The Other Child (43 page)

And …
like a son to Gordon?
To the people of Ravenscar, Gordon McBright seemed like a kind of devil. No one was on talking terms with him. No one seemed able to believe that I would really want to visit him. And yet he was to find a place in his heart for Nobody of all people?

I would really have liked to turn back. I was afraid – of McBright himself, but also of the condition I would find Nobody in. What if I felt I should go to the police? I loved Chad. I wanted to marry him. If I decided to save Nobody, our love would not survive my action. Chad would never forgive me if I got him into trouble over this. He had looked so exhausted, so laden with cares. He was fighting to keep his parents' farm going, and it was clear he was struggling.
I just can't be 'avin' any trouble
, he had said last night in his dirty kitchen. There had been something desperate about the way he said it.

Was I, of all people, going to bring him the trouble he so feared?

In spite of my doubts I rode on, pushing down harder on the pedals of the old bike whose tyres were losing air. It was becoming more and more of a struggle to ride. I tried to numb the tortuous thoughts in my head with the physical exertion. For the first time in my life I was faced with a difficult question of conscience. I suddenly wished I had not come to Yorkshire.

I could see the farm from a long way off. It was far out of Ravenscar, buried deep in the countryside and a good way from the sea. The buildings were on a little hillock above a wood. There were no other signs of human settlement near or far. It was a place of loneliness and isolation.

The weather was not sunny. A blue sky peeked through holes in the clouds only occasionally. Nevertheless it was still a bright August day. A beautiful day. The wind bent the blades of grass and raced over the stone walls. The day smelt of sea and summer. The atmosphere could have been beautiful, even romantic in a wild and elemental way. Yet it was not. The farm looked dark and threatening, although I could not have said why exactly. Even from a distance it looked somehow desolate, even though it was no more rundown than the Beckett farm. Nevertheless, it seemed to exude a cold horror. I shivered. Or was I affected because of everything people had suggested?

I approached hesitantly. The path was stony and overgrown with thistles. I found it hard not to fall off the bike. When the path started to go uphill, I had to get off and push. I stopped many times. I was hot, and felt myself sweating all over.

I reached the farm gate unchecked. Behind it was the farmyard. Stables and sheds formed a U shape around the farmhouse, encircling it like a fortress. Thistles and nettles were shooting up between the rusty equipment scattered around the yard. A car was parked right in front of the front door. It appeared to be the only thing which was regularly moved around here, as it was not surrounded by weeds.

I could see all of this when I got up on my tiptoes and peeked over the wooden gate. I had just dropped my bike in the grass at the side of the path. I could hear my heart beating loudly and fast. Apart from that I could not hear anything.

I cannot say that anything really happened. Nothing dramatic or terrible. No dog rushed at me with bared teeth, nor did Gordon McBright appear with his gun at the ready. I was not shouted at, not chased away. I just stood there, looked over the gate, and nothing happened.

And yet in some way which is difficult to describe this ‘nothing' was worse than a raging McBright would have been. If he had appeared in person I could have had a good look at him, could have made my own mind up about him, confronted him. As it was, he remained a spectre.

And the eeriest thing was that I could feel that he was there. I could feel that people were there on that godforsaken and apparently dead farm. There was even a clue: the car's tyre tracks crossing the yard. They could be seen in flattened grass and weeds, which had not had time to straighten up again yet. I guessed that the car had parked an hour ago at most. And how would anyone leave here except by car?

However I did not actually need that proof. I simply knew that I was not alone. I could feel that eyes were trained on me from behind the windows. I could feel that the silence here was not the silence of an abandoned place, but of horror and evil. Even nature held its breath here.

Years ago I had read a sentence in a book:
A place which had fallen out of God's hands
.

Now I knew what its author had meant.

And in that warped and frightening silence I heard Nobody-scream. I did not hear him with my own ears. Nothing broke the silence. But I could perceive him with all my senses, I swear I could. I could hear him screaming for help. I could hear him calling for me. I could hear his despair and extreme fear. The screams were the painful, tortured screams of an abandoned child.

