Natural Flights of the Human Mind (17 page)

‘Maybe there was nobody. We were the invisible. People with no past, no names, no ties.’

‘Everyone must have had a mother.’

‘You tell us who we are. Then we’ll tell you who our mothers are.’

‘But I can’t. I don’t know.’

‘Then neither do we.’

I should know about these people. They deserve to have names. Everyone needs a name. How can they just come from nowhere and be nobody?

When Straker wakes, his head thumps, his arms ache, his hands hurt. Suleiman has gone.

He sits up. A dingy dawn is starting to seep into the lighthouse. The gulls are screeching outside, and he can pick out vague shapes in the room. He feels as if he has run a marathon. He slumps, exhausted, for a while and counts in thirteens. 13, 26, 39, 52, 65—

He stops. He should have known that thirteen was dangerous. He knows the factors of 78. He starts on fourteens. 14, 28, 42, 56, 70, 84—

OK. He can carry on.

He washes mechanically, following his normal routine without rushing, then takes two stale doughnuts on his way up to the balcony. Dawn hasn’t yet arrived, but the dark is not impenetrable, and it’s possible to see the shape of the rocks below the lighthouse. The seagulls seem very busy in the half-light, dipping and soaring, screeching past each other, but somehow, miraculously, never colliding. Flying by instinct. No crash landings.

The tide is out, and Straker watches the first hint of dawn
threading its way over the strands of seaweed, and the mud. Thin pink fingers pick away at the piles of pebbles, sorting through the dullness of the rocks and polishing them to reflect a generous light—yellow, orange, green and blue. The birds all seem to land at the same time, and there is a pause in the breathing of the early morning.

This is normally a good time. The five minutes of stillness. But today it’s not working.

In the silence there is noise. Nothing today wants to be calm. Birds pecking at shells, water on the move, either creeping up or draining away, pebbles, creaking, creaking—

The creaking is coming from the lighthouse.

Straker stands up and balances with his legs apart, trying to listen and feel. Is it his imagination, or is the lighthouse moving? A tiny vibration creeping through the floor, a deep, secret engine starting to come to life. A shiver, a flexing of muscles. Is it slowly breaking away from its mooring, preparing to set sail?

He’s not sure. Is the vibration in the lighthouse or in his legs? Everything seems insecure in this early morning. Nothing is constant. He’s been here for twenty-four years, watching the cliff fall away, knowing that the end will come one day, and suddenly it is upon him. He’s not prepared. What does he do? Try to go with it, of course. But what if he survives again? What happens to him without his home?

He shivers. There’s a rising breeze. Magnificent comes and sits next to him, settling tidily with his tail wrapped round his legs. They look out to sea together. Perhaps he is worrying with Straker about their future.

Doody thinks that he can make the aeroplane work. Which is not going to happen. It’s too old. But suppose it were possible. What then? Does he fly it? Could he still do that? Could he sit in the cockpit and pull the joystick and take off into that airy place of anonymity that he used to know? He wouldn’t be allowed to. His pilot’s licence ran out years ago. Or they took it away from him.

He can feel a tremor inside him that doesn’t originate from the lighthouse. He identifies it as terror. An enormous churning fear of being in the air again, taking off, heading towards the defining moment of his life that he can’t remember.

He doesn’t want the aeroplane to fly. It should stay where it is, a monument to Doody’s godfather, a useless relic.

If he refuses to help her with it, what then? The aeroplane stays in the barn, and she gets angry.

He rubs his tired eyes and knows he has no choice. Nausea rises in his stomach at the thought of flying. There is no debate. He can’t do it.

He goes back down the stairs, leaving Magnificent at the top.

He opens a tin of salmon for the cats, and pours out some milk, feeling generous. He would like them to enjoy the day.

He waits until he can hear the church bells. Ridiculous sound. Like someone striking one or two bells with a metal object. No pattern to it, no originality. He sets off after they have stopped for ten minutes. If anybody is going to church, they’ll all be there by now, and everybody else will be indoors until the shops open. The fishermen will already have sailed on the early tide. Doody will be awake. Nobody could sleep through that racket. He’s ready to do some work on the cottage.

