The Living and the Dead in Winsford (21 page)

He smiled briefly to indicate that it was a truth with modification. ‘But I would have regretted it even more if I hadn’t taken care of him.’

‘Taken care of him?’

He nodded. ‘He’s twenty-four. And not exactly normal, to make a long story short.’

‘If you make long stories short I shan’t tell you anything about myself.’

He smiled again. ‘All right, if that’s the way you want it. It happened one winter evening nearly twelve years ago. On the way between Derby and Stoke – we were living just outside Stoke at that time.’

I nodded and waited.

‘Me and my wife Sylvia and Jeremy were on our way home late one evening. We crashed with a lorry. I was driving. Sylvia died in hospital a few hours later. Jeremy was badly injured and was in a coma for two months. I escaped with a broken wrist.’

‘I’m sorry. Please forgive me, I didn’t know . . .’

He assumed a facial expression I couldn’t pin down. Somewhere between resignation and confidentiality perhaps, I don’t know. In any case, at that moment Barbara came in with our food – Mark had given the starter a miss, and so we were neck and neck in that respect at least.

And then, as we slowly worked our way through our boiled cod with potatoes, asparagus and horseradish sauce, he continued the tale. Jeremy eventually came out of his coma at the hospital after eight weeks – while he was lying there unconscious he had somehow managed to celebrate his thirteenth birthday. His bodily injuries eventually healed, but something had also happened to his brain. He could hardly talk, his motor functions were almost non-existent, he had frequent fits and seemed not to understand any but the simplest of instructions. He couldn’t read, couldn’t write, didn’t seem to know whether he was coming or going. Nevertheless Mark took him home and survived the first two years with the aid of an assistant who came to help several hours every day. Jeremy had improved, Mark explained, but only very slightly. He continued to have fits – it was apparently some kind of epilepsy – and on several occasions Mark was forced to take him to the hospital in Stoke. The doctors recommended that Jeremy should be placed in some kind of institution; Mark was very much against that, but by the time Jeremy reached the age of fifteen and started showing signs of aggressive resistance he felt obliged to give way. The boy was placed in a home not far from Plymouth, and was moved after a year to another home near Lyme Regis in Dorset, where he stayed until he was nineteen. Meanwhile Mark had bought and moved into that house on Exmoor: he didn’t explain why, merely said that he wanted to get away from the Midlands. He stressed that there was no question of Jeremy being ill-treated at the home, but ‘in the end I just couldn’t bear seeing him sitting there. And so I took him home once and for all.’

I found myself breathing a sigh of relief.

‘Anyway, that’s the way it is,’ he said. ‘He hardly ever goes out. He sleeps fourteen hours a day, and sits in front of his computer for ten. But it seems to work. Who says that people have to go to the cinema, go shopping for food and go on holiday? Eh? Read books? Mix with other people? Who says that?’

But there was more hope than resignation in his voice.

‘And I can leave him on his own. He doesn’t do silly things any more.’

‘You mean he used to?’

He shrugged. ‘It happened. He could be a danger to himself. But that’s not the case any more. I’m sitting here now, for instance, as you may have noticed. And I often go for walks over the moor, as I think I said last time. No, he needs help with practical things such as washing clothes and preparing food, that kind of thing, but he doesn’t mind being left on his own.’

‘Do you talk to him? I mean—’

‘He understands what I say. Not everything, but as much as is necessary. He never answers, of course, but he understands that it can be helpful if he does as he’s told. If he’s been a good boy when I get home this evening, for instance, he’ll get a reward. A Crunchie.’

‘A Crunchie?’

‘Yes, a chocolate bar. It’s his absolute favourite. I have a secret store in the car. If he ever found it he’d probably eat himself to death.’

I thought about all that while Barbara came to clear away our used plates.

‘But that means you can never go away, does it? Not for more than a short time.’

He shook his head.

