One-Way Return

It was only when the letter came through that he realised he had never been to Head Office – the new Head Office, the one in London, the nerve centre of the huge consortium that now made the life and death decisions for his company.

His company had once been a respectable building firm, making a small profit each year, keeping several dozen tradesmen in business, sending him off around the area, talking to workmen, site managers, merchants, inspectors, clerks of works; in fact, all kinds of everybody, they all knew him.

Then, about five years ago, someone somewhere made the Harrison brothers – joint directors – a very lucrative offer at a time when the industry was going through something of a dry patch and suddenly the respectable building firm was merely the South-West Construction Division of Brickline plc. Instead of going in to the office once a week with their NHBC forms, they sent everything by post and e-mail to the new London Head Office, a place to which, duty by duty, desk by desk and worker by worker, Harrisons’ office slowly migrated. Then the old 1950s office itself was pulled down and a steel and glass cube housing microtechnology firms sprang up in its place.

He loaded his battered old briefcase, its corners frayed, its locks scratched and dull, and set it down on the passenger seat of his car. It would be a long enough journey, he thought. The letter said half-past nine, so he had made sure he was ready to set off at seven, giving himself enough time to stop off at a service station and grab breakfast. The street was quiet, just the paperboy cycling idly past, giving him a curt nod, the smart businessman three doors up setting off early too, the old woman with her Westie, just too far away to notice him. Should he stay five minutes longer and pass the time with her?  Probably not a good idea, he thought. Tempting fate. He could imagine himself somewhere in London, trying to beg those five minutes back from the past.

He locked up, and got into his car, starting it up, flicking on Radio Two, letting himself melt into the companionable mix of music and chat as he headed for the A-road that would take him onto the motorway. It was an overcast morning, and he wondered whether it would rain later. He had groundworkers, bricklayers, roofers to think of. He had worked his way up through the trades himself, he knew what it was like to press on with a job in the full force of the British weather when every instinct told him to get under cover, hide in the portakabins, scrounge a mug of tea or skedaddle to the nearest sandwich van until he saw the site agent stomping round in his muddy riggers, looking for someone’s arse to kick.

Stuck behind a heavy gravel lorry, he waited for a gap in the traffic to pull out and past. He cast a glance into the back of the lorry, wondering what sort of aggregate it was, where it was headed, what it would be used for. Later that day, he was sure the driver would find himself splashing through muddy ruts, searching out the site office, asking someone on a high scaffold where they wanted the sand tipping.

Half-past seven, and the motorway reached out and pulled him in. He made a mental calculation, totted up the miles, divided by the time, was sure he’d make it with plenty to spare, squirmed in his seat, put his foot down anyway. That was the difference between A-road traffic and the motorway, the difference that the experienced driver recognised. A consensual agreement to allow the motorway to do half the work for them. On A-roads, there were choices to be made, manoeuvres to be negotiated, hazards to consider. On the motorway, there were three lanes of single-direction traffic and only two things to bear in mind – your speed and what was happening directly in front of you.  He flicked between the left hand and middle lanes,  passing camper vans, sales reps, innumerable articulated lorries with wording from every country in Europe, supermarket delivery vans and a Range Rover towing a trailer with two mud-spattered quad bikes on it.

He changed station to Radio Four to hear the weather – overcast but dry in London – then back to Two, to hear Wogan narrowly avoid crashing the pips. The news told its familiar tale of woe, and he found himself switching off before the radio did. He kept an eye out for the next services. He needed something to eat. He had drunk a cup of tea and eaten two chocolate digestives since waking – he had glanced into the fridge for anything to eat but all there he had found was the left-overs of the takeaway Chicken Jalfrezi that had suddenly made him feel rather queasy the previous night and ruined the second half of Taggart. He had left it there; he’d bin it when he got home.

Services two miles and twenty-one miles. That’d do. Twenty minutes for a traditional breakfast, pot of tea, a fiver if he got himself an Express as well. He flicked on the indicator, pulled off the motorway and slowed as he negotiated the sharp bend that slid him into the car park, stopping between a Mondeo and a Megane, both London registered.

As he opened the door, the fresh air and the rumble of motorway traffic hit him like a slap, waking him from the somnolence of long-distance driving. He walked across the car-park, joining the flow that poured into the foyer of Western Fayre’s tiled and plastic world of welcome. Around the foyer, franchises jostled for space. Costa Coffee, Patsy’s Parlour, News Cabin, Captain’s Catch, Antonio’s Pizzeria.
The young girl at the counter of Patsy’s Parlour, rosy-cheeked, frizzy hair gathered up in a bun and tucked under a straw boated gifted him with a smile and a cheery good morning as he paid for his breakfast and paper.
“Up to London, are we?”
“Yes,” he replied, feeling strangely reluctant to discuss his business. “Big meeting.  Head Office. Attendance compulsory.”
“Oh, right,” she said with mock-foreboding. “Hope it goes well for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you hear about these things, don’t you?  Invited to big meeting. Head Office. Attendance compulsory. P45 on table.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he said. “I’ve been with the company for years. Too much experience. Too valuable.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” she said. He shrugged and walked off towards a nearby table, still glistening wet from its last wipedown.
Starting on his breakfast, he gazed out across the car park, the motorway, the fields beyond, stretching into the blurred distance of the Berkshire countryside. As he chewed his first mouthful, he mulled over what the girl at the counter had said. It was nonsense, of course it was. She must have heard so many moans from so many travellers that she had dredged up a meaningless memory of someone else’s life. He shrugged again, kept on with his breakfast, sipped at his tea. The thought was almost lost as he flicked the pages of his Express, tutting at the state of the world today, sighing at the stupidity of the rich and famous, shaking his head at the things they were said to have said.

