Half-Sick of Shadows (27 page)

Our misadventure at Ruse Bay having given him a taste for the stuff, Alf brought two bottles of wine to the Manse in his tartan suitcase. That came to two glasses and a dribble each. Fortunately, since Father couldn’t object – and thanks to Farmer Barry’s generosity – I’d made sure the Manse had a healthy, or perhaps unhealthy, supply of my favourite reds.

During a lengthy, giggly dinner at the big kitchen table – incinerated beef, under-boiled carrots, lumpy mash and lumpier
gravy
– our conversation took a serious turn. Alf said to Sophia, ‘Edward tells me you don’t like to leave the Manse.’

‘I don’t need to,’ she replied happily, and drained her wine glass for the fourth time. ‘Everything’s here that I need.’

‘Everything? Surely …’

‘Farmer Barry brings the things that aren’t. He brings the gas and connects it. He pops in at least once or twice a week.’

‘No he doesn’t,’ I said. ‘I’ve only seen him about twice since school ended.’ But I’d never had to connect the gas. I assumed Gregory did it – although I’d seen as little of him as I had of Farmer Barry. Connecting the gas was easy; Sophia could do it. But she couldn’t leave the Manse to fetch new supplies.

‘He comes when you’re out on one of your walks, and has gone by the time you return. I love Farmer Barry. He’s like a father to me. That,’ she pointed at Alf’s plate, ‘is one of his cows.’ It struck me that she said she loved Farmer Barry. Not liked, but loved. She had never said she loved Father. Maybe it was the wine talking.

‘Where do you walk to?’ asked Alf.

‘Round about. Bruagh and back.’

‘He goes out to smoke cigarettes. I can smell them off him when he returns. Good job Father doesn’t know.’

I pulled a face at my sister.

Alf steered the conversation back to the subject he wanted to talk about. ‘The promise was a very long time ago, Sophia. Promises run out after a number of years and you no longer have to keep them.’

‘What promise?’

Sophia reached for a near empty bottle and drained it into her glass. Alf looked at me, but my eyes were locked on Sophia for several seconds before I looked at him.

‘I wonder how it started,’ said Alf to either of us or no one, but looking at me conspiratorially.

‘How what started?’ I asked deliberately, playing the game, me and him against Sophia with the aim of helping her if we could.

‘Sophia’s reluctance to leave the Manse.’ Alf added, addressing Sophia, ‘I wonder why your reluctance to leave the Manse began. Perhaps something happened long ago?’

Sophia shrugged, and sawed into an edge of burnt beef rather awkwardly. ‘I don’t know. I’ve just always been like that.’

From behind my wine glass, I watched Sophia chew beef. Had she really forgotten the promise she made to Father, or did she simply not want to tell Alf about it? Sophia and I could no longer read each other’s minds. Yet I knew her well enough. She was not hiding the promise from Alf; she had forgotten it.

‘What a pity,’ said Alf.

‘What’s a pity?’ I asked.

‘Oh, you know. It was just a thought …’ That wasn’t Alfspeak; he was pretending to be more casual and tipsy than he really was – for Sophia’s benefit, of course.

‘What was just a thought? Out with it, Alf.’

‘I’d rather hoped that maybe, I mean, if you both wanted to, I could invite both of you to town for lunch some day. We could get a taxi. Who knows, we might even have our meat cooked by a chef who doesn’t burn it.’

‘Sounds good. I’m up for it. What about you, Sophia?’

My sister must have chewed that particular slice of beef five hundred times. ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘But thank you for asking, Alf.’

‘Well, if you change your mind, the offer remains open.’

‘If it’s Mother and Father you’re worried about, they sleep all afternoon,’ I said. ‘They’ll be fine for a few hours. They’re alone in their rooms that long while you’re feeding the chickens and doing the chores anyway.’

Sophia didn’t respond. Then she put her knife and fork on her plate, reclined on the chair and said she was stuffed. She sprang back up, grabbed the plate, and took it to the sink.

I announced that I was calling it a day, and Alf said him too. Sophia said she would stay up a while longer and watch television.

22

Gregory Returns to the Manse

‘Where did you go on that day, Alf?’ I asked, lying on my side in bed looking down at him lying on the floor looking up at me.

‘What day?’

