Some Kind of Fairy Tale (11 page)

I hear laughter in the corridor. It’s DC Dave and my lawyer sharing a joke as they come back to the interview room and it hasn’t occurred to me before that she’s actually been on their side all along. But then she takes one look at my condition and my rapidly swelling lip. “For God’s sake!” she says.

Then Dave leans across and grabs my chin. He looks—or pretends to look—angry. He moves my face to one side, then the other. Then he turns to Detective Constable Hulk and bawls, “Get out of my sight. Go on.”

The Hulk wipes a finger under his nose and goes out of the room without a word.

Dave shakes his head. “Did he do this?” he says to me.

“What does it look like?” I say. “Perhaps I slipped while I was trying to sit in my chair.”

My lawyer snaps. “That’s enough.” DC Dave may be playacting, but she isn’t. Her eyeballs are popping and I can see tiny veins throbbing at her temple. “Charge him or let him go.”

“I’m not going to charge you, Richie. I’m sorry that happened. He’s old school, Richie. That’s how they used to do it. Look, boy, just give me something. Anything. Any tiny detail that will help me find her. You know where she is, Richie. Any tiny detail. Her mum and dad, Richie, they are going out of their minds. It would be better for them if they could find out what happened. You can see that, can’t you? I mean, they are very fond of you, Richie. They’ve been kind to you. Like a second mum and dad, right? You owe it to them. You can see that?”

“I don’t know anything!”

“Just one detail, Richie. Help yourself. I beg you.”

And I start crying. I wish I could say that I didn’t but I’m blubbering like a baby. It’s not being smacked around, that’s not it. Well, it might have something to do with that, but mostly it’s the thought of what might have happened to Tara.

“Is it true?” I manage to get out. “Did Tara get rid of the baby?”

Dave nods at me, yes. He closes in across the table. My head is bent forward and he has a gentle but leathery hand on my neck. “It’s all right. Let it go, Richie. Let it all go. That’s right. That’s right. That’s the way. It’s all going to be all right. That’s the way. Richie, did you hurt Tara?”

“Yes,” I sob, “yes, yes, yes.”

“This is duress,” says my lawyer.

Dave nods. “Richie, there’s a stone. In the woods. A big stone, and most of it is covered in orange lichen and moss. You know that stone, don’t you?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Around the stone we could see that all the ferns and the bluebells had been bashed down as if two people had been lying down there together.”

I sob out loud. There’s a pain deep inside me.

“Is that where it happened, Richie? Is that where you did it?”

“Yes.”

He takes a deep breath, as if his work is done. He nods gently. “How did you do it, Richie?”

I look up at him. “Normal way.”

“What’s the normal way, Richie?”

He’s gazing deep into my eyes. I can’t think why he wants to know that. “Just … normal …” I say.

“You’re going to have to tell me what’s normal.”

I look at my lawyer. She’s gazing down at me, her arms folded tight around her. Her brow is furrowed. “How many ways are there?” I ask her.

She says, “He’s talking about
sex
, for goodness’ sake!”

DC Dave blinks and looks disappointed in me, like I’ve just let him down. “So you had sex there?”

“Yes.”

“And after you had sex, that’s when you did it?”

“What?” I turn to look at my lawyer. “Did what?”

I look back at DC Dave, and he is so focused on me he has the expression of a man trying to pick a lock with a hairpin.

“Richie, there’s the stone in the bluebell wood. And on that
stone we found a ring.” He holds up something shiny for me to see. It’s the ring I’d given Tara.

“Where did you get that?”

“It was on the stone. It had been placed there. Did you put it there after you’d done it?”

I’m like a drunk suddenly feeling sober after a gallon of coffee. “Wait,” I says, “wait. When I says to you I did it I mean that’s where we first had sex. Nothing else. By that stone. A year ago. I haven’t been there recently!” With a sense of panic I turn to my lawyer. “Tell him that’s what I meant!”

“Enough!” says my lawyer. “That’s enough. Charge the lad or let him go. You can see he’s under duress.”

Dave raises his eyebrows. “You were so close, Richie. So close.”

