The Cold Calling

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And it was wrong. It was so damn wrong. Everything was wrong.

Up early, her day off, Andy had hit the henna and when it was all done and dried off, damn if she didn’t look totally ridiculous. Red hair was a statement; all she had was a string of questions.

She’d bought the stuff on her way home from work on that first morning … in the flush of the excitement over Bobby Maiden’s diaphragm going gloriously up and down. It was a confirmation. Irrational though it seemed, the combination of a rising sun and an old lady’s wisdom had brought out the healer in her.

Two miracles in her life now. She’d been just dying to ring Marcus Bacton.

Give it a couple of days, she’d decided in the end. Let the euphoria settle. It cannae last, hen. And it hadn’t.

Something completely wrong. He’d come back sure enough. But did he act like he wanted to be back? Did he hell. He’d returned confused and unhappy and with a lingering fear of death which was outside Andy’s experience. There should be a feeling of triumph. He’d been through it. The death experience. Been through it and out the other side with no more than a probably temporary brain-stem problem. He should, at the very least, be feeling vaguely relaxed about the idea of death.

So it has to be me. I blew it.

Maybe now was the time to call Marcus. Andy dragged on her ancient housecoat, sat on a corner of her bed with the cordless.

The phone had that distant, rickety ring, what she thought of as a rural ring. It wasn’t getting answered. Most likely, Mrs Willis was there on her own. She was going a wee bit deaf and didn’t like to answer the phone even if she was aware of it ringing.

The snarl came as she about to hang up. ‘Yes!’

‘Marcus!’ Andy coming on cheerful. ‘Andy Anderson. How are you both today?’

‘Bloody hell, woman, I’m trying to make an omelette! Soon as I break an egg into the bowl, some bastard rings.’

‘Call back later, shall I? About two?’

‘No … damn it, don’t do that. No. Please. I’m sorry. Stay where you are. I was going to ring you anyway.’

‘Is Mrs Willis no too well?’ Marcus was no cook.

‘Ah … not terribly.’

Andy said cautiously, ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Oh. Spot of blood pressure. She has a day in bed now and then, quaffs a few potions. Oh Christ …’ Lowering his voice to not much more than a hiss. ‘I don’t know what’s fucking wrong. Well, I do.’

‘Jesus God, Marcus.’

‘Damnation! Hold on a minute, Anderson.’

Sounds of clanking pans, oaths. A sixty-year-old man fending, reluctantly, for himself. A force of nature, Marcus Bacton.

Nature was a real presence around the village of St Mary’s. You were always aware of its closeness. And of the miraculous.

Lying awake after the Bobby-miracle, she’d relived the other one.

Feeling again the absolute rock-bottom weakness, the alarming weight loss, the cramps, the red lumps on her legs, the hair falling out and the endless, endless journeys to the lavatory to release more blood and mucus into the bowl. Four barium enemas in as many months and three different drugs. Stress, they said, as she herself had said to dozens of other colitis sufferers. The stress of the job and the finding out about Mick’s fancy woman.

Then the drugs weren’t working any more and X-rays showed her gut was in one hell of a mess.

Which was when this schoolmistressy lady had been brought into the General after falling from her bike. Andy, dealing less efficiently than usual with the sprained ankle, provoking the comment, ‘You look as though you could do with a long rest, my dear.’

Before they wheeled the lady away, she’d pressed an address into Andy’s hand, a holiday cottage in the Welsh Marches. ‘Not terribly luxurious, but wonderfully peaceful.’

Except for Marcus Bacton rampaging around the place. But he was just one of the many forces of nature at work in the village of St Mary’s.

When she arrived she was getting to the stage of hating her own body. Scared to go out, in case she disgraced herself. Finding herself explaining all this to the housekeeper, Mrs Willis, who’d knocked tentatively at the cottage door this particular afternoon. Everything coming out, all the self-pity. Mrs Willis just listening, never once mentioning alternative therapies, as if she knew instinctively how a nursing sister was going to react to that old rubbish.

But would Mrs Anderson perhaps like to come for a walk with her and Marcus one morning? Well, Mrs Willis, that would be nice, but I have this wee problem about leaving the vicinity of a working lavatory before eleven. What time were you thinking?