Normally on a Sunday, he works on his garden, or his investigations if the weather’s bad, rereading letters, making notes, putting photographs into files. Today, there is a certain exhilaration in turning his back on it, acting as if it doesn’t matter. He runs from the harbour to the cottage, working out how long it takes, enjoying his long strides, feeling his heart pumping with clear, regular beats.

Once there, he leaps through the long grass to the door and knocks loudly.

Nothing happens.

He tries again, hurting his knuckles.

The house and garden are silent.

Perhaps he’s got it wrong and she went home yesterday. Maybe he just assumed that she would stay overnight when she never really intended to.

He can visualise the files on his table at the lighthouse, open, expecting his attention. Sangita, Felicity, everyone else hovering, offended by his neglect. Except Maggie.

He walks up and down outside the cottage trying to decide what to do. He could make a start on some work before she returns next week. The window-frames need attention. B&Q sell sandpaper, wood filler, undercoat, white paint. He could fiddle that lock and get inside in seconds, have a look at the beams inside the roof.

The front door creaks, and Doody peers out with an annoyed expression on her face. She’s wearing a striped nightdress—red and black, with the hem coming down on one side. Her hair is fuzzy round the edge of her face, tangled and confused. It looks impossible to brush out. It’s not as blonde as he remembers, the roots darker and not so dazzling. Her eyes are green—the first time he’s noticed the colour, but today they peer out between her frowning eyebrows, dark and impenetrable. The burnt pink patches on her nose and cheeks have faded into a softer tan, so that she appears slightly less out of place in her cottage.

‘I thought you must have gone home,’ he says.

She stares at him. ‘Don’t you ever sleep?’ Her face is creased and puffy, oddly vulnerable. ‘First those dreadful bells, and now you. It’s Sunday, for goodness’ sake.’

What’s she talking about? ‘We could clear the undergrowth, or I could paint the windows.’

She doesn’t seem to understand. ‘Go away, Straker. Come back in three hours’ time.’

She shuts the door in his face.

He can’t decide what he should do. He wanders around
the garden for a while, looking for the shed that was half demolished in the undergrowth. He pulls away some ivy, and discovers that two crumbling walls are still upright. In the corner between them, a spade, a rake and a scythe lie in an abandoned heap, all very rusty, but nevertheless intact.

He picks up the scythe. He’s never used one before, but once he starts, he’s surprised by its effectiveness, despite its age and rust. He goes back for the rake, which is little more than a few nails sticking out of a piece of wood, and sweeps the heaps of grass and weeds into manageable piles at the edge of the garden.

Tomorrow he could bring his own tools and start digging. It would all be cleared in a couple of days. Neat and ready to plant if she wants.

He works for some time, enjoying it. The sun comes out, and he stops for a rest. He sits with his back against the wall, and shuts his eyes, forgetting Doody.

‘Wake up, Straker.’

‘Maggie! You’re back.’

‘Not for long. I want you to do something for me.’

‘Anything, Maggie. You know that. I’ll do whatever you want.’

‘I want you to meet Simon.’

‘Simon your husband? Simon A. Taverner?’

‘Yes. I think you should make a connection and save us all.’

‘Save you? How can I save people who are dead?’

‘Easy. You let go of them. And if you speak to Simon, there can be some kind of resolution.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘No, of course not. That’s the trouble with you. There isn’t a lot you do understand. But there must be hope for you somewhere in all this.’

‘There is no hope for me. You know that.’

‘Rubbish, Straker. You’re just going down the cowardly road of self-destruction. Stop indulging yourself and do something useful for once in your life.’

‘How could I meet him?’

‘Get on a train. You know, a train like the one I was on. They usually manage to get there without crashing. Get off the train. Go to Simon’s flat—you know the address—and ring the doorbell. Say, “Hello, I’m the man who killed your wife.” ’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Why not? My husband is a reasonable man.’

‘He might not be by now.’

‘You read the letter. You know he is.’

‘I can’t do it.’

‘Why not?’

‘I just can’t.’

There is a long silence
.

‘That’s it, then. Goodbye.’

‘No, Maggie. No!’

Silence
.

‘Maggie! Maggie!’

He wakes with the sound of his own voice in his ears. He stares round in bewilderment, not knowing what he expects to see, certainly not the garden of Doody’s cottage. Something terrible has happened, and for a minute, he can’t remember what it was.

Goodbye
.

He leans back with a terrible sick pain inside his stomach.

