Natural Flights of the Human Mind (30 page)

He forced himself to dress and shave, creeping about the house, trying not to make any sudden noises. He couldn’t get the dream out of his head. It was a familiar, recurring dream, but it never became any easier to bear. It was as convincing after fifty instalments as it had been the first time. Still terrifying. The desperate, sinking realisation that he couldn’t do the exam. That he was incapable and would be found out.

The phone rang again and he picked it up.

‘Pete, it’s Justin. What time are we meeting up?’

‘I don’t know. Seven, I think.’

‘OK. See you then.’

If I survive, thought Pete.

He dressed in a suit, aware of the need for respectability. He tried to prepare a defence for his fast driving, but he knew what his father would say. ‘You shouldn’t have got caught.’

He drove over to his parents’ house and arrived ten minutes late. His mother was hovering by the door as he went in. ‘Hi, Mum,’ he said.

She smiled at him, but he could sense her nervousness, so he walked past her without another word. She blended in with the wood panelling of the hall, only there for the décor, fading into an insignificant background.

His father was waiting for him in the office—an imposing room with bookcases lining every wall, and a large executive desk in shiny dark wood. Books were displayed in sets, according to colour, with leather binding and gold lettering. Pete had never seen his father take one out to read.

‘You’re late,’ said his father. ‘Sit down.’

Pete sat opposite the desk, the soft warmth of the leather welcoming and enclosing him. He was now lower than his father. He waited for the onslaught.

His father swivelled from side to side without saying a word. He looked smug and superior, exactly as he should look, the managing director of a firm he had singlehandedly set up, developed and expanded. A very rich man who could buy whatever he wanted. His eyes were fixed on Pete, but he didn’t speak.

Pete moved uncomfortably and felt his mouth go dry. What was it all about? He cleared his throat. ‘Did you want something, Dad?’

His father reacted to this. ‘Did I want something? Am I
happy to see you sitting there doing nothing? Perhaps you’d care to tell me what you’re going to do today.’

This wasn’t what Pete had expected. He didn’t plan his days in advance. ‘I’m not sure. I haven’t really—’

‘What do you mean, you’re not sure? I pay you a generous allowance. You have everything you could possibly want, a car, a house, a plane, and I pay for it. Don’t you think it’s time you started to think about earning your own money?’

Pete’s insides shrivelled with misery as he recognised the old familiar conversation. They went over this every few months. It always resulted in his father’s anger building up to boiling point and spilling over. The room became white-hot with fury, the surrounding air throbbing with accusation. ‘OK,’ he said, his voice small and insignificant next to his father’s. He stood up, anxious to resolve it quickly. ‘I’ll go down to the labour exchange today.’

‘Sit down!’ his father roared, and Pete sat down. ‘I want to know what you’re going to do with your life.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Pete. ‘I’ll get a job. You’ll see—I’ll soon be offering to lend you money.’ He smiled, willing his father to see the joke, to abandon his headlong rush down the motorway and turn into a smaller, gentler country road. ‘What a relief. I thought you were going to tell me you’d been made bankrupt, or diagnosed with cancer, or something important like that.’

‘You don’t think this is important?’ His father got up, came round to the front of the desk and perched himself on the edge. He had put on weight in recent years, and was even bulkier than he used to be, yet he was still nimble on his feet, bursting with energy and strength. His physical presence was overpowering, and Pete found himself pressing into the back of the chair, intimidated by his closeness.

‘Your mother and I—’

Mother? What did this have to do with his mother? He followed his father’s eyes and turned round. She had crept into
the back of the room and was standing watching them. She gave him a smile again but it had no power. Why didn’t she say something? How could she stand there and let her husband bully him? But then he saw again the way she stood, closing in on herself, small, fragile and inward, and he knew he was asking too much.

‘Your mother and I are very angry that you’ve been caught speeding by the police,’ said his father. ‘Again. Way over the limit. How irresponsible can you get? You’re a grown man and you behave like a teenager.’

‘Everyone speeds,’ said Pete. ‘You do.’

‘I don’t get caught.’

His mother stepped round the side of Pete’s chair. She must have been edging forwards during the conversation. ‘You were going over a hundred miles per hour. You could have killed someone.’

‘You’ll probably be banned,’ said his father.

His mother’s eyes slid away to the side, refusing to look at him. She was fiddling with a handkerchief in her pocket, as if she had never spoken.