I picked up the bike, jumped into the saddle and tore down the hill as fast as I could. Twice I almost fell off the bike, as I was almost riding on the rims now. I just wanted to get away from this place and the screams which seemed to pursue me. I knew now that Nobody had landed in hell. Whatever happened to him on this farm, it was torturing him almost to death. He was completely helpless and Gordon McBright could kill him without anyone knowing. He could bury the body in a shallow grave in a field and no one would notice. In a horrific way the name which Chad and I had carelessly, and not without hate, given him proved to be only too appropriate: Nobody. This boy did not exist. In the confusion of the war years, a chain of unfortunate incidents had allowed Brian Somerville to fall through the cracks in the care system. He had become nobody. He had no protection at all. Because of his disability he was unable to protect himself. He was at the mercy of anyone whose hands he fell into, for better or worse.

Three people knew of him and his fate: Chad, Arvid and I. The three of us should have done something to help him.

We did nothing. We had our reasons, the main one being fear. I know that is no excuse. What we did – or rather, did not do – is unforgivable.

I have paid for it, mainly with the image which has haunted me in waking and sleeping moments for all the decades of my life: the last image I have of Brian Somerville. The small, shivering boy is standing at the gate of the Beckett farm in the February snow and looking at me go. He wants to cry, because I am leaving, but he is trying to smile behind the tears because he believes that I will come back and fetch him.

He is trying to smile because he trusts me.

Thursday, 16th October

1

She had no wish to carry on reading. She stood up and looked out of the window. The night was dark and overcast, without the moon or stars. A few lights shone in the harbour. The sea was a black, turbulent mass.

She went into the kitchen and, looking at the clock, saw that it was already past midnight. She opened a bottle of whisky, put it to her lips and took a few swigs. She wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her jumper. Suddenly she started to cry.

What had happened to Brian Somerville, the
other child
?

The images raced through her head in a confused jumble: her grandmother as a seventeen-year-old girl, Chad Beckett as a young man with too much on his plate, the dilapidated farm not far from total collapse. The war just over.

Try to understand her, a voice in her head said. Try to forgive her.

Her crying grew louder. She put the bottle to her lips again. She could see the little boy who had been a victim from the first day of his life and had remained one, because … Fiona had neglected to protect him. Because, given the choice, she had chosen to protect Chad Beckett, the man she loved.

Or at least: the man she thought she loved.

As if Fiona Barnes had ever loved in her life.

She felt dizzy. She had not eaten for a long time, filling herself only with strong alcohol.

Why was I always, always freezing as a child? Why did my mum become drug-addicted?

She had to find out what had happened to Brian Somerville. She only had a few more pages to read. It was obviously not about Fiona's whole life. She supposed it contained some clue as to Brian's fate.

‘I can't face it now,' she murmured.

She was drinking the whisky like water. That was the next question:
why have I become an alcoholic?

Of course she had not really become an alcoholic. She just drank a little too much, a little too often. Particularly when things got difficult.

She knew that she urgently needed to stop doing that.

She stood in the kitchen with the open bottle and looked around at the familiar objects. The coffee maker and the shelf with the mugs which she knew from her childhood. On the table, the clay ashtray decorated with flowers. She had made it for Fiona at school. At least her grandmother had kept it and used it. That was already a lot from a woman like Fiona.

She put the bottle down on the sideboard, but then immediately reached for it again, taking another few swigs. She was going to get drunk now. She was going to get so plastered she knocked herself out. Then – if she could still manage it – she was going to sway over to her bed and sleep until late the next day. When she would finally wake up, she knew she would feel terribly sick, but the headache would numb her thoughts, she knew that from experience. A really bad hangover was just what was needed to switch off from the world around her. The furry, dry mouth, the urge to vomit and the stabbing pain at her temples would push everything else into the background. She longed to be sick, to lie in bed and be able to moan, and pull the blanket over her head.

