The Living and the Dead in Winsford

37

The nineteenth of December. A Wednesday. The moment I wake up I remember that it’s Yolanda Mendez’s birthday.

Yolanda Mendez was my best friend for two years at primary school — year four and most of year five. She came from Peru, had big brown eyes and a horse of her own. If the family hadn’t moved she might well have been my best friend at secondary school as well — I think so, as there was never the slightest hitch in our well-oiled friendship.

And her birthday was so close to Christmas: I recall being a bit sorry for her on that account.

I get out of bed and wonder why she has suddenly come into my head. And then I remember that she always does on this day, every year. Just for half a minute or even less. I usually wonder what became of her, and I do today as well.

Is this what old age is like? I wonder as I check the thermometer and observe the sky through the window. People crop up then disappear, crop up and disappear. In a never-ending stream and with no apparent order or reason. Not just on their birthdays, I assume. The older we get the more vulnerable we become to our memories.

I feel listless today again. Come to that, I have done so every morning since that evening and night with Mark Britton. I can’t make up my mind if it’s because I miss him, or if there is some other reason — even if it’s the opposite of missing him. But why should that be so? I note down that it’s only four degrees, and looks wet and windy. It’s not exactly foggy, but it’s as if a thick but quite translucent cloud were drifting over the moor. Three ponies are chewing away just on the other side of the wall, with two more not far behind them. The sky is dark.

It strikes me that everything is going awry.

I start crying.

Then stop crying after a few minutes and light a fire instead. Castor comes sauntering in from the bedroom. I don’t think I’d be setting foot outside the house today if it weren’t for him.

I can’t even decide what is worst about sitting in prison like this. You leave no impression on the world. You are outside time. If you somehow managed to cease existing for a day it wouldn’t make any difference. Nobody would notice anything at all. Is that why some people become pyromaniacs? Or break into schools with their gun and shoot children? In order to make the impression that is so terribly important?

Is this a peculiar question? I don’t know; but the reason why I am here — isn’t it precisely so that I can avoid making any impression? And why am I suddenly enquiring about a reason?

We go for a morning walk instead. The same rough heather, the same grass and moss and thorn bushes. Bracken, pheasants and mud. After ten minutes there is a hailstorm: we turn back and hurry home.

*

Halfway through breakfast I realize that I fell asleep before eleven last night, and that I haven’t yet used today’s words. I read through my list and decide to have one more go with literary figures. The last two days I’ve tried Russians and Americans, so if I spread myself out a bit in Europe today, I can try three Swedes tomorrow.

Fagin. Quixote. Faust.

No luck, I note as usual, but I thought I detected a little bit of hesitation on the part of the computer when I tried Quixote. There was a slightly longer pause than usual before it stated that I had provided an invalid password. Could that be because some of the letters were correct?

Or is it just that I’m losing my grip and imagining things?

I start playing patience instead, but only eight games. I’ll save the rest until this evening.

I go to the centre after a long, difficult walk up to Dunkery Beacon, the highest point on the whole moor. We started from Wheddon Cross, in accordance with instructions in the guidebook, and almost all the time we had our destination in view, apart from when it was partially obscured by mist and clouds. But after having struggled up through soaking wet pasture land, difficult to negotiate, for what seemed like many hours, and forcing our way past aggressive herds of very fat cows — they were worryingly reminiscent of surly uniformed officials at border crossings into totalitarian countries — we came to the narrow road that encircles the summit in an irregular circle, and decided that we would attempt the final five hundred metres some other day. The wind was blowing straight at us, and there was good reason to think that the view would be restricted on a day like this one. We hadn’t seen a single person on the whole way up, and in fact the only real plus was a group of stags some way away from the path.

So we turned back, and walked down along a sheltered path through a valley — wet and muddy, but protected from the wind — and were back at the car park outside The Rest and Be Thankful Inn after two-and-a-half hours in all. This was the very pub I had called in at when I first arrived on the moor fifty days earlier: I remembered the big-bosomed blonde barmaid, the crossword-solving woman and the peripatetic plumber, and thought that it seemed as if had happened a year ago.

But I didn’t consider even for a moment popping in again. Instead we got into the car and began driving along the now familiar A396 back to Winsford. And as we were doing so, I decided it was high time to check the e-mails again.

Both Alfred Biggs and Margaret Allen are on duty for once. And there are two young girls and two young boys, sitting in different corners and lost in a world of their own of which I have no conception. I think in passing of Jeremy Britton, and exclude him from my thoughts just as quickly.

‘Welcome again,’ says Margaret Allen.

‘Ah, it’s our lady writer,’ says Alfred Biggs.

I apologize for the fact that Castor and I are so dirty, and explain that we have just been climbing up towards Dunkery Beacon.

‘On a day like this?’ exclaims Alfred.

‘That was brave of you,’ says Margaret. ‘I’ll put a cup of tea on for you. You can have your usual computer.’

I take my own e-mails first this time. Answer three Christmas greetings from colleagues at the Monkeyhouse, one from my brother and finally one from Christa. She says nothing about me appearing in her dreams or that she is worried, and I’m grateful for that. Violetta di Parma writes and says that she has forwarded our post in accordance with my instructions, and that she must now rush off so as not to miss the performance of Handel’s Messiah. I write a brief thank-you, and hope she enjoyed the concert.

Then Martin’s inbox. As always, I open it with a degree of dread. Offer up a silent prayer that at least there won’t be anything from G.

And my prayer is answered on that point. I read through the six messages that might require an answer: the first five can safely be ignored, the sixth and last is from Professor Soblewski:

My Dear Friend,

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to both of you.

That was in Swedish, but then he goes over to English and writes about an anthology of short stories that he and Martin evidently intend publishing — in Sweden and Poland simultaneously, half of them by Swedes and the other half by Poles. Young and promising writers, no old, established authors: they aim to promote the avant-garde. Soblewski suggests that they should replace one called Majstowski by somebody called Słupka, and promises to send the story in question as soon as he receives the translation. Then he wonders if young Anderson, whose story Carnivores he has just read in translation, is really all that outstanding. He would like Martin’s views on both these points. And to conclude he writes:

By the way, a curious and slightly macabre thing has occurred just a few miles from here. The police have found a dead body, they suspect foul play but are apparently unable to identify it. We live in a dangerous world, dear friends. Take good care of each other.

Sob

A sound rings out in my right ear, and I suddenly have difficulty in breathing.

A dead body. A few miles from here. The police are not able to identify it.

I notice that the room I’m sitting in, and which Margaret Allen has just left, waving goodbye from the doorway, has started swaying. I feel sick, and for a brief moment I think I’m going to throw up over the computer.

Or faint. Or both.

I cling tightly onto the table with both hands as the feeling slowly passes over. I close my eyes for a while, and hope Alfred Biggs hasn’t noticed the state I’m in. The sound is still there, but is not quite so loud now and has moved over into my left ear, for some reason. I open my eyes and read the text again.

Not the part about the anthology. Only the section about the dead body. Three times.

Foul play? Take good care of each other?

It’s almost dark when we leave the computer centre, despite the fact that it’s only five o’clock. This is the evening when Mark Britton will be at The Royal Oak with his friendly IT colleague. Until now I haven’t been able to make up my mind whether or not to go there and join them. But Soblewski’s e-mail has made the decision for me.

Castor and I will spend the evening alone at Darne Lodge.

We might not even play patience. We might simply lock the door and sit there with our thoughts and assess the remainder of our lives.