Awakening

by William Horwood

  This was one of them.

  The falls had given due warning of Margaret’s decline. The seriousness with which their doctor took them, his insistence on more frequent tests and check-ups, and the pills she was prescribed for blood pressure told them both that things would never be the same. But what spoke loudest of all was that she no longer wanted to do very much, or walk, or even garden.

  Death held no fear for her: she had had a good life and was tired now and beginning to let go. There was fear of loss but not of death itself, and for her visit to the doctor Margaret wanted no one else but Arthur with her.

  ‘You can have a rest my dear,’ she told Katherine, ‘have a sleep. These have been hard times for us all.’

  The appointment was at ten in the morning, so they left at half past eight. Arthur called home at eleven to say things had been delayed and they were doing other tests.

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘She’s so tired, Katherine,’ was all he said.

  Tired was what Katherine was too, but a sleep-in she could not do. She was restless, irritable, and it was the first time she had been alone and in the house since Judith was born.

  She missed Jack and Judith terribly with a pain like no other she had ever known.

  Distressed, she got up and felt the house all oppressive around her and went out to stand on the crumbling patio and listen to the garden and the chimes . . . In fact, she told herself, it was the first time in years she had been alone in Woolstone. Maybe the first time ever.

  She caught a glimpse of a tall, thin, haggard woman in the glass wall of the conservatory: clothes dowdy, hair lank, posture stooped. A defeated woman. It took her a while to recognize herself.

  She looked through her own reflection on into the conservatory to where her mother had lain bedridden and hurting for so long. The last time, the only time she could remember her parents alive, together and normal, was that day they picked up Jack in the health centre in North Yorkshire. Her Dad’s face was now just a photograph with no connection with real memory. Her mother was different.

  ‘Mum,’ she said aloud . . .

  Mum, I’d like to talk to you.

  Mum, I don’t know what happened.

  Mum, I did everything wrong.

  Mum, I’m numb inside and out.

  Mum, why did you leave me alone?

  She went back inside and up to her room.

  No, friends, no one to talk to.

  First Mum, then Judith gone like a bad dream that came and went and left devastation inside my heart.

  Jack’s gone, he’s gone and he was my rock and I fear he may never come back.

  Everyone’s gone, nothing and nobody left. Purposeless and drifting.

  She wept for the sense of the loss of them all.

  An old birthday card stood on her desk near the window.

  It was from her old school friend Samantha, who had moved to Hong Kong when her Dad’s work took him on a contract there. After that, Australia. She had never come back, but they exchanged cards and emails and she knew all about Jack coming into Katherine’s life.

  When they went into the Hyddenworld Katherine stopped replying to Sam’s emails, which piled up in her inbox until space ran out. When she had come back to have the baby there had been no time to clear her emails or write to Sam. Anyway, what was she going to say? What could she say? To anyone else it would make no sense.

  Katherine had a telephone book with friends’ numbers in, but she had so few friends it was nearly empty. She had no mobile yet. No time or inclination. She went back online and found a file with Sam’s old emails and the one with her contact details in Australia.

  What was the time there?

  Ahead or behind? She couldn’t remember and she didn’t care.

  ‘Sam?’

  It was an old woman at the other end of the line. Maybe her mother.

  ‘I’ll get her. Who shall I say . . . ?’

  But Katherine couldn’t get her own name out.

  ‘Sam! It’s for you. I don’t know. No. Female. Yes.’

  Then, to Katherine, ‘She’s just coming . . .’

  ‘Hello?’ said Sam.

  Katherine sat breathing, then not breathing, silent and not quite silent.

  ‘Hello . . . ?’

  Sam’s voice, gentle like it had always been. Back then it was like that, before all this.

  Before.

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘Sam . . . I . . .’

  ‘Katherine?’

  ‘I . . . Sam . . . I . . . I . . .’

  Katherine did not cry easily. She had certainly never cried like that, not like that. She cried like she would never stop. She wept. She howled like a small broken animal that has no one and nobody.

