Natural Flights of the Human Mind (5 page)

‘Come on, Pete. Let’s have a ride.’

Pete was terrified, but pretended not to be. The man taking
the money put him up against a chart on a wall, and said, ‘Sorry, mate, he’s too small. Can’t do it. Too dangerous.’

‘I’ll pay double,’ said his dad. ‘More.’ He waved a five-pound note at him.

‘Sorry,’ said the man. ‘I’d lose my job.’

His dad was furious and Pete pretended he was furious too, to please him. He was secretly relieved.

In the end, they gave up and went to the shooting gallery instead, where they shot ducks and won a goldfish in a plastic bag. But his father was still annoyed and gave him all the good reasons why they shouldn’t have been turned away.

He was like that, his dad. He wouldn’t leave anything alone.

Straker uses the lilac tree to climb on to the roof. The ladder is just inside the front door, and it would take ten seconds to break the lock, but he decides not to do this. Miss Doody will feel safer if the door’s still locked when she comes back.

There are two separate ridges—the long one that travels the length of the cottage and a smaller one at right angles that comes out over the front door. He’s not sure how he’s going to fix the sails. He’s brought a hammer and nails, but the wood doesn’t look sound enough to accept them. It may be possible to anchor down the edges with something heavy, so he goes back down and looks around for any stones or rocks he could use. He shuffles his feet through the long grass round the side of the cottage and almost bumps into an old, gently collapsing outhouse. It’s barely visible, smothered by a web of ivy and periwinkles that have spread up, round and through it, until it’s just part of a group of overgrown trees. The roof must have caved in many years ago, and crumbling bricks are scattered haphazardly around in the undergrowth. Delighted with his find, he carries several to the base of the lilac tree.

He starts work immediately, hauling up the sails and spreading them across the top of the ridge. He nails where
he can, and goes up and down for bricks to make them secure. His knees creak alarmingly, but he likes the rhythm of climbing, making an easy route for himself through the lilac. He may be slowly disintegrating as he grows older, but he’s more viable than the outhouse.

He’s crawling across the roof, holding one end of a sail and trying to pull it smooth, when he hears music. He stops immediately and listens, but there’s no sound except the wind. He moves again, and the music comes back, like something you glimpse out of the corner of your eye. He stops and starts several times, puzzled that he can’t always hear it. It takes another five minutes before he realises that he’s making the music. He’s whistling as he works.

He feels useful and capable, and finds himself calculating what to do next. He could go to the B&Q store, next to Sainsbury’s, and get extra polythene for the small ridge. He could buy some new beams, balance them on the trolley, put them in before she returns.

As he climbs down the lilac for the last time, he hears the church clock striking and counts the chimes. Two o’clock. Where did the morning go? The weeds are growing frenetically in his absence. He shouldn’t have neglected them this morning—he’ll never catch up. The number seventy-eight has been missing for four hours. He’s rushed past it, ignored it, forgotten it. But they’re still there, waiting for him—1 + 2 + 3…

Standing near the gate, he looks up at the roof. The sails are ruffling gently in the wind, but apparently secure. He starts to worry about Imogen Doody again, a jittery fear creeping through him. Will she be pleased, or will she be annoyed at his interference? Should he have done it? Has he implied that she’s incapable of doing it herself?

Should he take it down again? He walks back to the house, comes away again, unable to think. Cars are rushing past the gate on the corner, and there seem to be hundreds of them, the
entire population of Hillingham wanting to spy on him. Can they see him? Will they tell her it was him?

He picks up his rope and hammer and nails, and retreats. He doesn’t want to be seen, for people to make a connection between him and her roof.

As he hovers, he goes over the events of the previous day in his mind. Was it really his fault that she fell? What did he do? He stood at the gate for a few minutes. Nothing more. But even now, he can feel the urgency of her shouting, and worries again about the roof. Her presence is so powerful, so electric, that she can make him nervous without even being there.