‘Not without help. But luckily I have a sister. And if necessary I can arrange for him to spend a week at that place in Lyme Regis. But I try to avoid that . . . Although I have to admit that I spent a week in northern Italy last year. I managed both Florence and Venice. Anyway, that was my life in thirty minutes. May I offer you a glass of wine while I listen to yours?’

I didn’t need the stipulated half an hour, but managed to occupy twenty minutes. While Mark had been talking I had managed to think up a story I thought sounded quite credible, and that I ought to be able to remember in future.

I had been married and I had two grown-up children. I had been divorced for seven years, had worked behind the scenes at Swedish Television for over twenty years, and had started writing books around the time I got divorced. Three novels so far: they had sold sufficiently well in Scandinavia for me to take a year off and devote myself exclusively to writing. Which I thought was an enormous boost. What were my books about? Life, death and love – what else?

He laughed good-humouredly at that, then asked if any of them had been translated into English. I told him they hadn’t – Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, but that was all so far.

But what I talked about more than anything else was my childhood – and in some strange way, after only a short while, I almost felt as if I were sitting in Gudrun Ewerts’s old room in Norra Bantorget again. Mark was leaning forward over the table on his elbows, watching me speak all the time with his piercing blue eyes almost the same colour as his pullover. And I spoke. About Gunsan. About my home town. About my poor parents. About Rolf and Martin, although I used a different name for the latter, and I recall that for a moment – no longer than that, but even so – I was convinced that I would be able to tell him the truth. That I could tell him what had really happened.

I didn’t do so, of course, but I knew that beyond all doubt there was something about this man and his restrained sorrow that attracted me. When we said goodnight outside The Royal Oak shortly after ten o’clock, I found it difficult not to give him a hug.

But I didn’t do that either, and now, a few hours later as I lie in bed with Castor over my legs and am about to put a full stop after the evening, I think about how I talked so much about me and my life. I must have had a great need to do so. The story about his son and that tragic accident was still lingering on inside my mind, of course, but I also realized that we hadn’t discussed something we had talked about on the previous occasion. His ability to see what was hidden. The missing husband, the shadow, the sun-drenched house in the south and all the rest of it.

Once again it had become quite stormy during the evening. The wind was howling around the eaves, and there was a hint of snow in the air. I felt a little depressed, more depressed than I had been for several days, I don’t know why.

THREE

24

I left the Samos material untouched for over a week. I also wondered whether I ought to get rid of it all, take it out onto the moor with a can of petrol and burn it up somewhere; but I decided that would be a bit overhasty. Perhaps it would be useful eventually, even if I wasn’t at all sure what was meant by ‘useful’ and ‘eventually’. Another couple of concepts had been robbed of their usual meaning, but that’s the way things seemed to be going. I was now living within the framework provided by the hours of the day and the borders of Exmoor. I carried on reading about John Ridd and Lorna Doone, and I went for walks with Castor for three or four hours every day, all over the moor, but especially in the region of Simonsbath and Brendon, where heaven and earth kissed. At least, that’s what it said on a little memorial stone where I parked the car one day:
Open yer eyes, oh, ye lucky wanderer, for near to here is a playce where heaven and earth kiss and caress
.

The weather was consistently pleasant, several degrees above zero, relatively gentle winds and hardly any rain. I made my own dinner every other evening, and every other evening drove down to The Royal Oak Inn. There was no sign of Mark Britton, and even if that made me a little disappointed every time, there was nothing I could do about it. I exchanged a few words with Rosie, Tom and Robert about the weather and about Castor, but that was usually about all. When I got back to Darne Lodge I lit the fire and played four games of patience. Switched off the bedside lamp before eleven and slept until I was woken up by the dawn. Castor would be by my feet, under the covers.

No more dead pheasants appeared in front of the door, and I had gradually got used to thinking that we would go on living like this until one of us had an attack of thrombosis during the night and died in our sleep. Either me or Castor, but preferably both of us the same night. Why not? Why was it necessary for one of us to outlive the other? Would it be possible for me to convince Mr Tawking that I could rent this modest dwelling indefinitely?

