Natural Flights of the Human Mind (4 page)

He nods, and they stumble together through the long grass. They would be more successful if he put an arm round her for support, but he’s not offering this service and she’s not asking.

The ladder is still up against the wall, tools strewn around at the base. He attempts to take her through the front door.

‘No,’ she says. ‘There’s no point in going in. It’s all dead. Been like that for years.’

He helps her to sit down again on the grass and lowers himself next to her. She’s conscious that he’s looking at her. Perhaps he’s dangerous. She is being helped by a man who could be a lunatic. Nobody knows she’s here. She’d be yet another disappeared person, buried under the hawthorn bushes, in the long grass.

She turns to examine his face, and he doesn’t appear to be dangerous. He doesn’t even seem stupid. There’s a scar on his left cheek, stretching from the corner of his eye, down to the chin, lost in the grey and black grizzle of his beard. His eyes,
however, are remarkable. They’re bluer than she’s ever seen in real life. Frank Sinatra, Steve McQueen blue. As soon as she looks directly at him, he averts his gaze, but she’s seen his expression, his intelligence. If he’s a lunatic, he’s a clever one.

He gets up and starts collecting the tools into a neat pile. She has a very good idea.

‘Listen,’ she says, ‘you couldn’t do me a favour, could you? I need to get a tile down from the roof so I can buy some new ones. I want a sample.’

He pauses and glances at her. She can see the sweat on his forehead, the thoughts passing across his face, the quick turning away when he meets her eyes. He looks ridiculous in his navy suit and wellington boots.

‘It might be better if you took your boots off,’ she says. ‘It’s awfully hot, and you might slip.’

He doesn’t take his boots off. He climbs the ladder cautiously and, after fiddling for a while near the eaves, brings down a tile. Then he puts the tools just inside the front door. He pulls the ladder down and starts to fold it up.

‘Hang on,’ she says. ‘Maybe I haven’t finished.’

He stops, shrugs, then puts the ladder into the house as well.

‘Thanks a million. My ankle could be all right now, for all you know.’

He has a puzzled expression on his face. She can feel herself becoming irritated again. Why does he have to be so silent?

‘Say something,’ she says. ‘It’s not fair, me making all the conversation. I don’t mind if you want to shout a bit. We could shout at each other, see who’s the loudest.’

He avoids her eyes.

She sighs. ‘Please yourself.’

He’s completely still. She’s seen a street performer who paints himself grey and stands motionless long enough to give the impression that he’s a statue. Then, after a time, he twitches once, or winks, moves his head. People stop in
amazement until a crowd gathers, waiting for his next movement. They always give him money before leaving.

‘You could earn a living with your skills,’ she says. She tries moving her foot again and it still hurts. ‘I can’t walk,’ she says. ‘I’ll have to ring for a taxi to take me to the station. I don’t suppose you drive?’

He doesn’t shake his head, but he’s not offering.

‘No, of course not. That would be too good to be true. Could you fetch my bag? It’s just inside the door—by the hall table.’

He fetches the bag and hands it to her. He’d make a good butler.

She digs out her mobile from the bottom of the bag. ‘I don’t suppose you know the number of a local taxi firm?’

He shakes his head.

‘No, I thought not.’

She rings directory enquiries, then arranges for a taxi to pick her up at the gate.

The man watches her, then goes back to the house and pulls the door shut. He takes the key out and hands it to her.

‘Can you help me down to the road?’ she asks.

They stumble awkwardly back to the gate, with Doody leaning heavily on his arm. He’s not very good at it, because he lurches around too much and they have to keep stopping to recover their balance.

‘Great,’ she says, when they get there.

His shopping trolley is still waiting for him.

‘I hope you don’t have anything frozen in there.’

But he does. She can see the fish fingers and the frozen chicken breasts. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘You’d better send me a bill.’

He seems perplexed and walks off, pushing his trolley along the side of the road, avoiding the cobbles. Just like that, without a backward glance.

She watches him in amazement. Is he just going to walk away? ‘Hey!’ she shouts.

He stops, but doesn’t turn round.

