The Kind Folk (14 page)

"Found where?"

"One of the places my da said I mustn't go when I was little. You'd have to ask him, only he's not here any more."

"I'm sorry." Luke is, and not just for her loss. "So which places—

"Like I said, ask him."

"I'm sorry." By now Luke feels he's repeating the phrase simply because he has heard it used. "I thought you meant he—

"He's being looked after with some of his friends. I coped as long as I could." Just as brusquely she says "Do you want the number?"

"I'd appreciate it."

"Wait there, then." She drops the receiver, and a series of coughs dies away into the distance. Luke is gazing at the hill and straining to hear her when she retrieves the phone with an unhandy clatter. "Here's the number," she says, and Luke writes it on a sheet of hotel notepaper, though the sprained tip of the ballpoint that resides in the room makes the digits sprawl so large that they might be imitating someone else's script. "It's the Longview Home," Doris Lassiter says. "Be sure and call now you've got it."

"I'll do it now if you like."

"I'd tell anyone the same that can bring back his memories. Aye," she says as if she needs some reassurance, "even those," and with a curt goodbye she's gone.

WHERE THEY DANCED

The Longview Retirement Home is a small convened hotel with its back to the river. As Luke turns the car along the gravel drive a gondola glides towards him from the opposite bank. The vessel, which is big enough to carry several cars, floats above the wide river. By the time he parks in front of the sallow amber building he has identified the steel cables that suspend the vessel from the gantry of a bridge. Before Luke was born there used to be a transporter bridge near Terence's house, and he remembers Terence adding an older tale, telling him how you could walk across water if you knew the words to ask the spirits to bear you up. Luke is gazing at the bridge when a young woman opens the glass door of the home. "It's soothing, isn't it?" she says. "Most of our service users think so."

Luke wishes he felt soothed. She has a large face that looks rouged with scrubbing, and her auburn hair is tied back out of any sort of trouble. She wears trousers and a short-sleeved white blouse with the name Jaine pinned to the pocket. "Who are you here for?" she says.

"Desmond Lassiter. Whoever I spoke to yesterday said I could visit him."

"Our Desmond nearly always likes his visits. They bring him back to himself." All the same, Jaine says "Are you family?"

"I'm somebody's." Luke immediately regrets having said that. "My uncle," he tries saying, "he knew Mr Lassiter."

"I hope Desmond remembers. Come in while I see where he is." She leaves Luke in the spacious hall at the foot of an enclosed staircase. As he sits on a straight chair next to a low table strewn with dog-eared glossy pamphlets about caring for old age, a woman peers at him out of a side room and screws up her already wizened face. Upstairs a man is practicing variations on a sneeze, which put Luke in mind of last night's gig. The audience laughed hardest at his sternutative routine, where he mimics and enlarges on a bout of sneezing that overcame Maurice many years ago. "Aaa-cha," he recalls Maurice declaring along with aaa-chash and aaa-chow and much else, growing red-faced with the effort to produce a sound that apparently never came out as it should. There was woogh as well, not to mention wrogh and weragh. Did Luke manage to imitate the apoplectic colour too? That's how his face feels whenever he performs the improvisation. His act has started to put him in mind of a rite he executes to amuse people without understanding how it does. He can do without feeling even more unsure of himself, and he's glad when Jaine reappears. "He's in the grounds," she says.

As Luke follows Jaine the old woman limps fast out of the side room and plucks at his arm. "Have you brought the little ones?"

"He isn't yours, Hettie. Your family's coming tomorrow," Jaine assures her and leads Luke through a large room where several oldsters are watching
Brittan's Resolutions
on a television. Some of them gaze hard at him, but at least nobody seems to associate him with the show. French windows open onto an extensive lawn that slopes towards the river. As she makes for a man in a wheelchair who is watching fellow inmates stroll haphazardly about, Jaine murmurs "What was the name?"

"I'm Luke Arnold," Luke says as if it's no more than the truth.

"Your uncle's, Mr Arnold."

"Terence." Luke feels as though his own name—the one he has always used, at any rate—is receding from him. "Terence Arnold," he says.

"Here's somebody to see you, Desmond. The nephew of a friend of yours."

