The Yeare's Midnight (36 page)

After leaving the Merchant Navy, Bill Gowers had worked at Bolden station until it was demolished and rebuilt as New Bolden Parkway in 1965. Gowers was still fond of the railways and each morning would take a long walk along the edge of the track to the South Bolden signal box. He enjoyed talking to the engineers and often stopped for a cup of tea and a bun with
Albert Faulks, the signalman. Crowan Frayne often asked Gowers if he could walk with him but Gowers always refused. So Crowan would follow him. He would wait in bed until he heard Gowers slam the front door. Then he’d dress quickly and follow the old man outside.

It was about a four-mile round trip and it took Gowers over three hours, including his stop for tea. Crowan would stay back about a hundred metres: he knew that Gowers’s eyes were bad and he was unlikely to spot Crowan at such a distance. The route took them through the old village allotments, then past the cemetery and on to the railway line. Crowan liked the railway: the rush and energy of the trains, the scrunch of granite shale underfoot. He watched Gowers’s awkward, laborious progress and wondered what it would be like to push the old man under a train. Would he fly into the air or be pulled underneath and sliced apart?

The June morning was bright and fresh but Crowan preferred the security of darkness. He felt conspicuous in the daylight. He held back further, often losing sight of the old man as the footpath twisted through, around and behind the allotments. Crowan wasn’t concerned. There was a film of dew on the leaves like droplets of pearl, or tears:
‘Blasted
with
sighs,
and
sur
rounded
with
teares/Hither
I
come
to
seek
the
spring’.
He liked Donne’s ‘Twicknam Garden’. Crowan ran his hand softly against the wet leaves, feeling the cold water evaporate against his skin. He rounded a corner in the path and came face to face with Bill Gowers.

‘What are you doing, you little bastard?’ Gowers snarled.

‘Nothing.’

‘You’re following me. I’ll brain you with me stick.’ He waved his walking stick angrily at Crowan. ‘Can’t you give me any peace? Haven’t you messed my life up enough?’

‘I’m going home.’ Crowan turned and started to walk away. Gowers lashed at the back of his leg with the stick. Crowan Frayne felt a rush of pain as he fell to the tarmac.

‘I could kill you, nancy boy, and no one would know. I could
tie you to the rails in the tunnel and let the train have you and no one would know. They’d only find bits of you. A leg in Bolden, an arm in Evesbury, and your miserable little head at Liverpool Street.’

‘I’m telling Grandma what you said.’ Crowan Frayne scrambled to his feet. ‘You’re a fucking nancy.’

Gowers cracked his stick at Frayne’s right knee and the boy fell over again. ‘Tell her,’ he snorted. ‘Maybe I’ll do for her as well. I’d be rid of the both of you then. I might get some peace. I could line you up in the bleedin’ cemetery with your mother: be a nice family get-together, wouldn’t it? Now fuck off home and if I catch you sneaking about behind me again I
will
do you. Understand?’

Crowan Frayne stood awkwardly, the pain stabbing at his knee. His face was red with childish fury and he tried to hobble away. He didn’t look back as tears began to course down his face and Gowers snorted behind him.

‘Go on, cry, nancy boy. See what good that does you!’

Crowan Frayne stumbled back along the path that ran parallel to the railway. A freight train clattered angrily past him and he started with fright. He thought of his mother. He knew that he didn’t have a mummy: that his mummy had died when he was born. Somewhere inside he had always hoped that this was a lie and that one day she would come back for him. But Gowers had said she was in the cemetery, she was in a place under the ground. She wasn’t coming back for him. The path snaked alongside the graveyard. Frayne paused and looked at the hotchpotch of grey and black headstones, the small statuettes and the white bulk of the war memorial. His mummy was in there. She was somewhere. Why hadn’t they told him before? He made a decision and climbed through a gap in the hedge.

It took Frayne nearly an hour to find the headstone. The text on many had faded with time and rain and were hard to read. Elizabeth Frayne’s headstone was black with gold writing. The plot itself was neat and well looked after, in stark contrast with some of the overgrown graves that surrounded it. He read the
inscription:
Elizabeth
Maureen
Frayne,
1944–1967.
Gone
to
seek
Thee,
God.
This was the place. She was here. Hiding beneath the flowers and the soil. She had gone to seek God. A rush of thoughts almost overwhelmed Crowan Frayne: frustration, loneliness, disappointment. She had given him life and then deserted him. It would have been better if she had killed him and lived herself. She had left him behind. He hated her.

