Shadows & Tall Trees (17 page)

Marianne had never been a regular anywhere before, but The Milky Way made it easy for her. She knew one of the barmen who worked there during the week, and at the weekends her old school friends would turn up. It was dark and full of alcoves where she could hide away and nurse a drink for hours if she had to. However, she soon got to know several other regulars, including a middle-aged man called Anthony, who she was becoming quite attached to. Anthony was an insomniac, and, distressingly, probably an alcoholic. Marianne worried that she might end up the same as him, but she enjoyed his company, and he seemed to tolerate hers. Marianne knew that she could not keep up the lifestyle indefinitely, not least because the St. Denis Hotel stopped her pay after two weeks, and the little money she had saved was already dwindling. She was convinced that her mother would find out what had happened, as Mr. Lane telephoned every week to ask after Marianne, leaving messages on the answer-phone. (Luckily, Marianne had always managed to intercept and erase them.) The hotel manager was trying to make it easy for her, Marianne knew that. She also knew that at some point she would have to re-apply to the benefits agency, and Lane could easily tell them that she had just walked out of the job. Then there wouldn’t be any money coming in for at least a month.

It was three weeks later, perhaps four (Marianne had lost some sense of time), when she saw Miss Fisher walk into The Milky Way. It was a weeknight, and not at all crowded. Having bought drinks at the bar, Fisher sat at a table at the back. With her was yet another young man.

Marianne had been talking to Anthony. At some point in their friendship she had told him about the hotel and Fisher. She now pointed the woman out to him.

“Ask her,” he said, and because Marianne had finished her fourth glass of wine, and felt safe in such a public place, she did so.

“The police have already interviewed me,” Fisher insisted, uncomfortable at having Marianne confronting her across the table.

“I know, and they could
prove
nothing,” said Marianne.

“Because there’s nothing to prove! You gave them a description of the man they need to talk to.”

“It’s too much of a coincidence,” Marianne dismissed the reply. “You’re in league with the bald old man.”

“I really don’t know him. Look, I’m here for a quiet drink with my friend . . .”

“Another one of your escorts?” She turned to the young man, who looked confused at the sudden appearance of Marianne and her accusations.

“I hope she’s paying you well?” Marianne asked. “I don’t know what services she’ll ask of you, but if she tries taking you back to a hotel afterwards, don’t let her. There’ll be an old man with rusty hypodermic waiting for you.”

“Please, Miss. . . Night Porter,” said Fisher. “Please leave us alone. Otherwise I’ll have to call the management.”

“And tell them what? I’m a regular here, don’t you know?”

“I like to have company of an evening. I’ll take a companion to a restaurant, or a bar, or sometimes a club like this. When my young friend is tired I drop him off at a hotel with a couple of hundred pounds in his pocket to thank him.”

“And that’s when they meet your bald friend . . .”

The young man had been looking increasingly uncomfortable, and Marianne watched in amusement as Fisher opened up her purse, handed him some notes, and told him that he could go.

“I hope you’re feeling happy with yourself,” said Fisher, as the young man walked away.

“If I’ve saved his life, yes!”

“And how, exactly, have you done that?”

“By saving him from you, and the old man who disposes of your ‘escorts’ for you.”

“And how does he dispose of them?”

“I don’t know,” said Marianne. “Perhaps he injects them with something to dissolve them. . . so all that’s left is an oily, fatty mess in the sink!”

Fisher laughed, to which Marianne took exception. She hadn’t realized how drunk she was, or how tired. She realized that she had voiced a private fantasy that really was too fanciful. She decided to leave Fisher and the scene of her minor triumph, resolving to walk away without looking back. She made her way back to Anthony and apologized to him, saying that she was going home. She was depressed that he simply said goodnight and let her go. She looked back at him on her way out, and he was heading for the bar.

As she was leaving, Marianne went in to the ladies’. She sat on the toilet and replayed the scene with Fisher in her head, confused, unable to decide if she had made any sense. As Marianne walked out of the cubicle she heard the main door open and Miss Fisher walked in.

“I have nothing to hide, Night Porter,” said the woman.

“You drug your young victims,” said Marianne, wondering why she was continuing to be confrontational when all she wanted to do was leave.

“No, I don’t drug them. I buy them a decent meal and they usually end up drinking too much.”

“It’s called prostitution.”

“No, they only act as company. Nothing sexual happens.”

“No?” asked Marianne. She was relieved to have been able to get past the woman, and was now close to the door, able to leave.

“Night Porter, how I envy you,” said Fisher. “And the young men I pay to keep me company. I admire your youth, your vitality, your innocence . . .”

“Bullshit.”

“You could help me meet young men. There would be something in it for you . . .”