He decides he shouldn’t be there. It’s not his property. He pushes the trolley to the gate, opens it and leaves quickly, before he can be seen. There’s a group of smartly dressed women approaching from the village, their mouths moving up and down passionately, all talking at the same time. He looks at the ground and lets them divide and flow round him. He’s completely invisible. All is well.

Maggie: ‘Why didn’t you find out about Felicity earlier? All those pictures in the newspapers, the magazines. I’d have done her first.’

‘I didn’t know until I saw that poster two years ago. It was the first time I’d seen her.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘I don’t look at newspapers. They’re too violent.’

‘Are you really the best person to make judgements about violence?’

‘Leave me alone, Maggie.’

‘Absolutely not, Straker.’

‘Do you know what happened to my mother?’ Felicity is growing stronger in my mind, coming in without any nervousness. More real. She can join the others who are queuing up to have their say
.

‘Well, I think she died.’

‘I know that. She had cancer, and I shouldn’t have gone to the audition. The nurse wasn’t very pleased with me, but Mum said I should go. She’d spent years working for it. Did she know about the crash?’

‘How could I know that?’

‘You could find out for me.’

‘How? Who would know?’

Maggie in her gentle mode, the motherly voice, the caring grandmother: ‘Some things you never find out, Felicity.’

‘What a waste of time.’ Felicity’s voice is losing its naïvety, becoming high-pitched, almost strident. ‘My mum never told me she was ill until she went into hospital. She made all those sacrifices for me. I need to know. You owe it to me to find out.’

‘I’ve only just started. I expect in time I’ll get some idea—’

Maggie, sharp and hard again: ‘Don’t flatter yourself, Straker. You can’t play at being a miracle-worker. Your miracles will have negative equity.’

‘I know.’

The rain wakes him as it dashes against the window, hard and angry in the dark. Suleiman and Magnificent are lying at the end of his mattress, curled up inside one another, not yet disturbed by the storm.

The tiny room is suddenly and briefly lit, frozen by a flash into a photograph in time. Then vast claps of thunder burst out above them, rolling loosely around the sky, powerful and uncontained. The cats wake with a jump and howl in harmony with each other, their heads up, their tails straight and upright with terror.

He gets out of bed and pulls waterproofs over his pyjamas. He buttons the jacket, puts on boots and a sou’-wester, then climbs up to the light room. Outside, the world is disintegrating. He fights to open the door on to the outside balcony,
pushing against the wind. He reaches for the handrail, and edges his way out, testing his strength, determined to take part in this battle of wills. The rain is a solid sheet, buffeted by wind, sometimes vertical, sometimes parallel. The waves, heaving, crashing monsters, hurl themselves against the cliff and rise up towards him, finally dashing against the lighthouse in an unassuageable rage.

He steadies himself against the wind, braces his legs, and fights to stay there. The wind pins him against the lens and he’s unable to move.

‘Come and get me!’ he shouts. ‘Now’s your chance. Pick me up, throw me over the cliff.’

His voice makes no sound. It doesn’t exist in this chaotic world. He remains stationary and powerless.

‘Here I am. You want a sacrifice? I’m your sacrifice. I’m available. Forget everyone else and come for me!’

The wind screams, the rain pours past him and the waves leap into darkness. He’s invisible. He stands there for a long time, until he’s frozen and drenched and deafened. The thunder moves on and he can see the lightning out at sea—a beacon to guide ships on to the rocks. The new lighthouse flashes with minute precision at the correct intervals. Smug, secure in its superiority.

He and his lighthouse are nothing. Washed up, abandoned, useless.

He pushes his way back inside and undresses. The cats have moved up the bed in his absence, found the warmth that he left and snuggled down under the blankets. He removes them one at a time. Suleiman comes easily and he puts him into the cat basket at the foot of his bed. He purrs briefly and vaguely. Magnificent is more unwilling. He snaps at Straker as he tries to pick him up, so he taps his head firmly and lifts him. Then he crawls into bed. The cats leave the basket and climb back onto the end of the mattress. He feels them on his legs and looks up. Their eyes light up indignantly with every flash of lightning.