  ‘Katherine, whatever is it?’

  Her voice was caring and she was crying too, for in Katherine’s tears she heard the cry of the world.

  ‘It’s something bad isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes . . . but . . . I . . . c . . . can’t . . . oh, Sam, I can’t . . .’

  I can’t say it because no one can know, no one can ever know, and it’s not bad it’s worse than that it’s . . .

  ‘Look, Katherine, I’m going to ask you questions like we used to when we couldn’t get something out or we were too embarrassed. Remember? I ask, you answer. Easier that way.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Are you missing your Mum?’

  ‘Yes. But it’s not that.’

  ‘Is it to do with men?’

  Sam’s voice smiled and then stopped smiling.

  ‘No. Worse.’

  ‘Jack? He’s . . .’

  ‘Not Jack, it’s . . .’

  That’s a revelation, thought Katherine: it’s not Jack.

  ‘Okay . . .’ Sam was thinking. ‘You’re pregnant.’

  Silence then, what was there to say? Utter, utter silence.

  ‘Worse.’

  ‘Your . . . you . . .’ and Sam thought about the long silence and what its reasons might have been. And why her friend was calling now. And what was worse.

  ‘You had a baby?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And . . . he . . .’

  ‘She.’

  ‘She . . . ?’

  ‘Yes.’

  And that was the worst, that lie which wasn’t a lie exactly.

  Yes, she died.

  She was never my baby at all.

  She . . . I don’t know what she was, what she is . . . and I don’t know what to think or what to feel.

  Katherine wept uncontrollably.

  ‘I don’t know what to do . . .’

  Sam wept too.

  ‘And something else . . .’

  Was this it? Was this at the root of her grief or was it all of it? She didn’t know.

  ‘It’s Margaret Foale . . .’

  ‘She’s . . . like . . . your adoptive mother?’

  ‘I think she’s dying, Sam, and I don’t know what to do . . .’

  When they were finished Katherine felt hollowed out with loss and grief, for her mother, for Jack, for Judith and for Margaret. But for the time being there were no more tears to cry.

  The phone rang, it was Arthur.

  ‘They’re keeping her in overnight, more tests. I’m going to stay. Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine, Arthur, fine. Give her my love. And Arthur . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good luck. I’m thinking of you both.’

  ‘I . . . it’s not easy, Katherine. Growing old is not easy. It doesn’t creep up on you like they say. One day you wake up and it’s hit you like a ton of bricks. Like today.’

  She went out to the scullery, found her walking boots and put them on. The day was warm with sun and clouds, and she went out the side door, down through the garden, round the henge, over the barbed-wire fence and across the fields towards White Horse Hill. She wore jeans and a T-shirt and as she went she realized she had not locked the door.
She had never had to before. There was always someone there.

  The chimes will protect the house; they always have and always will.

  She strode the familiar paths as she often had with Jack and with Arthur, breathing the scented Summer air, enjoying the sound of skylarks and the Summer flowers, scabious and knapweed, rough and ready things she liked.

  The chalk turf was her turf, the slope up the escarpment steep, the presence of her beloved Jack very real, but he was not coming back. She could grieve, grieve for them all. Tucked away in all those feelings and the tears and her talk with Sam were tiny seeds of relief, of freedom, of visions of a wider world.

  She climbed and climbed, right past the White Horse, on past the Iron Age earthwork and then down the slope to the gate onto the Ridgeway.

  She stood where she and Jack had stood once and told each other that one day they’d just set off and head east and then north, along the Ridgeway, then onto the Peddar’s Way, on for ever, together, like they were meant to be.

  Not in this life it seemed.

  Margaret and Arthur came back that night while it was still light.

  ‘She wouldn’t stay,’ grumbled Arthur.

  ‘Tests, tests, tests!’ said Margaret. ‘Your mother Clare always said she knew better than the doctors and now I know what she meant. You look peaky.’

  ‘I am, a bit. What did Mum mean?’

  ‘That if you listen to your body it’ll tell you what it needs.’