‘The last day we saw each other at school. You came to my room. When you left, I followed you to the junior changing room. I wasn’t seeing things. I’ve asked myself all kinds of questions. Did I make a mistake? Did you walk past the locker, not into it? But if you walked past the locker, you walked into a wall. I’ve even wondered if the locker had a false back that you passed through.’ As I spoke, the expression on Alf’s face was one of calmness with an almost-smile. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Put me out of my misery. Where did you go?’

‘Oh, the locker.’

‘Yes, the locker.’

‘Guess.’

‘No, Alf. I can’t guess … I definitely, unquestionably, absolutely certainly saw you. It was a very, very clever trick.’

After a time, he said, ‘It’s a secret.’

‘No! No, Alf. I’m not letting you get away with that. How did you pull off the locker trick? … Stop smiling at me! All right. Answer a different question. Who are you? Where are you from?’

‘That’s two questions.’

‘Where are you from? That’s only one. You said you were at the university independently. I never understood that.’

‘I’m from here and there, really,’ replied Alf unhelpfully.

‘What do you mean? Do you mean that your parents travel because of your father’s job? What is he, a diplomat or something?’

‘A muse is from everywhere and nowhere. I’m from where I’m needed at any particular time – although time is a localized phenomenon; I’m using it now, in this conversation, merely for convenience.’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘You exist within the context of past, present and future, so that’s the frame of reference I’m using.’

‘Right.’

‘My work, and it wasn’t in my plan to tell you this but I’m not as sober as a muse should be … my work involves travelling all over gathering information on cultures and contributing to their enrichment.’

‘What?’ I said, after a moment in stunned silence. ‘You’ve only just left school, Alf. You don’t work for, or with, anybody. Anyway, I’m talking about what happened before you left school. You couldn’t have travelled then because you were at school.’

‘My form of travel is unconventional, Edward. Rather than travel from here to there and back in this or that motorized machine, I travel through time – that slippery phenomenon again.’

My penny dropped. I got it. ‘You’re a time traveller!’ Ear to ear travelled my grin. ‘Wow!’ What an imagination! What acting to pull it off so convincingly! What a storyteller! Why hadn’t he revealed this talent at Whitehead House? ‘But there’s a flaw.’ I wagged an accusing finger at him. ‘If you travelled back in time and killed your grandfather … You know it, don’t you: the old time travel paradox? Let’s see you get out of that one.’

‘It’s simple: I can’t interfere – much. It’s not that natural law forbids interference; it’s just that interference is incongruent with
stability
and nature works to preserve stability … Think of stability as your body’s health, interference as a harmful virus, and nature as white blood cells produced by your body to fight the virus. On almost every occasion, the white blood cells defeat the virus and preserve the health of your body. But sometimes the virus is too strong, or too sneaky, and stability is compromised.’

‘So interference is possible, but it’s dangerous.’

‘It can make systems sick. Fatally so.’

‘Systems?’

‘Universes.’

‘If time travel’s so dangerous, why do it?’

‘It isn’t dangerous where interference is limited to extracting from an environment non-material phenomena such as ideas. That’s what I do. That’s what orchard universes are for. I referred a moment ago to cultures. How do you think great civilizations emerge and produce great art? There can’t be civilization without art. Art is quintessential to civilization. Design. Architecture. Monuments. Towers. Sculptures. Paintings. Drama. Literature. Technology. Invention. How is it that animals do it?’

‘Animals?’

‘Humans.’

I stuttered, but came out with, ‘Genius. Occasionally, humanity produces a genius and things change.’

‘No,’ Alf said, in a protracted, condescending way. ‘Well, not really. It’s because people like me, and you may call us geniuses if you wish, travel, not only in time, but outside space-time too. Don’t worry about it. We travel all over in search of … in search of what do you think, Edward?’

Oh Lord! What did I think? I thought he was very clever. But I knew that already. He was certainly more imaginative than I’d ever dreamed. What did he and his kind travel in search of? ‘You travel in search of … solutions. You travel in time to find clues that solve crimes.’

‘Ideas,’ said Alf. ‘We search tirelessly, observing and documenting, developing and eventually inspiring in the production of great art. And sometimes, admittedly, not so great art.’

Art? I felt let down. ‘Just art?’