The man swings the chair to face them, describing a trail like a twisted symbol on the grass. His hands on the wheels are gnarled as old roots, and his eyebrows resemble a transplanted greying moustache. His watery eyes and peeling nose and thin almost colourless lips look close to being overwhelmed by pasty mottled flesh. His blurred gaze is slow to find Luke, as if he's waking from a daydream. "Which friend's that?" he mumbles.

"Terence Arnold, Desmond. Do you remember him? This is his nephew Luke."

"Ah nold. Arn old." The old man's lips work as though savouring the name. "Did he want my advice about money?" he asks anybody who might know. "I liked all my clients to be friends."

"I'll leave you two to get acquainted," Jaine says. "Just you tell Mr Arnold if you start to feel too tired."

The old man's eyes sag almost shut as she bustles over to a resident who appears to have forgotten where he is. Luke thinks Lassiter may be dozing off until he sees a glint in the narrowed eyes. "Give us a push as long as you're here, laddie," the old man mutters. "No need to be letting the world know our secrets."

"Where would you like to go?"

"Down by the river. The ones there won't be telling."

Presumably he means a pair of residents who are gazing over the hedge at the gondola. As Luke grasps the handles—their rubber sheaths are sticky with the heat—he says "So were you a financial advisor?"

"Nothing to be ashamed of, is it?" Lassiter retorts and squirms around to squint at him. "It's what I did. It isn't what I was."

Luke is silent while they pass the residents who are wandering about the lawn. As he makes to ask a question Lassiter protests "Did you not hear what I said? Stay clear of them."

Apparently he has changed his mind about the couple by the hedge—there's nobody else in sight he could have meant—and Luke can only hope this doesn't indicate how unreliable he is. He wheels Lassiter to a deserted corner of the lawn, and the old man pokes a shaky hand in the direction of the gondola. "Not much machines can't do these days, is there? They're taking all the spirit out of life."

"I suppose I grew up with it."

Lassiter peers hard at him. "You want to be true to yourself, laddie."

"I might if I knew who that was."

The old man's lips wrinkle inwards as if they're searching for an expression or trying to conceal one. When it's clear that he isn't preparing to speak Luke says "Do you remember my uncle, then?"

"That I do. He was another one like me. His job was only what he did and the old places brought him alive." With another searching look he says "You'll be the same."

Rather than respond to this Luke says "Why did he come to see you?"

"Not because he was any client of mine, but I'll wager you knew that." Lassiter narrows his eyes again and says "Won't he be the man to ask?"

"I wish I could. He's gone."

"Doesn't mean you couldn't." Before Luke can determine whether the old man has misunderstood, Lassiter says "He was looking for places the old tales came from."

"That sounds like him. Any in particular?"

"What are all of them about when you look into them?" For a moment Lassiter seems to be expecting Luke to answer, and then he says "The Kind Folk."

Luke's attempt at a laugh sounds like none he has ever heard. "You mean the fairies."

"If that's what you want to call them. It won't change what they are."

Luke finds he's grateful nobody can overhear the conversation. "What are you saying that is?"

"I'm saying nothing about it." Lassiter scowls as if Luke has tried to trick him. "They may be dying out," he mutters, "but they'll be a good wee while about it yet. They aren't the sort to take kindly to it either, so I'll not be aggravating them."

This time Luke doesn't even try to laugh. "You mean you believe in them."

"No more than your uncle did, laddie, and I promise you we're not alone."

His choice of words seems to catch up with him. He stares about the grounds and then leans forwards with an effort to peer under the hedge. While Luke doesn't want to disturb him further, he still needs to learn a good deal. "What made him think you could help him?"

"He read about me," Lassiter says as if the question isn't far from insulting. "I used to do a column in a wee magazine round here. I told some of the tales I'd got from my nan about the Folk."

Luke assumes the old man is lowering his eyelids as an aid to memory until he sees the narrowed gaze is fixed on him. "I ought to be asking," Lassiter says, "what made you get in touch."

"I found your name in his journal."

"He wrote things down, did he?" Lassiter keeps his eyelids nearly shut as he enquires "What did he write about me?"

'Just your name and where you lived. Can you tell me what you told him?"

