The Trespass (10 page)

“Two visitors to see you, George.” The care assistant bent down to Churchill’s level and spoke loudly into his ear. “He won’t hear you unless you talk to this side,” she told Dracup.

Dracup bent awkwardly, then squatted down on his haunches.

“Wait, I’ll get two chairs,” the care assistant said. She bustled off to some other room.

Dracup cleared his throat and spoke into the old man’s ear. “Mr Churchill? My name is Simon Dracup. You knew my aunt, Mrs Hunter. She used to visit you.”

The old man nodded and smiled. Dracup looked at Sara for help. He tried again. “Mrs Jean Hunter. Her father was a friend of yours – Theodore Dracup, my grandfather.”

Churchill looked at them blankly. The assistant returned with two chairs. “Give him a wee while. He’ll need to get used to you.” She smiled and went off to attend to another resident’s request. He heard her voice in the background, reassuring and cajoling as she handed out hymn books.

Sara leaned in close. “I’ll have a word.”

Dracup pushed his chair back.
Why not? This is going nowhere...

“George. Do you like to sing?” Sara asked the old man.

Dracup raised his eyebrows. But then, to his surprise, Churchill began to sing in a high quavering voice:

“Oh! How I hate to get up in the morning,

Oh! How I’d love to remain in bed…”

Sara smiled and patted Churchill’s arm. “You sing well, George.”

Churchill smiled a toothless smile at Dracup and winked. “We all sang it. In the war, y’know. Ta ta tum, tum tat um. You’ve got to get up; you’ve got to get up. You’ve got to get up this morning!”

The care assistant appeared again. “Sorry to interrupt. This is Joan Mayfield, the matron.” Dracup turned to see a trim lady in blue uniform smiling down at the group.

“Mr Dracup. How kind of you to come. Now then, George –” she raised her voice to an appropriate level for Churchill’s benefit. “What’s all this? We’ve already got you up this morning.” She smiled again and gave Churchill’s arm a light squeeze. “He’s a lovely old chap. He
will
miss Mrs Hunter’s visits.” She turned to Dracup. “I’m so sorry about your aunt. It’s very good of you to let me know.”

“Oh! how I hate to get up in the morning!” Churchill sang.

“Yes, George, we know,” the matron laughed softly, “but you should save your voice for the hymns. You’ll know them all, I’m sure.”

“Very tall, in the hall!” Churchill pronounced.

“I’m sorry – he does fly off on his fancies from time to time,” Mrs Mayfield said. “But he’s surprisingly lucid when he’s in the mood, aren’t you, George?”

“Time and again, time and again,” Churchill sang in a thin, reedy voice.

Dracup leaned in to ask another question, but Sara motioned him to silence.

“What was that, George?” she asked the old man.

“In time, you’ll find it – time in the hole.”

Dracup stiffened. Was this just coincidental rambling, or perhaps –?

“Dracup, Dracup.” Churchill leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “Theodore Dracup –”

Dracup’s heart lurched. “That’s it, George. My grandfather. Your friend. Theodore.” He held his breath but the old man seemed to have gone somewhere else in his mind. He lay back in the wheelchair, smiling, eyelids fluttering. Dracup swallowed and bit his bottom lip in frustration. Sara signalled patience.

“A shame, shame. What they did. Lali, lali. We found it –” Churchill’s eyes shot open and he leaned forward. The vacant look on his face had been replaced with one of urgency. “You’re a Dracup? Well, yes, you look a bit like him –”

Dracup moved back in alarm. The change in Churchill was disconcerting. “I’m Theodore’s grandson, George. But I don’t understand what you mean.” He looked around but the matron and care assistant had left them to it. Mrs Mayfield was talking to a newcomer, a young man with cropped hair, dressed in black with a starched white collar. The service was about to begin. “I need to know
where
, George – Theodore needs to know,” he added desperately. “
Where
did you find it?”

“He’s left it for you, he told me. In time you’ll find it.” Churchill fell back, exhausted.

The care assistant was at Dracup’s elbow. “I think he’s had enough for the moment. He’ll fall asleep during the service, you’ll see. Pull your chairs round and you can sit with him.”

Dracup heard little of the service. The words of the hymns floated around him, rising and falling in the fragile pitch of tired, worn voices. His mind was racing. There was something left, some residue of experience in Churchill’s mind. Somewhere in that frail cranium lay the secrets that could save his daughter. But how to access them? Dracup racked his own brains, playing with keywords that might help the old man remember. He realized that the service had ended only when a portly female care assistant came in with a tea trolley, causing the young minister to conclude his closing prayer with, it seemed to Dracup, irreverent abruptness.

“Tea time all. What’ll it be, Doreen?” She began to move around the room taking orders.

Dracup turned to Sara. “You try. You seem to have the touch.”

Churchill had his eyes closed again but the muscles in his thin face worked beneath the yellowed, parchment-like skin.

“Come on, George,” Sara said, cheerily. “We have to go soon. Tell me about Dracup. About what he wrote in his diary.”

“Diary? All the time he wrote. Did some drawing for me.”

“That’s it, George.” Dracup felt a glimmer of hope. “Fascinating drawings. And he wrote in cuneiform. Do you remember?”

“Best that way,” Churchill muttered as if to himself. “Can’t tell anyone.”

“You can tell us, George,” Sara replied softly. “Mr Dracup is family.”

Churchill looked up and studied Sara intently. Dracup felt as if some spark of recognition had ignited briefly, then been extinguished. “Are you?” Churchill said quietly. “I don’t know you. You look like one of
them
.”

