Undercurrent (37 page)

He went downstairs in a motley array of clothing, ready to compete with his hosts for the prize for inept dressing, not caring. He had told Fergusons to put the job on hold and he could not bring himself to care about that either. In this land of the relatively poor, he was still relatively rich.

He could feel the touch of Maggie's hand on his fevered brow and hear himself talking more than he had ever talked. And no amount of talking would tell him what to do. Knowledge did not point him in any direction.

'You see,' he said to Peter in the kitchen, watching him pour the tea from the teapot which looked as if it was too heavy to lift, 'it's in the nature of us Americans to believe that things can be fixed. Nothing broke that can't be fixed. No illness can't be cured. No tragedy can't be turned round into a happy ending. No mess can't be negotiated into success. I'm stuck with it. Positivism. The secret of our success. Compromise is a no-no.'

'How completely unnatural. It's all compromise, isn't it? And what's the point of striving all the time?

What you can't accept is the fact that life's full of mystery and you aren't supposed to know all the answers. Acceptance is the key. There's no hardship at all in going along with a whole lot of broken things.

You have to accept fate, just like you have to accept a hefty measure of ignorance. Go with the flow. Henry.

You can't actually change anything.'

Henry followed him into the garden, where Timothy was tidying up. There was the reassuring sound of a broom swishing on the paving stones with an even rhythm, gathering together broken twigs and scattered leaves. The door to the Wendy house was open and the inside was empty when Henry looked, except for two folders of assorted papers and an old leather writing case.

'I wanted to make a fire,' Tim said. 'Get rid of it all.'

'All what?'

'Harry's things. He's gone, you see. I think he's gone somewhere with his mother. I told him we didn't mind, but I don't think he'll be back. We'll leave the Wendy house, just in case. Might keep an ostrich in it.'

'Why do you think he's gone?' Henry asked with a massive lump in his throat. Timothy shook his head, warningly.' You might know, but we don't. Don't want to. That isn't for us to know.

But something's been settled. He's stopped flitting around. I think he's finally understood that it wasn't all a waste. He was looking for a purpose, you see. I don't know what it is, I don't want to know, but he's found it. I think he finally understood that he was .. . loved.'

'Don't burn the letters and things, will you?'

'Should we not?'

'No. Keep them. And the videos. She'll want them, some day.'

'She?'

'She. Someone.'

The Wendy house was sparkling clean from the hosing down of rain followed by ministrations with detergent. The plastic colours were weatherworn and faded out of their original garishness; Henry could see it as the cake icing house, shrouded with shrubs as it was and perfectly comfortable in these surroundings.

Perhaps it was true that things grow into their own places. Senta prowled around it disdainfully, sniffing and oddly subdued. She sniffed Henry's ankles with a greater show of animation.

'She misses him,' Peter said. 'They kept each other company when we were busy, you see.

It's always been like that. We're a bit too old for her, really, that's the problem, aren't we, Senta?

Can't keep up with you, can we?'

Henry wondered about the other person he had been a mere two weeks ago, who might have bridled at this archness and gagged at the sentimentality of talking to animals and ghosts, hating it all the more for never doubting its appalling sincerity. He put his arm round Peter's meaty shoulders.

'What's old, old man? Middle age is man's greatest dignity, his piece de resistance, the age of wisdom and just about enough vigour to go round. I got an idea.

Don't turn me down. Can't waste the damn Wendy house if Harry doesn't come back. What say you to another dog? There's a beauty...'

'A black beauty,' Timothy said, dreamily. 'Wanders round by itself all day and finds somewhere to go at night. I long for it, can you get her? I never know where she goes. Oh yes. Now how did I know you were going to suggest that?'

'You must be psychic,' Henry said glibly, but his heart was beating to a strange tune, kerthump, kerthump, kerthump and he felt slightly giddy so that the words came out rather careless. 'I think I can get her,' he said. 'Or get Maggie to get her. Got something to trade.'

