by David Mark
He turned and looked at me and his eyes reminded me of wet pebbles.
‘They rode right through him,’ said James. ‘Ghosts. Spectres. The whole lot. He was found weeks later by the king’s men who had come to see why he had not been paying his rents. He was white-haired and babbling and quite mad with fright. I heard that story when I was not much more than four. Like I say – it’s what you’re raised on.’
I wasn’t sure what to say in response. I liked the energy in his eyes and the fire with which he spoke but there was something about his glee as he described the deaths that I found a little unsettling.
‘I don’t know if I’ll sleep tonight now, either,’ I said, trying to make light of it.
‘Maybe just as well,’ he said, quietly, then dropped his voice further. ‘There’s something you might want to know. Look, I’m probably going to get into trouble for this …’
‘You sitting with a girl, Jimbo?’ came a voice from the top of the stairs. ‘Honestly, can’t leave you alone for a moment.’
Brian was mooching down the stairs in his dressing gown and pyjamas. His hair stuck up on his crown and his lip was curled as if he was smoking a pipe. Immediately James stood up.
‘What you talking about?’ asked Brian, jerking his head. ‘Causing trouble, Jimbo? Or storing up a few pictures to enjoy in your head at bedtime?’
He blushed and turned away, reaching past me and grabbing his coat from the peg by the door.
‘Tell Mam I got the early bus,’ he said, teeth together. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
I wasn’t sure whether to stop him or to say something sharp to Brian. It was hard to imagine them as brothers. There was a nastiness to Brian but it would be wrong of me to say that James was his entire opposite. It wasn’t sweet benevolence that oozed out of him – just a kind of harmless nothingness.
‘You can thank me later,’ said Brian, knocking me in the back with his knee as he leaned over me and watched his brother walk off down the road. ‘Saved your ears from bleeding.’
‘He was telling me a story, actually,’ I said, and it felt strange to pretend to be a grown-up with somebody who would respect me no more for the act.
‘Aye, like I said. You want more tea? Your hair looks nice, by the way. You’re pretty when you’re not soaked to the skin.’
I found myself grinning. For all that he was absolute trouble there was no doubting that Brian was a disarming boy. I could imagine him growing up to be the kind of rogue that always managed to persuade other people to cover for him or take the blame.
I followed him into the kitchen and watched as he built the fire up. He filled the kettle afresh and sawed a loaf into inch-thick slices which he placed under the grill. He poured himself a glass of milk and made no attempt to wipe the moustache away. He sucked on his teeth and looked at the table, then went into the back garden and came back a moment later with a handful of wildflowers which he placed in a small crystal vase he half-filled with water. I leaned against the wall, watching him work and slowly the kitchen filled with warmth and life. At seven thirty, Flick and John came downstairs, dressed and washed.
‘Sleep OK?’ asked Flick, and her eyes scanned the room as she spoke to me. She took in the vase of flowers and the hot toast and the pot of tea and gave the tiniest of smiles. As she passed Brian I saw her brush his hand with her knuckles: the lightest of touches, two petals bumping together on their fall to earth. Whatever they had argued about, it was now forgiven.
Brian left for school just before eight. He was well-behaved in front of his mother and father but he caught my eye as he was leaving the kitchen and I’m sure there was something devilish in the grin he shot me. I would never know how to read Brian. Nobody would.
‘I thought about it all night,’ said Flick, when there were just the three of us. ‘It was like I could see them. Bodies, full of holes and burning. Why did they choose Fairfax? He was just a nice old man who wanted to write people’s stories down. And the thing with the coins!’ She shuddered. ‘Those poor, poor people.’
‘There’s nowt to say you’ll ever know any more than you do,’ said John, lighting a cigarette. His reluctance to continue investigating had died in the face of the words on the singed pages.
‘We can ask,’ I said. ‘That’s all we can do.’
‘If it were Pike …’
‘We’ll cross that bridge later.’
‘You still don’t have anything that isn’t just guesses and imagination. It could just be a story. Fiction, written by Fairfax to keep himself busy. There’s no body.’
