Advent (36 page)

 
Gavin got the point at last and suddenly thought he understood where Hester had displaced all the rage and horror that were missing so conspicuously from her manner. ‘What about that lot in there?’

 
‘Hmm? Oh, my masks, you mean. Yes, you’re quite right, it’s the same idea. The concealed face, I suppose you could say. Though of course I tell myself I collect them just because I like them. And to be fair, some of them are objects of professional interest to me. Ex-professional interest, I should say, now that I find myself forcibly retired.’

 
Gav remembered the newspaper article. ‘They’re shaman masks?’

 
She raised an eyebrow at him.

 
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It was all in the paper.’

 
She sighed. ‘That’s all right. It’s an odd feeling, being other people’s business. I even had someone from the local rag phone this morning, wanting an interview. You can just imagine that, can’t you. The Nutty Professor in her own words. The phone kept going after that, in the end I had to unplug it.’ She nodded towards an ugly wall-mounted object of cream-brown plastic, the cord beneath it trailing loose. ‘Thank God this place is antique enough still to have the kind you can unplug. Anyway. Yes, more or less. There’s no such thing as a shaman mask per se, but four or five of my menagerie are totemic objects of one sort or another, or modern interpretations of such objects. Used for communicating with the spirit world, essentially. Like opening a channel. Not that you want a tutorial on the subject. A couple are rather rare and valuable. Not exactly museum quality, but still the real thing.’

 
She dabbed at crumbs on her plate with a fingertip.

 
‘I thought,’ Hester said after a while, eyes on her plate, ‘I’d want to ask you what her face is like. Speaking of faces. I thought I’d want to know. But it turns out I don’t. I really don’t.’

 
And there it was, out in the open again.

 
He heard the effort in her voice. He glimpsed again how she must have struggled to stay sane.

 
‘It’s almost as if I’m afraid that talking about her might bring her back. Like a bad omen.’

 
‘I think you’ll be OK,’ Gav said, not meeting her eyes.

 
‘Oh, do you?’

 
He wished he hadn’t spoken, but now she was watching him intently. ‘Yeah. Something’s . . .’

 
‘Don’t talk about it if you’d rather not. We don’t have to. Believe me, I know how difficult it is.’

 
I don’t want to hear about this, Gav.
Don’t be ridiculous, Gav.
Mention that name again, Gavin, and I swear I’ll make you wish you hadn’t.
No. Not any more. He wasn’t going to try and pretend Miss Grey didn’t exist, not ever again.

 
How could she be gone?

 
He gripped his hands together under the table and tried to keep his voice casual. ‘No, it’s OK. I just mean . . . something’s changed. With her. I’m pretty sure you don’t have to worry.’

 
After a pause she said, ‘May I ask what?’

 
‘What?’

 
‘What changed.’

 
Gav rubbed his eyes. ‘Well, OK. On the train. She’s never been like that before.’

 
Hester leaned towards him, disconcertingly curious. ‘And you said this has been all your life?’

 
‘Yeah. Long as I can remember. She’s always been there.’ Don’t start crying, he told himself. ‘Know what’s stupid?’

 
‘Nothing, I suspect, but go on.’

 
‘It was only, like, three years ago that I figured out that . . . that she . . . That I was . . .’

 
She waited patiently while he battled the humiliation of tears.

 
‘That she’s not real,’ he finished, and gulped at his tea.

 
‘That isn’t stupid,’ she said.

 
‘It felt pretty bloody stupid.’

 
‘I was thirty-three.’

 
He looked at her, wiping his nose.

 
‘Thirty-three years old. Nearly thirty-four. It was an autumn day in 1996. October the sixteenth. I could hardly forget the date, could I?’

 
A shiver went through him, but only on the inside. Absorbed in her memories, she saw nothing of it. ‘I’d lived a good part of an adult life. A normal, rather privileged, on the whole unusually happy life. I was down here for a weekend. I was walking along a path by the river, over on the other side. As I began one step’ – she mimed walking with two fingers, lifting one forward – ‘my life was much the same as anyone else’s. Anyone who’s more or less secure, at least. And when I put my foot down . . .’ The finger tapped on the table. Hester stared at it, an unfathomable look on her face. ‘It wasn’t.’

 
But all Gavin was thinking about was the date: 16 October 1996.

 
His birthday. The day he was born.

 
‘I wasn’t a child. I thought I knew the difference between reality and delusion. I did. I do know the difference. But in all these fifteen years I’ve never been able to persuade myself which of the two she is.’

 
It’s my fault, he was thinking. It’s all to do with me. The thing in the chapel had said so. The thing that couldn’t really have happened, the thing he’d run away from, the thing he didn’t want to remember.

 
What have I got to do with it?

 
Everything. Stupid boy.

 
He’d brought Miss Grey into the world with him, like some insane living shadow.

 
‘Did she frighten you?’ Gav took a moment to realise she’d directed the question at him. ‘When you were younger?’

 
‘No.’ The memories opened up suddenly beneath him, misty landscapes of vanished happiness. ‘Never. Not until a couple of days ago, when she started screaming like that.’

