Advent (37 page)

 
What did Miss Grey want from him? What did it have to do with Marina, the house, the beast in the dark?

 
‘You see,’ Hester began, as if the silent interval hadn’t happened, ‘I would never have expected the things she said to have any particular point to them. This is the thing that worries me. Over all those years I’ve never known . . . her . . . do anything like that. I’m not . . .’ She hesitated. ‘I’m not sure how good a thing it is for her to have an interest in you. Do you see?’

 
‘She’s always been there for me,’ Gav said, but he was thinking, Until now. Corbo’s voice came back to him, its curt flat rasp:
Gets killed.
Was she dead? Was Miss Grey dead?

 
He shivered violently.

 
‘Yes, I know. Forgive me.’ Hester had misunderstood his spasm. ‘I understand your story isn’t the same as mine. But you haven’t told me anything about what’s happened to you.’ There wasn’t the least hint of accusation in her tone; she was simply stating the case. ‘I took you to Pendurra, and then she left me, and then today, there, whatever happened to you happened. No’ – she raised a hand – ‘no, I’m not asking you to tell me. I’m just explaining why . . . Well, forgive me for saying it, but why I’m worried about you.’

 
‘I don’t know what happened to me today.’ She was about to interrupt him; he cut her off. ‘It’s true: I don’t know. Something weird’s going on. They’re all mixed up in it.’

 
‘All who?’

 
‘Aunt Gwen and the Urens and—’

 
‘Tristram Uren?’

 
‘Mr Uren and Marina I mean, yeah.’

 
‘Marina?’

 
‘His daughter.’

 
He’d surprised her – not just surprised, but shocked her.

 
‘Daughter? Tristram Uren has a daughter?’

 
‘Yeah. I met her.’

 
‘Good God. How old is she?’

 
‘Said she was thirteen.’

 
‘Thirteen!’

 
Hester looked completely dumbstruck. Apparently Marina’s existence was as astonishing to her as Miss Grey’s.

 
‘Yeah.’

 
‘You’re certain this girl you met is his daughter?’

 
‘Yeah, the whole “daddy” business sort of gave it away.’

 
‘Yes, I’m sorry. Of course. Sorry. But how incredible. No one has ever mentioned her.’ Her fingertips drummed on the counter. ‘It’s different in London, you see, but down here everyone talks about everything. I’ve heard all the rumours about a wife and so forth, but no one so much as hinted at a child. Where can she have been all these years?’

 
‘I don’t think she gets out much.’

 
Hester studied him with her thoughtful eyes. ‘Well, well,’ she said.

 
But he was thinking about Marina too. The one person who might know what he was talking about and he’d ignored her, dismissed her the way people had always dismissed him. I should be there, he thought. Something really bad’s happening. Miss Grey sent me there and I just ran away.

 
‘I should go back.’

 
‘No.’ Hester put down the plate she was drying with a decisive
thunk
, making Gav look up in surprise. ‘No. Gavin. Look. I haven’t the slightest idea what you saw or did today, but I can see the state of your clothes and your face, and I can see how tired you are. You need time, and strength. Trust me. I know a little bit of what this is like. I may know better than anyone. We shouldn’t even talk about it any longer. I know, it’s my fault. I have a thousand things I want to ask you. But they can all wait. Any idiot can see that you need some peace and a night’s sleep.’

 
When she said the word
sleep
it was like casting a spell. The idea of lying down somewhere, not having to talk, not having to think, made him almost weep with longing. Did he seriously think he was going back out into the dark, back towards the chapel and what he thought he’d seen there?

 
She tried to offer him the one bedroom upstairs, but when he saw the spare room – a space not much longer than he was, squeezed under the eaves and stacked to the ceiling with packing boxes – he absolutely refused. So he helped her shift boxes around until they found one with all the blankets and cushions, and together they piled them up until they’d made something like a fabric nest between cardboard cliffs. By the time that was done, Gav could barely hold himself upright.

 
‘I’m afraid there’s no light for you,’ Hester said. The room had a window, but the boxes completely blocked it.

 
‘’s fine.’

 
‘You’ll be all right, then?’

 
‘Yeah.’ Truth be told, he was glad of the barrier between him and the night. ‘Thanks to you,’ he added.

 
She grinned. ‘I’d say, “You’re welcome,” but that wouldn’t be the half of it. I have a suspicion you’ve saved my life, actually. I’d never have admitted this to myself before yesterday, but I’m not sure how much longer I was going to be able to carry on.’

 
Gav looked away.

 
‘I didn’t do anything,’ he said.

 
‘Oh, but you did. You did. You just don’t know what it was yet.’

 
It sounded a bit like a joke, but her voice was all simple assurance.

 
‘Gavin?’

 
‘Yeah?’

 
‘I don’t hate your friend. I never hated her. I’m only glad she’s gone because I’m old. I’m worn out. I’d rather have the easy life. I want to be like everyone else again.’