He glanced at his watch and realised that he must have bolted his breakfast. He had a good few minutes left before he ought be back on the road. He picked up his paper and walked out into the foyer, then to the car park. Instead of returning to the car, he made his way up an embankment to the picnic benches and sat down, looking out again at the countryside, feeling that something was now troubling him, an itch inside his mind that he couldn’t shake off.
He took out the letter from his jacket pocket. It had the directions to head office but that was not what interested him now. Instead, he read and re-read the short paragraphs, trying to detect any coded hints as to the purpose of the meeting. He should have checked with his colleagues, contacts in other offices, checking to see if they had also been invited. He wondered what it would have indicated had no-one else received an invitation.
It was just plain ridiculous, he thought. No-one was called all the way to London just to be fired. They would have sent someone down, or told him in a letter, plain and simple. That was the way the Harrisons had done it; bulletting, they called it.
He’s not working out, it’s best we bullet him, Fred.
I think we’ll bullet him on Friday, Henry.
The phrase had caught on and he had found himself using it of hapless joiners and bricklayers many a time. 
Ah yes, he caught himself thinking, that was the Harrison way, but they aren’t here any more. Brickline plc probably have a more modern way of doing things. They probably have a huge Personnel - HR, nowadays – department, with hundreds of lawyers to make sure things are done by the book, no chance of an industrial tribunal or such things. When they sack someone, that someone stays sacked. Of course, it wasn’t called sacking now. It was called outplacement, or downsizing or letting someone go. Damn Americanisms, he found himself fuming, as if British management was afraid to call the sack the sack. 
And what better way to get rid of someone than to do it off their own turf, at some huge building in London, where they felt alone and friendless, no mates to encourage them, no familiar surroundings.
He looked at the letter again and the nagging doubt in his mind began to grow. The more he thought about it, the more he began to see things that had previously eluded him. That was why the young quantity surveyor had been sent down to their office. The official line was that restructuring had brought more work which the new arrival was going to help handle. But what better way to learn the business he was going to take over than to shadow the old boy, watch his every move, slide into the job before it was handed to him.
And the new computer system, all internet and intranet and e-mail and laptops. Guaranteed to sideline the oldsters like himself, who were unfamiliar with computers in the first place. A sure way to ensure that certain communications went unnoticed.
And that internal memo concerning his company car upgrade; the paragraph about waiting for new budget proposals, favourable tax rates, a newer model. They didn’t want to give him a new car because he wasn’t going to be there to drive it.

He wasn’t surprised, just disappointed. He had heard of so many like him, giving loyal service to their companies and then shunted aside in favour of those who toed the corporate line. He would find somewhere else, he was sure of it, or perhaps he might reply to that letter from the local college, asking if he was interested in teaching Building and Civil Engineering. He had thrust that one aside, insulted that they might have thought him past it and ready to power down, but now, it seemed like an opportunity that he ought to grasp at.

He took out Brickline’s letter, tore it into a handful of ragged pieces and let them drop into the nearest litter bin. Then he strode to his car, got in and started it up. The reassuring tones of Wogan’s blarney filled his ears again. He smiled at a particularly acerbic comment, swung the car round and headed towards the westbound lane of the motorway.

The Gift

Overnight, as predicted, the temperature had dropped and it was through a frosty city that he walked to work that day. Anonymous in the throng of hundreds, if not thousands, a human river, he saw no-one and nothing;  he just wanted to get to the office. Clouds of steaming breath mingled with the acrid, milk-white curdlings of car exhausts, traffic noise and horns battled with Christmas carols and deep-bass hip hop for decibel dominance.

He had plans for the day, which included getting away early for the seasonal exodus. It was an unwritten understanding that his hours would remain unchanged, which was why he was coming in a full three quarters of an hour early; besides, he had things to do at lunchtime. Disgorged by the nameless throng that had carried him from the tube station across the bridge and into the financial quarter, he pushed through the revolving doors and drank in the quiet sanctuary of the foyer, marble-finished and tastefully lit, the logo of Pierpoint Brooker and Lomax picked out in five-foot gold flecked letters on the floor.
He met the eyes of the receptionist only momentarily as she handed him his post, which he clutched under one arm. The foyer was blissfully warm after the December chill of the walk to work, and he felt himself start to sweat slightly in his overcoat. The lift arrived and he punched in number sixteen, letting the stomach-lurching sensation carry him to the dizzy corporate heights of Refinanced Property Management Consultancy.

With a practised movement, he set his briefcase onto his desk, flicked open the locks, lifted the lid. Out came his laptop, several files, the FT and a well-thumbed copy of Monday’s City Trader Weekly. He had made sure it was pretty well obvious that he had been looking at the jobs pages. He had no intention of moving, but management didn’t know that and what better way to keep them keen than to hint that their star broker might be getting itchy feet.  He checked his e-mails, called up the spreadsheet he had been working on the previous night till half-one, then walked to the coffee machine to get himself an espresso.


“Coming to the bash tomorrow?” asked Jacobs from two sections over.
“Er, no, looking to get away tonight, if at all poss.”
“Oh, come on. It’s not as if there’s some piece of hot totty in the Cotswolds with your name on it, is there?”
“Who says there isn’t?” he snapped back, slightly irritated both that Jacobs had got to find out about Marielle’s brutal ending of the relationship and that he lost no opportunity to remind him of his single status.
“I think we’d know,” smirked Jacobs. “Chap like you wouldn’t want to keep something like that to yourself eh, would you? Especially after the way that Marielle…”
“Just piss off, Jacobs.”
“Compliments of the season to you too,” Jacobs laughed at his retreating back.

