Black Flowers (6 page)

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

‘
Not
a problem.’

She put the pot down and picked up the old one.

‘Surfing are we?’

‘I’m sorry?’

She nodded at his computer. ‘Silver surfing, I think they call
it. Terrible term. I know the library is having a big push at the moment though.’

‘Oh yes.’ Cartwright forced a smile, and tried to sound as doddery as she expected. If that was how she saw old people, then he didn’t want to stand out and be remembered. ‘I can’t recall. Perhaps I did see something about that.’

She smiled back. He was far better at acting than she was.

When she’d returned to the counter, he poured himself a fresh cup of tea. Energy dissipated in the form of steam and in the sound of the slight rattle as the cup filled.

A faint heat.

The aroma of the leaves.

Everything shifting constantly.

But as he placed the teapot back down, he felt it again: a jab of pain in his side, which set off a chain reaction of smaller bursts across his stomach and through his chest. It was excruciating, but he didn’t let it show. Anyone watching would just have seen an old man pouring his drink. Nobody would sense the multitude of cancers blooming inside him: so many by now that they surely half filled him, pressing against his skin like flowers overgrown behind glass. He could practically smell the pollen in his sweat.

Cartwright sipped his tea. A tube of heat materialised at his centre, and the pain gradually subsided.

Despite the discomfort, he appreciated the tumors for what they were: just a stage in his change. His body was transforming itself. New life was blossoming within. It was nothing to be afraid of, really, this ordinary version of dying. He had only two real regrets. The first was the question of what would happen to his family when he was gone. They were not as capable as he was. For the most part, they never left the farm and they lacked the necessary familiarity with the outside world to survive in his absence. He knew he should have prepared them better.

There was nothing to be done about that now.

The second regret, though, was a different matter.

On the far side of the street, the door to the cottage opened. Cartwright sipped his tea and watched with interest as the woman emerged. She was in her mid forties and very beautiful, with a sweeping rush of brown hair and a slim frame. But she had aged considerably in the year since he had last seen her. The thinness had become unhealthy; he could see her hip bones jutting below her dress. Her face had weathered too, so that she looked far older than her years.

It will be all right
, he thought.

You’ll see
.

She did see – or, at least, she spotted the envelope on her doorstep. He watched as she stared down, then crouched to retrieve it, picking it up a little too quickly. He turned away just in time as she looked across at the café. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her looking up and down the street, cars flashing past in-between them.

When he risked looking back, the woman had retreated inside. That was disappointing: he’d hoped to see her open the envelope. She looked so very sad, and Cartwright liked pleasing people. He liked helping them to understand.

He turned back to the laptop, open on the table in front of him. It was a battered old thing, the kind of device that most people would have thrown out and replaced by now, but it served its limited purpose adequately enough. It was also the only useful thing they’d salvaged from the debacle at the bridge – beyond the fleeting glimpse of her, escaping into the trees. That glimpse had only made things worse. It was his second regret. Cartwright hoped he might have what he wanted most in the world before this ordinary way of dying had finished. Even after all these years, he just wanted his daughter back where she belonged.

In the meantime, he had what was before him right now. One of the benefits of seeing the world properly was noticing the beautiful echoes the universe produced, seemingly for its own pleasure. Patterns created for their own sake. Reading what was
in front of him, Cartwright knew that people could do that too, unwittingly or deliberately, and that there was joy to be had in hearing the chimes of coincidence and adding to them. Just as the universe played, so could he.

He read the story again.

Goblins. Changelings.

Cartwright liked the story, and he liked the idea of bringing it to life, especially as it might help him to do so. And the best part of all? His son wouldn’t even need a mask.

People would be terrified enough of him already.

My flat was too small to store lots of books, so I didn’t have copies of all my father’s work, but I did have
Worry Dolls
. Like all my books, it was stored in a pile on a shelf in the wardrobe. I slid it out now, and opened it gently to the dedication at the front. The spine creaked: a soft, comfortable sound. It made me think of an old man sitting down on leather upholstery.

I noted the present tense, although I also knew my mother died before the book was published and would never have been able to read it. Even so, he’d addressed it to her as though she could hear, as though she was still with him.
I tell you every day in person
. I believed that. My father had been repeating the words that defined him, no matter that the person they were directed to was no longer able to hear.

Obviously he took Mum’s death hard, but he’ll be channelling it into his writing
.

What I’d said to Marsha on the phone that night sounded so stupid to me now. On top of the guilt it conjured up, it also made me feel like a fucking idiot. As a kid, I’d absorbed all his romantic ideas about the power of writing, and as an adult, I’d
begun to build my life on their foundations. But when it had mattered, those ideas had been shown for exactly how empty and meaningless they were.
He’ll be channelling it into his writing
. Except he wouldn’t, because writing was just writing, not magic. And so I felt naïve – like I’d spent my life believing in the Tooth Fairy.

I closed the book and caressed the cover once, as though sealing it.
Worry Dolls
. The story of a man who was terrified of living and dying alone, whose wife came to hold his hand as he passed away.
I never want to be without you
, my father had written. It didn’t seem so wrong to hope that maybe, in those last few moments, he hadn’t been.

‘Hey there, you.’