‘So, who’s Maggie?’ says a voice above him.

He looks up and there’s Doody, peering at him. She’s holding a plate and a mug, pretending to be pleasant. But she is watching him, her eyes thoughtful and suspicious.

So, who is Maggie?

He doesn’t reply, and this annoys Doody. She’s brought him some breakfast, but now she doesn’t want to give it to him. She would prefer to throw it in his face. There’s no reason why there shouldn’t be a Maggie, of course. It’s not as if he’s talked endlessly about his single life. Why should she care?

He rubs his eyes with trembling hands, then blinks rapidly. He has the appearance of someone brought outside after a long confinement in the dark. Confused by the light, almost frightened. He’s dressed neatly, but his face is crumpled and neglected. He really should trim his beard. Doody’s not going to be fooled into sympathy. She can’t bring herself to hand him the plate and mug, so she puts them on the grass beside him, and stands up quickly.

‘Who’s Maggie?’ she asks again, refusing to give up. If he’s got some woman up there in his lighthouse, she wants to know about it. Is this Maggie a prisoner? Growing her hair so that she can climb down it and escape?

He picks up the mug, takes a sip and swallows hurriedly. ‘Coca-Cola,’ he says, with surprise.

‘What were you expecting? Coffee? There isn’t any electricity, you know. You can’t make coffee without heat.’

He picks up the slice of bread she’s buttered for him and starts to eat, stretching out his legs in front of him. His right foot rocks backwards and forwards rhythmically.

Doody remembers her mother doing this at her father’s funeral. Singing a silent song, she thought then. Her mother didn’t care. She was bored with the funeral.

Doody shivers. ‘I’m going indoors,’ she says, a sharp, bitter taste coming into her mouth. ‘It’s cold.’

Straker pulls himself to his feet and follows her inside. It’s dingy in the kitchen—the window is small, and needs cleaning—but it’s warmer than outside. They sit at the table and Doody offers him some fruit cake. ‘Made it myself during the week. Haven’t made a cake in years.’

He nods and bites into a slice. She wonders if she’s put too much fruit in it. It feels heavy, and a little sticky, as if it isn’t cooked properly. ‘I prefer it moist,’ she says. ‘It lasts longer.’

He doesn’t reply. Doody’s still waiting. ‘Is she a prisoner?’ she asks. ‘In the lighthouse?’

He stops eating and stares at her, but she’s not accepting this contrived ignorance.

‘You know who I’m talking about. Maggie. Who is she? Is she your wife?’

He jerks his head up. ‘No!’ he says. ‘Of course not.’

‘Why of course not? People do marry. They do have wives, don’t they?’

‘Yes,’ he says, ‘but I haven’t.’

‘Did you once?’

‘No,’ he says again.

‘You could have left her. She could have left you. You could be separated or divorced.’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘But I’m not.’

For a while he seems lost in thought. Doody waits for him to say something else, but nothing happens. ‘Just as well,’ she says, in the end. ‘She’d have died of boredom every time she wanted to have a conversation.’

He drinks his Coca-Cola.

‘I can’t believe I own an aeroplane,’ she says. ‘A biplane. It’s the sort of thing you dream about, isn’t it?’

She gets up and goes to the sink. Last night, she found the stop-cock at the back of a cupboard in the kitchen, turned it on, and found that it worked. She rinses the plates and cups
in cold water. ‘Who is she, then?’ she says, with her back to him.

‘Who?’

‘Maggie.’

He doesn’t reply. If he was a child, refusing to answer her questions, she would march him to the headmaster. ‘Here you are’, she would say. ‘You sort him out’. But you can’t do that with an adult. Straker makes his own rules, and it infuriates her that she cannot shift them.

‘We need to check the windows,’ he says.

She turns round in surprise. ‘What do you mean?’

‘If the windows aren’t sorted before winter comes, it’ll be too draughty to live here.’

‘Sorted in what way?’

‘Some can be painted, but the others will have to be replaced.’

‘I can’t afford new windows,’ she says coldly.

‘No point in worrying until we know the situation.’

‘No point in knowing the situation if I haven’t got any money.’

They walk round and examine the windows. The frames at the back of the house don’t seem too bad. Straker runs his finger along them, scratching the edges. ‘These are OK,’ he says. ‘We can paint them.’