It rankled him all the way back to his desk. It was the one thing he didn’t seem to be able to sort out in his life. He had the job, the flat in one of the most desirable areas in London, the car (for out of town business only – damn congestion charge, bloody car parking fees), the membership of a very exclusive gym on the river (normally a two-year waiting list) but to lose the woman in such a spectacularly galling way (dumped by e-mail, copied to his friends for good measure) made it all seem somehow rather hollow.  It wasn’t as if he had the time to find anyone else, and all the executive dating agencies he had looked into seemed set up to prey on lonely and loaded suckers like himself.  So he had put the dumping behind him (or tried to) and buried himself in work, gaining good notices from the board and promising whispers of things to come at the next half-yearly appraisal.  That’d shut Jacobs up, he thought.

He opened a tightly-packed envelope postmarked Huntingdon and unfolded the sheets of paper. As he scanned it, he was confused. It was nothing that he knew about, yet it seemed to be some sort of précis of a very tasty land deal near Brampton, excellent connections to the A1 and A14, near Huntingdon race course, a bargain price to acquire, but the potential to make a very large amount of money. He could almost taste the commission when he noticed that the envelope and the letter were addressed to Andy Jacobs, Refinanced Property Management Consultancy, Pierpoint Brooker and Lomax


He glanced around; Jacobs was busily chatting to Kate Beaumont, one of this year’s graduate intake (clearly inexperienced if she thought Jacobs was worth getting to know, he thought) so he was going to be unavailable for quite some time. He picked up his mobile (leave no trace) and dialled the number. The dialling tone taunted him for at least twenty seconds. Come on, he thought, pick up.
“Hello, Mr Tenby?  Yes, it’s Pierpoint Brooker and Lomax here. No, it’s not Mr Jacobs, he’s tied up with a hot property locally and he’s asked me to handle your situation. Jamie Lessing. Yes, yes, I appreciate that. No, no, nothing that can’t be rescheduled. This evening?  Can’t see why not. Looking forward to it. You too. Bye now.”

He ended the call. Looking round again, he noticed that Kate Beaumont was laughing in an exaggerated way at something that Jacobs had said. A girl who laughs at your jokes, Andy, he thought; who could possibly ask for more? He slipped the deeds and details into his overcoat pocket and got on with the day’s business, sinking further and further into it until it was only the grumbling of his stomach that reminded him it was approaching lunchtime.

The cold air of the city, so heavy with exhaust and the exhaled dreams of millions that it clung to the buildings like a shroud, filled his lungs as he walked the quarter-mile to his favourite eaterie. It was run by two ebullient Kurds, who he was not quite sure were not gangsters. He had been going only a matter of weeks, and would abandon it when the broadsheets’ food editors discovered it too. Letting his pace drop a little, he had slightly more time to look around. The Christmas lights were on already and there were noticeably more children in the streets now that the schools were out. There in a little piazza was a Salvation Army brass band, puffing out festive melodies as deep and warm as a tankard of mulled wine (now that definitely meant Christmas was nearly here) and just there….

He stopped, gazing in at the window. Something like a thrill, a shiver that had nothing to do with the weather ran through him. The mannequin in the window of Broadhurst and Tompkins, Gents Outfitters since 1871 was wearing the most exquisitely tailored, superbly cut, class-oozing overcoat that he had ever seen. It was the sort of coat that he had always promised himself, a coat that made other coats want to run away and hide in shame. It made him acutely embarrassed of the worn and frayed effort that he was wearing. He nodded to himself and then, with the thought that a visit to Mr Tenby demanded the very best (as if the purchase of such a coat needed any further justification), he went in.

Ten minutes later he emerged, feeling somehow enriched by the new coat, putting to the back of his mind how much it had cost, knowing it was worth it. Success had its rewards and this was one of them. He quickened his step, knowing he had not that much of his lunch-hour left. The Kurds would not miss him. Perhaps he could get a take-away. Suddenly, he was jerked out of his reverie by a voice from practically underfoot.
“That’s a nice coat, mate.”
He glanced round, then down to see the man in the doorway, his grubby clothes and weather-beaten face a stark contrast to the immaculately groomed reflection in the shop window beside him.
“Yes, it is,” he replied, wanting to get away, yet held by something indefinable.
“Spare some change?” the man asked, and he held out a chipped and scratched enamel mug.
“I don’t carry any,” he said, which was the actual truth. “All plastic, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, right,” said the man with a half-laugh, accompanied by an exhalation of steam. That doorway might offer some slight protection from the cold but not much.
He reached into the Broadhurst and Tompkins bag and pulled out his old overcoat. There were still plenty of miles left in it. He handed it to the man in the doorway, then hurried off. There was a faint “Thanks, mate.” which was swallowed by the bustle of the city’s busy lunchtime.

The afternoon passed more quickly than he had thought, and outside, the cityscape gave way to the illuminated reflection of their office. He paid a visit to the coffee machine, timing his trip to coincide with Jacobs’ one to the washroom, got replies to several of his e-mails sent that morning about a lease on a dockside office block that had been sitting vacant since the summer, and played a game of Free Cell while waiting to be put through to a Herr Rolf Schroder in Dusseldorf. Finally, it was time to go. He cleared his desk in the exact reverse of the morning’s routine, spun the dials on the combination of his briefcase locks and headed for the lift. He was feeling so up that he even passed the time of day with Jacobs in an almost-friendly way until they reached the foyer and went their separate ways. He was headed for Kings Cross and Huntingdon; Jacobs, he hoped, was heading nowhere.  The earlier departure meant the streets were slightly emptier than they would be in half an hour or so. He dropped his pace, and – purely for reassurance – reached for the deeds to the Huntingdon property.