‘Thanks!’ she shouts. ‘All right? I appreciated the help.’ He makes her feel guilty.

He starts walking again, away from her.

‘If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have needed the help!’ She feels better.

A taxi drives up from the other direction and stops at the gate.

43 Westside Close,
Blenheim Rd,
Birmingham.
19/5/04

Dear Mr Straker
,

I was surprised to receive your letter out of the blue as it were. My poor Felicity (Fliss, as I liked to call her) has been dead for nearly 25 years and not a day goes by without me thinking of her. We was very close. There was a train crash. You might remember it was a London to Birmingham train. 78 dead but only one close to my heart
.

She was a lovely girl. I don’t know if someone like you in your profession as it were would remember seeing her photo in the Sun and the Mirror and the
Evening Mail.
Maybe they didn’t put her photo in
The Times
which you probably read. Anyway she was going to be the model for Parrot, I think they call it The Face, but they only had a few pictures from the photoshoot and they used them all for a bit then found another girl. You might remember her, Lucy Something and she was in all the pictures after Fliss. Black girl
.

Anyway, I expect you know Fliss (Felicity) and I lived apart, but she wrote to me all the time and we was like real mates. Her Mum (Rita) died of cancer and Fliss nursed her on her deathbed, like the good girl she was, but I’m her next of kin, there isn’t anyone else
.

Of course it grieves my heart to accept a legacy that was meant for my darling Fliss (Felicity) but I think she’d like it
that way. We was very close. She told me about her American cousins lots of times
.

Anyway you can contact me at the address above
.

Yours Truly

Jack Tilly

78 = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12. A beautiful number. As if Straker had planned it. Each one an individual, each number irreplaceable. You can’t take any one of them away, because forgetting would be as great a crime as killing.

At first, they were only numbers. Nameless, anonymous, hammering through his mind, inanimate as nails, kept at bay with other numbers. Twelve years ago, they changed, or he changed. He kept dreaming about them, a crowd of strangers, a turmoil of spinning legs and arms, faces without features. He wanted to know their names, and then the numbers became a list. A silent roll-call that echoed through his mind all day and night. Two years ago, he changed again. He wanted to know who they were.

He’s found plenty of excuses to contact them. He’s writing a book; he runs a firm that investigates unclaimed inheritance; he’s a journalist researching an article.

Now when they come into his dreams, chattering, arguing, being ordinary, his mind becomes full of them all, bursting with their problems. They are rich and alive, their thoughts pouring out of them, frantic in their desire not to get lost. Sometimes he can’t cope. His brain isn’t big enough, his shoulders not broad enough. He wants to live their lives for them, carrying on where they left off. But he can’t do it. He hasn’t the strength or the ability.

The voices stay with him long after he wakes up. He carries them round with him like a tape recorder that switches itself back on when he’s not looking, so their conversations echo through his mind at unexpected moments.

Sangita: ‘Rob Willow was doing a concert in Birmingham. I had to go.’ Her voice is gentle, diffident
.

I have a photograph sent by her mother. Young and sweet, a darker, more demure version of Felicity, in a pink sari with a single gold chain round her neck. A long black plait. ‘Who was Rob Willow?’

‘Rob Willow? Who was he? You don’t know?’

‘I don’t know anything.’

‘Well said, Straker.’

‘Thank you, Maggie.’

Sangita: ‘Rob Willow was gorgeous, the most handsome man in the world.’

‘What did you want from him?’

‘Want?’ Her voice crumples, uncertain. ‘I don’t know. I just wanted to be near him.’

So she didn’t know him. She was just a fan
.

‘What happened to him?’ Her voice is shy, hesitant. ‘Does he still perform?’

‘I have no idea.’ I don’t read newspapers, watch the television, listen to the radio. How would I know if he’s still around?

She’s crying, softly but desperately
.

‘But he wasn’t real. He was just a distant figure you imagined you knew.’

The weeping gets stronger, more desperate
.

‘Shut up, Straker. You’re just making it worse.’

Maggie, who, as always, knows the right thing to do
.