"I sent him off somewhere the Folk used to dance. They call it Compass Meadow."

"Any particular reason?"

"It's not far. Seeing as how you're so interested I think you should find out for yourself."

Luke wants to know why Lassiter sent Terence there, not the basis of the name. He's about to make this clear when the old man's eyes close, squeezing out a droplet each. "I'll go in now," Lassiter mumbles. "I've said enough."

Luke takes the clammy handles to steer him away from the hedge and murmurs "Did you ever go there?"

Lassiter grabs the wheels to propel the chair faster. "Just the once."

"And you found..."

The old man's eyelids tremble as if they're harbouring a bad dream, and he swings his head from side to side. "I almost saw them," he mutters and stares about like a sleeper attempting to wake up. "They were talking in the trees."

Luke lets go of the handles. "What did you think you heard?"

"They didn't ask my name, thank God."

"Why," Luke is compelled to enquire, "what would happen if they did?"

"If you told them true they'd pay you and your kin a few visits, and if you didn't you'd be feared they'd find you. You wouldn't want to know about it if they came to you after you'd lied to them." Lassiter turns away from Luke and thrusts his head decisively forwards. "Now I've said my piece," he declares, "and I want my rest."

Beyond the French windows Jaine crosses the room to meet him. "Has Mr Arnold brought things back to you?"

"He can take them with him," Lassiter says without looking at him.

As Jaine does her best not to look disappointed or bemused, the old woman who accosted Luke earlier calls across the room "Is that the little ones?

"We said, Hettie, remember," Jaine says. "Your family's day is tomorrow."

"Some little ones were here," the woman insists and nods unsteadily at Luke. "I thought they came with him."

Luke feels no less confused than she has to be. He's making for the hall when Lassiter says "Mr Arnold?"

He's gripping the wheels of the chair as though to ensure that it stays where it is. "Yes?" Luke says.

Once the old man has responded Luke shakes his head like someone indulging a relative and hurries out to the car. He sets the disc of Sophie's album playing and drives away without a backward glance. He might feel more relieved to be done with the residents of the home if it weren't for where he's going. "Don't look back," Lassiter said, and Luke feels like the victim of a trick he doesn't even understand.

THE EDGE

The path is off a winding lane half a mile from the nearest main road. A sign has fallen from a post and lies in rotten chunks beside the path, where the few surviving letters spell
PASS ME.
Luke almost couldn't find the place online; it's named on just one old map. It's where Lassiter sent Terence, but that hardly seems a reason for Luke to visit it, especially given his undefined nervousness. All the same, he leaves the car parked on the verge and starts along the path.

It's barely wide enough for anyone to pass him, not that anyone is to be seen. Thorny hedges fence it in, although if the fields on either side were ever cultivated, they aren't now. The sky teems with clouds, and Luke could imagine that their shadows keep weighing down the long grass. That's the play of the wind, which sets the hedges scraping their twigs together. Otherwise there's silence, not a murmur from the motorway over the horizon and no sound of traffic along the lane. When he glances back he can't even see the car. He's beginning to wonder how far he has to tramp, and whether it's worth the effort, when he catches sight of a line of trees ahead.

Lassiter said there were trees in Compass Meadow. As Luke advances they nod in unison to him. It's the wind again, but he feels as if part of the deserted landscape has become aware of him. The hedges twitch, and shadows flee across the path into the grass. When the wind relinquishes the trees their tops rear up as though unseen denizens have leapt from them. Several hundred yards short of them the main path turns away along the edge of a weedy field, but an uneven trail leads to them, not so much between hedges as through the middle of one. The track is so narrow that even when Luke sidles between the thorns they keep clawing at his sleeves. He struggles to the end and takes a breath that seems louder than the wind.

The hedge extends on both sides to encompass a field perhaps a quarter of a mile across from corner to corner. He has an odd sense that it isn't quite square, though he's unable to determine what shape is pretending it is. Otherwise it looks as nondescript as the surrounding fields—just one more stretch of unkempt grass scattered with wild flowers and piebald with lively shadows. There ought to be no reason for his mouth to have grown dry while his pulse sounds in his ears like a muffled drum.