‘Look, son,’ said his dad, and his voice softened, ‘this can’t go on. My deal is, you can come and work for me, properly—in at eight, a full day, or I cut off your allowance.’ He smiled, as if everything had been miraculously sorted out. Everybody manoeuvred into the correct position. End of discussion. Close the file.

Pete was shocked. ‘What do you mean?’

‘No more money.’

‘What? None? What am I supposed to live on?’

‘There won’t be a problem. You’re going to start earning your wages, grow up, act your age.’

Pete could feel panic rushing through his body, scorching and abrasive. They were being perfectly reasonable, of course. Most men of his age earned a living. But he had long ago discovered a fundamental weakness in himself—an inability to
achieve anything of value. He lacked Andy’s natural talent. ‘I do try,’ he said.

‘No, you don’t,’ said his father. ‘Look how well Andy’s doing. You don’t get that kind of success by sitting back and expecting someone else to supply all your needs.’

Pete rose from his seat. ‘I see,’ he said, anger and resentment giving his voice more strength. ‘Andy’s the golden boy, as always, and I’m the rubbish.’

His father nodded. ‘You’ve said it.’

Pete pushed away the chair and walked to the door. ‘Fine. I’ll get a job—I’ve already said that. You think I can’t do anything, but just wait and see.’ He pulled open the door. ‘I’ll show you.’

He heard his mother cry as he left the room, ‘Pete—’

He pulled the front door shut, intending to slam it, but it was too heavy and surrounded by insulation. The sound was weak and ineffectual.

He jumped into his car, turned on the ignition and put his foot down hard. The tyres shrieked as he pulled away violently over the gravel. He swung out of the gate.

‘You didn’t have to tell them you were paying for the windows,’ says Doody.

‘I didn’t tell them. You did.’

‘You didn’t have to agree.’

Maybe she hadn’t meant to tell them and it had just slipped out. So she’s embarrassed—a matter of pride. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘it doesn’t matter. For all they know, we could both own the cottage. I could be your brother. I could be Jonathan.’

‘No, you couldn’t. You told him you lived in the lighthouse. He even knew your name.’

She strides ahead and he follows her back to the cottage. They’re going to the barn this afternoon. Tony will be flying the Tiger Moth to an airfield where there’s a prospective buyer.

Of course. That’s the problem. She doesn’t want it to go.

‘Biggles wouldn’t have sold it,’ she says.

It would be better if she stopped thinking so much about a non-existent person.

‘I always thought Mandles—Biggles would come and save things. After he escaped.’

‘Biggles isn’t real.’

‘I know that,’ she says, glaring at him.

They reach the cottage and go in through the gate.

‘Supposing he’s never rescued?’

He doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Who’s Mandles?

‘There he is, kidnapped by smugglers, bound hand and foot and bundled into a converted Camel.’

‘Sounds like the Trojan horse.’

‘Does it matter if they chuck him out into the sea, or if he gets out of the ropes, struggles with the pilot, crashes into the sea?’

‘A bit cold. Not good, crashing into the sea.’

‘But at least you survive if you crash on to water. It’s a softer landing, surely?’

‘Depends if there are any rocks, how cold the sea is, whether he can swim, how long it takes for the rescue services to arrive.’

‘Oh, not long. They all know he’s been kidnapped.’

‘He should be OK, then. At this time of year, when the sea’s warm.’

‘Yes. On the other hand, should he just stay there for ever, waiting for the climax? What if there is no climax, no ending? Who cares? I thought I did, but now I’m not so sure. He’s not real, is he?’

‘No,’ says Straker. He doesn’t understand what’s going on here. But at least she’s talking, and she doesn’t sound quite so miserable as before. ‘He’s not real.’

‘It’s just a story.’

She gives a sigh, and he examines her face for longer than
normal. He knows her now. She’s not a stranger, but someone he wants to buy windows for. This is the extraordinary thing that has happened to him. He wants to buy windows for someone.

‘There’s something I need to tell you.’

She looks at him sharply, somehow knowing it’s serious. ‘You’re not going to confess to another seventy-eight, are you?’

Pete took the corner too fast, but he didn’t care. He wanted to shut his eyes, put the accelerator down as far as it would go and roar into oblivion. His anger had subsided almost as soon as he pulled out of his parents’ drive. Sleep was beckoning him again. Deep, dreamless sleep where he wouldn’t have to keep tasting the bitter failure that had accompanied him all through his life.

The tyres skidded, he swung the steering wheel, and lost control. The car careered off the road, and rolled down the bank, turning over three times. It came to a halt on its back, wedged against a tree.