 
‘Is she . . . ?’

 
‘What?’

 
Hester got up and began clearing the table. ‘I’m sorry, Gavin. I know I shouldn’t keep trying to talk about this. I’m going to shunt you off to bed soon, anyway. You look absolutely shattered.’

 
‘Bad day, yeah.’

 
Get worse
.

 
‘I’m sure. But it’s so hard not to keep on asking. For me it’s like you’ve arrived in my house to cure me of fifteen years of accumulated suffering. Every word I can exchange with you undoes a little bit of it. Do you see?’

 
Embarrassed again, he nodded.

 
‘What I was going to ask was, is she . . . is she like a . . .’ She opened her arms helplessly. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Is she anything like . . . a normal person? A woman?’

 
Miss Grey, who’d always been there. ‘Yeah. Well, no, not normal. Not at all. But not . . .’

 
Hester laughed mirthlessly as he trailed off. ‘Language isn’t a very good tool for describing the indescribable, is it? A lot of what we used to call “primitive” cultures are much better at this sort of thing than us.’

 
But now it was Gavin’s turn to be deep in memories.

 
‘She was my friend,’ he said quietly, staring at the tablecloth.

 
Hester came and sat down opposite, without a word.

 
‘Mum and Dad never understood.’ He’d never imagined himself telling anyone this. It was like a dream, like someone else speaking. But then he’d never imagined himself missing her either, and yet there was no other explanation for the swelling misery inside him. Miss Grey, gone? ‘Dad used to get so angry every time I said anything about her. He tried everything. He made this rule that every time I said her name he’d go up to my room and take a pound out of my piggybank. If there wasn’t any money in it I had to go straight out and wash the car or mow the lawn or whatever. To earn the pound. So he could take it away. That’s how he used to do it. He’d take the pound coin out of his pocket and give it to me and make me put it in the piggybank and then he’d take it right out again while I watched. Didn’t matter what time of day. Even if it was bedtime. He sent me out to do the car in the middle of winter once. In my pyjamas with a bucket and sponge. Mum . . . Anyway. Miss Grey was there, at the end of the street. Just seeing her made it OK.’

 
Hester reached across the table and patted his clenched hand.

 
‘Miss Grey?’

 
He blinked. ‘Just a name I made up. Stupid, I know.’

 
‘You kept a name for her?’ Hester asked, very gently.

 
‘Are you really sure she’s gone?’ he said, biting his lip.

 
Her fingers closed over his. ‘Oh, Gavin, I’m sorry. I do know she isn’t looking over my shoulder any more. I can just feel it. But I don’t know anything about your situation at all. Please don’t think I have anything to tell you about your friend. All right? Gavin?’

 
He nodded tightly.

 
‘I found you an hour or two ago running like the devil was at your heels. I left you by yourself in an empty house, just because she told me to and I was too cowardly and too tired to refuse. That’s all I know. I don’t know the first thing about you or your life or what she wants with you. So please don’t—’

 
‘What d’you mean, wants with me?’

 
Hester let go of his hand.

 
‘You mean when she said to leave me at Aunt— at the house?’

 
‘Not just that.’

 
My oldest friend, he thought. My only friend. Until now. Until today, when at last he needed her, when he’d finally discovered that he could stop trying to know better, that Mum and Dad were wrong, that Mr Bushy was wrong, everyone else was wrong, everyone but her. She’d tried to tell him something. She’d found her voice. And now she’d left him.

 
Had she given up on him? Had he driven her away?

 
‘Look. I’ve known her a long time. If “known” is the right word. As long as you, probably. How old are you, may I ask?’

 
‘Fifteen.’

 
‘Just as long, then. Fifteen years, a month and, let’s see, thirteen days. And in all that time I’ve never known her do anything like this. Do anything at all, in fact. I mean, I’ve never seen a discernible motive. I’ve never known her act like a rational agent.’

 
She waited for him to speak, but he couldn’t. She sighed, then got up and began clearing up again, stacking plates in the sink. ‘She told me to take that train, Gavin. She . . . Truth be told, it was one of the worst outbursts I’ve ever known. I’d only gone back to Oxford to turn in keys and finish up a couple of things. But I was planning to stay an extra day or two. You know, there were people I wanted to say goodbye to. That sort of thing. Dinner invitations. I’m supposed to be at one of them even as we speak, in fact. But on Sunday night . . .’ She heaved a deep breath. ‘Well. Why don’t we just say that I didn’t get very much sleep and that I was on my way to the station at the crack of dawn. It only . . . stopped when I left the college. And then when I arrived at Reading to change trains, it started up again. I had to go and lock myself in a stall in the ladies’. It was very clear to me which train I had to wait for. Very, very clear. It was very clear which carriage I had to sit in. Which seat.’

 
‘Miss Grey told you to sit opposite me?’

 
Hester nodded. ‘Not in so many words. Believe me, nothing was ever that straightforward. But yes. In the seat, that is. Nothing was said about you. I thought you were just another passenger. I had no idea you were . . .’

 
Ward of her you seek.