'Fetch,' Tim yelled and flung the broom in the air.

Henry drew a deep breath. 'You know the first night I got here? How did you know I was coming along? Psychic again?' Peter had the grace to look shifty and looked down at his shoes; brogues as violent a brown as brogues were ever made, polished to a piano varnish finish the better to offset the canary yellow socks. Some people did better out of thrift shops than others. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, gazing at the shoes so hard that Henry thought he would overbalance and tensed himself to catch him.

'Maggie has to check the hotel register every day. Make sure they do it right. Must have seen your name, I suppose. Told them to send you along. Told us.' Somehow, it did not Surprise him. He was rather relieved to find an instance of cooperative cunning rather than anything weirdly telepathic, although if the explanation had been obscure enough to feature some message from either God or the Devil, he would not have been surprised either. Henry was beyond surprise and into anticlimax.

He knew where the dog was, he had seen it from his window. He saw everything from his window as if he were filming each scene. He could always get as far as the window and watch the people without the people watching him. Watch the dog and know where it sheltered; he knew that it came as far as this door every day, imagined he knew where it was now, grabbing a halfway sunny spot on the shingle for as long as it lasted.

'Excuse me,' he said,

The sunlight made him giddy, he didn't know why, it was a pretty pallid sort of sunlight only made brilliant by the sea with the dark clouds backing up on the horizon again, ready to spit and blow and Snarl and bite and fight. The thunder God went for a ride, he recited and couldn't remember the next line. He crossed the road and whistled. My only talent, he thought to himself. I can whistle for the dog I never owned. I can whistle for the wind and be heard on any other planet and by any other species than my own.

The dog gambolled off the beach and sniffed his ankles. I would die to be able to run like you. Henry told it. And once we're inside, behave, right? It's me who'll square everything after, like the price of a decade of food. And something for Granny and tablets for Neil.

The dog wanted to come upstairs. He said no and heard it greeted in the kitchen with wails of delight. The stairs seemed longer and longer, halfway up, he heard a door slam and did not look back. He did not want to talk to her just now. The only way that Maggie had ever seen him was when he was pathetic and she was in control. Whenever he looked like shit, she looked like a birthday party; whenever he felt like shit, she was there at the rescue and whenever he thought shit, she had thought it first. And such a user, such a manipulator. How could a woman like that have a cousin like that, but all the same . ..

All the same...

All the same ... He felt weak at the top floor, checked the view from the window again, just to make sure he could not see the dog on the beach. A copy of a fax was on the bed, pristine black and white and almost warm. Henry read it, once, twice, three times, absorbed the message, leave me alone,
leave me alone, LEAVE ME ALONE
, until he thought he had understood. Well, what had he expected?

Gratitude? For what? From whom? It wasn't as good as it was before he'd got here and learned to swear, and it wasn't good now, but at least someone knew a lot more truth than they knew before, and godamnit, they didn't want to know it and they wouldn't have been bothered if they didn't know it and there was nothing he could do. Could do, fucking should do, FUCK

NOTHING, he yelled at the wall.

Cool Ms Chisholm. You can go now. Henry, and let us resume our lives. She does not want to see you. What you do next is entirely up to you. Thanks a lot.

He sorted money into piles. The early days of archaic Warbling taught him that cash mattered more than anything. He counted madly: food for the dog, benefit for Granny, Viagra he would send, no cash needed, biggest stash ever for P and T, Edward had refused payment. He touched the shawl which was grubbier now, because Maggie had wrapped it around his throat when his temperature was way high and he shrieked at her not to close the window. He put it in an envelope and scrawled her name on it.

She would know what he meant; she would never ask for anything more. He checked his watch. These were the hours for cooking.

His suitcase was extraordinarily light. No potions, no minerals, no whatsits, a few antibiotics in his washbag and the seagulls outside friskier than ever from what they had picked up. Seagulls freaked out by vitamins and ginseng: he tried to cheer himself with that idea, checked his watch again. Trains went on the hour. The sky was slate and the wind ominous.