Pete lay dazed for a while, tangled in a heap on the upside-down roof of the car, then slowly and uncomfortably tried to extricate himself. He moved with great care, uncertain if he was still in one piece, but everything seemed to function so he eased himself out of the open window. He was in a small wood, some way from the road, and completely alone. The car groaned as he left it—creaked and settled. He sat down among the brambles and stared into silence. Everything around him seemed artificial. The blood from a scratch on his hand was too red, the sky unnaturally blue, all in primary colours, lacking subtlety, like a child’s painting.

After a few minutes, he put his face into his shaking hands, and started to cry. It was not shock that was affecting him, or fear. It was an overwhelming sense of failure.

He had been on the edge of a black, welcoming void, desperate to fall down it. Now that void had moved away, out of his reach, and he remained on the outside as always, abandoned, lost, with no possible pathway back home.

12 p.m.

All faces are turned to the windows on the right of the coach, watching the sea. It’s a calm day, with a faint breeze rustling the edges of a gentle swell, which rises and falls rhythmically. It’s an idyllic scene, seagulls circling and diving, the sun transforming the metallic surface of the water into a brilliant blue reflection of the sky.

‘There it is!’

Everyone leans over and stares. The lighthouse is silhouetted against the sea, calm and in control, almost elegant, despite the fairground implications of its red and white circles. It’s pointing up at the sky, surrounded by space, superior in its isolation.

‘How close can you get us?’ Carmen asks the coach driver.

He’s already slowed down, examining the cropped grass bordering the Tarmac. ‘I might be able to get us on to the edge,’ he says. ‘But I couldn’t risk anything more than that.’

‘OK. That’ll do.’

He swings the wheel sharply and they lurch on to the grass, levelling out, until they’re parallel with the road. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘That’s as far as I go. As it is, I’ve broken a few rules.’

‘That’s fine,’ says Carmen. ‘Thank you.’

They climb out of the coach and on to the grass, standing around at first, stiff from the long drive, squinting into the brightness of the sun. After a few minutes, they organise themselves into small groups and set off towards the lighthouse. Carmen finds herself taking the lead with a group of
young men, while the older ones walk more slowly behind, stumbling over the unevenness of the ground.

‘What if he’s not here?’ says Kieran Fisher.

Carmen takes a deep breath. ‘We’ve already had this conversation,’ she says.

‘Ignore him,’ says a calm voice on her other side. ‘He’s always like this. Can’t leave anything alone.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You’ve forgotten me already, haven’t you? Stuart Fisher. Kieran’s my brother.’

‘I don’t know why he came,’ she says. ‘He doesn’t believe we’ll find him.’

‘He never believes anything. Never did. He’s a compulsive doubter. You should try living with him. It’s no fun, I can assure you.’

‘Don’t believe him,’ says a voice in her other ear. ‘He can’t tell the truth. He’s the compulsive one. He lies to make himself look good.’

‘See?’ says Stuart.

‘He even fools our mum,’ says Kieran.

Carmen finds herself unable to judge between them. She stops and looks round. ‘We should wait for the others,’ she says. She can see Mrs Mehta struggling in the rear, her high heels sinking into the turf. Geraldine Pendlestone, one of the few survivors of the crash, goes back to help. She used to be a teacher until she lost the entire class in her care. Carmen waits for them to reach her, and the brothers walk on without her, several yards apart, acting as if they don’t know each other.

‘Are you all right?’ she says to Mrs Mehta. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise it would be such a long walk. My directions weren’t very precise.’

‘I am good,’ says Mrs Mehta. ‘What is a little discomfort? A little pain for my daughter, isn’t it?’

‘What do you expect to get out of this?’ asks Carmen.

Geraldine shrugs. ‘Who knows? I just think we owe it to
ourselves to find out what we can while we’ve got the chance. I suppose there will always be unanswered questions—nobody can know everything. But I’d like to see him again.’

‘Do you think we’ll recognise him?’ Carmen has a folder full of blurred newspaper pictures in her bag, but she knows he won’t look the same.

‘Was he evil or stupid? That’s what I want to know.’

‘I don’t see how he can go on living a normal life. How would you live with yourself?’

Geraldine looks at her. ‘So what are you saying? He should be dead? Kill himself for our sakes?’

Carmen flushes. ‘I don’t know.’ She fights down the flames of her internal fire. ‘Well, why not? It doesn’t seem right that he should be all right when our children aren’t.’