Oh my god, he thought, they’re not there!  Jesus, did I drop them?  No, I can’t have done. Did Jacobs filch them while I was away from my desk? No, he was always in view and so was my desk.
Then, with a realisation that made his face crease with anguish, he remembered. Broadhurst and Tompkins. The shop assistant, only too helpful, had folded his old overcoat and slipped it into the bag. And he had given it to the down-and-out. A tramp had the paperwork for the deal of a lifetime!  He altered course, heading for the shop doorway where he had been so generous and so stupid at the same time. That was what he had felt, that indefinable sensation – his future self shouting Check the bloody pockets, you fool!

He reached the piazza, started to hunt through the crowds of shoppers. Which doorway had it been? Blast, he couldn’t remember. There was no sign of any down-and-out in any of the doorways on the piazza. The man had probably vanished into the teeming hordes flowing though the city, along with his one chance at glory and fortune.
He kicked an empty Starbucks cup into the road where it was flattened under the wheels of a black cab, then sat down on the nearest bench. He was going to have to call Tenby, invent some plausible excuse for the delay. The man would have copies, of course he would. It would have to be after Christmas. But the delay might be fatal; it was a chance, a slim chance but a chance nonetheless.

“Hello.”
He blinked, looked around, looked up. There, looking down at him was a pretty young girl, her face framed by a black bonnet, wearing a black tunic with Salvation Army wording on her epaulettes.
“I’m sorry, I don’t carry cash. Just plastic.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” she said and smiled. “I believe that you’ve given already today.”
“I did?”
“I saw you at lunchtime,” she said. “When you gave that man your new overcoat from Broadhurst and Tompkins. I know how much they charge. You didn’t have any cash on you so you gave what you had. Do you know how rare generosity like that is these days?”
“Pretty rare, I guess.”
“Try nearly impossible,” she replied. “Anyway, it proves that the Christmas spirit isn’t completely dead.”
As if realising that she had been gushing, she blushed, which he found curiously endearing. She had brown eyes (Marielle’s had been a glacial blue) and her hair below her bonnet was dark and curly (Marielle’s had been straight and blonde). She turned to go.
“Wait a minute,” he called out.  “I don’t suppose you know the man in question?”
“Oh, of course,” she said. “We know most of them in this area.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
“He’ll be at the drop-in centre, ready for his hot meal,” she said and then an earnest expression crossed her face. “You know, you’re not just generous, you’re caring too; you were obviously worried about him and wanted to make sure he was okay.”
“Er, yes, of course. Who wouldn’t?”
“Lots of people,” she said with a hint of regret in her voice. “You’re a rare find, Mr…”
“Lessing,” he said, smiling “but call me Jamie.”
“I’m Ellen,” she said, extending a hand “Why don’t you come with me? I’m on my way there now.”
“That’d be nice,” he said. “Truth to tell, I could use the company.”
He set off with her, allowing her to direct him. Halfway there, he asked her to stop a moment.
“Is there a problem?” she asked
“No, just got to make a quick call,” he replied, then took out his mobile, pressed a few buttons and waited for his call to be answered.
“Hello?” he said, “Is that Mr Tenby?”

New England, Old Shadows

                              
Parson Francis Moore, to the Bishop of London, Greetings.

In the year of our Lord, sixteen hundred and twenty nine, I took ship with a captain of the Massachusetts Bay Company, as your grace had bid me and crossed the Atlantic to embark upon my commission, viz. to establish the cause of the deaths of fully one quarter of the passengers aboard the ship Mayflower, nine years previous.

The crossing was unpleasant, given the turbid state of the seas, the driving rain, the winds that howled as if Satan himself were scourging them with serpents and the uncouth nature and demeanour of the seamen who plied their trade in a seemingly unending fug of rum and tobacco, against all sense and the preference of good King James, only four years in his grave. Mayhap they think the king’s writ does not apply to the Kingdom of Ocean.

We made landfall at Plymouth and there I found that the Massachusetts Bay Company, though nominally charged with the good administration of the Colony, makes free and easy with his Majesty’s authority. Though this was without my remit, I made careful notes of the liberties taken by those who ought to know better and enclose them with this packet, hoping that your Grace might convey them to the appropriate authorities.

Remembering your adjunct to be both thorough and speedy, I sought out the Colony’s doctor, Jacob Sawfield, and related to him my commission. He, though a busy man, for there seemed much to occupy a physician such as he, furnished me with all the information at his disposal concerning that first tragic winter, wherein so many poor souls perished.

I studied these names long. Though there seemed pattern enough to conclude that whatsoever sickness or pestilence had laid them low spread quickly and virulently, claiming husbands and wives, children and servants, discriminating little between saints and strangers, and making perhaps some cruel mockery of the hopes and dreams that had brought them so far to this unknown land, what did not seem apparent was the origin of that contagion. Armed with your warrant, your Grace, I bethought it fitting to have the graves themselves examined, lest any clue be left therein as to the nature of the sickness. I hired men and brought Jacob Sawfield with me to that sorry plot wherein the bones of they who perished are laid, whereat we commenced to dig, masking our mouths with clothes soaked in vinegar, a noisome odour and experience, to have no doubt, yet in far preferential to the fate that might have awaited us had we neglected this most important of measures.

After we had laid open the graves of some six or seven, and had gathered to ourselves a crowd, comprising the curious, the hostile, the intoxicated and the bored, Sawfield pronounced himself satisfied that nothing unnatural had laid these poor folk low, and declaimed that, in his opinion, it was due to the strange proximity of the pilgrims in the confinement of their settlement, owing to the unexpected cold that they had encountered that winter. ‘We might conclude,’ he said to me that evening, after we had striven to drive the smell of vinegar from our clothes and noses, ‘that whatsoever agent of contagion brought the sickness from person to person found it plainly easy to convey the harbingers of death, more so than if they had been sensible of their danger and secluded the sick from the healthy.’

