had them round for dinner, perhaps because Jim reminded her too much of Safe To Sleep. As I shut the door Claudine looked out of the kitchen. “We’ll be with you in a minute. Would anybody like a drink?”
I tried not to feel she meant in any way to occupy the house. Nobody took up her offer, and we trooped into the front room, where I found it indefinably disconcerting to see Bobby sit in my wife’s favourite armchair. She and Jim were sharing a wistful silence with me when Toby and Claudine joined us, and I made the introductions. “We’ve been reading your books,” Claudine told Bobby. “We thought you saw things pretty clear.”
As I wondered if she and my son recalled meeting Bobby at Safe To Sleep, Toby said to Jim “You were the policeman. Assistant chief con.”
“I was till I retired.” With a hint of an official tone Jim said “I haven’t retired from upholding the law.”
“You’re another kind of lawman now, you mean.”
“I could be if it’s called for. So what do you do with your life?”
“We’re in research, both of us. Human behaviour and the patterns people act out.” With a smile too faint for interpretation Toby said “It’s some fun.”
“It’s as your books say, Roberta,” Claudine said. “People are compelled to do things because they can’t stand back far enough to see them clear. Nearly everyone’s incapable of seeing deep into themselves.”
“I don’t think I ever quite wrote that,” Bobby said.
I saw Jim decide he should speak. “Are you saying you’re different from nearly everyone, Claudine?”
“I was saying Roberta might be.”
“Call me Bob. No, call me Bobby. These two always have, and Toby can as well.” After a pause that suggested she might have liked to stop there Bobby said “What are you saying makes me different?”
“We believe you’ve made a start,” Toby said.
I couldn’t stay quiet any longer. “You’re talking about when you first met.”
“When and where.” With a look that scarcely bothered to be challenging Toby said “Safe To Sleep.”
“That’s all past now,” Bobby said, glancing at Jim and me as if she was glad of our presence. “It was a long time ago.”
“Less than half a lifetime,” Toby said. “Most of mine and Claudine’s. Not too long at all.”
I felt provoked to retort on Bobby’s behalf and my own. “Safe To Sleep may have gone, but do we really think its effects have?”
Nearly everyone seemed to have some reason not to answer. “Are you thinking of anything in particular?” Jim said.
“What do you know about the Church of the Eternal Three?”
“It’s another of these operations that have come over from the States. Don’t they claim they can put you in touch with your past? Maybe they’re taking people for a ride, but I shouldn’t think they can be hiding much when they’ve got celebrities and politicians saying they belong. Or are you saying there’s more to it, Dom?”
“Doesn’t the name sound a bit too familiar?”
“You mean that place where we all played detectives, the Trinity Church.” Before I could protest at his dismissiveness, Jim said “There are real churches with that kind of name as well, you know. I don’t suppose for a moment this is one, but a name isn’t evidence of anything.”
I could have reminded him how the Nobles had played with their names, but Bobby said “Are you sure you want us to talk about this just now, Dom?”
“It’s occupying my mind.” A surge of grief left me desperate to keep on. “They’re all connected,” I declared. “Noble’s church and Safe To Sleep and now this church.”
Jim and Bobby gave me a look altogether too reminiscent of the kind
I might have had from Lesley, while my son and his wife withheld their expressions, unless I glimpsed a hint of a secret smile. “Is there any evidence of that?” Jim said.
“Toby can tell us, can’t you, Toby? And Claudine can. They’re both in the church.”
“Not sure what you want us to say, dad.”
“For a start, are there any other people in it who were at Safe To Sleep?”
“Nearly all of us.”
He and Claudine looked surprised that I’d taken so long to enquire, and I knew I’d kept quiet for the sake of my marriage. “Would that include Toph Noble?”
“There’s nobody called that there, dad.”
“You know who I mean. Christopher Noble.”
“Not that either,” Claudine said.
“Bloan. Of course, yes, Bloan.”
“No,” Toby and Claudine said in chorus.
I was taking a fierce breath while I thought what to ask next when Bobby said “Dom, don’t upset yourself.”
“I’ll be upset,” I said wildly, “if I don’t find out what I want to know.”
“Then let me try,” Jim said, turning to Toby and Claudine. “What exactly goes on at your, let’s call it a church?”
“We were telling Dominic when you arrived. We meditate.”
“On what? For what?”
“It shows you everything within yourself,” Toby said.
“If that’s all it doesn’t sound so bad, Dom.”
“Of course it isn’t all.” I didn’t know if Jim had abandoned his investigative skills since his retirement or was trying to avoid conflict because of the occasion. “What has that to do with the Eternal Three?” I demanded. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I can tell you.” To my dismay, it was Bobby who responded. “Someone from their London chapel was on the radio when they were discussing new religions. She was saying the Eternal Three are the past and the present and the future.”
The Way Of The Worm Page 2
