The Living and the Dead in Winsford (25 page)

Six days have passed since my last visit.

And it feels like a month since I sat here talking to Mark Britton that last time, which just shows how my conception of time is going off the rails. When he now comes in, less than a minute after I’ve ordered my food and got a glass of wine on the table, I suddenly feel grateful – and just as suddenly uneasy as well, in case he is only going to sit at the bar, drink a pint of ale and then leave.

But I needn’t have worried. When Mark sees me he gives me a broad smile and sits down at my table without even asking.

‘How are things? How’s it going with the writing?’

‘Fine, thank you. A bit up and down, but that goes with the territory.’

‘It’s nice to see you again. You brighten up my mealtimes, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

‘All right, I’ll allow it. But you’d better hurry up and order or we’ll get out of step.’

And so we are sitting here again. I think that either I’m so starved of everything to do with human relationships, or that it has something to do with this man. Most probably a combination of the two. I can feel butterflies in my stomach, and am relieved that I smartened myself up before coming here. Mark looks very smart, a little darker under the eyes than I remember, but newly shaved, well combed and wearing a wine-red pullover instead of the blue one. Corduroy trousers and a Barbour jacket that he’s hung over the back of his chair. Indeed, I think he could well be a sort of semi-noble country squire after a successful afternoon’s shooting, and I can’t help smiling to myself when I realize that I’ve given him a title that my father used to like using.
Country squire
.

‘I gather you don’t come here all that often,’ I say, ‘or is it just that we happen to have missed one another?’

‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I usually come here at least twice a week – but I like cooking, so that’s not why I come. I reckon you need to see somebody else’s face besides your own occasionally. Don’t you agree?’

‘Mine, for instance?’

He leans forward over the table. ‘I prefer your face to Rosie’s and Henry’s and Robert’s, I’ll admit that. And I’m grateful that you can put up with me now and again.’

I manage to shrug and assume a neutral smile. Being a television hostess for a quarter of a century does leave its mark. ‘You’re welcome,’ I say. ‘Being with you doesn’t cause me pain.’

‘But you have done,’ he says, suddenly becoming serious. ‘Suffered pain, that is. Things are a bit rough for you up there in your house when darkness descends to gobble us up. I’m right, aren’t I?’

‘What do you mean? You’re not sitting there again and reading my mind, are you?’

‘Only a bit,’ he says. ‘I see a bit and guess the rest. Who could spend a whole winter up there and survive with their mind in one piece? The moor is best for people who are born on it. In the winter, at least. Cheers, by the way.’

We each take a sip of our wine and look each other in the eye for a second too long. Or maybe I only imagine that extra second: it’s not the kind of judgement that is part of my repertoire any longer. Good Lord, I think, if he stretches out his hand over the table and touches me I’ll wet myself. I’m as emotionally unstable as a fourteen-year-old.

The new young waiter, who is called Lindsey and is undoubtedly as gay as the Pope is Catholic, comes with our food and we start eating. A couple arrive with an elderly terrier, and there is a pause while the dogs greet each other and we indulge in doggy talk before our four-legged friends settle down under their appropriate tables. I am grateful for the interruption, as it gives me time to get a grip of myself. Mark wipes his mouth.

‘Good, but not five stars. What was yours like?’

We had both chosen fish: me cod, him sea perch.

‘Pretty good. Five stars plus or minus a half.’

‘I would have cooked it more slowly at a lower heat,’ he said, nodding at his plate. ‘But of course, then the customer needs to be patient and wait a little longer. Would you like to try it?’

I don’t understand what he means. ‘Try what?’

‘My cooking. You could come round to my place for a meal one evening, and see what I’m capable of.’

I’m taken completely by surprise, but at the same time must ask myself why. What is so remarkable about a single man inviting a single woman to dinner?

‘You’re doubtful?’ he has time to say before I can squeeze a response out of myself.

‘No! Of course not . . . I mean, obviously I’d love to go to your house for dinner. Forgive me, it’s just that I’m a bit socially retarded.’

