All nightmare long, p.15
All Nightmare Long, page 15
Keep paddling, she said, her voice soft and imploring, though he could not see her face.
“I am,” he said, tears blurring his vision. “I’m paddling as hard...”
From the corner of his eye he saw something break surface to starboard, emerging like the smooth grey remnants of an ancient wave unspent. By the time he’d turned to look it had vanished, leaving behind a curious speckling luminescence that rose and fell with the swell.
“Keep paddling, keep paddling,” he said, hearing Mandy’s voice whispering the words beneath his own.
As the sun dipped towards the land in the distance, so he drew closer. The sea’s majestic swell lessened and the waves became rougher, breaking into white-tops and splashing into the boat. He should be baling, but then he would not be able to paddle. But if he kept paddling for too long, and the waves grew even worse, the boat would be swamped.
He was close enough now to start making out some detail. There was a small seaside town slouched along the dark strip of land, shadows striving for the sea from huddled rooftops, winding roads leading up from the shore and towards the hills much farther back. The hills were low, heavily wooded, seemingly immune to sunlight.
Something troubled him. Something about the town. He silently berated himself, concentrating on driving the paddle in, pulling, and again.
But the tide was taking him in anyway, so soon he stopped paddling and took a closer look.
A few lights had been lit in buildings close to the shore. They looked like beach huts of some kind, perhaps fishermen’s huts, and the lights pulsed like oil lamps. Down the beach, closer to the breaking waves, a dark line of seaweed seemed to mark the dividing line between ocean and land.
“I’ll cross that line,” Stephan said. He’d been talking to himself for days, keeping himself company, and he suddenly started crying at the uncertainty of his situation. More unfair than his wife, drowning slowly in their cabin. More unfair than his adoptive father, taken by cancer. He did not feel saved.
A heavy weight passed beneath the boat once again, drawing it more rapidly towards shore. He squinted in the dusky light. There was something strange about the little town. Something darker than the dusk, because although the sun was still in the sky it seemed to avoid the buildings and streets of that place.
The dark line of seaweed on the sand was moving. It quivered and flexed like a giant snake, but then Stephan made out what it really was. Not seaweed at all. People. Hundreds of people, standing in line along the beach that fronted their little town, not quite far enough forward to let the foaming water touch their feet.
Hundreds of people, waiting for him.
You’re going to be saved, Mandy said from somewhere deep in the ocean’s depths, where perhaps even after all this time her cabin had yet to flood. The man who had adopted him, dead for years, nodded in agreement, his old face lost behind a veil of smoke that wasn’t smoke at all, but salty spray thrown up by the strengthening wind blowing Stephan towards shore.
He reversed the paddle and started pushing it the other way. His lacerated hands bled into the water. His split lips pouted fiery pain at the sky. His paddling became more frantic as the town grew closer, and with that closeness came the unbearable, sickening realisation that after days adrift on the cruel ocean, this was the last place on Earth he wanted to be.
The sea carried him landward. Another mass passed beneath the boat and it lurched on, and the paddle was suddenly ripped from his hands, disappearing beneath the waves even though it was made of hollow plastic and designed to float.
Stephan knelt in the middle of the lifeboat, helpless in the face of his own fate. He suddenly had no wish to be saved. As he felt the boat’s hull grinding against the first sandbank that signified the approach of land, he finally made out the staring, strange faces of those who waited. They had been expecting him, and he wondered whether he’d ever been on a ship at all. Perhaps he had always been out here being drawn, steadily and relentlessly, towards this terrible shore. Maybe he was being brought home.
A MAN WALKING HIS DOG
I was still shaking when I returned home, so I made myself a cup of tea and sat on the decking in my back garden, wishing I’d added a shot of something stronger but feeling too traumatised to go back in and find the whiskey. My regular seat on the timber bench welcomed me, knowing my shape and affording me some level of comfort. But I was still shivering, and not only from the deep winter chill. It’s not every day you see a dead body.
It was cold but dry, January just heading into February. There’d been a heavy snowfall just after New Year’s, but since then the weather had been crisp and freezing, frost-speckled landscapes the perfect canvas for my regular morning walks with Jazz. I loved the sound of frozen leaves crinkling underfoot and the sight of Jazz rooting through the undergrowth, sniffing out scents I would never know. She lived in a whole different world from me—one of exotic senses and tastes, different colours, and drives I can only pretend to understand—but that’s why our friendship had always meant so much. She relied on me, I relied on her. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I held the mug tight in both hands, comforted by the warmth and staring through the steam. My back garden had the sparse, bleached appearance of winter, colours muted and growth paused between seasons. It felt like the whole world was holding its breath today.
I breathed out, and the steam spiralled and dispersed in the cool, clear air.
“A body has been found.”
She has been expecting it. She’d convinced herself it was the only likely outcome, given the circumstances. But it is still a shock when the words come out of the policewoman’s mouth. Taking form and meaning, given the weight of reality compressing air he had once breathed, the words’ finality is like a punch to the chest. Her heart stutters and she blinks, eyelids fluttering as the echo of the statement weaves its way through the house and rebounds inside her skull.