She wanted to be a child and for someone to console her.

Except that no one was going to. Not a mother or a grandmother. Fiona had never been good at that in any case. Stephen had moved out. He was a few houses further down the street in his bed in the Crown Spa Hotel, no doubt, sleeping peacefully.

She was alone.

Hey, Cramer, don't drown in your own self-pity now
, she thought as the tears rolled down her cheeks.

And at that moment the doorbell rang.

It was only after she had buzzed the visitor in, and was waiting upstairs at the door to the flat, that she realised it wasn't particularly safe to open the door after midnight. Maybe it was because she had been drinking, or because she felt so lost, but she remained in the stairwell and listened to the footsteps of someone coming up the stairs. The light had come on automatically, and its very bright white light made Leslie blink. She was still holding the open bottle in her hand. Her make-up must have been smeared and her hair messed up.

She did not care.

Dave Tanner appeared in front of her with a big suitcase in his hand. He stopped.

‘Thank God,' he said. ‘You were still awake?'

She looked down at her clothes. She was wearing jeans, a jumper and trainers.

‘Yes, I was awake,' she confirmed.

He appeared relieved. ‘I was afraid you might not open the door,' he said, smiling. ‘You really should use the intercom to ask who it is! It's half past midnight!'

She shrugged.

‘Can I come in?' asked Dave.

She moved aside and he stepped in, putting down his suitcase with a sigh.

‘Goodness, it's heavy,' he said. ‘Almost everything I own is in it. I had to walk, because my car finally gave up the ghost just now. Listen, Leslie, could I sleep here tonight? My landlady has just thrown me out.'

Leslie tried to get her drink-addled brain to follow him. ‘Thrown you out?' she asked slowly. ‘Can she do that?'

‘No idea. But she was completely hysterical. She was screaming for the police, raging … There was just no point in staying. I tried to reach an old friend, but her phone is turned off. She works in a bar down in the harbour, so I waited there from ten to a little before midnight, but she didn't come. Then I walked up here, hoping you'd be in and could grant me asylum. In all honesty, Leslie, I can't walk another step.' He paused, and stared at her. ‘Is everything all right?'

She could not help starting to cry again. ‘Yes. Well, no. It's about Fiona. She is …' She wiped her eyes. ‘I need some time to come to terms with everything.'

He carefully took the bottle from her hand and put it on a chair in the hall.

‘I can smell the alcohol on your breath a mile off, Leslie. You'd better stop. Otherwise
you
might be dead tomorrow morning.'

‘Maybe that would be for the best.'

He shook his head. ‘No.'

Like a little child she objected, ‘It would!'

He held her by both shoulders, steered her into the kitchen and forced her gently but insistently to sit down.

‘I'm going to make a nice warm cup of tea for you now. With honey. Do you have honey?'

She was too tired to struggle against his attention. Maybe, she thought, I don't want to struggle.

‘Yes, honey's somewhere. No idea where.'

‘OK, I'll find my way around.'

She looked at him blankly as he moved around the kitchen. He put the water on to boil, took two mugs from the shelf, opened this cupboard door and that one until he found where the tea was kept. He found a jar of honey on a shelf above the oven. Leslie watched him as he poured the golden liquid into the mugs. The water was boiling. Dave made the tea and put both mugs on the table, seating himself opposite Leslie.

‘What's wrong?'

She shook her head and carefully took a sip. The whisky had left her feeling sick.

Too much, too quickly on an empty stomach. She jumped up and ran to the bathroom, reaching the toilet just in time.

Retching and coughing, she threw up. Not much other than stinking bile came up.

Dave had followed her. He brushed her hair from her face and put a hand on her sweaty neck.

‘It's all right,' he said. ‘Good for it all to come out.'

She stood up, swayed over to the sink and filling her hands with cold water rinsed her mouth out.