After Brock (31 page)

But, in all that time up there, did I ever properly acknowledge the power of Death? I don't think so! Dad didn't either, and yet there it was, waiting for him, at the bottom of the A49…While I sat there in the mountains, owls killed the small rodents whom Nature, for its own unfathomable reason, doesn't permit to live safely or long, and both buzzards from the air and wickedly fast-moving little weasels, with their weird hissing and trilling noises, robbed rabbits of their lives. Perhaps I should have mourned every addition to the rank of the dead. But I let my sense of the beauty of existence bear me on past it all, through to the joy of sheer survival.

Dad did the same really, did he not, thinking the Disgynfa plateau might be this odd Annwn place. But it wasn't, of course. Couldn't be! There's no room for Annwn in any truthful reading of the Universe. Even his imaginary Annwn didn't shield him. Except that I haven't yet quite built it in myself, that cancellation of the living, that extinguishing of breath and pulse and blood-flow. But Dad, when he joined those search parties for me, on land and in the air, was forced to recognize its ongoing, merciless presence once again.

And that, God help me, is the worst thing I've done to the man I've been wanting so hugely to help…

It's hard to miss the increase in anguish in Pete's voice now, as, having found his second wind as narrator, he continues, addressing himself – or some invisible jury – more than the two individuals in his room: ‘Just think of me and my life! Until the kite shop here in Lydcastle I've never been present at it, I don't believe – not since January 1974. And it's doubtful whether I was adequately present then. I know that sounds a dreadful, even an immoral thing to say, but… God help me, it's the fucking truth.' And here he can't, masochistically, resist casting a glance at his audience, to gauge their level of shock. He doesn't find it. Maybe his self-accusation is no more than what they think about him anyway from his story – Luke from a pressman's swift ability to assess anyone he meets on a professional job, Nat's from his insider knowledge. And certainly it is Nat who's moved to interject, in an assuring, rather than an aggrieved, voice, ‘I know it's the truth about you, Dad, I've known it a long time.'

‘I can't doubt it!' Pete says.

Possibly he should stop talking here. But having switched himself on at such length (or been switched on, by pressure of circumstances and Luke's insidious power of persuasion) he can't, and won't, switch himself off. Not until he's released some statement about what now appears the second great dark climax of his feeling life.

‘I was glad of the move to South London (Norbury) that Oliver Merchant and I made. He'd always pronounced himself impressed by the way I inspected and commented on new designs, new lettering for his cards, a service I rendered him from age ten or eleven upwards. So when he suggested that I actually entered Sunbeam Press, as chief assistant who would quite definitely become a partner, and maybe one day – a heady promise then for any young man! – managing director, I said yes, Ol, yes, that's the best future for me I can see. Ol arranged for me to sit my A Levels that winter in a South London school, and I didn't do so badly. And, with these results, the London School of Printing – looking on me kindly because of my family tragedy – allowed me to start my degree course a term late.

‘One really thoughtful thing Ol did for me, the Christmas after the exams, was present me – to my astonished joy – with a dog. From Battersea Dogs' Home. We never knew exactly how old he was, a couple of years they reckoned. A white smooth-haired fox-terrier (well, that's as accurate a description as you could come up with). I called him Baron, I don't know why; name just came to me, and he seemed to like it from the first. He was very clever, very sharp of hearing, very loving, wanted to go everywhere with me – and to an amazing degree succeeded. I even smuggled him into college classes, and he became quite a party-goer, and saw a lot of human nature which most ‘pets' don't, but it never fazed him. He slept at the foot of my bed, but he'd always edge up to the pillow by the time I woke up in the morning.'

Nat sees with sudden, moving clarity that photo of his father when still a youth, long hair parted in the middle, and a white dog between his firm hands. The Pete Kempsey of that picture was as capable of devotion as Baron, he reckoned.

‘And he lived to a good enough age, though his death, when it came, tore me up, I don't mind admitting. I was going out with Izzie when he had his last illness, his heart. She helped to look after him, and that drew us even closer together.

