Like Father (11 page)

19 Open Day

He slept and, once again, he dreamed of Hodeken.

Danny sat at the foot of a huge, towering tree, so big that its roots spread out around him like a cathedral’s buttresses, each as broad as a normal tree’s trunk.

In front of him there was a big wooden tent peg stuck in the leaf-litter. Somewhere, a woodpecker drummed on a dead tree, the sound reminding him of pneumatic drills in the streets and another dream altogether.

He stood and pulled the peg from the ground. A short distance away he saw another. He went over to it and pulled it out. He put both pegs into his coat pocket. It seemed important to be tidy.

He looked around, and there was another. He pulled it, and continued on his way, gathering the pegs and taking them with him as he went.

He came to a stream, and decided to follow it up the hill. There must be a spring somewhere. He seemed to remember looking for a spring one time before.

Through the trees! A tune. A familiar tune: one of the old German folk tunes that Oma sang. He felt the magic in the music now, the calming influence. He pulled himself up the slope past a young tree, and paused. There was a wall of rock before him, a little cliff set into the hillside, and from its base the stream burst out.

So this was the beginning of things, the spring.

For a moment, he thought what he had taken to be music was actually the merry gurgling of the spring, but then he saw that there was a dark crack in the cliff, and perched on a boulder by that cavern there was a small figure, its head partly-hidden by a conical, grey felt hat. The music was coming from this figure – Hodeken’s head bobbed from side to side as he hummed.

Danny took the pegs from his pocket and laid them carefully at the base of this boulder, his work complete.

“Very good,” said that nasal voice. “I’d grant you a wish. But then I was granting you a wish anyway. I hadn’t forgotten.” Hodeken sprang down from the rock and stood so that Danny now had to peer down at him.

“Forgotten?” asked Danny.

“Your wish,” said Hodeken. “Remember? You want everything to be how it was.”

“But it can’t,” said Danny. “That’s not possible.”

“Don’t give up so easily,” said Hodeken, skipping back up onto his rock again, so that now he looked down at Danny. “Okay, I’ll confess: things are more complicated in this modern world of yours. It takes some working out. But we can do it, Danny. We can fix everything. I just need your help.”

Help?

“The first thing to do is to get rid of Rick.”

Danny shook his head. Hodeken’s words sounded ominously final. Was this what he had done to Danny’s father? Whispering suggestions, instructions, haunting his sleep until he cracked. “It’s her choice,” he said. “It’s nothing to do with me.”

“Oh very admirable, Danny. Well done! But we both know that he’s wrong for her, don’t we? And how will your wish ever come true while he’s around? Trust me, Danny. I’m doing what’s best for you all. Sometimes you have to act in other people’s interests when you know what’s best.”

With that, the little man jumped down so that he clung to Danny’s collar with his feet on Danny’s hips and stared him in the eye.

“Look at me, Danny. I’m ancient! You’re a child, Danny. You all are to someone like me. Trust me, boy. I know what’s best. Do what I say and we’ll fix it together.”

He hopped off Danny, down to the ground.

“Look,” he said, pointing to where Danny had laid the pegs. “You missed one.”

Danny turned, saw a peg still in the ground. He stooped to collect it and there was a sudden weight in his back, pushing him. He sprawled in the dirt, gasping for air.

When he looked up, Hodeken had vanished and he was alone in the woods.

He gathered himself up. He didn’t want to be here.

Trust me.

No. He started to walk through the trees, and then to run, desperate to get away from here.

Do as I say, Danny. It’ll be okay.

No. No! Nonono!

~

He woke.

Again and again, he woke, and each time his head was filled with the dying echoes of Hodeken’s thin voice.

His father had been an ordinary man. He often didn’t notice what was going on around him, and he forgot birthdays and anniversaries. He was prone to the occasional outburst of temper, but he seemed reasonably happy in his job and in his family life. But then he had changed.

Val had started to neglect him, and Eva and Oma had taken to pointing this out to him and slowly, ever so slowly, his life had started to fall apart around him.

He had cracked.

The voices in his head had done it, pushed him over the edge.