 
He couldn’t think of anything to say at all.

 
‘You’re different.’ He felt her eyes on him and suddenly realised what made her look clever. It was that you could tell she hadn’t made her mind up about things before she looked at them. What was that thing Mr Bushy always said? She didn’t
judg
e
; she
appraised
. (Sleepily he remembered the instruction from so many English lessons:
I don’t care whether you think it’s good or bad, Stokes. I want you to tell me how it works
!
) Her eyes took things in, generously. Like she’d taken him in.

 
‘You don’t have to be afraid of it, Gavin. It’s a marvellous thing. Don’t be afraid to find out.’

 
Learn fast
.

 
‘Good night then,’ she finished, closing the door behind her.

 
‘Night.’

Horace had been sitting at the desk under the window in his tiny room, moodily pondering nothing in particular, when he saw the car pull up at the professor’s house opposite.

 
He’d been about to shout something. Mum was in bed –
Up early tomorrow. I have to go to Mrs Ambell and Mrs Standish in Falmouth and then come back in the afternoon to help the professor. I have breakfast all ready for you. Make sure you brush your teeth this time
– but she’d still asked him to keep an eye out in case he saw the mad old bat come home.

 
And then he thought, Why should I tell her?

 
He knew exactly what would happen if he did. Mum would get out of bed, in her slippers. She’d come into his room and peer out through the net curtain to make sure the car was actually there, as if she couldn’t trust him to identify a car on his own. And then she’d go across the street and invite the nutter in. For a chat. And food. And he’d already told her he’d nearly finished his homework so he wouldn’t be able to get out of going down and being polite unless he came up with another excuse, really quickly.

 
Except he didn’t need to think of an excuse. All he had to do was not tell her the old headcase had come home.

 
What did it possibly matter anyway? He shouldn’t encourage Mum. Why should she care what the neighbours were doing? No. Forget it. He glanced at his wall clock. Mum wouldn’t get out of bed now.

 
He watched idly as the professor got herself out of her car. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her. Everyone knew about her, though. The village idiot.

 
Looks like she’s got a visitor too.

 
Someone was getting out of the passenger side. Not another old person, surprisingly. Seeing anyone who wasn’t nearly dead was a major surprise in this craphole village. Some kid.

 
Kid?

 
Horace stood up from his desk as the boy straightened beside the car. Light from the streetlamp in the lane fell through the bushes of the cramped front garden, picking out the visitor’s face.

 
Horace felt his secret turn to lead inside him.

 
After a few numb seconds he reached under the lampshade and turned off his desk light. Carefully, so Mum wouldn’t hear anything, he sat on the desk and pressed his nose to the glass, just in time to see the two of them, the woman and the boy, go into the house opposite. As they opened the front door they were caught in a box of brightness, made unmistakable. Just for a second or two, but long enough.

 
Horace sat in his room with his light turned off for a long time, and when he finally went to bed, it was hours before he managed to sleep.

Sixteen

Evensong complete, and
the usual handful of attendees sent back off into the night with sufficient good wishes, Owen decided to drive up to the lodge to see if Gwen had found her way home yet.

 
He knew he ought to have walked, really. The cold was no worse than any other overcast winter night, and he’d have warmed up anyway going up the hill to the crossroads. It wasn’t all that far. But it was very dark, the kind of dark that presses around the edges of a torch’s beam. Some of the villagers would be out walking their dogs in it, perfectly undisturbed, but even after all his years of living in the parish he’d never become used to being outside on his own in that kind of pitch black.

 
So, rather guiltily, he took the car.

 
He was swinging right at the crossroads on top of the ridge when a swathe of the impenetrable night above detached itself with a sound like the sky gasping and flew in front of the windshield. Owen cried out and swerved the wheel away. With a terrible crumpling noise and a bruising jolt his car ran into a hedge, throwing him against the seatbelt, crushing the breath out of him and filling his eyes with a chaos of shooting stars. His head spun.

 
Silence fell around him apart from a small hiss, steam leaking from the wrecked engine.

 
After a while he shoved the door open groggily. He couldn’t quite remember what had made him do something so stupid. His skull throbbed. He ran his hands over his legs. They felt shaky but intact. Cold air gusted around him.

 
He staggered out. One headlight was bust, but the other still shone, embedded in the hedge, making strange shadows. He had no other light. He cursed himself for his carelessness. Leaning in the door, he tried the ignition a few times, but though it scraped and rattled, the engine wouldn’t catch.

 
He patted his pockets with one hand, steadying himself against the car with the other. No phone. He’d left it at home. Half a mile away at most, but that half-mile was as black as the seabed. He opened the boot and felt around for a torch, but he knew there wasn’t one there. Carrying a light in the back of the car was something else he’d never learned to do, even after two decades of country life.