‘What kind of student was I? Well, a pretty average one, I'd say, no high flyer at all, better at some things than others, but at those competent and steady (believe it or not). As for life-style, well, again much as you might expect. (I daresay you can match it, Luke.) Some pubbing, some clubbing, some casual sex, some dope-taking, some protest marches for good causes (a big and enjoyable one on behalf of Allende's Chile, I remember, on which I met a girl I went out with for about a year), some playing rugby until I got fed up with the amount of practice-time it required, some trips to good gigs and exhibitions (most of which have slipped into mental oblivion years since) – all singularly unremarkable. In fact, my painful past history apart, I suppose that my having Baron as a constant companion was the only outstanding thing about me. It's strange to reflect on now, but I never once went back to Leominster. Refused to do so. Hence the abyss that opened up between me and my brother, Julian Pringle. And Sam I banished to the horrors of the past.

‘Baron and I lived with Ol, in his large, comfortable terraced villa in Norbury, which was often pleasantly full of visitors, as Ol was hospitable to any people who worked in any capacity for Sunbeam Press. He allowed me to bring friends there too, but I mostly chose not to. Why? (Apart from the fact that he might smell dope!) Well, I've probably already made myself out a shit, so why not do so further? I came to long for freedom from Oliver Merchant, and cherish any I got. (And Baron was something of a bulwark against him too.) You see, Ol was over-kind to me, over-solicitous; there was no getting away from him, and yet I wasn't – still am not, I guess – the kind of guy who stands up for himself with strong words or shows of temper. Far from it! Mates of mine, usually after too many drinks or smokes, said: “He's an old pouff, isn't he? A jealous, fussy old queen!” Well, I wasn't having any of that; I was loyal to him – but also, of course protective of my own reputation… And, you may well ask, were my friends right? Yes and no's the answer. I would take my Bible oath he never had sex with another male, and I would even go so far as to say he never wanted to. My mother he'd adored from a safe distance for more than twenty years, entrusting her with confidences, listening to hers (whatever they might have been), paying her compliments, singing her praises, and Dad, obviously, hadn't felt a flicker of threat. After their deaths the sentimental fondness he'd already developed for myself – partly as his dear Marion's son – occupied his emotional centre, and that could be a burden for us both. Particularly when I took girls out. He definitely got jealous then, which took the form of fault-finding first with them, then, if I persisted with my friendship, with me. He hoped, he'd say, I wasn't going to slacken in my Sunbeam Press work, there had been a case of a complaint from a major shop, a long-valued customer, and so on and so forth. And wasn't Baron enough of a companion for me? The dog surely had more sense than… well, than whoever was on the scene at the time! Such tensions were usually resolved by me stopping seeing the girl in question. Weak, I know, but there you are! Until, Nat, I met your mother. I fell in love with Izzie so overwhelmingly there could be no reining me in. After a month or two of sulky remonstrations Oliver had to swallow his pride, and later of course he was Unselfish Aid personified when it came to helping the two of us buy a house. (We'd buried poor old Baron by then.) You came into the world, Nat, eighteen months after our having moved there, as a happy couple.

‘Except that we weren't one, not really. Oh yes I was pleased to be a father all right – I never quite understand what the phrase “a proud father” means, because one thing that I felt right from the first, Nat, is: Here's an individual, with a life before him, who, for all his dependence on others at the moment, is utterly separate – from all others even from those who have brought his life about, who has ways and desires demonstrably and absolutely his own. Possibly I've felt that too strongly. Possibly it's a form of evading responsibility – or of my difficulty in receiving another person's life. I felt my own separateness encroached on by my householder existence, though I never ceased, Nat, to feel that you and your mother were the two people most important to me. And I…' he resents the painful lump that's come into his throat, ‘and I haven't changed in that respect either. But I haven't got enough, I reckon, to spare from that separateness to give out to others. Izzie said all I could really manage to tell the outside world about was my own pursuits. Greeting cards and now kites. Sounds comical, doesn't it? And that's why finally I bored her, I guess, but from my point of view… Well, I don't know I really
want
to tell anybody about much else. I am, and must remain, the text books would say, a loner. Some of us
are
loners, some of us aren't. And only sorrow follows when you read yourself wrongly.