Five a.m.? Five? Jesus God, are you mad?

Mrs Willis was the kind that just nods and smiles but you know you’ve ruined her day. So that night Andy just didn’t go to bed. Stayed up all night, drinking coffee, chain-smoking, going to the lavvy. Some days you could just live in the lavvy, head in your hands, a human sewer.

By four a.m. she was half delirious, aching all over. They were waiting outside. It was painful to pull on her coat and scarf. Outside, it was still dark. Marcus said, Don’t bloody well blame me, Mrs Anderson. Whatever the old girl says, I don’t question it these days.

They clambered over stiles, Marcus leading with his torch. On the edge of a big field, Andy was stricken with a leg cramp and fell down, rolling on the grass in her agony. Mrs Willis massaging the leg until the lump went down and then Marcus picking her up. Good God, woman, you’re like a bundle of bloody twigs. And it occurred to Andy that there wasn’t much weight left to go; she was a living husk, the disease finally draining the life out of her, and she couldn’t even cry about it, on account of the parched body wouldn’t produce tears any more.

Just before she passed out in Marcus’s arms, she heard Mrs Willis saying, in a matter-of-fact kind of way, Inside, Marcus. God knows, she’s thin enough. Put her inside the tomb.

‘Falconer!’ Marcus roared in her ear.

‘What?’

‘Fucking Falconer!’

Just one aspect that was not so peaceful, the old lady had said. But there was no harm in him.

‘Know what the bastard’s done? Four-strand barbed wire fence. Five feet high, no stiles! Fucking cunt.’

The degeneration of Marcus’s language had roughly kept pace with the deterioration of Mrs Willis’s hearing.

‘I don’t understand. What fence?’

‘Around the Knoll!’

‘He allowed to do that?’

‘He owns it. He’s bought the fucking Knoll!’

‘Marcus, you’re kid-’

‘He wants his own little burial chamber like other people want a garden gnome. He’s going to do lots of filming up there, for his bloody programme. His assistants will be doing their scientific experiments. They’ll be dowsing it and dreaming on it … Oh, and it’s closed to the public between — are you ready for this — between six p.m. and nine a.m.’

‘You mean nobody can go there at sunrise? Jesus God, Marcus. What about Mrs … Oh no.’

‘You wouldn’t recognize her. She won’t see a doctor, of course. But what would a doctor do? Give her blood-pressure pills?’

‘How old is she?’

‘That, Anderson, is one of the Big Mysteries.’

‘Must be over eighty.’

‘I was going to take her to the Knoll this morning. I was sure … Bloody hell, Andy, I love that place. I believe in it. I don’t give a shit what anybody-Did I tell you about the lunatic American woman?’

Andy said, absently, ‘Lunatic what?’ She was thinking about Mrs Willis. If I could bring down the sun for Bobby, why couldn’t …

‘American woman,’ Marcus said. ‘This American woman rang me about half an hour ago. One of these who talks so fast you’re lucky if you can answer one question in three. Trying to find her sister, last heard of working at Falconer’s place. I met the girl, actually. Wanted to know about the Knoll. Told her about Annie.’

‘Oh, aye?’ If I can bring the High Knoll sunrise to Elham General, why can’t Mrs Willis fetch it to the bottom of the hill?

‘And, of course, she was involved in Falconer’s stupid dream survey and so she wanted to sleep at the Knoll, and I said, you know, best of luck but don’t expect a holy miracle. Now the girl’s written to her sister describing this horrific nightmare and … Oh, I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve had a bellyful today. She told me she saw a black light over the Knoll.’

‘Americans are impressionable people, Marcus.’

‘No … Mrs Willis!’

‘A what?’

‘A black light. Over the Knoll.’

Andy shivered, clutching the housecoat to her throat.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ Marcus said. ‘I’m at my wits’ end.’

‘OK, look. I’m coming down.’

‘You?’

‘I owe her everything, Marcus. I’ll talk to the hospital. I’ll get time off. I’ll be there tonight, all right?’

‘That’s bloody good of you, Anderson.’

‘Jesus God, it’s the least-A black light? ‘

‘I don’t know what she meant either,’ Marcus said. ‘But it does have an ominous ring of death to it, doesn’t it?’