Dracup’s patience was nearing its end. “What does it mean, George? ‘In time you will find the whole.’ It’s very important. A matter of life and death. My daughter – Theodore’s great grand-daughter –”

Churchill threw back his head and laughed, a harsh cracking sound. Some of the residents turned around and stared in alarm. “Life and death. Yes. From the beginning. And they want to change it.” He put a scrawny arm out and grabbed Dracup’s wrist. “Be careful. It’s not for us to change.”

Dracup shook his head in bewilderment.
Great, more riddles. That’s all we need.

“Reverend Burton is leaving now,” Mrs Mayfield announced from the centre of the room. “One last hymn before he goes?” She beamed at the assembled ranks. “What’s that, Maisie? All things bright and … yes, number 243 on your hymn sheets.”

“This is going nowhere,” Dracup said to Sara, who returned a brief, sympathetic smile.

“You’re right. It might be worth coming back later. He’s too distracted – too much going on.” Sara patted Churchill on the shoulder. “Cheerio, old fellow. We’ll pop in another time.”

Dracup looked back as they made a tactful departure. Churchill was sitting erect in the chair. He grinned as he sang:
“The ripe fruits in the garden, He made them every one...”

And then Churchill did something strange. He held up his arm and waved it slowly from side to side. The chorus finished and Dracup heard him singing in a high falsetto:
“Tick tock tick tock – in the forest it’s seven past seven o’clock.”

“All right, George,” the matron said. “Never mind that. Last verse – here we are...”

“
He gave us eyes to see them and lips that we might tell...”

Dracup felt a cold thrill run through his body. Churchill grinned back and sang on.

“
All things wise and wonderful, The Lord God made them all.”

The chorus receded into the background as they found their way along the corridors to the front entrance. Dracup gripped Sara’s arm as they exited into the cold, clear air of the car park, their breath leaving white trails behind them.

She looked at him in astonishment. “What? What is it?”

“The clock. Don’t you see? That’s what he was telling us.
In the forest it’s seven past seven o’clock
he sang. Remember Theodore’s message?
In time you will find the whole?
” Dracup dragged Sara to the car. “Come on. Quickly. Whatever my grandfather intended to be found, it’s in the clock at Forest Avenue.”

“Okay, come on. Let’s have it,” Potzner yelled, preempting the knock at his office door. Several lab-coated individuals burst into the room, preceded by a slight, bespectacled character Potzner knew as Mike Fish, head of the Forensic Paleontology group.

“Jim. We have a translation for you.” Fish removed his glasses and held up a red folder. “But I don’t think you’re going to thank us for it.” He smiled apologetically.

“Try me.”

“Right.” Fish drew out a sheaf of paper. The other team members shuffled nervously. One of them dropped a biro.

“In your own time…”

Fish glanced up and cleared his throat. “Okay. It’s a split message, we think. I mean, we think that around half of the text is missing – there are some connective words that just, well, finish right where they are. Could be that whoever sketched the diagram left out some of the lines. Anyhow, it’s definitely cuneiform script, of the style we’d expect to find in or around the Babylonian environs circa 4000 BC.”

“And?”

“This is what we’ve got.” He smiled apologetically. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“Just spit it out, Fish, will you?” Potzner shoved his chair back and stood up. Fish’s colleagues shrank towards the door.

“Right. Here we go. It’s very exciting. The use of cuneiform is normally restricted to tablets – writing tablets I mean – and pottery and so on. Soft imprints. It’s pretty uncommon having an inscription like this on metalwork. The diarist tells us that the composition of the object is silver, with gold inlay.” Fish brushed a stray strand of hair out of his eyes. He was thinning on top and employed a version of the oddly popular comb-over technique, which was, in Potzner’s view, the worst form of denial.

“What does it say, Fish?” Potzner spaced the words with a second’s pause between each.

“Yeah. Sorry. Right.” Fish shuffled his papers. “Okay. Here we go. First line.
From holy resting place to rest upon the water.”

“Go on.”

Fish turned to a colleague who whispered something in response. “Yeah. Well, we’re not too sure about this line. We think the name reference is
Noah
, but it may not be. Hard to say. At any rate, it refers to someone about to take an important action.
But Noah, the faithful son...”

“Action? What action?”

Fish removed his glasses again and polished out an imaginary blemish. “Well, that’s the second half of the verse. The one we don’t have.” He shrugged his thin shoulders.

Potzner grunted. “Next.”

“Yeah. This is good. Very clear.
Once more in the earth you will find peace.”

“If only I could,” Potzner said.

One of the technicians grinned, saw Potzner’s expression and converted the action to a cough.

“Okay,” Fish said. “Two lines to go.
From whence you came.”

“And –?”

“Nope.” Fish smirked. “Between –
between the rivers.”

“I wasn’t making a contribution, Fish.” Potzner fought his irritation. “Now read it all.” He sat on the edge of his desk and snapped his cigarette case open, released a new packet from its cellophane wrapper and began to transfer Marlboros from packet to case.

Fish took a deep breath. “What wouldn’t I give to see the real object this guy sketched from. I mean I really have to see the rest of the script to make sense of it all. It’s the clearest example –”

“I know. Just read it.”

“Okay. Right. Here goes:

“
From holy resting place to rest upon the water –

But Noah, the faithful son –

Once more in the earth you will find peace –

From whence you came –

Between the rivers –

“There you go. That’s it.” Fish nodded conclusively. His assistants smiled and made appreciative noises.

“Anything else?” Potzner asked them. “Any shape, any word, any stroke of the pen, any other diagrams that might help?”

Fish sighed. “I’m afraid not. We don’t think anything else cross-refers to this particular diagram. The footnote doesn’t really make any sense. It’s in a modern idiom. Roughly translated it says –”

“
In time you will find the whole,”
Potzner said. “I know.”

Fish and his team exchanged surprised glances.