The Cold Calling

XVII

Never needed an alarm; he awoke at six, precisely, to the bloody second. Always woke at six, from the days when he was employed to force-feed Shakespeare sonnets to gluesniffing thugs.

So, when Marcus fumbled on his glasses and the luminous clock said 4.55, he knew there was a problem.

Had hardly any sleep. Didn’t get to bed until half past one. Sitting around waiting for the Anderson woman — seriously, who could you rely on these days? — and worrying about Mrs Willis, who’d gone to bed early after two hours sitting alone in her Healing Room and not — here was the clincher — not even coming out for The Archers.

Another crash. Thunderous but familiar. An October gust thrusting at the barn door, slamming it back and forth — what happened to the new padlock and chain? One day that door would blow off and there’d have to be a gaping hole for the duration, because he couldn’t afford to replace it. Whole bloody fabric was coming apart, rot setting in, and the farmhouse would collapse a bloody sight faster than the original castle.

Felt he was under siege in his own ruins, the motte a tiny island in a Falconer sea, foundations eroding. The whole of the western world turning into a Falconer society: glib, superficial, arrogant, narcissistic.

Bastards.

The barn door went again, this time with a faint splintering coda, as though it had been hit by a team of men with a battering ram and they were backing off for another go. It must have sprung completely open.

In the dark, Marcus pulled his trousers from the bedpost (never be caught without your trousers) and his tweed jacket from the bedroom door, hauling it on over his string vest. Creeping in his socks down the stone stairs — although there was little danger of awakening Mrs Willis, state of her hearing these days — and stepping into his wellies by the back door, Malcolm ambling through to join him.

The cold hit him with a surprisingly vicious punch. Be winter before you knew it. Seemed no bloody time at all since last winter, the way the years just flashed by. But, then, why shouldn’t they? A year was nothing. Sixty years were nothing; what could you learn in sixty bloody years? What had Marcus Bacton learned?

Bugger all of any real significance. ‘Just has to be more than this,’ he told the dog. Grabbing his torch from the hook in the porch, stumbling into the yard.

The barn door blew out at him as he reached it, almost knocking him over. Bastard. Looked like the bloody chain had snapped. But when he pointed his torch at it, he saw the chain hanging loose from the hasp, the padlock still dangling from the chain … and the bloody padlock was open.

What the hell? Couldn’t be a burglar or a tramp looking for a bed, unless it was a tramp with the skill and patience to pick locks, and the door was so rotten anyway that he could have kicked his way in quicker, and … Good God!

Marcus saw that the key was still in the padlock.

The keys to the buildings were all kept in an old coffee tin on the kitchen window ledge.

Oh my God.

Mrs Willis.

Andy swung the car sharply right into a bumpy track, between outstretched arms of stone.

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a castle, Bobby. Did I no tell you he lived in a castle?’

Something huge and tubular was pushing out of a bushy mound into the charcoal-grey pre-dawn. Half of a stone tower.

‘Well, he lives in it inasmuch as the walls are all round the house,’ Andy said. ‘More a liability than anything, with the upkeep and the official inspections.’

Behind the ruins, the headlights had found a low house, heavy with oak timbers, small, irregular black windows. Andy parked about fifty yards away. ‘We’ll bide here a while. Don’t want to set the dog off. Marcus’ll be about soon enough.’

‘Get some air, I think.’ Maiden pulled down his eyepatch, levered himself out of the car. It was chilly, the darkness rattling and squeaking. His body aching. There were no visible lights, apart from a fading moon and a single star.

Andy joined him. ‘How you feeling?’

‘OK.’

‘I bet.’

‘No, really. Better.’

‘You’ll sleep fine here. Air’s like rough cider. Listen. I have a thought. This may be stupid.’

‘Go on.’

‘It’ll take us no more than twenty minutes to walk to the Knoll.’

‘You don’t think that’s stupid at all,’ Maiden said. ‘You’ve been planning it all along.’

Only a barn owl shrieked in reply. He found himself losing touch with the reality of it, the scene receding into a small screen of pebble-glass, the kind you saw in front of vintage TV sets from the 1950s.