‘Yes. Just one, tiny, three-letter word with a single syllable. Art. Art, in its numerous shapes and forms, is the thing, the one and only thing, that makes this animal, human, a significant cut above the rest.’

‘Ah!’ said I. ‘Not so, my time-travelling friend. That would be speech: the power of language.’

Alf nodded his head in agreement, which confused me. ‘Like I said, Edward: art. I may have talk; I may have speech. I may say: At a fly beer wine bottom if weasel. Where, then, is speech without art? I may say: And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. That’s art.’

I’d thought I was fairly sober until then. I could have sworn he said something like, at a fly beer wine bottom if weasel. Time to introduce the balm of hurt minds.

‘Alf?’

‘Yes, Edward?’

‘Goodnight.’

Father slept.

‘Hello, Father. Hello smelly, shitty fucking Father fucking smelly shitty old fucking fuckface.’ He had pushed the blanket down so that it covered only his lower body. He didn’t appear to feel the cold these days. The frosty days and freezing nights were too hot for him. Sophia knew why. He’d used all but the last dregs of his life. Close to death and what waited therein, he felt heat from the fires of Hell. Him and his bible! Him and his God! Sophia hated him and his God.

Under a spillage-stained vest, Father’s old ribs rose and fell. She watched them rise and fall every night when she’d done with him and he settled. She stood there watching until enough strength
returned
for her to turn round and leave. Sometimes his ribs rose and fell harder in his sleep. His old lungs expanded to bursting point for ten or more breaths; he inhaled and exhaled as though his whole system needed patching and pumping up just to keep him ticking over. When his ribs settled, when his breathing became less laboured, Sophia imagined herself raising a pillow to press down upon his face. Would she have the physical strength? Could she do it? Could she murder him? Probably. Meeting him in Hell: that’s what stopped her.

But if she did it, it wouldn’t be murder – at least, not cruel murder. No one could accuse her of that. It would be for the best, like putting a dog out of its misery. What, she wondered, would Edward advise her to do? What would Edward say, if he were in here instead of across the corridor with Alf? She had lost the ability to know his mind. They had grown apart. Everything changes. Everything has its time. Father had had his time. He wasn’t going to get better. Better like this than with his dirty fingers up her skirt. Sophia wished she hadn’t told Edward and hoped he had forgotten. Of all the things she hated thinking about, she hated thinking about that most. Think about something else. That’s the only way to stop it: think about something else.

Best look in on Mother. See if she’s asleep. Best leave Father’s bedroom. Every time his ribs rise towards her face they seem to say, ‘Stop our endless heaving; we can’t do it ourselves.’

Sophia raised the pillow. If Father opened his eyes he would see her. Should she set the pillow on his face and gradually exert pressure? Should she push the pillow forcefully on his face, all her pressure at once? She must not startle him awake. She would die if his eyes shot open and he saw her about to kill him.

A clock ticked long seconds. It must have ticked inside her head because there were no clocks in the bedroom or corridor.

Her arms were heavy from holding the pillow. Not now. Tomorrow. With relief, she let the pillow fall to her knees. But she stood on. A voice in her head: ‘It’s now or never.’ And Sophia stood
on
, convinced that she had no option but to start all over again, here, tonight, talking herself into doing what she didn’t want to do and wanted so very desperately to do.

A hand grasped the pillow, but did not pull it away from her. Sophia gasped with shock. Her heart jumped, but not her feet. She quickly realized that Gregory stood beside her and the hand belonged to him. Solemn-faced, he looked briefly into her eyes, then looked at Father. Sophia released the pillow when Gregory eased it from her. The rest was easy. It ended almost as soon as it began. Gregory pressed the pillow to Father’s face with one hand. His other hand wrapped around the old man’s neck, not choking him, but pinning him to the bed. Father twitched and jolted several times – a token struggle. Gregory held his neck, and the pillow to his face, for much longer than necessary, which seemed none the less like no time at all.

I woke before dawn needing to pee. Had Sophia tapped on my door? I raised myself on to an elbow and switched on the bedside light. Alf gave me a fright; I’d forgotten about him. He sat cross-legged on a pillow on the floor fully clothed, the quilt draped over his shoulders.

‘Alf.’

Pale and shivering, he stared at the floor.