‘Funny thing is Oliver Merchant – Leominster's most prominent bachelor, said Sam Price once – came firmly in the second category. He was not a loner. He started – ludicrous though the word may sound for one of his age and mannerisms – dating women. In South London, as back in Herefordshire, he got involved with Am Dram, and I even think he capered comically over some Norbury or Dulwich stage as Koko to another Katisha. (I did not go to watch!) And he and one of these women, Rosie Roberts – who, far from being a lead-part in these shows, was merely a member of the Chorus – got on so well that they married. The proverbial feather wasn't in it when I heard, but of course I said I was glad to hear it. I wasn't. Not a bit! I'd guessed that Rosie would start taking an interest in Sunbeam and work her way into it as shareholder and Board member. Still the actual settling up of the company's affairs after Ol's death wasn't as fraught as I'd once feared. For by this time – I'm truly sorry, Nat, for you to hear this in such black-and-white terms – I knew for definite that I couldn't sustain a family life any more, that I'd bring more unhappiness than happiness to my wife and son if I stayed. I remembered what joy I'd had from kites – my little brother Robin had always liked them, and you, Nat, long before the move, enjoyed flying them on Clapham Common and out on Box Hill, when we made those expeditions into Surrey. So I bought myself out of Sunbeam, saw that Izzie was well provided for, and then came out here to The Marches, my native region after all, to look for some property in which to establish a kite shop. And the rest, as they say, is History.

‘Some history, I hear you thinking!'

For a moment both Luke and Nat think he's finished, that, in a surprisingly flat way, he has got to the climax of this last part of his story. But just by looking at his flushed face they see that they are wrong. Pete is just bracing himself for what he still must tell them.

In Nat's head those Berwyn colours repeat themselves – light green (turf), dark green (clumps of woodland), light purple, deep purple (all the heathers), brown (bracken), grey (the shale) – all to be subsumed now in the variegated blackness of night. Which denied them their power.

Pete is going, ‘When, after being unobtainable by mobile all day, all fucking day, Nat didn't return on the night of the twenty-first, I went spare; do you both understand that? I didn't know what to do, where to put myself, who to be with, how to eat, how to sleep – from that time on, right up to my going into the air with the North Wales Police, Heddlu Gogledd Cymru, taking off from Wrexham… Hard to decide whether I felt worse before or after receiving the jiffy-bag from the Co-op here! A case could be made for either, and, take it from me, these last few days I've made both. Before last Friday I thought Nat might just have buggered off on some giant escapade that could lead him half-across the globe, that those Heights he mentioned in his note were emotional or psychological ones – a bewitching girl, quality-time sex, ‘Ecstasy', the chance to travel to Arctic Norway and Sweden before the winter begins – any of these! But the devil in all that was, however were Izzie and I ever to get in contact with him?

Assuming he was alive. Then when those items came to us from Llanrhaeadr, then, yes, we now knew at least where he had unde-niably
been
, and therefore where we should start looking.

‘But both Izzie and I, at our most despairing, thought what we'd got could well be farewell tokens. Either sent by Nat instead of the conventional suicide note – never a satisfactory form of leave-taking – or else found in a little heap somewhere, with no owner visible or traceable, by some kind busybody, and then forwarded – though why to the Cooperative here in Lydcastle we couldn't explain. We got to the stage, you see, when we couldn't feel a hundred per cent sure of the handwriting on the package; it was all in Caps, and rather wonky ones at that, and as Nat has never been a great communicator, neither of us could even remember the last addressed envelope from him we'd received or exactly what the lettering on it looked like.'

Nat is inclined to chip in here: ‘I sent the things partly because I was keen you
didn't
think I'd topped myself, Dad.' But he doesn't; it would be a little less than the truth. He'd inwardly provided for the possibility that the world might well think that was what he had done. And had gone on with his scheme.