A Division of the Light (23 page)

“Are you sure?” Alice asked after a pause.

“Positive.”

She nodded. “All right. But I don't want whatever was in his rucksack. Or any money.”

Richard was surprised. “But Thomas
had
no money—didn't you know? His account was almost empty.”

“No, I didn't know that.” Alice looked down. “All he had to do was ask,” she added.

She did not know if she had spoken the truth. Probably she would have resented continuing to support him.

Richard led them toward a car parked alongside a featureless wall of red brick. Suddenly Alice felt nauseous. Sweeping through her was the vivid realization that on the other side of that wall Thomas's coffin was in place and ready for burning. The furnace door would be closed and a control turned. Within seconds gas jets would incinerate the wood and play upon his body like blowtorches. His skin would peel away like bark from a tree and his fatty tissue would bubble and ignite. Before it disintegrated his skeleton would glow dark as an X-ray against the incandescence. Smoke from his burning would flow from the chimney; she and Gregory and Richard would be breathing it in as they left the site. Soon all that would remain of the man she had once loved would be a scattering of bones being shoveled into a pulverizing mill.

She put out one hand to steady herself against the wall, but it was too far away and her fingers scratched thin air. The asphalt tilted on the parking lot.

Gregory reached out and steadied Alice before she fell. Inside her head there was a sense of lightness, of lifting from the ground. Scared of falling further, she leaned against him as if he were indeed a trusted cousin.

Concerned, Richard asked if she was all right.

“I'll be fine,” she said weakly.

“I understand. You'll take a long time to get over this.”

“Ages,” Gregory said drily.

“Don't worry about me,” Alice insisted.

Richard waited a moment and then spoke in a rush.

“You can be honest with me. Before all this happened, Thomas
and you were getting on well together, weren't you? I mean, there weren't any problems?”

Once again Alice wondered if, somehow or other, he had discovered the facts but had concealed his knowledge. Maybe the truth was evident in her face.

“You must have a reason for asking that,” she said.

“Do you mind the question?”

“Of course she doesn't,” Gregory said.

“We were all right,” Alice answered, and then waited a moment. “Yes, we were all right,” she said again, as if repetition were a guarantee of honesty.

Richard was satisfied. “I thought you must be. I was pleased that Tommy had, you know, settled down at last. I never could. It's good to know he was happy before he died.”

“Is there something we don't know?” Gregory asked.

Richard pressed the key to unlock the car boot.

“When he was younger—when he was
a lot
younger—he had black moods. Severely black moods. It was easy to undermine his confidence. I wasn't the only one who knew how to do that because a lot of us were guilty of it. It took Tommy weeks to get out of those moods—sometimes longer. When he was in them, he used to say things he shouldn't have said. To make everyone else feel guilty, I suppose.”

Gregory expressed what was not being spoken.

“You mean he threatened suicide?”

“Often.”

Alice shuddered. “He can't have done that. He didn't leave a note.”

“That's right,” Richard said, “he didn't.”

“You told me that the police said there was food in his rucksack.
That he must have slipped and fallen and hit his head while trying to fill a bottle with water.”

“That's what it looked like.”

“The empty bottle was still there beside the river.”

“Yes.”

“Richard, there were still places that Thomas wanted to see. He was desperate to see them. It was an
accident
. There's no reason to think anything else.”

“I'm sure you're right,” Richard said quietly, in a way that both Alice and Gregory took to mean that he was not completely convinced. He opened the car boot fully.

“I thought you'd like his camera and his map,” he explained. “I've scrolled through his photos. There are a few inside a flat—the one he shared with you, I suppose—but with no one there. Not a soul. I don't know why he would do that.”

Gregory improvised. “Maybe you were planning to redecorate,” he said to Alice.

“That was the idea,” she agreed, and Richard went on.

“After those there are dozens and dozens of photographs of the places that he visited. I have no idea where they are. They all look the same to me.”

Once more, Alice hesitated.