That makes him laugh. ‘We’re in the same boat, then. I . . .’

He pauses and looks embarrassed for a moment.

‘Well?’

‘I really wasn’t at all sure if I would dare to invite you. But anyway, it’s done now.’

‘Are you saying it was planned?’

He smiles. ‘Of course. I’ve been thinking about it all the time since we first met. If you think I’m some sort of village Casanova, I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you. But I’m pretty good with fish, as I’ve already said.’

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Thank you for being so bold. But how is Jeremy going to take it? Will he accept that you are being visited by a stranger?’

Mark gestures with his hands and looks apologetic. ‘He’s not going to hug you enthusiastically. You’ll probably think he’s being antagonistic, but he will leave us in peace. He has plenty of private business to be getting on with.’

I think about the gesture Jeremy made when I saw him looking out of the window. I wonder if I ought to mention it, but decide that it can wait. ‘And dogs? Does he like animals? I won’t come without Castor, I hope you understand that.’

He bursts out laughing. ‘The invitation is for both of you. As for Jeremy, I think he prefers animals to humans. I’ve thought about buying a dog, but haven’t got round to it.’

And so we start talking about breeds of dog, about loneliness and the particular kind of darkness that embraces the moor at this time of year. He maintains that some nights, when there are no stars visible, heaven and earth can take on exactly the same shade of black – it’s simply not possible to distinguish between them, it’s as if one were living in a blind universe. Or as if heaven and earth had actually merged. Such nights can be dangerous for your state of mind, Mark says, even if you don’t go out on the moor to experience it. The phenomenon creeps into your house and under your skin. He remembers it from his childhood in Simonsbath – people just went out of their minds overnight.

‘And it’s at times like that you need to visit a good friend and have a bite to eat, is it?’ I ask.

‘Exactly,’ says Mark. ‘See a different face, just like I said. Shall we say next Friday? A week from now?’

We agree on that. Why wait for a whole week, I wonder, but I don’t say anything. He explains that I can drive right up to the house even though that doesn’t seem possible from a distance, and when we leave The Royal Oak Castor and I accompany him a short way up Halse Lane so that he can show us where we must turn off.

‘A mere three hundred crooked yards,’ he says.

‘I know,’ I say. ‘Castor and I have already walked them, but in this direction, not towards the house.’

Then we shake hands and part.

*

I wish I could regard that as the end of the day, but unfortunately that is not possible. When we come down to the war memorial, where we have parked the car as usual, there it is again: the silver-coloured hire car. I can’t see the silver colour, of course, because this little central spot in the village is only lit up by a single street lamp which is hanging over the memorial, swinging back and forth in the wind, and its dirty yellow beam is inadequate – but there is no doubt that it is the same car. The same newspapers are lying on the dashboard, one Polish and one Swedish, and this time he has parked so close that I have to get into my car via the passenger door.

He?
Why do I write
he
?

29

I must get to grips with this.

Must bring my fear out into the daylight. It’s the unformulated apprehensions that are the worst, and once you have dared to put a face on the monster you are halfway to overcoming it. I recall that Gudrun Ewerts used to use images like that, and when I get up on Saturday morning after a chaotic night, I realize that it’s high time.

What exactly is it that is scaring me? What am I imagining? My goal is simply to outlive my dog, after all. Isn’t it?

But first the routines, otherwise chaos will take over. I must make a fire and have a shower. Wake Castor up. Make the bed. Note down my meteorological observations.

Five degrees at nine o’clock. Moderate wind, misty, visibility fifty metres or so.

We walk in the direction of Dulverton: those are the fairly dry paths we know best, and where we meet the ponies three mornings out of four. And as we are walking I think through everything in detail. Or at least try to formulate the apprehensions. Put a face on the monster. Return to Mi
ȩ
dzyzdroje.

*

So:

More than six weeks have passed. One-and-a-half months. If he did manage to get himself out, he must have done so that first day.

Otherwise he’d have frozen to death.