This seemed, in truth, most logical an explanation, and so I prepared myself and my belongings for the voyage back across the ocean. Yet I was to find that my sojourn there was not to be so swiftly truncated. For, a week before I was to take ship again for London, a letter came to me which spake briefly thus

If thou wouldst know the truth behind the unseemlie end of those poore wretches who, though hoping for a better life here in the New Worlde, found instede merely dethe and by most terrible means, then I wouldst meet thee tomorrow night hence, on the townland west of the first milepost. Yours in haste, Ezekiel Crowe

Thus intrigued, and mindful of your admonition to spare no effort to uncover the truth, I made to keep this appointment and thus was introduced to the dubious company of this Ezekiel Crowe. He was of appearance filthy, of manner dissolute and of speech and bearing so unlike anyone that I have ever encountered in church or genteel society that I scarce deigned walk with him one hundred yards, let along the distances that he bade me do if I were interested in the truth. Yet thanks be to God that I did. For he, from a mouth clouded by drink and tobacco, possessed of few clean teeth and the breath of a hundred rotting corpses, told me a tale that chilled my bones and made me shiver as if the very hand of winter laid upon my shoulder and tightened its grip in some confederate’s embrace.

“They say as how ye seek news of what befell they who landed here nine years since,” he spake to me. “I am in a goodlie position to furnish ye with said details, but I am loth to do so, since ye, being a gentleman and of the Church, what is more, will surely judge me mad or possessed or both.”
“If you are so certain of my reaction,” said I, “then why sought you me out? Surely you must have thought me at least half-minded to hear you or you would not have sent me that letter.”
“Ye speak with good sense, Parson. I hope that your mind is similarly prepared for what we shall discover.”
And with that, he bade me meet him there the following dawn, with horse and food for one week, and – if I should deem it necessary, weaponry. I asked him what manner of situation might make it so that we might need such, at which he merely laughed in a way that I found most unsettling.

The following dawn, I met Crowe as I had been bid, and on horseback we set off, I mindful of the nature of the man. Once away from the influence of Plymouth, we found the habitation of man a scarcity in the wilderness. Here and there, a solitary farmstead might emerge, as though it had been lost and was now pleased to see us. The roads became tracks and they in turn meandered into the grass of meadows and the thickets of weeds and brambles and were lost. For all as has been made of our settlement in the New World, we have made but a scratch upon it and that scratch seems at times almost hasty to be healed of us. Each evening, as sun set, the darkness between the trees thickened and reached out its fingers as if to entwine us, and only our fire, a solitary isle of light sat between us and the great unknown. The hills ahead rose up as if the very land recoiled before us and sought to crush us neath its wild majesty. I sought comfort in Scripture but Crowe found his solace in the bottle and the pipe. He offered me both often and laughed when I refused.

Four days’ ride into the wilds, near a shining mere that rippled like some sinuous beast trapped between its wooded banks, we came to a place where our horses refused to go. At the head of a wooded valley, steep-sided and covered in old, old trees, they shied and whinnied and would not go on, even for the fear of the whip. Crowe did laugh here, and said
“This is surelie the place, for even dumb beastes knowe theyre peril. Mayhap we had more sense than they, we would not pass and leave this unseemlie place be.”
“I have faith in the Lord,” said I. “And I have not come this far, to be turned back by shadow and shaking. Let us strengthen ourselves with prayer, then shall I see that which you deem so terrible and yet so necessary.”
I knelt and prayed, and Crowe made semblance but his lips moved not, and if he swayed and trembled, it was under the influence of another spirit than that of our Lord. Then, armed with the consolation of God, I proceeded on foot into that accursed valley.

In truth, your Grace, though I was possessed of fortitude and faith, yet as I made my way further on, I began to feel real fear, of a kind that was previously unknown to me. As there are places in Judaea and Israel where the influence of the Baals is strong, so here I found myself of the conviction that I was being watched by some unearthly presence, which lurked amongst the dark spaces between the trees. Their trunks were shrouded in moss and the ground between them was heavy with old leaf mould and thick grass that so deadened the sound of our feet that we seemed to be wading through a mire. Several times did I turn suddenly, expecting to find the very Devil himself behind us, but there was nothing there; nothing visible, at any rate.
We neared the head of the valley, at which point, Crowe stopped and turned to me. He smiled again, and then pointed through the trees.
“It is yonder. Though I have been here before, I find that I have acquired some sort of ague and like it not. I will wait here for thee if thou hast the courage to proceed.”
I found that I had to dig deep within myself to find said courage, but be assured, your Grace, that I found it and more, and strode on to find that which the reprobate had indicated. A few yards further on, I saw it.

Your Grace, it was as if the earth had grown a tooth. A towering shard of rock rose up from the ground, fully eight feet high and five in width. It was black as night, so black that it seemed to drink in the light and make this place darker still, and yet upon its surface, I discerned patterns of some obscene and blasphemous design. And all around it, in the undergrowth, entwined and ensnared by the grass which dared to grow at the foot of this monstrosity were objects, rusted and rotten and corrupt, but each, as I could see, some poor wretch’s possession. I bent to pick up what appeared to be an ivory comb, and beheld upon the handle, the legend

Alys Mullynes, 1615, Dorkynge

And in similar vein, each of the artefacts which had survived to tell their tale did pronounce the names of those poor souls who had tasted only death as their reward for the brave pilgrimage on which they had embarked.