I almost jumped as Ally walked into the room. I hadn’t heard the front door open: the echoing booms and bangs from the flat below had obscured it. In fact, I hadn’t even realised it was after five now and work was done with for normal people. Time had just … passed. Despite everything, it kept doing that. When something awful happens, you half imagine everything should slow down respectfully to take note, but of course it doesn’t work like that. The days just disappeared around me.

‘Hey.’ I put the book back. ‘How was your day?’

‘Crap.’

She let her handbag fall down her arm onto the bed, then sighed to herself. I sat back in front of my laptop, and a moment later she walked over and put her arms around me from behind. The smell of her perfume was a shock after being on my own all day. Her chin jutted against the side of my neck as she spoke.

‘The usual crap, to be more precise.’

‘No excitement?’

‘Ha! No. Although Ros phoned. She wants to know when you’re coming back. She’s sympathetic, but stressing out.’

‘Monday,’ I said. ‘Probably.’

‘Yeah, I told her. But you know what she’s like.’

I reached up and ran my hand over Ally’s forearm: over the
fine hairs there that she hated but I loved. There’s something especially comforting about being hugged from behind. Maybe because, by definition, you don’t ask for it, so it always feels honest.

I hadn’t had to ask for anything these past few days. It must have been obvious to Ally how badly I needed her right now, and so she’d just stayed, looking after me in imperceptible ways ever since we’d returned from Whitkirk. Food would appear. Phone calls and arrangements would have been made without my noticing. All the things that could easily have been overwhelming – that might have caused me to buckle – I’d emerge from my dazed state, begin half panicking about them, and then realise she’d already done them.

‘I don’t know what I’d do without you,’ I said.

‘Me neither. Good thing you don’t have to worry about that.’

As I rubbed her arm, it occurred to me that she and my father had never met, and now never would. He hadn’t known he was going to become a grandfather.

Would it have made a difference if he had?

Would anything?

The handful of newspaper reports I’d seen on his death all mentioned
Worry Dolls
and my mother’s death, placing heavy emphasis on the latter. I still found it hard to believe, but the facts were the facts. He’d lost his wife and had a vague history of depression; his car had been found in an isolated spot by a bridge; his body was recovered from the riverbank seventy feet below; and police were not currently looking for anyone else as part of their enquiries. The word ‘suicide’ didn’t appear in the newspapers, but it emerged unspoken through the details, between the lines. I couldn’t avoid what he’d done even if, most of the time, I also couldn’t quite believe it.

A number of journalists had called or emailed, asking me to comment, but I didn’t acknowledge them. What was the point – what did they expect me to say? Maybe that I hadn’t cared enough to make sure he was okay? Or that I was having trouble
accepting he’d killed himself – and that a part of me still didn’t, not really? There was nothing sensible for me to tell them. The result was that, in the reports, I was generally reduced to a footnote.

He is survived by his son, Neil, 25
.

There was an enormous chatter of gunfire from below.

Ally sighed and moved away from me.

‘Excuse me for a moment, babe.’

‘No worries.’

This time, I heard her open the front door – and then several large
bangs
. A moment later, the noise from the television below fell silent. There were no raised voices. After a few more seconds, Ally came back up the stairs, my door slamming pointedly behind her, and the television downstairs did not resume.

‘That’s
much
better,’ she told herself. ‘I’m going for a shower.’

She whistled on her way down the corridor, and I managed a half-smile before turning back to the computer. There was a new email I needed to respond to.

The messages had all started on the day the obituaries began to appear in the media, and then increased in volume as the news of my father’s death spread across the blogosphere. I don’t know how they found me, but they did. My father’s friends, colleagues and fans, expressing their shock and sending their condolences. All contained variations on the same themes.

I had the pleasure of meeting Christopher once
.

His work was an inspiration to me
.

He was a wonderful writer, a wonderful person
.

I’m so very sorry for your loss
.

A few of them sent personal anecdotes – usually stories about their encounters with him at conventions or signings. That was the strangest part, actually: the tales of late-night drinking, draining hotel bars dry, falling over furniture at six in the morning; the adventures in foreign countries, winding streets, late-night taverns and hidden drinking dens. They made my
father sound exotic and exciting, as though he’d lived the life of a spy, and I found it hard to square their version of Christopher Dawson with mine.

But as strange as the stories seemed, they helped. They were comforting. Reading them created an odd combination of sadness and happiness: they tightened knots in my heart and my throat. Every novelist wants to be read, of course – what’s the point of speaking if nobody listens? But, to my father, there had always been a difference between saying the thing you know people want to hear, the bestselling thing, and saying what
you
want to – what you
have
to – and then hoping someone likes it enough to listen. That was what Dad had done all his life. And it was clear from all these emails now that people had listened.

From the bathroom, I heard the hiss of the shower starting up, and then the
whump
of the boiler kicking in.

I hit the reply button and started typing.

Dear Mr Cartwright

Thank you for your email. My father’s funeral will be held at Longwood Crematorium at 1.00 p.m. on Friday 24 September. If you would like to attend, please do come. There will be a reception afterwards at The Regency. Directions to both are attached.

Donations, in lieu of flowers, should be made to Cancer Research UK.

Thank you, and I’m sorry for your loss too.

Neil