Been eaten up by the rats.

Or?

Okay, two days. Two days maximum. I decide on that.

So, assume that Martin has been free since the twenty-fifth of October. Alive. What would he have been doing all that time? Would he have spent over forty days looking for me? I erased all traces of my movements after Berlin. Was there something I overlooked?

Has he been looking for me without making his presence known? Is that a possibility? Surely it sounds impossible. Or is it in fact as impossible as that?

Has he somehow found a trail leading to England?

Rented a silver-coloured Renault and followed a new trail to Exmoor?

Found our car? No doubt it’s possible that the registration number is on a data list at the tunnel terminal in Calais – but how could he have got hold of such a document?

And Winsford?

Rubbish. It simply doesn’t add up.

But if he really did get out of the bunker – I think, hypothetically – he must have kept everything secret. Somehow or other. There’s no doubt about that: he must have chosen not to have revealed the truth. Everybody thinks we are in Morocco. Everybody I am in touch with, that is. Gunvald. Synn. Christa. Bergman. Soblewski. G, whoever he is.

Other people as well – colleagues in the Monkeyhouse, colleagues in the Sandpit, Violetta di Parma and our neighbours with whom we never socialized . . . The fact is that every man jack who knows who we are also knows that we chose to leave Sweden because of certain improper goings-on at a hotel in Gothenburg.
Together
. Surely . . . Surely there would have been some sort of mention in the e-mails if Martin had suddenly turned up and put a stop to all the illusions and circumstances I so carefully cobbled together? In Stockholm or somewhere else. Surely?

Surely?

I pause briefly at this point because a little bird appears from nowhere and perches on the back of a pony. Only ten metres away from us. It sits there wagging its tail for a few seconds before flying away. I don’t know if it’s an especially remarkable event, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before. The pony paid no attention to it in any case, just carried on grazing calmly.

I shake my head and pick up the thread again. How . . .
How
could he possibly have traced me to the edge of an obscure little village in Somerset? We were supposed to be going to Morocco, after all.

It’s a more or less rhetorical question. I haven’t used a bank card or a mobile phone since I left Berlin, I am using an assumed name, there are no connections between the fictitious writer Maria Anderson and the former television personality Maria Holinek. None at all.

In the relative light of day during a familiar morning walk it is not difficult to reach this conclusion. The fact that I’m fighting against figments of my imagination. If Martin were alive, I would know about it. Everything else is out of the question. Everything else is fantasy.

Unless . . .

I pause again and think.
Unless this is exactly the strategy he has decided to follow
.

This sort of revenge, to be more precise: to slowly, extremely methodically and cunningly let me know that he is on my heels . . .
Revenge is a dish best served cold
. . . Letting me know that he knows where I am, and then, nudge nudge, scaring me over the edge into a nervous breakdown before finally . . . Well, before doing what exactly?

Would he be capable of acting like this?

I have to ask myself that question in all seriousness. Would Martin Holinek, the man with whom I have shared house and home for the whole of my adult life, be capable of doing something like that? Would it be in line with his character?

To my horror I realize that I can’t answer no to that question without reservations.

Especially if I consider the fact that the person he is after is his lawful wedded wife who tried to take his life by shutting him into a bunker full of hungry rats – and I really do have to take that circumstance into account, no matter what.

I start walking again. I feel sick. I can feel the first drops of what promises to be a heavy rain shower, and speed up in order to get back indoors as soon as possible.

But would it be possible to do that? I ask myself. Even theoretically possible? All he had with him when I left him there was the clothes he stood up in. How could he possibly have managed it?

An accomplice.

That thought strikes me just as we are clambering over the wall that separates Darne Lodge from the moor, and I realize immediately that it is a legitimate conclusion. Ergo: if Martin somehow managed to extricate himself from that confounded bunker and is still alive, he must have acquired an accomplice more or less immediately. There is no other possibility.

Somebody who assisted him with his plans, and helped him in every way necessary. Silence, money, support.