He saw a sliver of gold in the east. In the west, behind the castle’s bush-bristled mound, dark hills.

* * *

Halfway up the rise, he turned to look back into the east. Saw the dawn like an estuary in the sky: flat banks of cool sand and spreading turquoise pools. But he knew there was something wrong: it was just a pretty picture, he wasn’t feeling it.

‘You OK, Bobby?’ Andy moving briskly through the dew-damp field, looking back at him. He was out of breath; she wasn’t.

‘I’m OK.’ He could feel the excitement in her. Couldn’t believe that she believed his survival was down to some kind of prehistoric magic.

Andy shook her head over the view. ‘Will you look at that?’ She had on a blue nylon jacket, pink jeans and a pair of walking boots she kept in the car. She looked loosened up, very much at home here. ‘I mean, isn’t that just amazing?’

‘It’s very nice.’

‘Very nice?’ She stared at him. ‘Jesus, Bobby, I thought you were supposed to be an artist. You’re talking like a guy with no poetry in him.’

‘Sorry.’

‘You think I’m mad, don’t you? I mean, come on, if you think I’m out of it, you bloody well say so.’

‘I think you’re an optimist,’ he said.

‘Let’s just try it, huh? You stand on the Knoll and you let the sun rise over you, and if you think it’s still February … Just try it, huh?’

Ahead of them, in the west, the land rose steeply towards what were either high hills or low mountains, hard to separate them from the still-night sky. Andy tugged at the sprung bar on a metal gate.

‘Not far. Just we’ll need to go careful. Don’t wanny get arrested for trespass. Guy who owns the land — this TV archaeologist, Falconer?’

‘He owns this land?’

‘He does now. He and Marcus are, ah …’ Andy dragged the gate across the tufted grass. ‘… not over-friendly. He’s apparently fenced off the Knoll. If he found Marcus climbing over the wire, he’d be pressing charges. We’d probably get off wi’ a warning, but he’s no gonny see us anyway, this early.’ She lowered her voice. With any luck.’

Andy closed the gate behind them and crackled confidently through a patch of dry bracken. Did she really imagine she was going to have him skipping back down the hillside, praising God, the Virgin Mary, the Mother Goddess?

‘What happened to the girl who had the vision?’

‘Aw, it becomes less inspiring. Child tells her mother, gets the strap for being late to school. And lying. When she keeps on about it, Ma summons the vicar. No friend of the Roman Church. Plus the local people are saying any vision at a pagan site has got to be the work of the evil one. They kind of ostracized her.’

‘Christians,’ Maiden said.

‘Cause celebre for The Phenomenologist and Marcus. Hates religious prejudice, though, God knows, he has enough of his own. Look …’

She stopped, took his arm. About a hundred yards away, at the summit of the slope, something squatted like a massive, stone toad.

‘Most people find them kind of weird, these old sites, wouldnae want to go up alone. Now it’s like … approaching a cathedral.’

She turned her face into the dawn. There were channels of crimson under the lightening sandscape in the sky, chips of glittering cloud. Andy’s skin was ambered in the morning glow, her eyes shining, red hair alight.

‘Supposed to be a chambered tomb, that’s what the books say, but this … this is no to do with death. Jesus, how can you ever turn your face into the sunrise and contemplate dying?’

Maiden looked down at the dirty yellow grass. He felt cold.

‘These people,’ Andy said. ‘The old guys. They positioned it to grab the earliest daylight. So it’s all about rebirth. New life, healing the body, healing the mind, healing the spirit. It’s everything we’ve forgotten. As a race, y’know? Like … Hey … you OK?’

‘Nothing.’ His mouth dry. ‘Someone walking over my grave.’

He looked down at his hands, saw they were trembling. Never before, in his whole life, could he remember his hands trembling.

‘You’ve gone pale, Bobby.’

The stone toad crouched over him.

‘OK, listen to me.’ Andy put her hands on his shoulders. ‘C’mon now, what are you feeling? Right this second.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes you do. Give me a word.’

‘All right, dread.’