‘I lost a whole class of children. You never recover from that either. But I’m not sure that knowing he was dead would make it any easier.’

They weren’t your children, thinks Carmen. It’s not the same.

‘What I have discovered,’ says Geraldine, ‘is that I want him to be evil.’

Carmen nods slowly. ‘He is evil.’

‘The trouble is, he may not be.’

‘He must be. All that blood on his hands.’

‘He might regret it.’

No way, thinks Carmen.

There’s shouting from ahead, and they see that the younger ones have already reached the lighthouse. They’re standing at the bottom, looking up.

‘They might have waited until we all got there,’ says Carmen.

‘They probably feel they’ve waited long enough.’

They walk a little faster, half carrying Mrs Mehta between them, until they are all congregated at the base of the lighthouse.

‘He’s not here,’ says James Taverner.

Kieran tries the handle on the door, and it swings open. ‘We could go in,’ he says.

‘I don’t know…’ says Geraldine, but nobody takes any notice. They race inside and up the stairs. Carmen and Geraldine follow. They can hear the footsteps of the others pounding up the stairs above them, stamping in their anxiety to be there first.

‘Oh, well,’ says Carmen. ‘What have we got to lose?’

‘Suppose we have the wrong person?’ Geraldine seems genuinely worried. ‘Thirty-two people hounding an innocent man.’

‘Too late to worry about that,’ says Carmen, and they start climbing the stairs.

12.15 p.m.

Doody and Straker prepare some lunch in the cottage kitchen. The hens prowl broodily round the wall on their frieze, clucking in silence. Doody fills a jug of water at the sink and puts two glasses out with the plates and knives. Straker gets the breadboard, unwraps some pâté and puts it on a plate.

Doody thinks about what Straker has just told her. ‘So you think you crashed the car on purpose?’

‘That’s how I remember it.’

‘You wanted to die.’

‘Yes.’

‘But it didn’t work.’

‘No. I just got up and crawled out. Apart from a few bruises, I was completely unhurt. The car didn’t catch fire.’

She half smiles. ‘Bad luck, then. Couldn’t even kill yourself properly.’

‘No. I had another go the next day.’

She is about to sit down, but stops and looks at him. His
beard is shorter than it was when she first met him, and neater. He’s started to trim it and she hadn’t noticed. He looks younger than when she first met him.

‘You mean you did it deliberately? The real crash? The aeroplane?’

‘Well—the evidence is fairly incriminating, isn’t it?’

‘But that was different. I mean, there were other people involved.’

‘If I’d tried it once, I could have tried it again.’ He looks past her. ‘I was a fool. No common sense, no concept of responsibility.’

She sits down and looks at the plate in front of her. Oliver d’Arby’s china. White with two blue circles round the rim. ‘My sister committed suicide.’

His eyes turn to her in surprise. ‘I didn’t know you had a sister.’

‘I haven’t. She’s dead.’

He watches her. ‘Why did she do it?’

‘I couldn’t understand it at the time. She was very clever, a gifted child, everybody said. Maybe she couldn’t keep it up. I suppose it must be a huge strain, having to be the best all the time. You’re not allowed to be lazy, or careless. Everyone’s expectations must be so high, and if things don’t go right, they’re all so disappointed. I think she tried to explain it to me once, but I wasn’t listening. We didn’t get on.’

‘So she was too clever and I was too stupid.’ His voice is low and exhausted. ‘I can’t remember what was going on in my mind—only the despair, the feeling that there was no way out.’

‘But you had an easy way out. You could have gone to work.’

‘I know. It doesn’t make sense, does it? I told them I would work. But that wasn’t really what it was about. I couldn’t seem to do anything right—nothing would please them…’ He pauses and smiles bleakly. ‘I was like a self-indulgent, spoilt child, I suppose.’

‘But you still don’t know what happened on the next day when you crashed the plane. It could have been completely different.’

He is silent, and they start to eat their lunch. Doody needs to consider what he’s just told her before she can make any comment. She likes the fact that they can think together but they don’t need to share the words.

Did she share any silence with Harry? Even in the last few weeks when he seemed depressed, Doody had talked to him all the time, filling the spaces, trying to make the flat homely and comfortable with her life, her thoughts, her existence. Somewhere he would want to come home to.

Except he didn’t.

Harry and Imogen had talked non-stop to start with. About everything in the world. It was as if neither of them had talked before and they just poured it out, endlessly. Did they listen to each other? At the time, she had thought they did, but perhaps she was wrong, and they were just concentrating on their own thoughts. Maybe they had both found it so exciting to have a person to talk to that they forgot they should have been listening as well.