When he wakes, it’s with a painful jolt, as if he’s gone down a step that’s steeper than he expected. He lies, panicking, for a long time, his heart beating aggressively, Sangita’s face in front of his eyes. He doesn’t want to see her once he’s awake, but she’s so real that he finds himself looking for her in the curved walls of the lighthouse. Surely he can still see an echo of her
pink sari, hidden behind the table, a flick of the fat black plait swinging out of sight up the stairs to the light room.

He’s so exhausted he can’t move. He’s only pretending to be alive. All his energy is used up by the seventy-eight. And his investigations of the last two years take him back to a dangerous time. They’re opening up the scars, tearing through hidden tissues that were pretending to be healed.

He should never have started. They were all safely stored away, wrapped up, concealed in a drawer. A mass of bodies, victims, a collective tragedy. Why had he let them out? But if he had left them there, he would never have known Maggie. There would be no one to argue with him, nag him, make him think.

It was the poster that changed everything. He was going to Sainsbury’s one day, and there was Felicity on the advertising board outside the car park. Four times larger than life, tattered rags of material substituting for clothes, her eyes luminous and innocent. The multi-coloured parrot on her shoulder blended with the green and purple wisps of hair on her almost shaved head.

‘
FELICITY TILLY
,’ it said. ‘
THE TRAGIC FASHION OF 1979
.’

The poster was advertising a television programme about changing fashions, but it was some time before that became clear. What he saw was Felicity Tilly, alive, looking directly at him, accusing him. He forgot the shopping. He abandoned his routines without being aware of it. He returned, over and over again, spending most of the week on the opposite pavement, staring at her, unable to reconcile her vitality, her aliveness, with his special knowledge about her death. He wanted to know her, understand who she had been, what she thought.

When they replaced the poster with another about yoghurts, he was bereft.

So it had started there. He opened up files for all of the seventy-eight and found he was hungry, starving, desperate to know them, speak to them, longing to bring them back to life.

He keeps thinking about Miss Doody, the way everything is absorbed by her anger. It comes and goes, like a lightbulb. On, off, on. Does she do the switching consciously? Does she like it?

He’s managed to avoid people for years. Why should she come along like that and force him to pay attention to her? She’s not one of the seventy-eight. There isn’t room in his mind for anyone else. So why has she begun to edge her way in?

She frightens him. He needs to find a way of switching that light off, so he can eliminate her from his mind, go back to where he was, leave her as she was before he met her.

On Sunday, the day after her accident, he should be working on his garden for the whole day. The carrots are coming through nicely, he needs to thin out the new lettuces, and there is plenty of weeding to do, but instead, he finds himself preparing to go into the village again. He stands in front of the only mirror in the keeper’s cottage and examines his Aran jumper and black trousers, although the mirror is small and he can’t see his face without bending his knees—which he seldom does.

A strange plan is forming in his mind, but he can’t think about it too closely without a thread of panic worming its way into his stomach.

He goes to the edge of the headland before leaving. The wind is fresher than yesterday. Foam touches the tips of the waves as they race cheerfully towards him, leaping over each other, recklessly hurling themselves against the cliff. There’s so much energy here, the will to go on indefinitely. How easy it all looks, so inevitable and perpetual. Most things that are left alone for long enough will crumble and decay, like the lighthouse, so why is everything around him so alive, so furious? The wind, the sea, the grass, Imogen Doody?

He turns away and fetches his bicycle. From a distance he can see two coaches stopping for the view, and he hesitates before mounting it. Will they see him and laugh? Will he
appear in their photographs of Beckingham lighthouse as a dot, a smudge, an insignificant blur? The more he thinks about it, the less likely it seems that he would appear at all. A non-person lost in the landscape of sea and sky and lighthouse. Just as he would like it.

When he reaches the pier again, there’s no sign of the boys who were fishing for crabs yesterday. The sailing people have come down to catch the rising tide, and he has to moor quickly to get out of the way. They launch themselves with dedication. People who don’t see him, who look past him because he doesn’t count. Their faces are brown and healthy from sailing and living. They wear life-jackets, yellow, blue, orange, and the wind whips through their hair as they rush to get their dinghies into the water. With every gust, the cord on the flag at the end of the pier cracks against its pole. There’s going to be a race. Two men are standing by the flagpole waiting to fire the starting gun. There’s a distant crack and Straker senses the panic of the last few boats to get launched.