‘Dread? Son, this place saved your life.’

‘You saved my life.’

‘Aw.’ Andy dropped her arms, walked away from him, shaking her head.

‘Sorry. Wrong thing to say, huh?’

‘Bobby, everything you say’s wrong. Walked on your grave. You said grave. This is no to do with graves.’

‘You’re taking it personally.’

‘Damn right I am. All the way down here I’m thinking this was gonny bring you out of it. Out of all this grey stuff, this fear of death, all this February shite.’

‘It doesn’t change what you did. You wanted to think it was linked to your own recovery and whatever happened to you up here. I don’t know why you don’t just accept that it was you … your instincts, your experience …’

He risked another look up at the stone toad on the mound, vaguely hoping it might have acquired a halo, turned to gold.

He shuddered. He could almost smell it. Like the worst smell he’d ever known: when he was with the Met, called out to this house in Islington, this well-to-do suicide couple sitting naked on the sofa, holding hands, dead for three weeks, their heads fallen together. Pills and whisky and hundreds of flies and, on the coffee table, a photo album full of pictures of naked children.

He turned his back on High Knoll. The colours of the eastern sky were flat as a fresco; the dawn didn’t want him.

‘All seemed so meant, Bobby.’

Maiden hated himself. For her, the place was sacred. Why couldn’t he feel it?

But she wasn’t even looking at him any more.

‘Jesus God.’

A short, plump man was shambling and flapping towards them, down the Knoll.

‘Anderson?’ The man slipped and stumbled to his knees. ‘Is it you?’ He was grey-haired, late middle-age. Blinking up through heavy spectacles and a film of sweat. ‘It really is you?’

Andy reached for his hand and he stood up shakily. He was wearing baggy trousers and, bizarrely, a string vest. He clasped her hand to his chest, as if to make sure she was flesh and blood.

‘I’m sorry, Marcus. Unforeseen circumstances. Everything OK?’

‘No.’ Pulling from his trouser pocket a chequered handkerchief the size of a small pillowcase. ‘No, it’s fucking not.’

‘What’s happened? Marcus?’

‘I’m sorry, it …’ Snatching off his glasses, wiping his eyes. ‘Andy, oh God, I think she’s dying on me.’

They heard the noise before they saw her. It was suddenly sickeningly familiar to Andy. Like very loud snoring.

She ran ahead. About six feet back from the monument, there was a low, wooden stockade-type fence, several rows of barbed wire strung over the top. But the wire was cut and hanging like briars. They climbed over the fence.

‘You brought her up here, Marcus?’

‘Course not. She bloody well brought herself up. Oh God, can you do something?’

‘OK. Just … you know … keep calm.’

‘Woke up early, knew something was wrong. She’d come down in the night, let herself into the barn and pinched these … look.’ Holding up a pair of rubber-handled wire-cutters. ‘She cut the fence. Can you believe it?’

Close up, the burial chamber looked like a huge, collapsed crab, the shell split as if someone had stood on it. The old woman was laid out along the damaged capstone like …

… like a sacrifice … Andy smothered the image.

Mrs Willis wore a bright green coat and a yellow woollen scarf. Her hair in a tight, white bun. The volume of her breathing sounding perversely healthy.

‘It’s a stroke,’ Andy said. ‘No question. I’m sorry.’

‘What I feared. Fuck.’ Marcus sighed. ‘Blood pressure. Why wouldn’t she see someone? Someone else.’

The old woman’s head was pillowed by Marcus’s folded tweed jacket. Eyes were closed, mouth open, tongue protruding. Spittle and mucus all round her lips and her chin.

‘Do we get her down, that’s the question, Marcus? Maybe not. She up here when you found her?’

‘Just as she is now.’

‘OK.’ Andy removed Mrs Willis’s glasses, handed them to Marcus. ‘We need to get her in the recovery position. Don’t want her choking, swallowing her tongue. Bobby, can you take … this is Bobby Maiden, Marcus, patient of mine. Easy now. On her side.’