“Thanks,” Gregory said, picking up the map and glancing at it. “He's marked this,” he added.

“Yes, he made notes all over it. His wristwatch, would you like? His address book? He had two archaeology books in his rucksack—do you want those?”

“Richard,” Alice insisted, “I have lots of things to remember your brother by. I really don't need anything else.”

“Apart from the Kodak and the map,” Gregory said quickly,
holding out his hand for the camera. “I'll take care of it,” he said as soon as it was passed over.

“There was another thing,” Richard added cautiously. Alice noticed him tense a little, as though anticipating a dismissive reaction.

They waited. Richard looked up at the crematorium roof and then back at them. She wondered if he was looking for smoke.

“There's a memorial garden here,” he said.

They waited until Richard continued.

“I was going to have the ashes buried there. The undertaker said he would see to it. And they'll put a plaque on the wall. It'll be durable plastic because people steal the brass ones.”

Alice glanced at Gregory, but he did not look back at her.

“But maybe,” Richard went on, then stopped, then started again. “Maybe Tommy would have wanted his ashes scattered in a different place. Maybe he said something to you about it.”

“No, he didn't. Why should he?”

Richard shrugged.

“He must have believed that his death was years away,” Alice said.

“I suppose so. Yes.”

Not knowing how to answer him further, Alice turned to Gregory. “What did you do with your wife's ashes?”

“I buried them where we had been happiest,” he said.

“I thought, perhaps,” Richard said tentatively, “one of those ancient sites that so fascinated him—you know, circles, mounds, things like that, the ones in his photos . . .” His voice tailed off. “But maybe not,” he added defensively.

Once the suggestion had been made, it seemed to Alice that this was the best ethical solution. It would be fitting if all that
remained of Thomas were interred in a place that had informed his ambition. It was the least he deserved.

“You're right,” she agreed. “Why don't you do that?”

“But I don't know anything about archaeology. We were very different people, and what interested Tommy never interested me. If you shared his life, you must have shared his interests—at least to some extent. So I thought that maybe you would have the best idea.” And before Alice could answer he went on, rushing out his suggestion so that the words collided with each other. “And I thought that you would like to do it—bury his ashes at one of his favorite places, I mean. Or scatter them there. Whatever's best.”

“I don't know if I want to do that.”

“It seems right to me,” Richard insisted. “I don't have to be there. In fact it's probably better that I'm not. I don't even need to know where the site is. Because I think it's something that should be done by the person closest to him. And that's you. It could be your secret. I wouldn't mind.”

Even his own brother wasn't concerned, Alice thought. Thomas had been more alone than she had ever fully realized. He had always needed someone; even his remains still needed someone.

“What do you think?” she asked Gregory.

“Maybe it would just be best if they were scattered in the memorial garden. Look, let's be frank, Thomas is dead. He's not going to know or care where his ashes are.”

“But you felt a duty to your wife to leave her at the right place,” Alice said. “Maybe this is about duty.”

Gregory said nothing. His suspicion was confirmed: Thomas was a problem even in death.

The three of them stood together and said nothing until Richard looked at his watch.

“I have to go,” he said. “Maybe you can think about it and let me know. If you can decide within the next hour or so that would help.”

Alice came to a decision.

“You're right,” she said. “Thomas shouldn't be left here. He should be somewhere else. Somewhere that he would want to be.” She turned back to Gregory. “We should do what you did—take him to where he would have been happy.”

Richard's relief and eagerness were apparent.

“And you'll do that?” he asked, far too quickly.

“Of course.”

“And once we've got the ashes to you, I can forget them?”

“Yes,” Alice said. “Yes, you can forget them. I'll make sure they go to the right place.”

Richard leaned forward. For a moment she thought he was about to kiss her, but instead of that he grasped her hand in both of his.

“I was never a true friend to my brother,” he said, “but I always wished him well. You were good for Tommy. I'm so happy that he met you. You knew what was right for him. You still do.”