Violet made egg and chips for lunch. It was Crowan Frayne’s favourite but today it made him want to retch. An egg was like a baby. Was the yolk the brains and the white the body? A baby with no mummy. Like him. He felt sick and pushed the plate away.

Gowers ate loudly and hungrily, eyeing the boy. Crowan hadn’t said anything to Violet about the morning’s confrontation. His grandmother slept in on Saturdays and had still been asleep when he had returned. His knee throbbed uncomfortably.

‘I think I’ll sit in the garden this afternoon,’ Violet said. ‘It’s a beautiful day.’

‘Good. The racing’s on at two,’ Gowers replied between mouthfuls. ‘Take the nancy out with you. I could do with some quiet.’

‘Would you like that, Crowan?’ Violet asked, ignoring the jibe. ‘We could do some sketching.’

Crowan Frayne nodded silently without looking up. Gowers smirked and returned to his
Sporting
Life.

By two o’clock it was hot outside. The garden hummed with light and colour. Violet had set up a small table and brought out some sketching materials. The air smelled thick and sweet with honeysuckle and lilac. Crowan watched bees hop from flower to flower.

‘Do bees bring food to the flowers, Granny?’

Violet smiled. ‘No. The other way around. Bees drink nectar from inside the flowers. Bees pick up pollen from one flower and carry it to other flowers. It’s how they reproduce.’

‘So how do flowers get food?’

‘They draw up nutrients, goodness from the soil, and they use sunlight.’

Crowan Frayne went quiet. ‘Goodness from the soil.’ He knew what that meant.

They started to draw the laburnum tree at the end of the garden. Violet’s depth perception was poor and she drew as much from memory as from what she could actually see. She sensed that Crowan was unusually quiet but stopped herself from asking him why. Sometimes he was best left alone. She looked over at his drawing.

‘That’s good, darling, but don’t try and draw every leaf and twig. You’ll go mad trying. Think about the light: the shapes it makes as it shines through the leaves and branches. Light and dark: simplicity.’

‘OK.’ Crowan Frayne was only half listening. He was thinking of how many dead things had their goodness inside the tree: thousands, probably. One day he would draw them all: people’s arms and legs tangled into branches, flowers and plants twisted and sucked into leaves, dead animals’ bodies bound into roots, Bill Gowers’s tired face gnarled into the trunk.

‘I am every dead thing,’ said the tree softly. Crowan Frayne nodded. He understood.

Violet paused for a moment. She was getting a headache.

‘Crowan, be a love. Could you go and get my glasses from my bedroom? They’re in the chest of drawers. Third drawer down.’

Crowan walked back to the house. He was careful to go by the kitchen door rather than the French windows. He did not want to disturb Gowers. The television blared out an excited horse-racing commentary and he could hear Gowers barking encouragement at his bets. Crowan climbed the narrow staircase and went into Violet’s bedroom. It was cool and dark inside. There was no carpet and the two single beds stood on exposed floorboards. He had rarely been in the room before.

The chest of drawers was in the far corner, next to the beautifully made bed that he knew had to be his grandmother’s. There was a neatly aligned row of expensive-looking books on
the top surface of the dresser. He ran a finger along them as he walked past: Shakespeare, Hardy, Dickens, Keats, Wordsworth, Austen, Brontë. The names were becoming increasingly familiar and each conjured images, characters, stories and rhymes to him.

Reaching his destination, Crowan knelt painfully and opened the third drawer down. Its contents were carefully arranged: a diary, a photo album, some writing paper and envelopes, an eyeglass case and a small wooden box. He touched the box with a finger: it felt beautifully smooth as he traced the grain of the wood. ‘V. Frayne’ was stamped on the lid of the box.

Curiosity overcame him. He stood up and lifted the lid. Three glass eyes stared back blankly at him; his face reflected in their blue corneas and fixed black pupils. Crowan Frayne recoiled in shock and dropped the box. It clattered against the edge of the dresser. Two of the eyes fell to the floor and shattered immediately against the floorboards. Then the box hit the floor with a crash. Crowan tentatively crouched and turned it over. The final eye was cracked in three pieces inside the box, its jagged shards resting against the purple lining. It leered horribly at him. Crowan Frayne was sick.

