The Red Judge (3 page)

I went from room to room, lifting blinds and looking for a window to get out through. But all of them were locked, and so were the fire exits, and the kitchen door, and the museum office where I'd at least hoped to find a phone.

I banged on the front door, shaking it on its hinges, and jumped up and down in the hope that I'd somehow activate the burglar alarm. But it stubbornly refused to go off, and I tried shouting through the letterbox instead, and running through the building, banging on the windows and calling for help.

But nobody heard me. Rowley's Riverlife Museum is situated in a quiet part of town between trees and empty office buildings and, even when I switched on all the lights, there was nobody to see.

So much for police protection of public buildings, I thought. So much for town centre closed-circuit TV,
and neighbourhood watch, and everybody being on the lookout to beat crime. I'm stuck here and, by the look of things, I'll stay this way until morning.

The lights went off again, on a timer, and I was plunged back into darkness. Deciding to make the best of things, I helped myself to biscuits and milk sachets in the coffee shop, and a plaid rug ‘woven from Shropshire wool' in the tourist shop. Then I made my way through the building looking for somewhere to sleep or, at the very least, make myself comfortable.

But that was easier said than done. Once Rowley's Riverlife Museum had been a merchant's mansion, teeming with warmth and activity – a grand Tudor family house, as full of life as a walled city. But where there once had been huge old fireplaces and four-poster beds, now there were information boards and display cabinets, paintings and photographs, stuffed fish and birds, models of flat-bottomed river boats called trows, old maps, old fishing nets, long eel baskets called putcheons and nastily pronged eel forks that looked like the devil's own favourite weapon.

There wasn't even anywhere to sit down. I did find a coracle in the Sabrina Room – dedicated to Pengwern's queen of rivers, known commonly as the River Severn, but locally, as the Sabrina Fludde – but it was a fragile-looking thing that could be hundreds of years old, and I was afraid of breaking it.

In the end, I curled up against a storage heater in the Wye Room, dedicated to the river that Grace, my other grandmother, had always called by its Welsh name, the
Afon Gwy
. I'd always thought of it as her river because her house looked down on it, and perhaps that's why I chose it now.

I huddled against the storage heater, looking up at an old painting of the Afon Gwy, remembering swimming in that river and watching Grace fish. Not much had changed since that picture had been painted, as far as I could see. The river still flowed down from Plynlimon Mountain on exactly the same course, and the valley was just the same, winding between great flanks of hills that rose to hidden summits.

The only difference was that Grace had gone. She was dead, I mean, struck down in her garden pegging out her washing, with not a hint of a warning that a heart attack was on its way. It had happened a year ago now, but I was still trying to come to terms with it. As much as I had always hated my Fitztalbot grandmother, I had adored Grace. Now, with her gone, there was nobody to stick up for me, getting on the phone to tell my mother to go easy, and refusing to hear a word against me, no matter how much trouble I was in.

Not that she could do that now! If Grace were still alive, I thought, there'd be nothing she could say this time. What was there to stick up for?

What indeed? In my mind, I played the whole thing through again. It started with my sister standing in the doorway, and ended with the ambulance taking her away, with my father clinging on to her. You could see from his eyes that he didn't know a crowd was watching. All he knew was what he'd seen – Cary getting hit and me, who'd led her out into the traffic, getting off scot-free.

Except that I hadn't got off scot-free. I'd done something terrible and here, curled up against the
storage heater, shivering in my soaking clothes, I knew that life would never be the same. Everything,
everything
, was my fault. How many times had my mother said, ‘If you carry on like this, my boy, you'll get yourself into
real
trouble one day.'

And now I had. In the darkness of that cold museum, I was haunted by her words. They picked at me like goblin fingers, making me afraid. It wasn't the sort of fear that I'd once enjoyed, either – the sort I'd felt when spray-can painting on the railway bridge or watching scary movies on the telly. I couldn't just shiver, and laugh, and live to tell the tale another day. Here in Rowley's Riverlife Museum there
was
no other day. I was trapped in the darkness, alone with my thoughts. I couldn't shake them off.

