Flesh and Blood (7 page)

10 Outsiders

The following afternoon, Matt went with Aunt Carol to see Gramps in hospital.

He had spent the morning in town with his mother. She was buying a suit to wear for job interviews and for some reason she wanted Matt to be with her. She seemed to be trying to impress on him how seriously she was taking what she called ‘the next big step’. This afternoon, she had appointments with the town’s three employment agencies.

The core of the hospital was a cluster of tall Victorian red-brick buildings, the grounds of which had been steadily filled in with modern concrete annexes. Stoham Ward was on the first floor of one of the older buildings, with windows that looked out across the flat roofs of a neighbouring block.

They paused in the doorway and Matt surveyed the ranks of beds along either wall. Ancient grey-faced men lay staring at the ceiling, waiting to die. Others, just as old, sat in chairs by their beds, studying the pages of newspapers or large print books, or talking to visitors. In a side room, a small semi-circle of aged men sat watching daytime TV.

Gramps was one of the ones lying in bed. Matt swallowed, unprepared for the sudden rush of emotion.

“Like I said in the car,” Carol told him. “Gramps is very ill. You mustn’t expect too much from him.”

But then Matt noticed that Gramps was not alone. The vicar of Crooked Elms was sitting by his bed, leaning forward, talking earnestly.

The vicar stood as Matt and Carol approached. “Ah,” he said, “visitors.”

Gramps lay motionless, but Matt saw his eyes move slowly from the vicar to his new visitors and back again.

“Carol,” said the young vicar. “And this is...?”

“Matt,” said Carol. “My nephew.”

The vicar nodded. “We have met before,” he said. “I didn’t realise you were a Wareden, Matt.”

There was something about the way he said that which Matt didn’t like – the reference to his family name, the too-familiar use of his
first
name.

Matt shrugged, said nothing.

“I hope you don’t mind,” the vicar continued, addressing Carol. “I was visiting another gentleman of my parish and I couldn’t help but notice your father.”

“Of course not, David,” said Carol, quickly. “It’s very kind of you.” To Matt, she added, “David has always taken an interest in our family – he visited Gramps a lot, before...”

The vicar smiled awkwardly. “We miss him in the village,” he said. “I hadn’t realised he was here. He asked me to keep an eye on his house. I’ve been doing that anyway – Neighbourhood Watch, and all that – but I assured him I would continue. Mrs Wareden was always a regular member of our congregation...” He hesitated, as if aware that he was treading in a delicate area, then plunged on. “I hope your family is keeping well, Mrs Smith. How are your lovely daughters?”

It seemed that he wouldn’t stop talking, now that he had started, but Carol managed to get rid of him after a few minutes.

Gramps watched them all the time, through heavy-lidded eyes. He had probably been sedated, Matt guessed.

“How are you, Gramps?” he asked tentatively.

His grandfather just stared at him, and Matt wondered if he blamed him for stopping him from killing himself.

“Dad?” said Carol. “Can you hear us, Dad?”

Gramps licked his lips, then said, in a soft whisper, “I can hear you, Carol.” But he was still staring at Matt.

Matt wanted to tell him that he had read the letter, and that he understood. He wanted to tell him that he almost wished he had just walked past that open door, so that Gramps wasn’t found until much later. But then, he wondered, why had Gramps left the door open, if he hadn’t wanted to be found?

“Everybody sends their love,” said Carol, unaware of the currents passing between Gramps and Matt. “We’re all praying for you, Dad. We all want you to get better quickly.”

Gramps managed to nod. Then he closed his eyes. A few seconds later, he opened them again. “I’m tired,” he said. “So tired.”

~

Matt couldn’t stay. He couldn’t take the accusing look in his grandfather’s eyes. He made his excuses, telling Carol he’d meet her at the car.

A few minutes later he stepped out into the sunlight. There was a scented garden here, with a fountain and some plastic seats. Over to one side a young man pushed an elderly woman in a wheelchair, both looking politely bored by the other’s company.

The vicar was there, sitting on a white bench. He rose to his feet when Matt emerged. He must have been waiting.

