The Living and the Dead in Winsford (31 page)

‘But I would like to go walking over the moor with you.’

‘You are different. Presumably you’re not quite right in the head, but that suits me down to the ground. Where would you like to go?’

I thought for a moment. ‘Simonsbath and on towards Brendon, I think. Isn’t that what you recommended? Where you went walking as a child?’

‘Whenever you like,’ said Mark, yawning. ‘Yes, that’s where the moor is at its most beautiful . . . And its most desolate. It’ll be as windy and rainy as hell at this time of year, but that’s a risk you have to take. As long as you have the right clothes it’s not a problem.’

I explained that I even had a waterproof jacket for my dog, and he promised that we would go there as soon as an opportunity arose.

‘But not before Christmas,’ he said.

‘Why not?’ I asked, more as a joke than anything else. ‘There’s a whole week left yet.’

‘I’m going to be busy at the beginning of the week,’ he said. ‘A chap I work quite a lot with is coming here. And then Jeremy and I are off to my sister’s over Christmas – the main holidays, that is.’

‘I see. Where does she live?’

‘Scarborough, if you know where that is. It takes half a day to drive there, and I don’t know how it will go. How Jeremy will react. He doesn’t really want to leave this house at all, as you’ve probably gathered. I suppose you could say it’s an experiment, but I’ve set my mind on going through with it. In any case, we’ll be back before New Year, and then I promise to go walking over the moor with you until you drop.’

I said I was looking forward to that. Then added that what I wanted more than anything else just at the moment was to sleep for a few hours.

‘I thought you were never going to stop talking,’ said Mark, and so we rolled over on our sides and fell asleep.

It was eleven o’clock the next morning before Castor and I left Heathercombe Cottage. Jeremy joined us for breakfast – for twenty minutes, at least: that was the time he needed to eat his meal which comprised two eggs fried on both sides, a cup of tea, and two slices of toast with apricot jam. Mark said he had eaten exactly the same breakfast every single morning for the last two years, and the only place you could get the right sort of apricot jam was a little health food shop in Tiverton. If ever it closed down there would be a major problem.

Three spoonfuls of sugar in the tea, and lots of milk. Jeremy measured the dosage himself, concentrating as if he were placing the final card in a house of cards. He was wearing the same Harlequins jersey as yesterday, but his jeans were blue rather than black; and just as the previous day he shook hands with me once again. As I sat at the table, watching him more or less counting the grains of sugar in each spoon, I felt overcome by a feeling of tenderness towards him that I found difficult to explain.

‘What does he do up there in his room with his computer?’

Mark hesitated. Jeremy had just left us, and I found it difficult to talk about him when he was present. Castor had been given a portion of scrambled egg and bacon that he gobbled in less than five seconds.

‘You don’t really want to know that.’

‘Yes I do,’ I said. ‘I really do.’

He sighed. ‘Okay. Only two things, in fact. Recently, at least. He watches violent films and solves sudokus.’

‘Violent films and sudokus?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’

‘And he . . . I mean, why violent films?’

‘I don’t know. But he doesn’t seem to be adversely affected by them. And he gets into a much worse humour if he’s not allowed to look at them. I’ve tried restricting him, believe you me.’

I thought about that gesture he had made in the window, but yet again decided not to mention it.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to . . .’

Mark shrugged. ‘That’s okay. He sits watching those films . . . He does watch other films as well, not only ones in which people kill one another, but I just don’t know what he gets out of them. Either sort. He sometimes watches the same film three times without a pause – maybe he needs to do that for it to sink in. He’s not exactly a star at solving sudokus either.’

There was a trace of bitterness in his voice, and I wished I hadn’t asked in the first place. ‘I suspect sudokus aren’t the easiest of puzzles to solve,’ I said, ‘but I’ve never tried so I don’t know.’

Mark laughed. ‘He understands the rules. I tried telling myself that he’s better with numbers than with letters, so I spent a few weeks teaching him . . . Well, he understands what you have to do, but the problem is that he has no idea how to distinguish between right and wrong. I’ve checked up on him, and instead of working something out he tries pot luck, and it’s wrong more or less all the time. When he realizes it’s wrong, he goes back and tries pot luck again. I think it takes him about half a day to solve a sudoku of the easiest sort.’

‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘But it keeps him occupied, I suppose.’

‘Yes, it does,’ said Mark with a sigh. ‘And who’s to say what the rest of us do to occupy ourselves is so much more sensible? Manufacturing weapons? Selling shares? Advertising rubbish that nobody wants?’

He was certainly starting to sound gloomy, and I thought it would be best to let the matter drop. Once again I’m not at all sure what I mean by ‘let the matter drop’.

‘I dreamt about it again last night,’ he said after a few seconds of silence.

‘About what?’

‘About what I said when we first met. That absent husband and the house in the south. Perhaps it was because you were lying beside me . . .’

I was totally unprepared for this, and it came as a bit of a shock. I had almost succeeded in repressing his clairvoyant abilities, or whatever they were. In any case, I hadn’t spent much time thinking about it, and that business about reading other people’s minds felt more like an in-joke by this time.

But perhaps that was an over-hasty conclusion?

‘Really?’ I said, sounding more doubtful than I would have liked.

‘It was the same thing, really. A group of men around a table dressed in white, wondering where somebody had disappeared to. A white house as well . . . somewhere a long way south, as I said before.’

‘And what about me? Was I there in a corner somewhere?’

‘That might be what was new about it,’ said Mark, looking thoughtful. ‘You were walking along a beach – it must have been quite close by, because I saw you at the same time as I saw the house. Yes, you were walking along a beach with your dog . . . There was no more to it than that.’

‘That’s quite enough,’ I said, trying to laugh. ‘I don’t want you to be limitlessly supernatural.’

Mark cleared his throat and apologized.

‘But I’m really pleased that Castor and I could come here,’ I said after a short pause while I got a grip on myself. ‘I’d like to invite you up to Darne Lodge, but that somehow feels like a move in the wrong direction . . . And I assume it would be hard to persuade Jeremy to come there. It really is a rat-hole.’

He smiled. Reached over the table and took hold of my hands. ‘I’m sure you’ve made it very cosy up there,’ he said. ‘But even so I think we should blame Jeremy and continue to meet here.’

‘Continue?’

‘Yes.’

‘We must go for a walk above Simonsbath first.’

‘Certainly,’ said Mark, looking serious. ‘First Christmas, then a walk over the moor, then Heathercombe Cottage part two.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll go along with that. The entire programme.’

‘By the way, that stalker – what’s his name? In case I happen to come across a certain Renault . . .’

Castor and I were already on the way to our car, which I’d parked on the other side of the bridge.

‘His name’s Simmel,’ I said. ‘Yes, he’s called John Simmel.’

That was just a name that happened to come into my head. I’ve no idea where it came from: perhaps from a book or a film.

‘Good,’ said Mark. ‘John Simmel. I’ll remember that. Look after yourself. It’s possible that I might be having dinner with my colleague at The Royal Oak on Wednesday . . . Just in case you fancy meeting two nice Englishmen instead of just one.’

‘I’m perfectly happy with one, thank you,’ I assured him as I let Castor into the car. ‘Thank you for everything.’

‘I’m the one who should be thanking you.’

I glanced up at Jeremy’s window, but he was evidently sitting at his computer. A violent film or a sudoku?

And as we sat shuddering and shaking on the bumpy and muddy road down into the village, it occurred to me that I’d forgotten to ask for help with that password.

Something told me that was just as well.

Something else told me that I should forget all about all those silly threats and thoughts. No doubt it is the moor and the solitariness of my existence here that gives rise to them.

37

The nineteenth of December. A Wednesday. The moment I wake up I remember that it’s Yolanda Mendez’s birthday.

Yolanda Mendez was my best friend for two years at primary school – year four and most of year five. She came from Peru, had big brown eyes and a horse of her own. If the family hadn’t moved she might well have been my best friend at secondary school as well – I think so, as there was never the slightest hitch in our well-oiled friendship.