It was at this point, your Grace, with the trees crowded in around me, and the silence – even unto the absence of birdsong – so powerfully noted, that the sense of overpowering evil overcame me, as I realised that the only way in which these artefacts might have come to be at this place was by the agency of one who had dwelt with and shared the lives of the poor souls to whom they had belonged. I am sorry to say that I fled that place as fast as my feet would carry me. Crowe joined me in flight, for as he claimed, he had made the journey to that hideous thing more than once, and the strain of said journey had shown upon his face and upon his soul. In his weakness, he had turned to drink and tobacco for solace, and who, having made the journey that I made and seen that which I had seen, might blame him?

The fear has not left me, though I returned to Plymouth a trembling and nervous wretch. I write these words to you, your Grace and shall hopefully convey them to your own hand, that you might know what manner of creature lurks in the forests and the hills of the New World and lend your voice to those who say that they are the servitors of Satan, and must be destroyed. Crowe has long since vanished into the mire of humanity, those wretches who drown themselves in their own sin.

Yet how might it be explained that as Crowe and I rode into Plymouth, those who saw us glanced first at us and then behind us, and turned away in unease, though when we glanced over our shoulders, there was naught to be seen? Who was that dark figure who watched from the end of the street the night before I set sail for London? When I went to see, there was no-one there. And on the crossing, was there another ship, several leagues distant, as some sailors maintained, though none was seen to leave Plymouth matching that description, with sails of deepest black? And did the harbour master err, in counting the passengers who disembarked at London, and make our complement one greater than it had been when we set sail?

I cannot say. I have returned to my parsonage in the Suffolk flatlands and seek solace in reading and prayer, and attempt to put from my mind that sight in that valley in the wild lands of Massachusetts. Yet I find that I am unable to walk the short distance down the wooded lane to the church alone on winter evenings, and send a lad first into the building to light the candles. I cast glances across fields and meadows to the woods beyond. I look over my shoulder far more often than once I did. And thought it ill-befits a man of God to do so, I have taken to carrying a firearm with me, and although I find comfort in the solidity of its stock and barrel, I still hear the unsettling laughter of Ezekiel Crowe and shudder.

On the Beach

It was awkward. It had always been awkward. He had always been awkward. That was my father; a nuisance to the end. And afterwards.

Susan came with me to the funeral, which was good of her, since she and Dad didn’t see eye to eye. She was a declared non-believer and I was officially agnostic (Church of England long since lapsed), so the fact that Dad had got religion on his death bed thanks to a happy-clapper hospice visitor (or perhaps a touch of the pre-Judgement collywobbles) made it all – to say the least – interesting. The enthusiasm of the congregation and their ebullient cheerfulness was rather embarrassing and I shifted several times in my seat, stood up at the wrong time, started to sing the wrong hymn and – worst of all – gave vent to a long, loud and unconcealable yawn right in the middle of the address by a nice young lady vicar called Frances. Much head-shaking and tutting ensued.

Many of those at the church were merely fellow parishioners or acquaintances and so, unlike we family members, did not feel the need to join the second part of the afternoon’s entertainment, the trip to the crematorium. They were the lucky ones. There is nothing quite so disheartening as strolling through a garden of remembrance, remarking on the beauty of the roses and the neatly trimmed lawns, only to glance up and see the towering chimney, dark against the sky. It was like a huge finger pointing towards heaven as if to speed the departed on their way. At least it wasn’t going at the time. That would have been a bit too much to bear.

“As his eldest son, I believe that these by right are yours to look after,” said the crematorium manager, handing me the shiny black urn as I was putting my coat on and preparing to leave. I stared in horror at the object in my hand as if I expected it to start talking to me. Susan glanced over my shoulder and muttered something less than complementary.
“Usually, we take care of them,” the manager said, “but I believe that there is something in the will…”
“I’ll pop them in my handbag,” said Susan. “You’ll only drop them.”

I was glad that she had decided to come. If she hadn’t been there, I would have had to have found a place to put them and driven home half distracted by the prospect of them falling off the seat and spilling as I negotiated a tight bend on the A120, or rolling across the floor and getting stuck under the brake pedal, as if Dad was trying to reunite us with all his effort.  Instead, they sat there in her bag, next to a travel pack of Kleenex, her glasses case and a half-used stick of Cerise Glory lipstick. It was probably the closest he had been to a woman since my mother left him.

And the manager was right; the will contained a surprise for me. It was one of his last requests that I, his eldest son, should scatter his ashes on the site where my mother was buried, so that they could be together at last. I rang her to check.
“Mum, did you and Dad ever discuss where you’d like to be buried?”
“Not that often,” she replied, the theme tune from Eastenders vying with her voice for the rights to the telephone receiver. “It might have come up once or twice. Why do you ask?”
I explained. She laughed.
“That sounds like him. The incurable romantic or a silly old prat. What makes him think that I wanted to spend the rest of eternity with him, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “Remember, he doesn’t know you’re not dead yet.”
“Nor ever will he,” she said. “Just scatter him wherever you want. He’ll not know the difference.”

I took a few days off from the antiques shop, leaving Elaine to handle things, and – having racked my brains to think of somewhere appropriate – resorted to the old trick of a road atlas and a pin. On my fourth go – after discounting scattering sites in the Theatreland map of London, halfway through the index and Junction 10 of the M25 – I settled on a strip of beach near Hunstanton in Norfolk. Susan declined to come with me, which was entirely understandable. She felt that she had done her duty to the old man at both church and crematorium. To stand and watch me pour a jar of grit and sand onto a beach of grit and sand was, she said, taking the piss.