Danny lay there, in the dark hours of the night, and he wondered how much of this he could take before he, too, gave way.

If it had broken his father, then what chance did Danny have?

Finally, he woke and there was silence in his head.

He climbed out of bed and went to the window. Dawn had already broken outside, the morning light bright through the trees.

He pulled on his clothes and trainers and went outside.

The air was fresh, as if it had rained overnight. It was Saturday morning, he remembered. The day of the Open Day.

Suddenly, he remembered the dream, gathering all those wooden tent pegs. He rushed across the car park and peered over the rose and honeysuckle hedge.

The marquee was still standing.

The grass shimmered with moisture – either rain or dew, he wasn’t sure which.

He breathed deep, and savoured the stillness of the early morning. Maybe things would work out. Maybe this was some kind of turning point.

He went back inside.

~

The weather was cool but sunny and promising to turn into a real scorcher. Everyone was sure the Bank Holiday Saturday crowds would be tempted out of their homes for the Open Day.

One of the local farmers had set aside a field at the back of Wishbourne Hall for parking, and Danny helped Won’t and Sunil guide the cars in, and hand out leaflets listing the day’s attractions and a map of the grounds. They were collecting money, too. HoST had agreed with the Fete Committee that entry would be free, but they would charge for parking, encouraging people to use alternative means of transport.

Won’t was grumbling about their work almost from the start. “How come we get this, then?” he said.

“Smile,” Sunil told him. “We form the first impression of Hope Springs for our guests. Be happy!”

Danny quite enjoyed the routine of it. Filling up the field from the front. Making sure there were sensible routes through the parked cars and no-one was blocked in. He liked the buzz of anticipation of people arriving for a day out.

He liked the silence in his head.

By mid-morning the field was half-full and Martin and Tim had come to take over car park duties.

Danny wandered back with Won’t through the wooded area towards the marquee. There were people everywhere. Lots of them were following the garden trail indicated on the leaflet’s map of the grounds, but others were just wandering, having a good look.

“So, is Cassie going to be here, then?” asked Won’t.

Danny shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Thought you might. Thought you might be meeting her. You two being–”

“Being what?”

Won’t sniggered, but said no more.

They came to the hedge at the top of the lawns, and Danny surveyed the crowd. Lots of old people. Families with children rushing about. Residents of Hope Springs and the rest of the village standing behind stalls with plants for sale, a tombola, a raffle, bouncy castles and bric-a-brac stalls.

The jangling sound of sitar music drifted across from the marquee. David must have put one of his CDs on.

No sign of Cassie. He didn’t know if she would be here today or not. He hadn’t seen her to ask.

“Come on, they’ll be wondering where we’ve got to,” said Danny, heading down the slope towards the marquee.

~

The marquee was lined with trestle tables displaying the flowers and vegetables entered in the village show. Giant cabbages and leeks sat side by side with fussy arrangements of late spring flowers and handicrafts. Off on another set of tables Warren was giving away bags full of Hope Springs produce – all organic, and accompanied by a leaflet outlining the courses and activities on offer at HoST. There was a children’s art show at one end of the tent, and at the other were tables and chairs where HoST were providing refreshments.

“How did we do it?” complained Won’t. “We get the car parking just when people are arriving, and now we’re working on refreshments just as lunchtime’s coming up... Someone has it in for us.”

Danny got stuck in behind the scenes, ladling coriander soup into bowls, emptying the used grounds from the coffee machine and refilling it.

Again, he lost himself in the routine activity. He even found himself humming a little tune as he worked.

He stopped, panicking, when he recognised the tune. One of Oma’s – one she must have learnt from Hodeken.

Nothing.

Just the buzz of voices, the pleasant wash of sitars and tablas ... in his head: silence.

Later, he saw Cassie standing in the queue with her parents.

She may have spotted him. He didn’t know. He concentrated on what he was doing.

“Hey, Danny. Would you fetch some more rolls from the kitchen?” called Luce, across the food preparation area, late in the afternoon. “We’re running out. Jade’s up there. She’ll sort them out for you.”

He went, glad to escape the heat of the gas stove.