He heard laughter behind him. Gowers stood at the door. ‘You’ve done it now, you silly little bastard!’ He turned slightly and shouted down the stairs. ‘Violet! Violet! Come and see what the nancy’s done.’

Frayne was shaking. He had no idea what had happened. He felt he had violated a dark, private place. Glass fragments lay strewn across the floor. Violet appeared at the door and raised her hand to her mouth.

‘Look at that!’ shouted Gowers triumphantly. ‘He’s only gone and smashed your eyes up, the little bastard. What Hitler started he’s finished. Mind you, the Nazis only got one of your eyes – he’s done three!’

Violet pushed past him and picked Crowan Frayne up from the floor. She sat him on the bed and knelt to start picking up the larger pieces of glass. She said nothing. She felt ashamed; as if a great deceit had been exposed.

‘I expect he done it on purpose.’ Gowers beamed. ‘He’s a vindictive little so-and-so. Now what are you going to do?
Them’s expensive things now. And I ain’t paying for a new set.’ He rubbed his chin in glee. He had scored a great victory. ‘You’ll have to wear dark glasses now, like Ray Charles.’

Frayne flew at Gowers across the bed and threw a childish punch at the old man’s mouth. ‘Fucking shut up! Fucking shut up!’ he screamed. ‘I’ll fucking kill you.’ The surprise and the momentum of the assault knocked Gowers back against the wall. He quickly recovered his footing and hit Crowan hard on the chin: the boy fell backwards and banged his head against the dresser. He started to bleed. Gowers picked him up and held him by the throat.

‘You think you’re man enough, do you? Have a go, then. I’ll do you, I swear it. Maybe I’ll tear your eye out to replace the ones you’ve buggered. See how you like it. How about that?’

Violet pushed Gowers away. Crowan fell back onto the bed. ‘Go away, Bill,’ she ordered him firmly. ‘Go away and leave us alone.’ She leaned closer to him and whispered, ‘And if you ever lay a finger on that child again, I will finish you. Do you understand?’

Gowers stared at her.
‘He
attacked
me,
in case you didn’t notice. Ain’t it bleeding fair, eh? I was just defending myself. I’m an old man.’

‘And he’s a child. You should know better. Now go away.’

Gowers grunted and turned away. Violet sat down next to Crowan on the bed and put her arm around him. He was shaking, sobbing without tears. Blood trickled warmly from the back of his head. The boy nodded silently as she explained to him: about the war, the explosion, the glass, her eye. But Crowan Frayne wasn’t really listening.

He was suddenly on a desert planet. It was the first time he had been there. There were no footprints on the sand except his own.

The
sand
is
black
and
the
mountains
have
eyes:
the
rocks
talk
when
the
sky
replies.

He decided to stay a while.

Marty Farrell bounded up the central staircase of the New Bolden Police Station and was panting for breath by the time he reached the third floor. Harrison was waiting for him outside Underwood’s office.

‘What’s all this about Dexter?’ Harrison asked.

‘Her car was at the library but I couldn’t find her.’ Farrell paused to catch his breath, ‘The librarian said she went outside and didn’t come back in again. Her car door was open. There was blood on the seat.’

‘Fucking hell.’

‘That’s what I thought. There’s another SOCO and a couple of plods working on the car and taking statements.’ Farrell looked Harrison straight in the eye. ‘You reckon he’s got her?’

‘I hope not. But she found him before. Maybe she found him again.’ Harrison was starting to feel a depressing sense of resignation. ‘We’ve tried her mobile. There’s no reply.’

‘I must have missed him by minutes,’ said Farrell.

Harrison thought for a second. ‘Look, Marty, she wanted us to lift prints off that computer. We should get moving on it ASA-fucking-P.’

‘It’s in the lab now.’

‘Good. You call me if we get a match with anyone who’s got a record. I don’t care what for. This might be our only chance of finding him.’

‘And Dexter,’ Farrell added.

‘And Dexter.’

‘There’ll be a lot of prints. This might take time.’

‘Start by looking at the keys he was most likely to have used. If he was looking for books by John Donne or by Elizabeth Drury he would have had to type their names in.’