He nodded, and said, “Your grandfather – he’s not a happy man. If there’s anything I can do.”

“Thanks,” said Matt. “But we’re okay.”

“There have always been Waredens in Crooked Elms.” The man seemed hesitant, yet he clearly had something to tell Matt. “The village seems odd without them. Unprotected, I suppose.”

Matt squinted at the man. His choice of words... How much did he know? “You seem to know a lot about my family,” he said.

The vicar smiled. “It is an interesting parish and there’s something of the amateur historian in me. When I came to Crooked Elms six years ago your grandfather was very hostile and I became determined to find out why. It emerged that he had had a dispute with one of my predecessors a long, long time ago.”

“What kind of dispute?”

“The Reverend Harold Allbright was a charismatic figure – very persuasive, very forceful. And, it emerged, he was a very corrupt individual: driven by the Devil, although your grandfather would never use such language. For a time he and your grandfather were friends, but their relationship soured.”

The words from Gramps’ letter came back to Matt just then: “such tragedy nearly happened a century ago, and again when I was a young man.” This Devil-driven vicar... had he been drawn in and corrupted by the power of Alternity? Was this the incident that took place when Gramps had been a young man?

“What happened?”

“Your grandfather accused Allbright of certain dark practices and turned the villagers against him,” said the vicar. “Those possessed by darkness are readily discarded when they are no longer useful. My predecessor died a young man and his body lies in a simple grave in the churchyard at Crooked Elms.”

The vicar was standing close to Matt now. Too close. He put a hand on Matt’s shoulder. “I don’t pretend to understand what has happened in my parish,” he said. “But I know that it is a special place and that your grandfather is a special man. I’m praying for his recovery, Matt. Praying with all my strength.”

~

Back at the house, Vince was working on his car. He was lying on his side on the pavement, folding sheets of newspaper around the front near-side wheel, preparing to spray a filled dent on the wing.

“Not working?” asked Carol, as they passed him.

He glared at her. “Told you,” he said. “It was only short-term. We cleared the site this morning.”

“Have you been to the Job Centre? If I’d known I’d have asked Jill to have a look – she was going there this afternoon.”

“Jobs don’t grow on trees,” Vince said, sitting up. “The sort of thing I do – you get it through word of mouth, not cards put up in the Job Centre.”

“You mean casual, cash-in-hand jobs that last a few days?” said Carol sarcastically. “I’m sorry, I got it wrong. I was talking about real jobs. Ones with a bit of security, ones with prospects.”

Vince yawned loudly into the back of his hand. Then he nodded across at a cardboard box balanced on the wall. “Here, Matt,” he said. “Chuck us the paint, will you?”

Carol marched into the house, and Matt took an aerosol can out of the box and passed it to his cousin.

Vince shook the can and it rattled loudly, startling Matt. “Old cow,” muttered Vince.

Matt leaned back against the wall. The vicar’s words had disturbed him more deeply than he liked to admit. He tried to put them out of his mind. Instead, he studied his cousin. Fussing over his car like this, he didn’t look like the sort of person Gramps would warn against, but then Matt had seen the other side of him, too. “Sounded like you’ve had that discussion before,” he said.

Vince turned to his car and, holding the nozzle a short distance from the surface, started to spray. “Been to see the old goat, have you?”

Matt nodded. “He was awake for a few minutes,” he said. Gramps had been unconscious for most of the previous day, his mother had told him. “He didn’t seem too pleased to see us.”

Vince’s hand moved methodically from side to side, and soon the patch was completely covered. “He’ll be loving it,” he said. “All those nurses, doing everything he wants. That’s probably why he did it. He’d have done it properly if he’d really wanted to top himself, wouldn’t he?”

“You think so?”

“Course I do,” said Vince. “He’s a doctor, isn’t he? He’s just like a spoilt kid, chucking the toys out of his cot to get attention. He’s had it all his own way for far too long.”

Vince tossed the aerosol across the pavement into the box, then started to remove a strip of masking tape that was holding a piece of paper over the nearest headlight.

“You heard from your Dad, yet, have you?” he asked.