She stepped back. Bars of bright crimson had appeared in the eastern sky like the elements in an electric fire. Marcus said, ‘Look … Anderson … can’t you … you know … do anything?’

‘Limited amount you can do for a stroke. We need to keep her still. Then we need an ambulance.’

‘How the hell’s an ambulance going to get up here?’

‘That’s their problem. You just go back to the house and call them, I’ll stay here.’

‘When I said do anything …’ Marcus stood up. ‘Look, you know what I meant …’

The sun had come out, full and round and red.

‘Aye, I know.’ Andy went to sit behind the old woman in the shelter of the stones, wiped her mouth with a tissue. Took the white head gently between her hands. ‘Come on, Annie, you can hold on.’

The sun was turning to gold. Andy lifted her face to it, closing her eyes, waiting for the warmth to enter through the centre of her forehead, travel down through the chakras, until her hands were burning.

Marcus said, ‘What did you call her?’

‘Oh, Marcus,’ Andy said softly. ‘Old fool that y’are. You telling me it never occurred to you? The natural feeling she had for this place?’

‘Her name’s Joan,’ Marcus said stupidly. ‘Yes. Yes, it did occur to me, the way she just arrived, out of the blue. But Annie would be at least ninety. Mrs Willis can’t be that old. Can she?’

‘If she’d told you she was pushing ninety when she first came, would you have even considered taking her on?’

‘If she’d said she was Annie Davies, I’d have given her the Earth.’

‘You wouldnae have been able to keep it to yourself. Not for a day. And you’d’ve been on at her about it nonstop, questions, questions, questions. She didnae want the Earth.’

‘Oh my God.’ Marcus sat in his string vest, the sweat drying on his arms, staring down at Mrs Willis then up at the sun, his glasses misted. ‘She came here to die.’

‘She came to heal.’

‘No, I mean … here. She came up here to die at the Knoll. In the dawn.’

‘Aw, Marcus …’ Andy flexed her fingers in Mrs Willis’s hair. ‘How do we know what was going through her head?’

Andy’s hands still weren’t warm. She saw that Bobby Maiden had stepped between her and the sun. His face was deeply shadowed, but she could see the Sellotape was peeling away from his skin and he was holding the eyepatch in place.

He said, ‘How about we get her down from there?’

‘Bobby?’

‘Get her off the stone.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know why.’

‘He doesn’t understand,’ Marcus said. ‘She loves this place.’

Bobby turned away from them and the stones. He was trembling. He walked away down the side of the Knoll.

Andy said, ‘Go phone for an ambulance, Marcus. Please?’

‘Yes, of course. Yes. Sorry.’ Marcus scrambled to his feet. Behind him, the sun was full and round and red, like a bubble of blood. He looked down at Mrs Willis. ‘Oh God.’

‘Marcus … go.’

He didn’t look back. When he reached the bottom of the mound, Andy called out, surprised at the tremor in her voice.

‘Bobby, come here. Talk to me.’

He came over reluctantly, not looking at the stone, left hand clamped over his eyepatch.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. What do I know?’

‘Never mind what you know,’ Andy said. ‘This is no the damn crown court, what do you feel?’

‘Cold. Sick.’ Gauze from the eyepatch was hanging down his cheek. ‘Frightened.’

‘Give me a hand with her. Take her legs.’

They lifted her. Bobby Maiden wouldn’t touch the stone. They laid her on the grass, Marcus’s jacket still under her head.

The sun was on the old woman’s face. Her eyes were open.

‘Annie? Can you hear what I’m saying?’

The eyes glared up at her.

‘Blink. Blink if you can hear me.’

Mrs Willis’s eyelids moved a fraction. Her skin was translucent, like tissue.

‘Annie,’ Andy said softly. ‘You feel better now? Off the stone? You feel better where you are?’

The blink was a long time coming, but when it came it was more pronounced, as if she’d been concentrating her energy.

Andy looked up at Bobby Maiden. Then across at the sun.

Her hands were feeling cold.

The sun was a lantern of hope, the land aglow. In the valley, the spire of St Mary’s church was tipped with gold. The birds were singing. And her hands felt cold.