But on the twenty-fifth of November I visited the Winsford Community Computer Centre once again. Something had told me that it was high time. Over a month had passed since that remarkable walk, but it could just as easily have been a year. Or several, it seemed so far away in the past.

Everything that wasn’t here and now seemed to be so far away in the past, and I suppose that’s how it must feel for anybody who only takes account of hours that pass and walks that are undertaken. I hadn’t even realized that it was Sunday when I stood rattling the door of the centre, but I was duly informed by Alfred Biggs when I took him at his word and knocked on his red-painted door just round the corner a few minutes later.

That was no problem, no problem at all. Alfred Biggs unlocked the door for me, and helped me to set up links with the outside world. Then he apologized and said he had a job to do in the church, but he promised to come back again in about an hour. If I wanted to leave before then, all I needed to do was to switch off the lights and make sure the door was locked behind me. If anybody else wanted to come in and access the web, I should let them in so long as they signed their names in the visitors’ book.

Before leaving, he naturally made sure that there was a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits on my table. And that Castor had a bowl of water and a handful of treats that his missus could give him as she considered appropriate. I thanked him for his kindness, and when he had left I sat absolutely still with my eyes closed for half a minute before opening our mailboxes.

Mine first, that already seemed to be the routine.

Just one message. I couldn’t pin down the precise reaction I felt. Relief or disappointment? It was Katarina Wunsch again, in any case. In three lines she apologized for upsetting me with her doppelgänger story, and hoped that I would enjoy a pleasant winter down in Morocco. I wrote an equally brief reply, closed the box and feeling somewhat uneasy I turned my attention to Martin’s e-mails.

Ten new messages: I could ignore seven of them straight away. The remaining three were from that student about that incorrectly marked essay again, from Bergman and from the person calling himself G. After a little thought I decided to ignore the student as well, and instead looked to see what Eugen Bergman had on his mind.

He said thank you for my (i.e. Martin’s) previous message, wished me all the best with regard to the work and the time down there in general, and he had a question. A journalist from the Swedish magazine
Svensk Bokhandel
was on a journey through north Africa and would very much like to call on me for an interview. Bergman didn’t think Martin would be interested, but had promised to ask. I wrote a response in which I (Martin) confirmed that we were totally uninterested in any kind of contact with journalists, and that work was going according to plan. Then I drew a deep breath and opened the message from G.

Your last e-mail made me more than confused. Did you have a stroke or are you just trying to avoid the issue? I’m coming down. What is your address? G

I just sat there for a minute or more, trying to absorb the implications. My last message had obviously not calmed G down at all. He was
more than confused
.
Trying to avoid the issue?
But what was the issue that Martin was trying to avoid? What was so important that he needed to meet Martin?

And who was he?

I realized of course that Martin must have told G about our plans for spending six months in Morocco, and presumably also that the purpose was to write something involving Hyatt and Herold. Something to do with the years before her suicide. And that this had disturbed G so much that he felt he must put a stop to it. Isn’t that the case? I asked myself. Surely that’s the way the land must lie?

Unfortunately I was unable to dig out the message Martin must presumably have sent him, and as I nibbled away at my biscuits and sipped my tea I wondered how hard it would be to sort out something like that. My knowledge of computers and IT had always been as limited as my interest in such matters, but I could see that it shouldn’t be too difficult for anybody with a bit of competence in the field.

But I was also only too aware of the fact that I would never be able to bring myself to take that step. It was not certain that Martin’s old message would in fact throw any light on the matter, and in any case it was distinctly possible that I would find the key anyway. Surely it must be somewhere in the remainder of the material from Samos and Morocco, the two-hundred-and-fifty pages or however much it was that I hadn’t yet got round to reading. If there was something as important as G was alleging, it could hardly escape my notice, provided that I could raise enough strength to sit down and read the stuff. It seemed highly likely that G himself would feature in the material, but if he wasn’t in fact the Russian Gusov, I didn’t think I had come across him yet. Where I got that feeling from was not something I could answer for.