I didn’t argue with him. He was talking to the air, not to me or his wife. He wanted his objections heard so that if it turned out we were fools at least he would be able to remind us he had not been taken in.
‘I don’t like lying,’ said Felicity.
‘It’s not lying.’
‘It’s not the truth.’
‘You’re getting into difficult territory there,’ I said, and was pleased to see her smile.
‘Howay then,’ said John, and some Geordie crept into his accent. ‘I’m off to work. Try not to get run over by any wagons while I’m gone, eh, love?’
She gave him a little flutter of a smile, like a butterfly beating its wings. He kissed her on the head as he pulled on his cap. He paused for a moment, uncertain whether he should do the same to me.
‘Look after her, eh?’
‘I will,’ I said.
He looked at me for a moment too long, then his eyes flicked to his wife and back to me. ‘I wasn’t talking to you.’
CORDELIA
Flick and I didn’t talk much as we walked. I could hear her breathing harder than she needed to and I’m sure she could hear the little waver in my voice as I said hello to a man in green fishing waders and a waterproof coat who was walking his Labrador on the opposite side of the road.
‘Know him?’ asked Flick, as he returned my greeting with a grunt.
‘Just his face. Saw him in post office. Why?’
‘Making conversation.’
‘Oh.’
There weren’t many cars on the road and the gutters were still gurgling with muddy puddles and mulched leaves. I felt like I could hear Flick’s mind making noises like a waterlogged motorcycle engine. I couldn’t think of very much to say.
‘Meg Merrilies’ cottage,’ said Flick, half to herself, as we followed the path into the village. She nodded at a little house on the bridge. ‘You read Walter Scott?’
I was a bit taken aback by the question. ‘What? Well, some, yes.’
‘Don’t know any myself,’ she said. ‘But there’s one book of his – Guy Mannering, it’s called. Lots of this area in it, though different names and such. There’s a lass in it called Meg Merrilies. Bad old sort and landlady of the alehouse. She were based on a local lass. A real lass. Reiver, like I told you the other day.’
I thought back to our brief conversations. The day of our meeting felt like an age ago. Where had I been? A grave. Laying there, thinking of my son and wanting the world to leave me alone or swallow me down.
‘You were in her grave,’ said Flick, flatly. ‘Hundred years old and they probably put her in there kicking and screaming. There’s some say that that was her house yonder but others reckon she were actually from Mumps Hall, up the road. Who’s to say, eh? Oh, there it is. That’s the one. You can see the sparks.’
She was right about that. The road curved to the left before it entered the bulk of the village and the garage stood to our left. It was a large building with half a dozen coaches and minibuses parked up on the forecourt. The front bonnet of an agricultural vehicle had been lifted up and a short man in blue overalls was leaning into its guts. Red sparks were dancing around his head. Nearby, a fat man and a thin man in matching shirts and ties were leaning against the front of one of the coaches eating sandwiches from greasy paper bags. They both waved at Flick as we approached.
‘That’s Hopper and Mont,’ said Felicity. ‘Bloke with his head
in the tractor is Gordon.’
‘Which is which?’ I hissed.
‘Hopper’s the fat one.’
It took a moment for them to place me. They looked at Flick the way the locals tended to look at one another – as if they were reading words off a card that was slightly too far away for them to see clearly. It took me a while of living there to realize that you weren’t truly local until you had mastered the squint.
‘How’s you, Felicity?’ asked the one called Hopper. He had a plump face with dimples and a fat neck. With his round spectacles and pudding bowl hair he gave the impression of being made up of water lilies. He was sweating lightly, despite the chill.
‘Mustn’t grumble, Hopper,’ said Felicity, and her voice sounded deeper and more heavily accented. ‘Enough rain for you?’
‘Cats and dogs,’ said Mont. He was older, with no teeth at the front and a perfect meringue of white hair on top of his heavily lined face. ‘You hear about Haltwhistle? They’re looking to evacuate and that didn’t even happen during the war.’
‘Something in the stars,’ said Hopper, sagely. ‘Were never rain like this when I were a bairn.’
‘Nah. We had summers too. The ground don’t know whether it’s February or midsummer.’