He spends longer on the front windows, poking them with a screwdriver that he produces from his pocket, running it along the join with the windowsill, where paint has been used to fill the gap. He pushes it into the side of the wood, which immediately caves in.

‘Don’t do that,’ says Doody. ‘You’re damaging them.’

‘They’re rotten,’ he says. ‘It’s the salt in the winds off the sea. They’ll have to be replaced. I could probably do it.’

‘Really?’ she says. ‘Are you a window man?’ For some reason, she can’t imagine him having a job. Now, it all seems rather odd. Does he work from home, doing something
secret and mysterious in the lighthouse? But how does he find time for all this? Doing the roof when she’s not here, wandering round the village, exploring neglected pathways, examining abandoned barns. He doesn’t come over as a busy man.

He doesn’t answer, his expression puzzled.

‘Is that your work? Windows?’

He shakes his head.

‘Then how do you know how to do it?’

‘I don’t,’ he says. ‘But I’m sure we could work it out.’

There he goes again. ‘We’. She opens her mouth to say something, then shuts it again. At least he’s offering. He’s her best chance. ‘It’ll be expensive,’ she says.

He shrugs. ‘A bit at a time. We’ll manage.’

His attitude is unexpectedly reassuring. Doody spends most of her life worrying about things that haven’t happened yet. Maybe she should think like he does. We’ll do this, and then we’ll do that. Worry about it when they need to.

‘So what is your job?’

He frowns.

‘What do you do all day? What do you live on? Where does your money come from?’

Maybe he’s a bank robber after all. He wouldn’t need to do anything if he was—just sit in his lighthouse and spend the money. ‘It’s a pity you don’t spend it on clothes, haircuts, shaving equipment…’

She looks at his face more directly, and his eyes slip past her, focusing on some distant point through the window. Extortionist? Murderer? Both? How can you tell? Is there some giveaway, a series of lines on the face, a hardness to the eye that indicates you’ve held a gun, plunged a knife into someone’s heart, put arsenic in your wife’s porridge?

Her pulse booms in her ears.

Do people do strange things if they are being poisoned? Does it make them commit suicide? Suppose they are only slightly poisoned: does that mean that they stop thinking rationally?

Imogen has asked herself these questions over and over again, but because she has never asked anyone else, she hasn’t had an answer. What confuses her is that she can’t quite remember what she did with the yew berries. She knows she mashed them up in the box under her bed, and she remembers going there every night, mixing them, stirring them, thinking of Celia. Did she sprinkle some on Celia’s carrots one day at dinner? She should know the answer to that question, but she doesn’t.

When Imogen found Celia, she stood for a long time just looking at her, unable to think clearly. After a while, she became conscious of a churning sickness in her stomach. She didn’t know what to do. Should she run round to Mrs Gregory, their next-door neighbour, and knock on the door? What would she say? ‘Can you come and see if my sister is dead?’ But she might say no. She didn’t like Imogen very much, and always ignored her if they passed in the street. She might be out.

Imogen heaved violently and vomited over the floor. She stood over it for what seemed like a very long time, struggling to breathe, cold and paralysed.

Once she could move, she tried to get Celia down, just in case she wasn’t really dead, although she could see from her face that she must be. She climbed on to a chest of drawers, her legs shaking and jerking uncontrollably. But Celia was too heavy, and Imogen couldn’t undo the knot that tied the rope to the rafter. She ran downstairs to find a knife, grabbed the breadknife, and tried to saw through the rope without any success. She cut her thumb, which started to bleed, and the breadknife wasn’t sharp enough. Nothing in their house worked properly.

She needed to get help. She raced down again, tripping over
her feet, nearly falling head first, but saving herself at the last minute. She dialled her mother’s work number, fumbling so badly that she had to make three attempts. It was engaged.

Should she ring the police? What would she say? ‘I think my sister is dead?’ But would they believe her? She wasn’t sure if she could explain it properly. What if they thought it was her fault?

Imogen thought it was her fault. She decided to ring Janet, a girl who had been friendly with her at school for a time. Janet was a strangely slow person. She thought a long time about things before she did anything, and once told Imogen that she liked to keep her feet on the ground. This was literally true. She managed to avoid gym lessons when they were climbing ropes, refused to jump when she was aiming the netball at the net, and never ran if she could walk. But she was sensible.