“Can he go?” says my lawyer.

Dave indicates that the way to the door is clear. Julia Langley gathers her pen and notes from the desk and stands up. “Come along, Richie.” I follow her. Dave doesn’t even look at me. He just looks at the wall as if he’s very tired. Very tired and very sad.

Outside in the corridor the fat fuck stands leering at me. The corridor is narrow, so we have to squeeze by his bulky figure. “See you
vewy
soon,
Wichie
,” he says in that high-pitched warble. “See you
vewy
soon.”

T
hat was the happiest time of my life. I sat on that pretty white horse, feeling his presence behind me, the breath of him on my neck, and I felt a trickle inside me, like everything that had happened to me in the past was dissolving. I hadn’t the slightest idea where he was taking me. I couldn’t care less. I trusted him. I knew that if I was wrong, and that if he might harm me in any way, then I was no judge of character. I believe that I saw all the way through him to his every intention toward me, and I was content with what I saw.

We soon turned out of the bluebell woods and across a narrow road onto a bridle path giving way into a field. The field was lined with trees gone wild, drunk with the mayflower. There was a glistening stream where the horse stopped to drink, and after that the horse moved on at a slow pace for what seemed like hours before we even spoke a single word to each other. Yet the sun barely moved in the sky. I felt dreamy, lazy, sleepy, and yet safe on the back of the horse, with his strong, suntanned arm around me to balance me and my knees on the panniers.

“What’s in these baskets?” I asked in a kind of slumber.

“Blossoms,” he said.

“Why do you want those?”

“We eat it.”

I gave a little laugh at his joke. Then I closed my eyes and gave in to the gentle swaying gait of the horse.

After a while, and just to remind myself that I could still speak, I murmured to him, “How long before we get there?”

“We pass through with the twilight,” he said. “Then we’re there.”

I think of that often now, but never even questioned it at the time, so content was I. We’d been going for a while and I remembered that he knew my name but I didn’t know his. “Come on, tell me.”

“Ah, names,” he said. “Now, where I come from there are people who say that once you can name a thing, you own it.”

“What a silly idea.”

“Is it silly? If you can name a thing you can put it in a box and close the lid on it. This box or that box. If you can’t name it, it runs free. Isn’t that true?”

“How did you know my name is Tara?”

“Well, that was very strange. I saw you sitting by that golden rock in the bluebell woods and the name just popped into my head from nowhere. A little voice said
Tara
and
a child of the sky
. What do you think of that?”

I tried to think of his name, to see if anything would pop into my head. I emptied my mind and waited for a whisper. I believed it would be given to me. But nothing came.

“And don’t waste your time trying to do the same trick,” he said, and laughed. “Because I’m guarding it.”

“So why won’t you just tell me your name?”

He became serious. “I can give you a name. I could make up any name, and you wouldn’t know the difference. But where I’m from, see, we all have a secret name. It’s known only to the clan, sort of thing.”

“Clan?”

“Clan. Tribe. That’s just a way of speaking. But anyway, this name, by keeping it a secret to the tribe, has power. And if you have it, they say—though I’m not sure I agree with them—well, it gives you power over that person.”

“This is mad. I’m riding away on a horse with a man who won’t even tell me his damn name.”

“Oh, I am going to tell you. I am, for sure. But first I want you to hang on, because we’re going to canter a bit now; otherwise we’ll miss the crossing at twilight.”

I assumed he meant that we would be crossing a river, maybe the River Soar or the Trent into Derbyshire or Nottinghamshire. I had no idea where we were, but if we were crossing either other than by bridge then it was going to be an exciting splash. I’d never wet-crossed either of the wide rivers on a horse, and I meant to ask him. But I didn’t have a moment to put the question, because the horse flicked forward its ears and then went straight from walk to canter, and we were away, hard-riding across a field of emerald green.

Oh, it was thrilling!

He was such a good horseman. I’d had riding lessons since I was a little girl, and for some years the use of a pony in return for leading the weekend treks. I could ride, and ride well, but with a saddle and stirrups; yet he was attuned to his horse in a single current that ran through the animal, through him, and through me, too.