‘Come on, Tara. Get in and I’ll shove off.’

‘What about Sam?’

‘Leave her. We can’t wait any longer. It’s just you and me.’

Straker doesn’t look at them, just lets their voices wash past him like a current, until they are drops of water in the wind. When he first came here, it was mainly fishermen sailing out on the tide, returning hours later, their motors chugging tiredly and weakly. They were part of the pattern of the weather. Now they have been replaced by these confident, brightly coloured young people who appear to be having fun.

He goes to the back of the boathouse, ignores his shopping trolley and crouches down beside the old dinghy. He examines the crumpled plastic sails, separating them from the tangle of ropes, smoothing them out so that he can see their shape. He produces a Stanley knife from his pocket and starts cutting them away from the ropes, listening intently. His ears strain
with the effort, as he half expects someone to come striding in with authority, ready to accuse him of stealing.

Nothing happens. The three old men outside have their backs to him, watching the race. If they know he’s here, they make no acknowledgement.

He cuts through the last rope and sits back for a few seconds to ease his hand. Outside, the folded sails of the unused boats pulled up into the harbour clatter urgently in the brisk wind, their tarpaulins tugging against their restraints.

There are two sails, and he takes them both. They’re cumbersome and difficult to fold, but he manages to cram them into the shopping trolley. The three men won’t hear him, because their ears are deadened by the wind. The sailing club has a new clubhouse, further round on the coast, and he has seen the recreational sailors meeting there, happy with their bar, their retired admirals, their trophies in a glass case. They don’t waste time thinking about this dilapidated old boathouse with a corrugated iron roof that leaks, where heaps of red sandstone crumble down from the cliff at the back. Would he have been one of the sailors once, if things had gone differently?

He walks up the road to the village and stops at the corner of Miss Doody’s house. It looks the same as yesterday. The path through the long grass to the front door is still visible, and the area round the hawthorn bushes where she had her accident looks well flattened. There’s no sign that she’s returned today, but there wouldn’t be. A twisted ankle needs rest, and she’ll be restricted for a while, unable to get on a bus, or climb ladders.

He pushes the trolley through the gate and shuts it behind him, standing still and listening for sounds that might tell him he’s doing something wrong. Nothing changes. The dandelions and rosebay willowherb rustle in the wind and a branch from the lilac tree taps gently against an upstairs window. He looks up at the roof and tries to estimate its size. It’s not
enormous. The two sails together may not be quite big enough, but they’ll certainly make a difference.

He takes a deep breath. He laughed here for the first time in years. Something crept inside him and ran its fingers over his nerve ends, played them like a harp so they became suddenly alive. Something strong and powerful.

Of course it all went away afterwards, but now, standing inside the gate, he has a hint of it again, like an unfamiliar smell, new and dangerous. He stands looking up at the roof for so long that his neck starts to ache.

He remembers a time, long ago, at a fair with his father. They stood together looking up at a big dipper, huge and brilliantly lit, painted in vivid, exciting colours. The boats were rocking gently as people boarded them, and they moved up slowly, higher and higher, waiting for the moment when the fun would begin.

‘Look at them, Pete,’ said his dad. ‘That’s where we’re going. Right to the top.’

They stood side by side, Pete’s left shoulder touching his dad’s right wrist. He was a huge man. Gulliver in Lilliput. Physically big, mentally big, and ambitiously big.

Pete had no ambition to be up in the sky then. That would come to him later. What he did see was their two shadows, stretching out before them in the late-afternoon sun. His father’s was so long that you couldn’t see the end and his own appeared tiny beside it. He thought that he would never be as tall as him, that however much he exercised, ran, ate, he would never catch up. As his shadow stretched, his father’s would always reach further. But he felt safe next to him. Nobody was as big as his dad, and nobody ever would be.