I reached for the plaid rug, and pulled it round my shoulders, but couldn't stop shivering. Cold-eyed gargoyles from some ruined Wye-side abbey glared down at me as if they knew what I had done. Old fishermen and riverboat men glared down, too, from their photographs on the walls. Their faces seemed to condemn me, as if they all knew what I'd done. I felt on trial, with nobody to defend me and not a word that I could say on my behalf.

Even the
C
ŵ
n y Wbir
looked down at me – Plynlimon's legendary hounds of hell whose hunting grounds were the skies above the mountain. I hadn't noticed them before, but now I could see them in the painting of the Afon Gwy, and see their master too, the famous Red Judge of Plynlimon who – as every child knew – would ‘get you' if you were naughty.

And I'd been naughty, all right. I'd been more than naughty, and it seemed to me, looking at the painting,
that the red judge knew it too, standing on his mountain holding up the black corph candle, that only ever burned for a death.

Guilt does funny things to you. In the morning, there were no candles in the painting, nor was the red judge in it, nor his
C
ŵ
n y Wbir
. It was good to wake up and find myself lying on a cold, hard floor beneath a painting that had nothing in it but mountains, hills, a river and a few sheep.

I sighed with relief, and would have dropped back to sleep if a door hadn't sudden banged shut somewhere. Footsteps rang out in the big main hall and I heard a rattling sound – chains or keys, or something like that – and the beeping of the burglar alarm being switched off. Then voices started chattering, and I realised that a radio had been turned on.

I crept out on to the landing to see what was going on. Downstairs in the hall, a man in overalls was hauling a heavy-looking industrial-sized polisher across the floor, heading in the direction of the stairs. He was the cleaner – and he was coming my way. I looked around for somewhere to hide, and managed to get behind a door before he reached the top of the stairs. He passed me without noticing and, the moment I heard his polisher whirring in one of the rooms, I made my getaway.

I headed down the stairs and across the hall. The front door was still locked, so I turned towards the kitchen door instead. This was open, and through it I could see a vacuum cleaner and a microwave, plastic buckets and detergent bottles, mugs, a kettle and a big jar of instant coffee, all lit by a fluorescent strip-light.

I could also see the back door – which was open too, and led into a narrow alley where the week's rubbish had been lined up in black plastic bags. My escape route at last! I leapt over the bags and made the quickest exit possible, not even stopping when I tore one of the bags open, strewing its contents halfway down the alley. I was out of there, and no looking back – on my way home, ready to face whatever I was in for when I got there.

I couldn't get home quickly enough. But when I slipped through the side gate, the house stood in darkness as if none of us lived there any more. It looked abandoned, and a shiver ran through me. I let myself in, telling myself that everybody was asleep, and that was why the lights were off. But my parents' bedroom was empty and their bed unslept in, and the rest of the house was empty too. I went up and down every staircase, and in and out of every room, including the laundry room and even the cellar.

But nobody was home, and there wasn't as much as a note to explain what was going on. In the dining room and kitchen, I found tables and work surfaces laden with untouched food and, in the drawing room, I found the remains of the Christmas tree bauble that I had dropped, still not cleared up.

Obviously everybody was at the hospital – and that was where I should be too. I ran upstairs to change into some fresh clothes. On my bed were strewn the wrappings of the presents that I'd bought the day before. I stared down at them, remembering another world where joke books had seemed funny, and plastic turds a good idea. Now that all felt so long ago.

Suddenly my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of crunching on the gravel outside. It stopped beneath my window and car doors banged. My mother called something to my father, but I couldn't hear what. I heard them entering the house, their footsteps ringing in the hall. Then they started up the stairs, and the hairs rose on my head. I remembered the candle burning in my imagination – the black corph candle burning for death – and prepared myself for the worst.