We took the field at a canter and then galloped up the incline of a hill. The wind streamed my hair behind me and the white mane of the horse flashed white gold in the rays of the dying sun. We jumped a fence, we took a stream, we leapt over a fallen log. The hooves pounding on the dry grass quickened my heart and I thought,
This is terrible this is terrible I’m falling in love with this man and I don’t know where I’m going
.

The horse started to slow as it reached the top of the hill, and then he pulled her up so that she went into an easy trot for the last few yards. The animal was breathing fiercely, for it had been a good long gallop. The dusk was settling around our shoulders now and the sky had gone an eerie blue black. When we got to the top of the hill we could see the last red streaks of the sun like the scrap of something torn on the mountains in the west, mountains I didn’t recognize. We crested the hill and the horse picked its way through stones down toward a dark woods. Not like the bluebell
woods we had left, but much more dense and shadowed, though the horse and her master both seemed so very sure of the path that I never questioned either for a moment.

“When do we reach the crossing?” I asked at last.

“The crossing? Oh, we’ve done that.”

“We did? When? When did we do the crossing?”

“Back there a ways.”

I didn’t recall any crossing. I asked him about it again.

“Good God, woman, you do ask a lot of questions!”

It was only when we were coming out of the woods, with the sun completely gone and the moon coming up, that I realized I wasn’t going to be home that night. It’s not that I wanted to turn around, but I suddenly felt uneasy about Mum and Dad and how they would be worried about me. I needed to get a message to them. I thought, as soon as we pass a house in this remote place I’ll knock on the door and give them the number and ask if they would please phone and tell them that I’m fine.

The moon went behind some clouds and we emerged from the wood to find not houses but a shadowy, sandy beach. The quartz in the sand twinkled in the half-light with an electrical intensity. I was astonished. I couldn’t believe we had come so far east or west, but when I made some comment he said no, it wasn’t the sea, but a lake. I peered across the water, trying to discern the farther side. In the morning, he said, in the morning I would be able to see all around the lake. And it was true: I could see tiny lights burning here and there out on the water, which I took to be the reflections of dwellings on the far side of the lake.

The water was deep calm, like a layer of oil, but with a sweet, honest odor of mud and weeds. We trailed along the edge of the lake for perhaps half a mile, and soon we came to a large ramshackle house all in darkness.

“Look, I share this place with others, but there shouldn’t be anyone here just now.”

The horse came to a stop. He jumped off and then he helped me down. Everything he did for me was like a little display of chivalry. At first I thought it was a performance, to charm the pants off me, but it was no act; it was his way. He smiled at me briefly
and then led the mare into a small stable at the side of the house. I followed. Once inside, he whisked the blanket off the horse and threw it over a bar. Then he picked up a dandy brush.

“Let me,” I said, taking the brush from him, and I began to brush down the horse.

He watched me carefully. “You know about horses.”

“Yes.”

“A woman who knows about horses. Can I marry you?”

I laughed but when I looked back he wasn’t smiling. I finished brushing and then I ran my hand down the mare’s leg, squeezing the fetlock a little, and the animal easily showed me her hoof. “But she’s not shod,” I said.

“I don’t ride on the road,” he said dismissively. “And those farriers that you see around, well, they’re like thieves. Come on, let’s go inside.”

Well, it was a bit of a mess.

There was no electricity. “Wouldn’t have it in the house. Makes people go crackers,” he said.

Sometimes I didn’t know whether or not he was joking. “It might make you crackers or it might not,” I countered, “but you can see your way.”

“We have light.”

An old-fashioned brass oil lamp stood on the kitchen table. He lit the wick and rolled a brass wheel to bring up the flame, then lit a second, which he took through to the living room; I thought it was a living room, but there were a couple of mattresses with coverlets dumped alongside the walls and with long, thin pillows so they could be used as beds. The walls were covered with paintings and wood carvings and musical instruments: unusual musical instruments, as if they’d been collected from exotic countries. I instantly thought about Richie, but just as quickly I let go of the thought.