Imogen dialled her number and waited, with the receiver jumping up and down against her ear. Echoes of the distant ring thudded and boomed inside her head, jangling harshly against the confused tangle of her thoughts—

‘Hello?’ It was Janet’s mother.

‘Hello, Mrs Franklin. Can I speak to Janet?’

‘Imogen, is it?’ She always changed her voice when she talked to her, trying to sound posh. Imogen didn’t understand this.

‘Yes. Is she there?’

‘No, dear, sorry. She’s off to the library.’

‘Oh.’ This was unbelievable. She wasn’t there on the one day that she should be.

‘Shall I give her a message?’

‘No, it’s OK.’

Imogen put the receiver down, picked it up again before she could change her mind and dialled 999.

Imogen didn’t know if they believed her or not, but she started to cry and couldn’t stop, so she had difficulty giving them the address.

‘Is there anyone else with you?’

‘No,’ she said, wondering why it mattered.

‘We’ll get an ambulance there in a few minutes. And a police car.’

They knew exactly what they were doing. That was what was so frightening. They seemed to be prepared, as if they were expecting it. As if they knew all about Celia and Imogen, and there was a police car just round the corner waiting to come round, an ambulance five minutes away with all the right equipment for cutting down people hanging from rafters.

From the moment the police were at the door, nothing remained the same. There were people everywhere. They seemed to be rushing around, but in a kind of forced silence, as if nobody was allowed to speak above a murmur. They cut Celia down and were transferring her to an ambulance when her mother came home. Imogen was in the living room, staring at a cup of tea that someone had made her, pretending to sip it even though it had sugar in it and was disgusting. Her mother came through the front door, ran into the living room, grabbed Jonathan with a hysterical shriek and then saw Imogen. Jonathan was alive and Imogen was alive, so it had to be Celia on the stretcher.

‘No!’ she howled.

Her scream wasn’t like an ordinary scream. Imogen kept searching for where it had come from. She couldn’t believe that her mother could make that kind of noise. She hadn’t made any noise when Daddy died. She had just been pale and brave.

Even now, she can see her mother’s face when she realised that Imogen was alive and not Celia. The horror.

Imogen wasn’t allowed back into their bedroom for ages. She had to sleep on the settee downstairs and couldn’t concentrate on her homework with the television on all the time. A policewoman came to talk to her for a time, about Celia. She wanted to know what she had been like in the last few weeks. Nasty, thought Imogen. ‘OK,’ she said.

‘Nothing unusual?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Except she didn’t go to bed.’

The policewoman was interested in this. ‘How do you know?’

‘Because she was sitting at her desk.’

‘Didn’t you go to sleep either?’

‘Yes, I went to sleep.’

‘Then how do you know she didn’t?’

Good point. ‘She told me,’ Imogen lied. Why did she feel as if the policewoman were trying to catch her out? Did she know about the berries?

Janet rang. ‘Why weren’t you at school today?’

‘Something’s happened,’ said Imogen. ‘Tell you later.’

‘Tell me now.’

‘No, I can’t.’

Janet was annoyed and put the phone down. Imogen didn’t care that much. They never had anything to talk about anyway. She suddenly longed for her old yew tree. She wanted to escape there, sit silently in the branches and construct Biggles stories in a world that didn’t really exist.

About a week later, instead of going to school, she caught the train and went back to the old house. Other people lived there now—four pairs of faded jeans flapping on the line, a Wendy house beside the shed and a new cast-iron front gate. Someone had dug up all the cotton lavender near the house and replaced it with miniature conifers. The yew tree was still there, though. Once she could see that there was no one around, Imogen climbed the wall and jumped over. Then she sat in the tree and tried to forget everything. She closed her eyes and thought of Biggles.

But it didn’t work. It didn’t work properly again for years and years, until Harry had gone.

Nobody talked to her about Celia’s death except the policewoman, but she heard her mother discussing it with the police. Apparently, Celia had been doing brilliantly at Cambridge,
but hadn’t made many friends. She was too young, really, they said, not mature enough to cope. She didn’t relate to people. Well, well, well, thought Imogen. Why did no one spot that before? Now everybody knew what she knew.

‘She may not have intended it to work,’ said a policeman. ‘She must have known her sister was due back. Pity she didn’t find her earlier. Fifteen minutes might have made all the difference.’