  ‘What’s yours need?’

  ‘To die, more or less. It’s old and wearing out and it’s been a hard few years.’

  Arthur scowled and said, ‘Going to the study.’

  ‘At least our bed’ll be comfortable,’ said Margaret.

  ‘Damn silly. All the way there and all the way back.’

  ‘I’ll bring you tea.’

  ‘I’ll bring you whisky,’ said Katherine.

  When he was gone Katherine said, ‘So? What is wrong?’

  ‘Heart. Angina, and probably worse. Katherine . . .’ She drew her chair nearer, ‘I do not want to linger on a couch like your mother did and I don’t intend to. She didn’t either but she had no option: she had to see you into some kind of maturity, God help us all. All day today, made to feel helpless in the car and then the hospital, I wanted to be up on the Hill like I used to when I was your age. What did you do?’

  ‘I spoke to Sam in Australia, I cried a lot and I went for the walk you wanted to do but couldn’t.’

  ‘Well, what to say? Tomorrow promises to be fair.’

  ‘We can drive up the Hill and park.’

  ‘We can leave the damn car right where it is and walk. I’ll make a picnic.’

  They all made one next morning, adding the bits they liked.

  ‘My early tomatoes,’ said Arthur.

  ‘They still look green, my dear.’

  ‘Muesli bars,’ said Katherine.

  ‘Get stuck in my teeth,’ said Arthur.

  ‘Cheese and chutney sandwiches,’ said Margaret, folding tinfoil around them.

  ‘Soggy,’ said Katherine.

  ‘Well, there it is, dear, that’s what I’ve made!’

  They were always the same, their picnics. Each to his or her own, their plaints affectionate, their food, despite the gripes, always completely consumed.

  ‘You’re not walking,’ said Arthur.

  ‘I am,’ said Margaret. ‘Tired I may be, and a little in pain, but I’m walking like I always have. You wouldn’t have it any other way.’

  ‘You shouldn’t,’ said Katherine.

  ‘But I must, you see, I must.’

  They went slowly, nearly meandering, chattering their way along the old much-loved paths, happy to see the White Horse resplendent, a tired old lady, a vigorous old man and their adoptive granddaughter.

  Margaret was slower than she ever had been and grey-faced; Arthur attentive, Katherine watchful.

  They knew it was the last time, each moment hard but more precious for it, an old lady saying goodbye to the corners and places of woodland and stile, bramble and gorse that she and her partner in life had always loved.

  ‘Katherine, it was a blessing when you came into my life,’ said Margaret suddenly, giving away the tenor of her thoughts. ‘However terrible the circumstances, I was given a gift. One day you’ll see that Judith is a gift as well, despite everything.’

  Somehow they reached the top, the world spread out all summery at their feet. They lay listening at leisure to the buzz and the hum of a July day.

  ‘Englalond,’ murmured Arthur. ‘If I smoked a pipe I’d smoke it now.’

  ‘I’m glad you don’t, darling. Jack is a gift as well. Life is a gift. Every precious moment.’

  ‘It is,’ said Arthur, his wrinkled, freckled hand reaching to hold hers.

  Katherine thought Jack . . . you and I have a very long way to go to get to where they are but we’ve started now and we can try. Come back, my love, come back soon.

  ‘Listen,’ said Margaret.

  They listened.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought I heard the chimes.’

  ‘And I thought I heard horses’ hoofs,’ said Katherine, sitting up alarmed. Great horses’ hoofs across the heavens. A brief hint of thunder.

  Getting home was difficult.

  They had to walk on either side of Margaret on the steep bits going down.

  ‘Oh, oh, oh!’ she said. ‘And once my legs were elegant, now they can’t even hold me up.’

  ‘I should never have let you come out in the first place,’ said Arthur, ‘but then I never could say no to you. Bloody silly. Stubborn.’

  ‘Huh!’ said Margaret. ‘You or me?’

  ‘Both of you,’ said Katherine, ‘both of you.’

