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When Gulnaz returns she fails to notice his changed state, too preoccupied with reporting on the weather, helping him into his coat and finding him his walking stick. He follows her out, but leans the stick against the wall before closing the door. Like the crutches and the wheelchair, it has propped him up long enough.
The signal was lost just half an hour ago. Now, when he tries to connect, he meets only deathly silence. Before that, though the images were distorted and the sounds jumbled, he’d seen enough. Make your peace with your ghosts, Margaret had said. His father, his brother, his mother. And now another; the sad, sensitive, intelligent, inquisitive and thoughtful ghost that labours for hours over the smallest details of a model ship; spends days sifting through shells and indexing them by shape, size and colour; sits lonely and afraid up in a greengage tree. The ghost that was robbed of love by the murdering hands of war, by the jaws of a merciless sea and the claws of a ravaging cancer.
And the mad woman had said those other things that he hadn’t believed. How could he? Or maybe he had, just for a moment, and the insanity of it was just too great to accept.
They’re sitting side by side on the bus. He’s studying the delicate hands on her lap. How perfect to slip his hands into hers and pretend they’re just another couple, newlyweds en route to the airport for some sun-drenched honeymoon. How perfect, but how impossible. Those hands are not at rest. They fidget and fumble like hands under a drier. Her face is not turned fondly towards his, but pinned to the window, searching the rain-soaked streets for the sorry soul she’s abandoned at his time of greatest need.
“Nearly there,” she says anxiously, as they top Cooper’s Hill. Without thinking, Alex sounds the bell. “We need to get off here. He’s not at the flat.”
The earlier downturn in the weather has past; no more rain, but the air has turned colder. The sky is needle-sharp and blue. They enter Old St. Bart’s via the west gate, at the smarter end of the churchyard. But he knows they won’t find Daniel up here. The grassy cobbles pave their way to the hollow.
“I think I should approach him alone,” he croaks, and releases her hand.
“If you think it best,” she says. “I’ll be just over there.” Gulnaz points to a gravestone, which Alex guesses must be that of her grandfather.
“Give me five minutes. Then you can come over.”
She nods silently. And all at once his face is in her hair, his tears wetting her cheek, his arms crossing behind her, feeling her spine go weak. He then whispers something in her ear that he’s never said out loud to anyone. “I love you, okay? I really love you.”
“Okay.” The nervous little laugh she gives out sets them both in motion. He sees her dropping to her knees before the stone, kissing her own fingertips and laying them on its surface. For fear of changing his mind and calling her back, he turns quickly and continues down to the north gate. It feels as though he’s made this approach many times, but never with a heart so heavy or a head so full. There is the Navy man, standing at the bus stop with bags at his feet, his wife hugging and kissing him, then watching him go, waving and crying, but the man returning no emotion as he stares out through the shrinking rear window. The eyes are not on his sons, nor on his wife, but somewhere at their backs, maybe the hills behind, maybe an ocean beyond.
And here comes the little boy, tearing back home along the coast road, his little legs running faster than they’d ever run for his father, churning over in his frightened little mind what to say, only to lose courage the moment he stumbles in through the door. Sitting breathlessly on the carpet and pushing all bad thoughts from his mind. Reaching over for the magic set, his magic set, and finding the trick in the book that at first he mistakes for a guide on how to make paper chains. And now Gulnaz, with her outstretched hand, the Mobius ring he’d fashioned for her resting in her palm as he explains its unique properties – a single twisted surface that bends full circle, runs back to back with itself and finally meets up with where it begins. The ants on the front feel the tread of the ants on the back, but really it’s all one pathway. He is showing her the trick: Take a strip of paper; put a mark on one side; twist the two ends; join the two together to form a loop, and cut –
To a cat darting for cover, a robin taking to the air, as a trembling voice echoes through the trees. He looks up from beneath a magician’s hat to see a woman’s mortified face. How did he come to be here? He’d been in the church, waiting for the rain to stop, and had become lost in childhood thoughts; he was here to attend to his mother’s grave. The stone is nearer now, a little way off the path, but there are tears of cold obscuring his view, an iciness needling its way deep beneath his coat. Or it might be more than just cold; the shivers seem to bode of a presence. Is someone covertly watching him? Or simply conducting a vigil of their own? The gravestone now slips into view, its pale curves thrown into relief by the hedgerows behind. But the front face is hidden by a bundle, about the size of a man, propped up against it. He steps from the path into the wet grass, quickens his pace and then stops, as his brain tries to make sense of what it sees.
Twenty yards behind, a woman before another gravestone studies him, her coat and headscarf cocooning and concealing her. Through cupped gloves, her breath billows into the frosty air and, as if by sleight of hand, vanishes. It isn’t the first time she has seen this man. Always he seems to cower beneath that mop of hair and shrink into that oversize coat. If ever there was a man in hiding from himself, she’s thinking, this was the man.
But for now they are still strangers. She doesn’t know that tonight they will talk until the early hours, that in a week’s time they’ll be a couple, that a week after that they will share a bed, and that a few weeks later, at this very spot, he will abandon her forever. She pulls a patterned handkerchief from her bag and dabs at her nose before setting off towards him. The gentle ‘Merry Christmas’ she ventures as she passes isn’t meant to intrude upon his privacy, only to acknowledge the one other living soul in this resting place of the deceased. But he’s either failed to hear it or has chosen not to answer.
He’s clearly distracted, in a state of some distress, his attention focused on the graves by the hedgerow, darting off rapidly towards the shadows, leaving her words, for the moment at least, to fall upon dead soil.
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Author’s note
Every effort has been made to ensure that named geographical locations and historical facts are accurate, except where they relate uniquely to the fictitious characters in this book. The village of Thurlestone in Devon, for example, does have a school, a pub and a hotel with the same names and descriptions as found here, whereas Daniel’s house and street are imagined. The beach, golf course and coast path are all as described. Alex’s accident it fictitious, although I am told that casualties have been recorded in similar circumstances along those treacherous, overhanging cliffs.
The facts surrounding the Falklands crisis, including dates of sailing, the location of Devonport and the wider aspects of the military campaign, have also been checked. However, the specific frigate in which Petty Officer Richard George served and the story around it is fictitious.
The information about Iran is based on testimony and research. So many people have remained either missing or in prison since the revolution that it is impossible to know whether Gulnaz’s story is true or not. I am assured however that it is entirely plausible.
Because it is never identified, the Midlands town at the centre of this novel, along with its garden centre, hospital, park and n
ursing home, should be assumed to be entirely fictitious.
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About the author
I am a writer and composer, working in the South West of England. To date I have written two novels, a TV script and several short stories. My music work comprises nearly sixty compositions for a wide range of media.
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