“I’m very sorry, Mrs Jones. This is not a formal identification, but the clothing matches your description.”
She can’t look at the policewoman. She’s been very kind, has sat with her for many hours over the past few days, but she is an invader in Jenny’s home. Yesterday, Jenny went into the kitchen and found that John’s cup had been washed and wiped and placed on the wrong hook, and the wrong way around. He wouldn’t have liked that. They had their routine, their organisation, and John would have tutted and rolled his eyes. The policewoman didn’t belong here. John did, sharing Jenny’s space as he had done for the past four decades.
Jenny takes in a deep, shuddering breath and goes to stand, one hand flat on the table-top, the other pressed against her bad hip. She senses the policewoman moving close and concentrates harder, not wanting her help, not needing it.
“Maybe you should stay sitting down,” the woman says, and Jenny hears the pity in her voice. The caring, the humanity. It’s been there all along.
“Yes,” she says, easing herself back into the chair. “Maybe I should.”
“I’m very sorry, Mrs Jones.”
“Yes,” Jenny says, and as she sits again she looks across the table at John’s seat. He’s there, newspaper folded on the table before him, toast and marmalade half-eaten on the plate, cup of tea half-empty, and he’s frowning at the crossword as he has every morning for as long as she can remember. Soon he’ll sigh and sit back, sliding the paper back across to her so that she can have another look. Seven down’s a bugger, he’ll say, and she’ll hear him crunching the rest of his toast as she looks at the offending clue, half-hoping she’ll get it instantly, half-hoping she won’t. They both love their morning ritual. It is the foundation upon which the rest of their day is built, whatever that day is destined to bring.
John is not there. This day has no foundation. The previous few days have been the same, but now she knows that solid base will never be built again. She is floating free in her own home, her own chair. It makes her feel sick.
“We like to do the crossword,” she says, and she senses the policewoman’s discomfort. She hears movement behind her, a shuffling of feet, and Jenny silently berates herself for saying something so foolish. The woman will think she’s just a confused old lady. She’s not confused at all.
She’s angry.
“He’s left me,” she says, looking up at the policewoman for the first time since hearing those dreaded words.
“I’m sure he didn’t mean to,” the woman says. She has a very caring face.
“I told him he was being stupid,” Jenny says. She’s already told the police about his failing health. They wrote down what she said with a blank expression.
“He sounded like a very proud man,” the woman says, and the past tense makes Jenny blink. John will never be in the past for her.
“Where?” she asks.
The policewoman scoots a chair over and sits down next to her, taking Jenny’s hand in her own. It’s a sudden, surprising gesture, the first time the woman has made physical contact, and it makes everything more real. The foundation of my new future, Jenny thinks. A stranger holding my hand.
“Up by the canal,” the policewoman says. “I don’t know where, exactly.”
“Five days,” Jenny says. “He’s been lying there on his own for five days.”
No answer. Only a squeezed hand.
“Who found him?”
“A man walking his dog.”
Jenny laughs. She surprises herself so much that she pauses, then laughs again. The policewoman frowns, uncertain.
“Isn’t that always the way,” Jenny says. “Poor man. Poor, poor man. Just out for a walk with his dog and he finds . . .”He finds my dead husband.
“I suppose it is something you hear a lot.”
“I’d like to meet him,” Jenny says. “The man. His dog. I’d like to meet them to say sorry.”
“I’m not sure if...”
“Not straight away. After all this is . . .”Sorted. Put away. After everyone but me has moved on.
“I’m sure it can be arranged,” the woman says. Her radio makes a funny noise and she lets go of Jenny’s hand, standing and moving to the doorway into the dining room to speak. She must be grateful for the distraction.
Jenny looks across the table at her husband’s empty chair. Seven down’s a bugger, he says.
“I’ll get it for you,” she whispers.
The policewoman glances at her and frowns. Just another confused old lady whose husband wandered away to die.
Jazz went off on her own again. I didn’t mind, because she was a good dog and I knew she wouldn’t get lost or run away. Jazz always came back.
But now, something was different. She was barking. She didn’t bark very often, and it sounded agitated and afraid. I followed, slipping down the steep slope from the canal towpath and into the woods. A stream flowed down there. I’d heard it countless times, but I’d never been tempted from the path to go exploring. There was a barbed wire fence, fallen trees, holes from old forestry work, and I had no wish to injure myself and lie there in pain waiting for someone to come and help. I glanced back up towards the canal. It was interesting seeing it from this perspective. From down here, you could make out some of the heavy stone retaining walls that had been built over a century before, when the canal was being constructed. Such a familiar place, and now I was seeing it afresh.
“Good girl, Jazz,” I said. She had shown me something new once more. She was always good company, and she enriched my life.
I heard another bark. I paused, head tilted, and the barking came again. I fought my way down the slope, climbing over fallen trees, avoiding the snares of tangled undergrowth.
The barking continued, guiding me, and by the time I saw her I knew that something was wrong. A darkness had fallen over the day. The sun was still out, but the fir tree canopy shielded me from the cool sky, and frost clung to the shadowy forest floor.