I packed a lunch, filled up the car at Asda and set off up the A134, taking it easy. The beach would still be there no matter what time I arrived, and Dad was in no hurry any more. I put the radio on and let the steady passage of the programmes mark my journey through the day. I made Bury St Edmunds by eleven, Thetford by five to twelve, and my approach to King’s Lynn was slowed only by the need to keep an eye out for speed cameras. Susan, the queen of speed, had three points on her licence, a moral advantage I did not intend to abandon lightly.
And then, perhaps a little after one, I turned down a minor road, came over a rise and saw before me, the glistening expanse of the Wash, a huge toothy bite taken out of England by the ravenous North Sea. I turned to Dad’s urn, secured to the passenger seat with several strips of parcel tape.
“Well, here we are,” I said. “This is where you and I part company.”

I couldn’t drive all the way down to the beach. There was a sign several hundred yards from the sea which read “NO VEHICULAR ACCESS - ENGLISH NATURE”
I parked the car, undid the urn, slipped it into a pocket of my coat and set off down the track towards the beach. It never occurred to me to just tip him into a ditch and drive off again, even though there was no-one around to see me. It had been raining the night before and the track was muddy, slippery even. I nearly lost my footing a couple of times but I was more concerned with not breaking the urn. I had visions of myself, cupped hands full of ash, stumbling the last few yards onto the sand.

Instead, when I reached the end of the track, there was no sand waiting for me but a vast panoply of saltmarsh, glistening and undulating like a sodden rag cast across the landscape. I let out a sigh through clenched teeth.
“Sorry, Dad, but this is as close to the sea as you go. Besides, give or take a few hundred yards, this is where the pin landed, so here you are.”
I took the urn from my pocket and gripped the lid, wondering if it was a twister or a puller. I struggled with it for a moment and it just came off in my hand. Inside….

“Excuse me, but what are you doing here?”
I turned, stopping up the urn again. A grey-haired, thin man in a waxed green jacket stood there, looking suspiciously at me.
“Just walking,” I replied, strangely reluctant to discuss my business. “Is that a problem?”
“Well, it might be,” he said “Depending on where you intend to walk. It’s the season, you know.”
“The season?”
“The nesting season. The grey-winged Samarkand mud wader.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “I see.”
“Do you?”
“Er…yes.”
“What’s that?”
“This? Oh, it’s my father,” I said without thinking. He raised his eyebrow.
“Take him out for walks often, do you?”
At that point, I shrugged, sighed and told him the full story. He seemed a harmless sort, and I needed someone who wasn’t family or friend to talk to.
“That’s a very nice thing to do,” he said as I finished. “Some folk would’ve just tipped the ashes into the dustbin and have done with it. But you’ve done the decent thing and that’s mighty rare in this world.”
“What more could a son do for his father?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’d like to think that when I go, my son might do something like that for me, but I know he wouldn’t. Him and that wife of his are only after my house. And my daughter’s only interested in me for child-minding when she goes off gallivanting with another of her fancy men.”
I didn't want to stand on a saltmarsh beach in Norfolk all afternoon acting as agony aunt for an amateur Bill Oddie, so I took the chance to ask
“So where do you think the best place to scatter the ashes is?”
“You could do worse than the headland, down there yonder,” he said, nodding away behind my shoulder. “I’ve often thought that when I go, I’d like to rest there. You get some lovely sunsets across the Wash.”
“Let’s go there then.”
We set off, he leading the way, picking the best route through the marshes, pointing out things that I might have – no, let’s be honest, would have – missed, dropping little asides from his life into the conversation. I discovered that he had been a fireman, retired early due to stress, moved to King’s Lynn, got a job as a security guard, lost that when the company went fully automated, then volunteered to help out at the nature reserve and eventually become the assistant warden.
“I’m hoping to become the head warden next year,” he said. “That’s when Harry retires. Not that I’ll really notice the difference. I’m here practically all the time.”
“You must really love it here.”
“We all ought to have something that we like to do, rather than have to,” he said. “What do you do with your days?”
“Oh, I run an antiques shop in a little village near Colchester.”
“Do you like it?”
“Yes I do.”
“Then you’re lucky. What did your father do?”
“He was a policeman for thirty years, then he moved into insurance, became a loss adjuster. Then he retired and then he died.”
“Do you think he liked it?”
“It never seemed to me that he did.”
“Well then, perhaps he’ll like this more.”
We had reached the headland, and he led the way up the earthy, crumbling slopes to a clump of trees that stood watching the shifting, shimmering marshes. My new companion stood a little way back as if not to intrude on this moment. But as I took the lid off again, I found that I couldn’t just cast him to the winds. Instead, I handed the urn to the assistant warden while I dug a hole in the ground. I took a fallen acorn I had found in the grass and popped it in, then poured the ashes in on top of it and filled the rest in with soil. We both stamped it down and stood there, as if the occasion demanded some deeply moving eulogy. In the end, all I could say was
“Be at peace, Dad.”
and hoped that somehow this might increase his chances of being so. I didn’t know. I still don’t.

The assistant warden walked me back to the car, but offered me a cup of tea at the warden’s lodge, a few hundred yards further up the shoreline. I still had my packed lunch in the car, which I brought with me to eat. When I had finished, I glanced at my watch. The afternoon was slipping away and at that time of year, it got dark worryingly early. I didn’t want to be driving that far in twilight, and so I made my excuses and set off for the car. He came with me to the start of the track.
“Thanks for coming,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t get that many visitors at this time of year. It was nice to spend some time with someone who’s not interested in birds. I am, I know, but everyone needs a break.”
“That’s true,” I replied. “Good luck with your grey winged Samarkand mud wader.”
“Good luck with the antiques.”
The last image I had of him was a figure dark against the brightening western sky. I remembered what he had said about the Wash sunsets. I hoped that evening would be a good one.

Mercy

Liversedge Farm tried hard to bury itself into the landscape, at the end of a muddy, unsurfaced lane, hard-packed gravel and stones the only support for the few vehicles brave enough to voyage down it.
Fog faded the landscape to a dreary grey, Droplets of condensation on every surface, hanging from the branches and the twigs, glistening on the spiders’ webs.