She nodded. The muscles in her neck felt stiff. Richard went on.

“It's sad that you didn't have a lot more time together. You must have really loved each other.”

There was no point now in telling Richard the truth. She lied to keep him content.

“Yes,” she said, “we did.”

Minute after minute the procession of bleak, lifeless photographs slid across Gregory's screen. At the beginning of each section he
halted their progress and consulted Thomas's OS map. After this he searched the internet for images that would confirm Alice's provisional identification of the locations; she needed to be certain that each stage of Thomas's final journey had been correctly tracked. Perhaps, Gregory thought, a file of digital images and a map covered in handwritten jottings were to be her dead lover's only memorial.

During this period there were three incoming calls to the office. On each occasion Cassie pointedly greeted the caller by name so that her father would know who was ringing. None was unimportant, but Gregory shook his head in dismissal and continued his research. Cassie had to promise each time that he would call back as soon as he could. Gregory had not noticed, but she was wearing her mother's necklace for the first time since he had borrowed it to photograph Alice.

There was little pattern in Thomas's map. It appeared that although his route had been initially systematic it had soon degenerated into unpredictability. Rather than pursue an itinerary based on rational topography, he had instead been prone to impulse. Sometimes he had traveled to sites that were miles away from each other and returned later to ones he had overlooked. In the final days he appeared to have crossed his own tracks several times. Alice had speculated that this might have been the result of transport difficulties, and cited infrequent bus services and poor availability of accommodation. Although Gregory had not disputed this he believed that the doomed journey's haphazard nature was the product of a disordered mind that could no longer comprehend its best course of action.

The very last photographs were of a wheel-head cross that was so tall and spindly that Thomas had evidently had difficulty fitting
it all into the frame. He had also taken several close-ups of patterns and images carved into its sandstone surfaces. Although much of the detail had weathered, Gregory could identify a tree in full leaf, a snake and several human figures, one with its arms outstretched. Only when he checked further did he discover that these were representations of the sacred ash tree that supports the world, the serpent that surrounds it, and a depiction of a crucified man. The cross was an amalgam of pagan and Christian mythology, with the crucifixion sharing the same column as the battle between the Norse gods.

Gregory telephoned Alice from his mobile. She told him that she understood why the cross would have intrigued Thomas; one of his interests had been the cultural impact of belief systems. New beliefs, he had claimed, entered a community first as threat, then as distortion and finally as transformation. Alice suspected that he had seen that process illustrated in the carvings.

Gregory knew that what concerned Alice most of all was that the photographic record stopped in that churchyard. The cross was its terminal point. There were no images of Thomas's planned destination.

“I know where the cross is,” Gregory told her. “The date on the photos and the notations on the map correspond.”

“He was on his way to Sampson's Bratfull,” Alice said.

“That's what it looks like.”

“But he never got there. If he had done, he'd have photographed it.”

“That sounds right.”

Alice did not answer. Some extraneous noise, perhaps an echo, rustled in his ear.

Until quite recently Gregory would have been bemused by
the name of Sampson's Bratfull, and would have assumed that it was fictitious until he was shown it on a map. And if he had then researched the mound further he would have judged it to be uninteresting and of marginal archaeological interest. Now, as the place toward which Alice's last lover had been heading when he drowned, the location assumed an importance that he could scarcely measure.

Evidence on the Bratfull was scant. Internet photographs showed a concentration of stones set on a drab, marshy, desolate moor. According to posted comment, the modest scale of the mound had disappointed passing walkers. If it had been a tumulus, Gregory thought, it must originally have been much higher; perhaps builders of stone walls or believers in pagan religions had cannibalized it over the decades. There was agreement that the name originated in a folk tale in which a giant let stones fall from his overloaded apron as he strode across the high moor. The sixteenth-century spelling of Sampson, and the Old English and Gaelic name for cloak,
brat
, testified to the antiquity of the myth. Some sources, however, claimed that it was not an earthly giant who was carrying the stones, but the devil.