As soon as I saw the shape ten feet from Jazz I knew what it was. I froze, heart hammering, and for the longest few seconds of my life I waited for movement. He’s a drunk, a vagrant, a bird watcher, an explorer. But all of those were wrong, and my first reaction was right. This was a dead man. From the state of his body, the colour of his skin, I believed he had been dead for some time.
I reached down to stroke and calm Jazz.
Which was when the man’s head turned with a crunching sound and he said, “She’s a good dog.”
I snapped awake, gasping for breath. It was the third time I had dreamt about the dead man, the dreams waking me each morning since finding him. They unsettled me, because a dead man shouldn’t talk. They were mostly the same—me and Jazz walking, her disappearing down into the woods, me looking for her. Then the barking, her calling me onwards with an obvious alarm. Drawing me closer to the body. The only real changes were the memories of how the weather had been that day. In one dream there was snow, a couple of inches coating the landscape and settling on the canal’s frozen surface. In another, it was raining a constant, soaking drizzle. In this final dream, it was cold and sharp, and my exhalation of shock upon finding the body hung in the air before me. I didn’t like waking to these dreams. It was as if the poor man’s death drew me onwards, day by day, towards my own inevitable future.
Perhaps the events of today would help me move on.
I glanced at my bedside clock and sat up. Standing and opening the curtains, I was struck by the strange beauty of this normal, new day. It was cool and frosty once again. For the third morning in a row, I dwelled upon how the dead man would see no more mornings.
His wife would be here soon. A police officer would be accompanying her. After an initial deep sense of anxiety at the prospect, I had at last accepted to meet her. She was the one who mattered in this. The police had filled me in a little about her background, and the more I heard, the more I understood why this day must be so important to her. I might have been having strange dreams, but her waking hours had become a nightmare. If I hadn’t found her husband’s body, it might have been many days before his fate was discovered. Even weeks. Perhaps he might never have been found at all, hidden from the towpath as he was by a large holly bush and a couple of fallen trees. I was the person who had changed her life.
Jazz and I had changed everything.
I dressed and ate breakfast, then went about cleaning the house. I kept it in good condition anyway, but having a stranger visit gave me the impetus to vacuum and dust once more. Dog hair gets everywhere. But as I cleaned, I realised that I would not be letting the widow inside. Not after what had happened. Not after the dog had snuffled at her husband’s corpse.
There was no way that she could meet Jazz.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Jenny asks. She’s sitting in the back of the police car, and the policewoman is turned around in the passenger seat, eyes wide.
“I only found out myself this morning,” she says. “And, really . . .”She shrugs. Does it matter?
Jenny frowns and looks at the hedgerows and fields flitting by. Did it matter? She wasn’t sure how it could, yet it did. If this were a TV series or a book, not real life, it would hint at a malevolent pattern, a twisted thread leading to more murder and mourning. In truth, it’s nothing but a sad coincidence. It is always a woman out for a jog or a man walking his dog, isn’t it? They are the people out early in the morning. They are the ones who find what the night leaves behind.
“How long ago?” Jenny asks without looking at the policewoman.
“Fourteen years.”
“Not the same dog, then.”
“Huh?”
It doesn’t matter. They swing from the main road onto a lane leading along the hillside, and across a couple of fields she can see the line of trees that marks the route of the canal, and the hump of an old stone bridge. They’re still three or four miles from where John was found, but the towpath that leads there is now very close by. From here, all routes lead to his lonely, sad death.
A tear rolls down her cheek. She leaves it to drip from her jaw. She has wiped away too many tears.
“I hope he won’t want to talk about it,” Jenny says. “The other body he found all those years ago, I mean.”
The policewoman doesn’t reply. Jenny suspects that he’s already had to talk about it enough with the police. She feels sorry for the man and hopes he’s not nervous.
They finish the journey in silence, parking across the road from a neat little cottage. It’s small but well kept, render painted a pale yellow, its garden large and ordered. There’s a Ford in the driveway, and a curl of smoke rising from the chimney. Jenny realises that she doesn’t know a single thing about this man, other than what he found three days before. She hasn’t asked his name, whether he’s married or alone, how old he is, what he does. She’s suddenly embarrassed by that. He’s been through a trauma too.
She wonders what he thinks about her wishing to meet him.
“Are you ready, Jenny?” the policewoman asks.
She nods. “Yes.”
The policewoman leaves the car and opens Jenny’s door for her, and as she does so the cottage’s front door opens and a man emerges. He’s tall and perhaps a decade older than her John, well dressed against the cold, and as he closes the door behind him and smiles, Jenny wonders, So, where’s the dog? He crosses the country lane and stands close to the back of the police car.
“I thought we might go for a walk,” he says.
He took the woman—the widow—and the policewoman along a track by his house and into a small woodland. They walked away from the canal, not towards it. The silence was awkward and heavy, punctuated only by the sound of their footsteps on the frozen ground, the crinkle of leaves beneath their shoes, the birdsong from the bare trees and bushes. He walked side by side with the woman, and if he glanced to the left and away from her he might have been alone.
He often came to these woods with Jazz. He knew the area well, and he led them to a place in the centre where several fallen trees provided somewhere to lean or sit.