Fisher had come forward, almost without the younger woman noticing, but Marianne pushed her away. Suddenly there was a flurry of arms and legs as Fisher slipped backwards on the wet floor, and, when she fell, there was a horrible sound as her head hit the dirty cracked tiles. The woman didn’t move, and immediately an almost black liquid started to flow from out under her head. In the dim, ineffectual light it took a few moments before Marianne realized what it was. But she didn’t have time to find out how badly Fisher might be hurt because she was frozen by a blast of cold air. A cubicle door had opened. She had thought they were alone, and she was confused to see that it was the cubicle she had, herself, just come out of.

Suddenly there was the old, bald man with the deep wrinkles. He looked at Marianne, then at Miss Fisher, and he smiled.

“I’ll finish her off for you,” he said. “In a few moments there will be nothing.”

“I don’t want to know,” said Marianne, backing away.

“Good, good. Then we can agree that you have seen nothing here. Leave and never think about this again.”

“But why help me?” asked Marianne, although her voice was so quiet she hardly knew whether she had articulated her thoughts.

“Why?” asked the old man. “I was always there to tidy up for you before. And I’ll be there when you need me again.”

A
s usual, Benjamin had found himself the longest and most cumbersome piece of wood—most of a young beech tree in this case—and dragged it behind himself for ages, ploughing the damp, black forest soil as he went. Julie was investigating a brown heap of crumbling leaves just this side of compost. She was fascinated with micro-organisms and her plan was to observe some live decay under her microscope later that day. She had been given it for her sixth birthday and she had since examined every body fluid and foodstuff known to her, putting Benjamin off milk because of the red and purple blotches all over it. Spring was late this year; it was early April, but there were still small patches of snow at the base of some of the larger trees. The soil was faintly gurgling and hissing and the branches of the trees were strangely tense with the impending eruption of millions of buds.

Sarah led the way and turned around to tell the children to step it up a bit. The sunshine earlier in the day had fooled her into putting on her soft-shell jacket. Now she was freezing and she needed the loo. Patrick had chosen a different route, presumably to jump into their path as if out of nowhere when they least expected it. The lack of foliage would make this a tricky one, Sarah knew, but her husband’s resourcefulness with pranks was legendary. Benjamin finally let go of his tree, having grown tired of pulling it along. Their path took a turn to the right and then they saw Patrick, standing on a tree stump, arms to his side like a soldier. Sarah had witnessed this many times, but it always gave her the creeps to see him like this, unblinking and as if carved in stone.

The children giggled. “Dad’s a statue!” Benjamin screamed and quickened his step because he knew what was coming. His dad would jump off the tree stump with a huge roar and grab whoever stood nearest to him and give them a messy cuddle. Sarah and the kids walked cautiously past Patrick, who didn’t move. They shot nervous glances over their shoulders, expecting him to be all over them any second now, but he wasn’t. After a few metres, Sarah turned around to face Patrick and warned him that they were going to start dinner without him if he wasn’t coming. “Maybe he wants to see how long he can stand like this,” Julie suggested. “Mrs. Moll made us do that in PE and it was really hard.” Sarah agreed. It was just the kind of thing he would do.

When they got home, the children kicked off their muddy boots and went straight for the couch. Sarah picked up the phone to call Patrick. She let it ring until she heard it go off in their bedroom. She rolled her eyes, wondering once again why her husband had bothered to buy a mobile in the first place. He always seemed to mix up his settings so he couldn’t hear it, or he forgot to take it altogether.

Sarah cut open a roll of ready-to-bake pastry dough and spread it on a large baking tray. She pricked it with a fork, sprinkled ground hazelnuts and started to grate apples over it.

“Mum? Where’s Dad?”

The children had just put in a
Madagascar
DVD and were waiting for the anti-piracy disclaimer to fade.

“He’ll have bumped into someone. You know Dad.”

“Yeah,” Benjamin chuckled, “we know Dad!”

Once dinner was in the oven, Sarah started to worry. She went upstairs and called Michelle, their emergency babysitter from next door. She appeared on the doorstep ten minutes later in tracksuit bottoms. Her hair was wet. They walked into the living room together.

“Julie? Ben? Look who’s here!”

“Michelle!” Julie jumped off the couch and threw her arms around the girl’s neck. Sarah knew she was her daughter’s favourite babysitter in the world, but dodgy friends and a rumoured weakness for weed confined her to the substitute bench.

“Where are you going, Mum? You didn’t say you were going out.”

Benjamin didn’t like sudden changes in schedule.

“Sorry, Ben. I didn’t know earlier. Dad’s met some friends on his way home and they’ve invited us over for a drink and a bit of a chat.”

“But, why can’t
we
come?” He was upset now.

“Because it’s Sunday night, dummy,” Julie said and stared at her brother with mock exasperation, clearly for the benefit of Michelle, who was supposed to think of her as very grown up.

Sarah put on her down jacket, a woolly hat and a pair of sheepskin gloves. It was still light outside, but as she got closer to the forest, dusk started to fall like something creeping out from between the trees. She walked up the forest path they had used on their way home, hoping to find something, anything, that led her to Patrick. By now, she was convinced that something was wrong. And then she saw him. He was still standing there, in the same position, hands by his sides, chin tilted up.