  Over the barbed-wire fence with difficulty, round the henge, a brief pause by the chimes, up the lawn to the house.

  ‘Oh, I’m glad to be back,’ said Margaret, ‘help me to a chair . . . yes, here in the conservatory.’

  They did, and glanced at each other when she was settled.

  ‘You stay with her, Arthur, I’ll fetch tea.’

  He looked bleak and sad because, Katherine guessed, he thought they had just finished the last walk up the Hill that Margaret would ever have.

  ‘Did you enjoy that?’ she heard him say.

  ‘Very much, my dear,’ replied Margaret, ‘so very much.’

  She was asleep by the time Katherine came back.

  ‘She’ll have something when she wakes up,’ said Arthur.

  So they had tea quietly, saying nothing as they watched the light fade on White Horse Hill at eventide.

  Until night fell and Arthur helped Margaret up to their room.

  Katherine sat for a while in the dark of the conservatory but she felt restless and uneasy.

  Outside it was dark, the night winds fretful, the chimes uneasy. She walked across the lawn, feeling the dark as Jack sometimes did, but he did it better and more naturally than her. Reaching the conifers she did not go inside the henge.

  ‘Never again,’ she whispered, ‘I never want to go back. This is my home, this my world. I’m sorry, Jack, I’m so sorry, but I want you to come back to the human world. I want to be . . . normal, I need you to be here so that we . . . we . . .’

  She didn’t know what they might do when he came back. She just wanted her Jack to find the way home and she prayed that he would, as once, not so long ago, at that same spot, Margaret had prayed for Arthur’s return.

  Now all was changed but the feeling was the same: the longing, the hope, the despair.

  ‘Come home, my love,’ she said.

  44

  DOGGED

  The moment Jack and his friends raced up the stairs to escape from the Great Hall of Bochum and the doors were shut behind them they knew where they were.

  It was the rubbish dump underneath which, Feld had pointed out when they arrived, most of civilized Bochum lay.

  There was a foetid smell about
the darkness they were in, a slithery, oily, acrid feel to the air which caught the backs of their throats and made their eyes feel prickly. Though the drifting clouds above their heads were lit from beneath by the myriad lights of the vast industrial landscape within which they stood, at ground level all was dark and shadowy and hard to make out.

  Worse, the ground felt unstable and it was easy to slip or stumble.

  ‘Over here,’ said Jack, pulling out one of the torches Cluckett had packed for them. The ground was covered with rubbish in and out of which rats ran, scattering as they came and following after them.

  ‘Stay together and stay close!’ he ordered, ‘because we’re not going to have time to start searching for each other in this lot if we’re to get away before the Bochumers realize which way we’ve come.’

  He felt shaky, but strong enough to lead. He put it down to the foul air.

  The path they were on was no more than an animal track, and it continued round the edge of the building they had been in. To their right were the windows which inside were high up, but now they could look in.

  They could see that the fire had taken hold, the flames beating against the glass.

  ‘Crack!’ went one window, followed by a rush of air from outside it.

  ‘Crack!’ went another, just ahead, the pulling of sucked air so strong it threw Barklice off balance.

  If they could have moved away from the building they would have done so, but the ground sloped up steeply to the left and was impossible to climb, being no more than a mound of filthy, ill-smelling rubbish of all kinds, in all stages of decay.

  They started to run, Feld in front now, his stave at the ready in case they met anyone, and Jack behind, ready to defend the rear. The fire in the building to their right was getting worse by the moment, more windows cracking and the heat becoming intolerable. They could hear shouting inside and water shot up at them. Someone was already taking command.

  Feld stopped abruptly at a gap to the left and Jack caught up.

  ‘We need to get away from this fire . . .’ he said.

  Crack!

  They darted through the gap and found themselves in a wide space, the mounds of rubbish all around so high that they could not see human buildings in any direction, just the lurid clouds above.

  Some of the tops of the mounds were now lit orange by the flames behind them, like mountains at sunset. But at ground level it was still hard to make anything out.