Matt shook his head. “No,” he said. “He’s hardly going to call
here
, is he?”

“Why don’t you call him then?”

He had, but he didn’t want to talk about it. Certainly not to Vince. He’d tried this morning, but had only reached the answering machine, yet again.

“I don’t see why I should be the one to do everything,” he said. “Neither of them let me know what was going on until they had to.”

Vince nodded. “I know how you feel,” he said. “You want to hear a story, do you? When Carol got pregnant with Tina everything changed round here. I didn’t understand it: they were suddenly happy, they stopped arguing, they started talking behind shut doors so I couldn’t hear.

“But they never told
me
. Sounds stupid, but I really thought she was just getting fat – I was only six. They didn’t know how to tell me, because suddenly they wished they’d never taken me, they wished they’d just waited a bit longer. Eventually I worked it out for myself, and I hated them for it. All they had to do was
tell
me.”

Vince’s intensity reminded Matt of the morning at Crooked Elms when he had slashed his own arm, just to prove how serious he was.

“Parents are like that,” said Vince. “They don’t trust you. You’ve got to learn not to trust them in return – when you’ve done that, it’s all okay.” Then he smiled. “You and me, we’re just the same,” he concluded. “Outsiders. Outsiders in our own family.”

~

Later, Matt headed upstairs. He wanted to be alone. He needed to think things through – as if that would make any difference. He already knew what his options were: stay here with his warped family and make a new start with his mother, or return to Norwich where none of this madness had ever intruded. His friends were in Norwich, and his father, but did he really want that, he wondered? It would be running away, he knew. Perhaps running away from something he would have to deal with later: if there really was any truth in his grandfather’s claims, then he knew that now was the time to deal with them, to learn control.

He went into his room and shut the door. Leaning with his back against it, he closed his eyes and tried to relax. He wouldn’t gain anything by letting it all get to him like this, he had to stay cool.

There was a strange smell. Briny, decaying, like mouldering seaweed, only somehow more foul than that. For a moment he couldn’t place it, then he realised where he had encountered it before: in his mother’s room at Bagshaw Terrace.

The dead seagull!

He looked around the room, but there was no sign of it. The last one had been in a plastic bag – but this room was
full
of carrier bags and boxes! He made himself calm down.

He closed his eyes again, and tried to picture the room as it had been this morning. There would be a new bag somewhere, or signs of disturbance.

He opened his eyes, looked around. Nothing seemed to have been moved, nothing added. He went across and opened the window. The two of them were playing down in the garden: two sisters, chasing each other round, such an innocent scene.

He turned back to the room and thought. He had to be methodical.

He stripped his bedding back, then peered underneath the camp bed. Nothing.

He sat on the bed and tried again to look for anything that had been moved. Again, he had no luck. He tried to work out if there was a part of the room where the smell was strongest, but there was not. He started poking about in the bags and boxes, cautiously at first, then gaining steadily in confidence.

Quarter of an hour later, he gave up the search.

His first inclination was to go downstairs and confront the little demon, demand to know what she had done to his room. But he knew that would achieve little, other than to give her the satisfaction of knowing she had upset him.

He went across to the window and looked down into the garden. Tina and Kirsty had stopped playing now. They were sitting side by side on the stone bench at the far end of the garden. Kirsty was hunched forward, with her head bent low over a glossy magazine. Tina sat back with her feet on the bench, her knees tucked up under her chin. She was fiddling with something – a ball of wool, a small doll, a dead mouse for all Matt knew – and every so often she would pause and look up at his open window.

He turned away and found his current book on the floor by the camp bed. He picked it up, then straightened. Either the open window had cleared the smell or he was getting used to it. Or perhaps he had been imagining things.

He went downstairs.

~

“Guess what?”

Matt looked up. His mother stood in the doorway in her grey interview suit. She looked happy, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright and dancing. He couldn’t remember the last time she had looked like this.

“You and Dad are getting back together again?”

Instantly, her expression changed: the familiar hard lines appearing across her forehead, her mouth twitching as she stopped herself from responding. She reached up, patted the hair she had tied back neatly this morning.

Matt returned his gaze to the pages of his book.