I stayed silent. Flick had been quite clear about that. She needed a favour from somebody who didn’t give them freely and she didn’t want him thinking that there was anything fishy about her nosing about in the boot of a dead man’s car.
‘You’ll not have met Mrs Hemlock,’ said Felicity, as if she had just remembered me.
Both men gave little nods of greeting. I think one of them began to say something about being sorry for my sadness but lips stuck together as he said it and I got a jumbled sequence of syllables instead.
‘Nice to meet you both,’ I said. ‘They didn’t tell me the weather got like this when we moved in.’
‘Aye, well, you’ve got a good house to shelter in til the sun comes back,’ said Hopper. ‘My brother Wilf helped the contractors with the brickwork on your front wall. Charged a fair price.’
‘Your James was on the early bus,’ said Mont, turning back to Flick. ‘Hard worker, that one.’
‘Aye, likes to get in early and spend some time in the art room.’
‘Sits on his own still,’ said Hopper, a little sadly. ‘I always tell him to come sit at the front by me but he won’t have it. Stares out the window. I reckon he’s happy enough. Not like your youngest. By he’s a handful. Keeps you on your toes, eh?’
‘Am I paying you to chatter?’
We looked up as a sudden harsh Geordie voice replaced the sound of sparks falling on wet ground. Gordon had removed his head from the tractor. He was probably fifty years old but there was so much grime on his face it was hard to say. He was a squat, round-shouldered man with close-cropped red hair and a moustache that reached to his chin and which was so darkened with grime that it looked like a horse had left a hoofprint on his face. He had welding goggles perched high on his head so that he took on the appearance of a fly and as he gave a curt nod at Flick, I saw him poking his tongue into his cheek as if trying to dislodge some food. I realized a moment later that he was actually trying to better situate his false teeth, which appeared to have been designed for somebody with a smaller mouth. They slurped and rattled and whistled as he spoke. If he’d had a pet budgerigar, it would have died from the stress.
‘Good to see you, Felicity,’ he said, rubbing his hands on his overalls. ‘You’ll be keeping my lads from their work, I see, eh, pet?’
Hopper and Mont grinned at their boss.
‘Cig break, boss,’ said Hopper. ‘Starting the Longtown run once the weather’s been on the wireless.’
‘You’ll get that bloody coach there even if there’s an iceberg in the way,’ said Gordon, giving them a stern look. He turned his attention to me. ‘You’re from the Winslow farm,’ he said, without much enthusiasm. ‘Your husband have owt to do with shutting the railway?’
I stared straight at him, wondering what was best to say. I had no idea whether it was anything to do with Cranham.
‘I don’t think that’s his department,’ I said, apologetically.
‘Well, if it were his doing then shake his hand fer me,’ he said, grinning. ‘Best thing to happen for me business in years, though there’ll be plenty who’ll moan and whine that it’s going to kill the place off. Kill it off, I tell you! Like the government hasn’t been trying to do that for years!’
‘Don’t get him started,’ said Hopper, smiling, and it was clear that they had heard his opinions on the matter before.
‘I’ll start if I like,’ snapped Gordon. ‘Twelve coaches I’ve got, love. Started out with a knackered old bus and now I’m one of the biggest employers in the region. There were four butchers in Gilsland when I were a boy. Four! Were all go once upon a time. Boom and bust, that’s what they say now. That’s what we’ve had for as long as people have been writing down. Good times and bad times, like the writer used to say. But people always need to get about and for as long as I’m able, they’ll be doing so on Temple Coaches.’
Talking to Gordon was like being in the front row at a political rally. Not all of what he said made sense but he said it with gusto and it was hard not to be carried along by his pride in himself.