He shuts his eyes. The wind and rain continue to hurl themselves against the side of the lighthouse.

You could go quietly mad in a lighthouse when your only companions are cats.

A thin, reedy voice burrows deep into my head, half waking me, but not quite. It’s one of the children, crying
.

Maggie is here, ready before me. ‘Now, now. There’s no need for tears. We can’t change anything.’ When she tries, she projects an extraordinary warmth, and it hurts me—actually makes a physical pain in my chest—that I can’t be the recipient of any of it
.

I try to speak, but my throat has seized up in my sleep, and no sound comes out
.

‘Tell me what the matter is, Wayne.’

Did my mother talk to me like that?

‘I can’t find my mummy. She’s gone away and I want her to come back.’

‘No, no, no. Your mummy never left you. You left her and she just went on without you. But she misses you.’

The wailing eases and stops. ‘Why?’

Maggie pauses. ‘Why anything, Wayne? It just is.’ Maggie, the great philosopher, the oracle, the source of all wisdom
.

‘Straker!’ she says sharply. ‘I know you’re listening. What do you think I should say to Wayne?’

I don’t know. I don’t know.

‘Come on, don’t you have anything to say?’

The pain in my chest is growing. I can’t stop it. I can’t speak. It presses against me, pushing, suffocating
.

The next morning is breezy but quiet. The violence and the rage have been hidden away, swept under the table, and he’s presented with a false serenity. Hypocrite, he thinks, looking at the smug, shining sea.

How many times has he gone up there in a storm and offered himself to the elements? He can’t understand why he’s constantly rejected. He wants to jump, to leap out into this cauldron of energy and fly through the air for a few seconds. The thought of this brief flight has sustained him for years. He could loose himself from the tight grasp of the seventy-eight, soar freely into a silence in his head before he surrenders and joins them. To expect a little helping hand from the weather doesn’t seem unreasonable, but he survives every time.

He takes his breakfast of two stale doughnuts up to the light room and goes out on the balcony to eat, squeezing his legs against the iron railings. It’s impossible to reconcile the sea of today with the sea of last night. Despite all the time he’s been watching, it can still surprise him.

Suleiman follows him on to the balcony and stretches out in a patch of sun, purring to himself. He looks at Straker affectionately, narrowing his eyes, half asleep before he’s finished washing. Straker puts out his hand to rub his ears and the cat pushes his head up against him.

Magnificent never comes up here, but Straker knows exactly where he is. Further back on the headland, he’ll be sitting on a grassy mound, silent, alert, watching. Waiting for the first twitch of a mouse’s tail. Magnificent is the great survivor. Part of him will be hunting and sustaining himself long after Straker’s generation goes.

Straker enjoys the solid texture of the doughnuts, the way the jam oozes as stickily as when it is fresh. Something about it reminds him of his childhood. Every time he takes a first bite, he’s eight again, watching his mother’s face as the sugar coats his chin and the jam spurts out on to his cheeks. He buys fourteen every Saturday and they usually last all week. If mould appears, he throws them away, but that only happens in summer. The cold preserves them through the winter.

He sits down on the floor next to Suleiman and shuts his eyes, feeling the sun against his eyelids, making calculations.
He spends a few minutes every day memorising the tide tables so that he can carry them around in his head. He needs the structure in advance so that he can organise his thoughts into compartments—a way to force time to pass. He started this process long ago, once he had recognised that he would have to go on living. The routine of the calculations, the predictability, was soothing. He began to like the tides and the moons, the position of the sun, the hours of daylight, the shape of the day. There are charts on his walls—hours, days of the week, months, years. His mind walks down orderly pathways where the edges are laid out—neat, predictable, reliable. The hedges alongside are clipped and immaculate; the angle to each new path is precise, ninety perfect degrees. He likes right angles. The square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the two opposite sides. He has a feel for Pythagoras, convinced that their minds are similar. But Pythagoras was ready to take risks, leap into the dark, think the unknown.

Not Straker. He never strays, never thinks the unknown. His mind never moves beyond seventy-eight.