If he went now, quietly, he would have to wait, but if he did not move, another kind of madness would descend. The horror of doing, being nothing.

No hat. It was mild for the time of year, gathering energy for another storm, going to be horrible soon. Horrible: he toyed with the word on the way to the station, going the back way. It was an unfamiliar description and he tried to think what he might say instead. Awesome, terrific, incredible, nasty. Not nice. The station was deserted apart from three kids with one bicycle between them. The smallest one-sat, kicking the wheels as if it was an enemy instead of transport. He waited for a sense of relief. Checked on his fingers for the things done and left undone.

Waited.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

There were starlings under the eaves of the station canopy, putting out clarion calls, shrieking for mother. He walked to the edge of the platform and trod along a yellow line explained by a notice which said, do not cross. He looked at the plants which withered in the aisle between eastbound and west.

The train failed to arrive. He was way too early and the next city train was going to be late because of the weather. The sky turned from slate to black and even the birds fell silent as the wind began to rattle. Henry checked the breast pocket on his jacket, one last time, as if it would be the last time and he would not do it again and again. Back in the twenty-first century which Warbling had managed to suspend, he could feel himself slipping into the benign neurosis of everyday concerns, and the need for everyday documents.

A woman appeared in charge of the kid who was kicking the bike, and cuffed him. Henry leapt to his feet, about to intervene and then sat down again as she followed it up with no more than a scolding and a crushed packet of crisps taken from her bag. He moved to the far end of the platform and sat on a metal bench out of the wind, adjusting his scarf and his gloves and feeling his feet warm in his boots. He might look like a tramp, but he was well insulated.

Should have said goodbye, but why did anyone need goodbyes? Because it closed the chapter. He found himself imagining what the reaction of the two men would be when they found he had gone, told himself they would not be quite reconciled by the over-generous payment, that was not the point with the English he had met. Money in quantity was not important; they were weird like that.

And what about her? Would she shrug her shoulders and say to herself that was exactly how she expected him to behave?

What was it she had needed from him anyway? She needed what he had achieved, without breaking any of her ridiculous promises to her cousin. She did not need him. If that woman needed anything, she was not going to say. He stared at the trees on the far side of the platform, pinned behind the high railings and shaking in the wind. The waves on the seafront would be high; he had liked it when the waves were high enough to throw shingle into the road.

A train pulled in opposite, a slow-moving bullet of light. Probably the only train on the track, going all the way to the end of the line before coming back for the patient few on this platform. They should be throwing things at it in protest. He was never going to smoke again and only ever eat nutritious food.

If he saw Maggie from the outside, as if he was a stranger, what would he see? Someone who had moved heaven and earth to find out the truth about the cousin she loved like a sister. Someone who went on serving the interests of that same person, doing her bidding, remaining faithful to her, inhibited by ridiculous promises to a self-confessed murderess, as if that made no difference to love or loyalty. Perhaps it didn't. Perhaps it made you suspend judgement entirely; If you loved someone, you didn't leave them whatever they had done. Any more than Angela would abandon her daughter, or Peter would abandon Tim. You would do anything. You would lie, for a start; you would trade on affection and sentiment.

You might even blackmail people with their own decency. You would put yourself on the back burner, wipe yourself out.

There was an unfamiliar lump in one of the pockets of the jacket and it dug into his thigh as he sat on the metal bench. Henry investigated and found a bar of chocolate and a tube of extra strong mints, examined them carefully. Now who had put those there?

Someone who knew that he was inclined to forget about sustenance and needed to take a little something for his blood sugar in his weakened state? Don't you be going out without something to eat, she had scolded him only yesterday in that maternal way she had developed with the patient. He could not blame her for himself becoming ill, but in a way, he had. It was not her fault that he had ignored the impact of cold and shock and incurred the almost inevitable sickness, but it was she who had started it all. He was trying to make himself angry, but the presence of a bar of chocolate was preventing it.