It seemed that even the world had forgotten the farm, with its overgrown orchard, the rusting tractor in the ivy-strangled, crumbling barn.  Weeds gave the yard an unshaven, wild look, and the cracked panes in the mildewed wooden window panes seemed to suggest a history long since written and concluded.

But there was still life there. The old man wandered round the cold kitchen, poking from time to time at the coal in the stove, making sure that it was burning well. His gnarled hands slowly assembled the ingredients of breakfast, knocking dust off the knick-knacks that littered the shelves as he took something from them that he needed.

He glanced out of the window at the yard and barn, nodding to himself at the roke that seemed to have smeared the landscape into a featureless haze beyond the lane. He was glad that it was not raining. The house’s roof was missing some more tiles these days and he was running out of pots and pans to catch the leaks that had turned the attic into a fungus-riddled, dank triangular nightmare.

He filled the dented copper kettle at the sink, waiting until the spluttering taps had finished coughing up brown-tinted water. While it started the slow process of boiling on the stove, he checked the toast, found it done and with what he thought was a hasty movement, he withdrew it, noticing only after he had put the slices on the plate, the red mark on his finger and thumb that would later throb with hot pain.

As he made his way along the hall to the bottom of the stairs, he did not even notice the peeling wallpaper, marked with dark spots as if it had caught some unpleasant disease. The paint on the skirting board had worn away to reveal the wood in several places. The rattle of the crockery on the tray was the only sound apart from the slow ticking of the grandfather clock, all day, every day punching holes in the silence.

He started up the stairs, both hands holding the tray, not using the rickety banister that creaked and swayed if anyone was so foolish as to place their trust in it. The third and seventh stairs, covered by fraying carpet, groaned like slumbering donkeys as his steady tread fell upon them.  She would know he was coming.

And still the grandfather clock intoned the passing of the seconds, its pendulum shaving fragments off time.

He backed in, pushing the door with his bony shoulders, and so he smelt the room before he saw it, that familiar fug of must, of damp, the faint tinge of spilled urine, long since dried. The pungent undertone, like a cello being played downstairs, of stale tobacco.

The room had its dusty curtains drawn, but this made little difference to the half-lit scene. The bed was spread with two blankets, a quilt and a counterpane but the woman in it still felt as cold as ice. He put the tray down on the bedside table and sat himself down beside her, catching a glimpse of his reflection in the long oval mirror fitted into the door of the mahogany wardrobe. He noticed just how unkempt the decision not to shave that morning had made his chin and jowls. What was left of his hair waved wildly back at itself. His turkey neck hid in the shadows of his shirt collar.

He turned back to the woman in the bed, brushed what was left of her hair back from her lined and hollow-cheeked face. He half-started for the ebony hairbrush tangled with silver threads on the dressing table but then sat down again. Her dark eyes, the only things that moved, turned to watch him.

“It’s today,” he said quietly, and she tried a smile that got no further than her eyes. He started to feed her, piece by piece, her toast and marmalade, her scrambled egg, her porridge. It was probably only warm now, he thought, as he watched her try to chew and swallow each mouthful.

Once she had finished as much as she was going to eat, he stroked her cold cheek, then got up and walked to the window, glancing out to where a hedgerow ran straight as an arrow into the fog and disappeared like a ghost. He picked the hairbrush, knocking over two of the many bottles of tablets as he did, setting them aright with a shaking hand. He looked for quite some time at the glistening silver hairs, remembering when they had been chestnut red, and then he put it down again because his breathing and swallowing had become rapid and he was shaking.

He let his glance move around the room as he walked to the bed, picked up the tray, met her eyes again, then left. He went into the spare room where he now slept, and laid the tray on the bed. His pipe and packet of tobacco sat by the dusty glass on the bedside table, next to an equally dusty Bible.

He rarely went to church now. Even the hymns were different now, and the vicar’s sermons were dominated by terrible goings-on in faraway countries with unpronounceable names, for which he asked his dwindling number of parishioners to donate. And it was such a long way to walk, when no buses ran on Sunday  - and only once every other day during the week  - and taxi drivers didn’t even know where the farm was. The one who had brought them home the last time from the hospital with more bottles and more pills given to them by a sad-eyed young Indian doctor, had dropped them off at the end of the lane to walk the last half-mile back.

And he didn’t want to leave her alone, not even for a couple of hours.   

He went into the chilly bathroom, the wooden sash window jammed a half-inch open. He turned on the taps and put the plug in. It would take time to fill, but he was happy to wait. From the cupboard, he took the heaviest towel he could find and laid it into the warming water, pushing it down until the wet had darkened it so that it looked the deepest burgundy, rather than a faded red. Only once it was fully soaked did he turn off the taps. He felt the water. Good. It was warm. He wanted it to be warm. It was for the best.

He came down the stairs, carrying the tray. He was breathing shallowly and swallowing as he came. The seventh and third stairs groaned sadly. The grandfather clock ticked on, steadily, mercilessly. He walked along the hallway and into the kitchen, put the tray on the draining board, the cutlery into the sink, stained and scratched through years of use.

He pulled on his tweed jacket that had been too big for him, then just right, then too tight across the shoulders and now too loose again. He walked out into the yard and headed for the barn. The damp, cold air got into his lungs and he started to cough. Somewhere out in the greyness, a dog started barking, then stopped just as suddenly. He pushed open the door of the barn, sidled through the gap, pulled it shut again. What he was looking for, he found under an old table on which rusty and unoiled tools lay discarded since their last job had been finished.

Across the farm, across the damp and dripping landscape, silence held on. Then there was a sound like thunder and the sudden flight of birds.