Outside, the sun burnt down, harsh and bright.

He cut across the main lawn, through the stalls and the crowds. Lots of people had settled down on the grass to picnic. David was strolling through, juggling and balloon-modelling for the children.

It reminded Danny of childhood visits to the south coast at the height of summer. Ice creams and slot machines and those heaving, hot crowds. Those trips had always been fun.

Round the back of the Hall, he mounted the steps to the kitchen.

Jade was there, dusting icing sugar over another tray of cakes for the refreshments. She hadn’t noticed him come in.

Danny looked around at the chaos of the kitchen. Pots and pans everywhere. Three black bin-liners full of rubbish. People had been working here since the crack of dawn, he knew.

“Hi,” said Danny.

Jade started, and looked around.

“Gave me a fright,” she said, flicking a strand of hair away from her eyes.

Danny let his eyes roam around the kitchen again. “I was looking for more bread rolls,” he said. “But...”

She grinned, pointed. “There, by the pastries. Under the cloth.”

Danny went over and lifted the corner of a sheet of muslin. There was a tray stacked with rolls: white, wholemeal, some flecked with herbs.

“What d’you reckon? I made them last night.”

“They look good.”

He tucked the cloth back over them, and slid the tray out to make it easier to pick up.

“Couldn’t get the door, could you?”

She went over, reached out for the handle, and then paused. “You need to get rid of him, you know,” she said, in a friendly, reasonable tone.

Danny stopped, and looked at her.

Her wide, dark eyes stared at him intently. Her lips were slightly parted, as if she was about to add something.

“Rick,” she said, finally. “You need to get him out of the way.”

“I...”

He wanted to barge past her, run like hell, but he had the tray, the rolls. He had a job to do. He couldn’t just...

“Do it, Danny. It’s gone too far now. You have to get rid of him.”

He was pressing up against a work surface, as far from her as he could be without actually backing off into the kitchen.

Her eyes...

Jade’s eyes had gone pale, the irises tiny black dots. The whites of her eyes, so pure before, were now a tapestry of fine red blood vessels.

As he watched, the smooth skin of her face became tough, leathery, landscaped with lines and lumps and tiny, hairy growths.

And her mouth! Now it was a narrow slit, the lips almost vanished, the teeth small, yellow, crooked.

Suddenly he was aware that there was a kitchen knife on the work surface behind him. Black handled, with a long, wedge-shaped blade. He wanted to reach for it. Protection.

He felt dizzy. He felt a madness rising.

He was clutching the tray so tightly its edges felt in danger of breaking his skin.

He needed to stop this. Stop it now.

He struggled to breathe, and looked again at the grotesque creature before him.

“Trust me,” it said, and Jade’s voice had become higher-pitched, nasal, more penetrating.

And then she leaned towards the door, pulled at it, stepped back, and she was Jade again, and outside the spring sunlight flooded the yard behind the Hall and birds sang from high in the trees.

He stumbled past her, out into the fresh air.

He crossed the yard. It had been part of a playground at one time. There were lines painted onto the tarmac, partly rubbed off now.

He rounded the corner of the Hall and normality struck him like a blow. The sunshine, the people picnicking on the grass. The marquee, down the slope by the lake.

They would say today had been a great success, he knew. A coming together of village and Hope Springs. It might even become an annual event. They couldn’t always guarantee this kind of weather, though.

He shuddered.

His mind was flitting from thought to thought like a butterfly, never resting, always avoiding the one thought, the memory – a snapshot image lodged in his head.

Of Jade. Of not-Jade. Her tiny bloodshot eyes, her age-worn skin, her stubs of yellow teeth. Jade, but not Jade.

Hodeken.

Danny cut through the herb garden, onto the lawn.

The first stall was the tombola. There was a great big wicker basket full of folded tickets, and all around it prizes, with tickets stuck to them. Clay pots of Hope Springs honey. Giant bars of Fair Trade chocolate. Bottles of last year’s perry and cider from the orchards. An envelope containing tickets for the Grafton-on-Severn cricket festival. A complete round cheese from a local farm.