‘You tell yer husband that next time he’s having a port and a cigar with the ministers that there won’t ever come a time when I don’t see a way to make money off of their bad decisions. Were same in ’56 when Wimpey came to build their bloody rocket site. 3,000 men they had working there at one time and nigh-on all of ’em needed transporting to the site. Who did it for ’em? Me. Brampton, Carlisle, Hexham, Gretna – every place that could make up a busload sent men to work on that blasted rocket. Did it help Gilsland? Did it buggery. All it meant were the local lads took jobs that paid a fortune and which gave ’em ideas they oughtn’t have had. Thought it would last forever. Went to their heads and spoiled a lot of good lads. Then the government decided it didn’t give a damn about the moon and it were all over. Of course there’s still a site and still jobs and you still hear them testing their weapons and dropping their bombs but we won’t see four butchers again in Gilsland in my lifetime – not unless I get out of the coach business and into meat, eh?’
He gave a huge laugh at that. I laughed along, looking to Flick for help. She was way ahead of me.
‘Give over, Gordon, we didn’t come for a rally. It’s a sad business we’re here on, if I’m honest. Could you spare us a moment?’
He looked at Flick quizzically and his smile faded. ‘Fairfax’s car?’
‘Aye.’
‘I were sorry for it, Felicity. Were a bad thing to happen. I heard he’d just seen the tree come down and were off to get help at the base. That right?’
Hopper and Mont were still hanging around, listening in. Felicity gave a little shrug. Her lips looked grey.
‘We think that were it, aye,’ she said. ‘Who’s to say? That car …’
‘I told him not to buy it.’
‘We all did. Were an expensive mistake.’
‘There’s parts to be saved,’ said Gordon, and he rubbed the sleeve of his overalls across his face as if rubbing a peephole in a dirty window. ‘You’ll be helping sort his estate, I’ll imagine.’
‘Not much estate,’ said Felicity. ‘But aye, I’m helping with the mess of it all.’
‘Interviewed me half a dozen times, did Fairfax,’ smiled Gordon, wistfully. ‘Always scribbling. Bet I used up a dozen notebooks for him.’
‘That were the thing of it,’ said Felicity guilelessly. ‘He’d been writing Cordelia’s story.’
‘Aye?’
‘Aye. Been talking a fair bit these past weeks. She gave him some papers she found in the house and she’s a bit concerned she may have given him something that belonged to her husband.’
I tried to look like a silly wife. I gestured at myself, indicating that I was a bit scatterbraine
d and feather-headed and that I would be in trouble with my influential husband if he didn’t come to my aid.
‘She gave it to Fairfax as he was getting into his car,’ said Felicity, her voice full of reprimand. ‘She saw him put it in the boot. Would we be able to have a little look and see if we could get it back? Would mean a lot to the both of us.’
Gordon looked from Flick to me and back again. He was clearly an intelligent man and I could see him weighing up if there was a way to turn it to his advantage.
‘Back often is he?’ asked Gordon. ‘Your man?’
‘As often as he can,’ I gushed.
‘Mebbes you could bring him down the social club for a chinwag,’ he said, scratching his chin. ‘Got a lot of ideas he could maybe pass on to those what makes decisions.’
I nodded eagerly and it seemed to sway him. He sucked his lower lip and there was an obscene slurping noise as he struggled with his false teeth.
‘I ain’t opened it up, I don’t think,’ he said. ‘You won’t want to see it, I doubt. Be a bit hard for you, I’d have thought, Felicity. But tell me what you’re after and I’ll go look.’
I shook my head, urgent and severe. ‘No, it’s fine, I really would rather look myself …’
‘There’s blood,’ he pointed out. ‘It’s a state.’
‘I don’t mind blood,’ I said, and it sounded so much like the wrong thing to say that I shot a glance at Hopper and Mont to see if they were pulling faces. They weren’t. They just squinted.
‘Well, whatever you like,’ said Gordon, sighing. ‘But you’ll remember me to your husband, yes?’
‘Of course.’
‘Righto. This way.’
I followed Gordon into the dark confines of the garage. It was a dark, cold space that reeked of damp and engine oil. One long wall was obscured by stacks of huge tyres and there were pigeons cooing in the steel girders high above. The light came from a row of bulbs that hung from straggly wires.
Gordon led me behind a large white vehicle with a hook on the back and nodded at the crumpled remains of Fairfax’s car. It looked like an old running shoe. It was battered both at the back and the front and the windscreen was completely missing save for a few jagged teeth of glass stuck into the metal casing.