But my parents passed my door and carried on to their room. They didn't even check that I was home. Through the wall I could hear their voices murmuring to each other, but I couldn't hear what they were saying. Glasses chinked as they helped themselves to stiff drinks. Then I heard them on the phone, passing on their news to everybody in the whole wide world, it seemed.

Everybody except me.

I hid in bed, pretending to be asleep in case my parents came in. I didn't want to find out what was going on, not any more. There was something grim about the voices through the wall – something about them that frightened me. I didn't want to know what had happened to Cary, and lay with my eyes tightly closed every time anybody went by.

But I needn't have worried because nobody came in.

Later, I heard my parents leave again. The front door slammed behind them and immediately I knew that I'd made another mistake. I leapt out of bed and ran to the window, wanting them to come back. I even leant out to shout at them, but it was too late. The automatic gates swung shut behind them, and my parents' car disappeared from sight.

I was alone again. I stood at the window, watching people passing down the hill. The rest of life – including Christmas – was still happening for them, but not for me. Sleet began to fall, and the day began to darken. I knew what I had to do, but couldn't find
the courage. I stood like that for ages, wasting precious time – Cary's time as well as mine. Then, in the end, I phoned for a taxi, knowing that if I didn't go to the hospital and find out what was going on, I'd never forgive myself.

All the way there, I sat with my head down as if I was ashamed of anybody seeing my face. Pengwern passed by in a daze. In no time at all, we were on the outskirts of the town, turning into the collection of modern buildings and old Nissen huts that comprised the county's prime hospital.

The taxi pulled up outside the main entrance, and I paid my fare, still not looking at the driver. Then he drove away, and I was left standing in the biting cold with sleet blowing into my face. With a growing sense of dread, I hurried through sliding glass doors into a reception area where rows of chairs were filled with people who all looked about as happy as I felt. A massive vase of flowers stood on a plinth. The place reminded me of a funeral parlour.

I turned round, and would have left again if the woman behind the reception desk hadn't seen the state that I was in, and called out, ‘Can I help you, dear?'

I asked where Cary might be found, and she tapped my sister's full name, CARIEDWEN ELIZABETH FITZTALBOT, into her computer and came up with Intensive Care.

‘It's on the third floor. There's a lift at the end of the hall,' she said, pointing the way.

I went down the hall, feeling more reluctant every step I took. I had always hated hospitals, with their sense of secret sorrows behind closed doors, and pent-up fears. And now I had my own share of those fears
and sorrows. I reached the lift and pressed for UP. A pair of stainless steel doors glided open with a ‘ting'. The lift was empty and I got in, pressed the button for the third floor and listened as a metallic voice announced, ‘
Mind the doors
.'

Then the doors glided shut, and the lift rose for an eternity, during which it seemed to me that the light reflected in its shiny steel came from hundreds of corph candles. I knew it didn't really, of course. But it was a relief, all the same, when the doors finally ‘tinged' open and I was released into Intensive Care.

I stumbled out, feeling lost, without a clue which way to turn. Signs hung over my head, with arrows pointing in every direction. I tried to work out which of them to follow, and suddenly saw my mother through a pair of swing doors. She looked just about as lost as me, standing in the middle of the ward, her usually immaculate appearance shot to pieces. Her hair was all over the place, she wore not a hint of make-up, and the expression on her face suggested that everything she'd ever worked for had been swept away.

At the sight of her, I felt my legs turn to jelly. I don't know what I would have done if she hadn't suddenly looked up and seen me. Our eyes met, and I knew I couldn't let her know how lost I felt myself. I marched through the swing doors, a stupid smile stuck all over my face.

‘How's Cary? Is she all right? Can I see her? Where've they got her? Is she coming home soon? What do they say? Are they going to keep her in? Can I talk to her?'

That's the sort of stupid thing I said. But then I saw
the rest of them – all my Fitztalbot relatives clustered like carrion crows in the lounge at the bottom of the ward. They looked up at the commotion, and saw me, and my father looked as well.