And her birthday was so close to Christmas: I recall being a bit sorry for her on that account.

I get out of bed and wonder why she has suddenly come into my head. And then I remember that she always does on this day, every year. Just for half a minute or even less. I usually wonder what became of her, and I do today as well.

Is this what old age is like? I wonder as I check the thermometer and observe the sky through the window. People crop up then disappear, crop up and disappear. In a never-ending stream and with no apparent order or reason. Not just on their birthdays, I assume. The older we get the more vulnerable we become to our memories.

I feel listless today again. Come to that, I have done so every morning since that evening and night with Mark Britton. I can’t make up my mind if it’s because I miss him, or if there is some other reason – even if it’s the opposite of missing him. But why should that be so? I note down that it’s only four degrees, and looks wet and windy. It’s not exactly foggy, but it’s as if a thick but quite translucent cloud were drifting over the moor. Three ponies are chewing away just on the other side of the wall, with two more not far behind them. The sky is dark.

It strikes me that everything is going awry.

I start crying.

Then stop crying after a few minutes and light a fire instead. Castor comes sauntering in from the bedroom. I don’t think I’d be setting foot outside the house today if it weren’t for him.

I can’t even decide what is worst about sitting in prison like this. You leave no impression on the world. You are outside time. If you somehow managed to cease existing for a day it wouldn’t make any difference. Nobody would notice anything at all. Is that why some people become pyromaniacs? Or break into schools with their gun and shoot children? In order to make the impression that is so terribly important?

Is this a peculiar question? I don’t know; but the reason why I am here – isn’t it precisely so that I can avoid making any impression? And why am I suddenly enquiring about a reason?

We go for a morning walk instead. The same rough heather, the same grass and moss and thorn bushes. Bracken, pheasants and mud. After ten minutes there is a hailstorm: we turn back and hurry home.

*

Halfway through breakfast I realize that I fell asleep before eleven last night, and that I haven’t yet used today’s words. I read through my list and decide to have one more go with literary figures. The last two days I’ve tried Russians and Americans, so if I spread myself out a bit in Europe today, I can try three Swedes tomorrow.

Fagin. Quixote. Faust.

No luck, I note as usual, but I thought I detected a little bit of hesitation on the part of the computer when I tried Quixote. There was a slightly longer pause than usual before it stated that I had provided an invalid password. Could that be because some of the letters were correct?

Or is it just that I’m losing my grip and imagining things?

I start playing patience instead, but only eight games. I’ll save the rest until this evening.

I go to the centre after a long, difficult walk up to Dunkery Beacon, the highest point on the whole moor. We started from Wheddon Cross, in accordance with instructions in the guidebook, and almost all the time we had our destination in view, apart from when it was partially obscured by mist and clouds. But after having struggled up through soaking wet pasture land, difficult to negotiate, for what seemed like many hours, and forcing our way past aggressive herds of very fat cows – they were worryingly reminiscent of surly uniformed officials at border crossings into totalitarian countries – we came to the narrow road that encircles the summit in an irregular circle, and decided that we would attempt the final five hundred metres some other day. The wind was blowing straight at us, and there was good reason to think that the view would be restricted on a day like this one. We hadn’t seen a single person on the whole way up, and in fact the only real plus was a group of stags some way away from the path.

So we turned back, and walked down along a sheltered path through a valley – wet and muddy, but protected from the wind – and were back at the car park outside The Rest and Be Thankful Inn after two-and-a-half hours in all. This was the very pub I had called in at when I first arrived on the moor fifty days earlier: I remembered the big-bosomed blonde barmaid, the crossword-solving woman and the peripatetic plumber, and thought that it seemed as if had happened a year ago.

But I didn’t consider even for a moment popping in again. Instead we got into the car and began driving along the now familiar A396 back to Winsford. And as we were doing so, I decided it was high time to check the e-mails again.

Both Alfred Biggs and Margaret Allen are on duty for once. And there are two young girls and two young boys, sitting in different corners and lost in a world of their own of which I have no conception. I think in passing of Jeremy Britton, and exclude him from my thoughts just as quickly.