“For fuck’s sake, Patrick, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Sarah called when she thought she was within earshot. He didn’t flinch. Walking closer, it occurred to her that, for some reason, he might not be able to see or hear her. When she was level with him, he still didn’t move or acknowledge her presence in any way. She touched his hands, which were cold. She pressed her own hands to his chest and felt his heartbeat. Clearly, he was in some kind of altered state; perhaps he had hypnotized himself without knowing it. Sarah tried to shove Patrick off the tree stump, hoping it would wake him up, but he wouldn’t budge. She started to push against his hip with both hands. Nothing. She tried to prise away his shoes from the wood and make him topple over. She could easily lift Patrick’s shoes, but only because they were no longer attached to their soles. The soles and much of Patrick’s feet had somehow sunk into the tree stump. Sarah tested the moist, half-rotten wood with her fingers before she climbed up to face him. She tried to rub some warmth into Patrick’s arms, then took off her down jacket and placed it over his shoulders. She put her hat on his head but couldn’t manage to slip the gloves onto his hands, because his pale fingers were impossible to separate from each other. She willed herself to take deep, regular breaths and hugged him until it was completely dark in the forest. Sarah kissed Patrick and jumped back on the path. “I’ll be back, don’t you worry. I’ll get you out of here.”

Sarah sneaked into the garage and started to pile everything she needed into a wheelbarrow. She put on Patrick’s ski jacket and hunter hat, which she was glad now they’d already put in storage in the cellar. She quietly let herself out again. The way to the edge of the forest was short, yet she couldn’t be sure any of the neighbours weren’t watching from behind their curtains, and so she decided to take a detour over the muddy field adjacent to the back gardens. She sank in to her ankles with every step she took and the wheelbarrow was near-impossible to push. She ended up dragging it behind her, with the effect that she lost her cargo several times and had to pull it out of the muck.

By the time she had returned to Patrick, she was covered in mud and badly out of breath. She sat down and hugged his legs for a moment. Then she set to work on the tree stump. She wasn’t too sure where to cut. She couldn’t tell how deep Patrick’s feet had sunk into the wood and she didn’t want to risk hurting him. She decided on a hand span from the top and hacked the crosscut saw into the back of the stump. She’d once had to cut a piece off a large trunk on a company outing and she’d done remarkably well, but this one wasn’t lying on a sawhorse and it was wet and much tougher than she’d expected.

It took her the best part of an hour to cut through to the middle. She’d lost the all-important rhythm several times and it took an incredible effort to pull the saw out again when that happened. Also, she soon discovered that she would have to cut out wedge by wedge because of Patrick’s weight pushing down, which made it impossible for her to slide the blade back into a single cut. When she had sawn out a deep enough section of the stump, she started to cut down from above, in front of her husband’s toes. She placed the wheelbarrow behind the tree stump, embraced Patrick and tilted him back like a toy soldier. His muscles relaxed and he collapsed into the wheelbarrow. He looked very much like someone who’d passed out in an armchair. Sarah could remove the half disc of black wood from around his feet with comparative ease. They were not injured as far as she could tell but she cursed herself for not having brought replacement shoes or at least a pair of warm socks. She secured Patrick to the wheelbarrow with lashing straps, covered him with a picnic rug and started to push him down the forest path. There was no way she was going to be able to move him over the field and so her best hope was that it was dark enough now for people to have stopped staring out of their windows.

In the garage, Sarah made the emergency call. Afterwards, she loosened the straps, gently tipped the wheelbarrow to one side, and let Patrick slide onto the picnic rug she’d spread out on the floor. She covered him with a thermal blanket from the car’s first aid kit. Then she stowed the tools, all the while rehearsing a plausible version of what had happened. Patrick had passed out in front of the garage after he’d returned from the forest. She and the children had no means of knowing he’d arrived at the house. He must have lain there, in front of the garage, for several hours. He couldn’t be woken up and was evidently suffering from hypothermia. Surely the paramedics would know where to take it from there.

It was nothing. At least that was what they said. Patrick woke up in the ICU the next morning and couldn’t remember a thing. Not the statue thing, not the tree stump, not even the walk. They ran all sorts of tests on him: cardiac assessment, blood panel, the works. They gave him a sick note for the rest of the week, just to be on the safe side, and he returned to his former life feeling relaxed and fully recovered.

Sarah was the only one who noticed a change in Patrick after the incident. He had become calmer, more even-tempered. He never raised his voice anymore and there was hardly anything that seemed to really upset him. For some reason Patrick had developed a great fondness for footbaths, which he would take in a fairly deep angular window cleaner bucket every night while watching the evening news. It was only after a couple of months that Sarah realized that by the time the weather forecast was on, the bucket would always be empty.