The liberating thing about Straker is that she doesn’t have to try. There is nothing that she must do or say. She can talk to him or not and he accepts both.

‘How old are you?’ she asks.

He looks up in surprise. ‘I’m not quite sure. I’ll have to work it out.’

‘Well, you’re good at numbers. Think of a number, double it, multiply by three, divide by two, take away the number you first thought of.’

He shakes his head and smiles. ‘Fifty-three,’ he says.

‘Ten years older than me.’

‘Really?’ He bites into his roll. She watches him chew. She normally can’t bear people eating, hearing food rolling round in their mouths, breaking up, liquefying, watching them
swallow, seeing it go down their throats. All horribly intimate and physical. But every time she sits with Straker, she doesn’t mind. It seems perfectly natural, as if she’s eating and all the noises and movements are her own.

Biggles doesn’t seem important any more.

‘It’s an impressive record,’ she says. ‘Surviving two crashes in as many days.’

1 p.m.

They swarm over the lighthouse, crowding into the tiny rooms, overflowing from one level to the next, squeezing past each other on the stairs. The young ones race up to the light room and lean over the railing.

‘What a way to see the world every time you wake up.’

‘Cold in the winter.’

‘You can see for miles.’

They have to shout to make themselves heard. The wind is booming overhead and tugging at their T-shirts and jackets.

‘Does it seem completely upright to you?’

They try to stand up straight and gauge the vertical position of the lighthouse against the church tower in the background.

‘It’s an optical illusion.’

‘No, it’s not right.’

‘You’re imagining it. It’s fine.’

‘It makes me feel sick. I’m sure it’s leaning over, like the Tower of Pisa.’

‘Look how close we are to the edge of the cliff. That can’t be right.’

‘Do you reckon it’s going to fall over?’

‘I’m sure of it. I’m an architect. I know about these things. Believe me, the edge of the cliff is too close. It’ll be much more eroded lower down—undermining the foundations.’

They look at each other, alarmed. ‘Is it safe?’

In the room below, Carmen and the older ones are peering round curiously. They move awkwardly, with the embarrassment of intruders, but at the same time they want to see how he lives, to find proof that they have the right man.

‘Look,’ says Geraldine, picking up several files from the floor. She puts them on the desk and opens them. Photographs spill out, news cuttings, letters from them to Peter Straker, lists of names, communications from experts, times, dates…

‘There you are,’ says Jack Tilly. ‘What more evidence do you want? It’s him all right.’

‘We knew he had all this information. We gave him most of it. He could still be what he says he is, a writer,’ says Geraldine.

Carmen doesn’t believe this. She never has. She knows that Peter Straker is Pete Butler. In her mind they are the same person. She felt it from the first moment she received his letter and she trusts her instincts on this, absolutely.

‘But where is he?’

‘Yes,’ says Carmen. ‘That’s what I want to know.’ The thought that they might miss him altogether haunts her. They have found the lighthouse, his home, his notes. All they want is the man.

‘We could just wait here for him to return.’

Carmen hesitates and looks at her watch. One fifteen. She makes a decision. ‘Let’s go and have lunch. We’ll all feel better when we’ve eaten, and we can ask in the village if anyone knows where he is. We can always come back.’

She calls the young ones down from the light room and they emerge from the stairs dishevelled by the wind and excited.

‘Phew!’ says Jeremy Ainsworth, breathing deeply. ‘Great place to live.’

Something like a groan begins somewhere deep within the building. It starts softly, a delicate whine of protest, polite still and controlled, then it rises in volume and becomes a shriek, more violent, like the protest of a man screaming in agony.
Gradually, the sound subsides, settles back into the low groan, then stops. Everyone is motionless, looking round with shocked horror.

‘What was that?’ says Kieran into the silence.

‘The lighthouse is dying,’ says Stuart. ‘It’s about to collapse.’

Jack Tilly bolts for the stairs. ‘I’m out of here,’ he says.

‘Well, probably not quite that soon,’ says Stuart, watching Tilly’s departing back. There’s a shout of laughter, mixed with relief, then they all dash after him, tumbling over each other in their anxiety to escape.

They drive back into the village, subdued, grappling with the discovery of Straker’s notes, the crumbling lighthouse, the realisation that they are in the right place and that they have been breathing the same air as the man they have all been hating for twenty-five years.