The Living and the Dead in Winsford

45

And so I wake up in that bed yet again.

The first of January. For the second time within the space of two weeks I have made love to a man. A stranger, whom I met in a pub in a village at the end of the world.

Is there anything wrong in that? I ask myself. Not as far as I can see. I assume that my former husband is dead, and I assume that if despite all expectations he is in fact still alive, he wouldn’t want me anyway. And so I am a free woman.

My new lover isn’t lying beside me in bed, but I can hear him pottering around in the kitchen downstairs. We have a new year, and we have a new situation.

Jeremy was allowed a sip of champagne at the stroke of midnight, but he didn’t like it. He spat it out, and washed away the unpleasant taste with a large glass of Fanta. As I lie here in bed I have the feeling that he might actually like me. In any case, he seems to accept that I associate with his father in this way, and if I have understood Mark rightly it would not be routine for Jeremy to do so. He admitted yesterday that he was taking a considerable risk in inviting me to dinner that last time: he didn’t know how Jeremy would react, but decided to chance his arm. The last time he was visited by a woman, two-and-a-half years ago, everything went wrong — but he hasn’t given me any details.

I look out at the dense foliage outside the window. It doesn’t allow much light in. The house really is hidden away from the world, and it feels as if you are both protected and inaccessible here. Mark told me yesterday that the house had been empty for nearly ten years when he bought it, and that putting it into decent shape nearly drove him mad. The middle floor, where I am currently lying in bed, contains Mark’s bedroom and study: I’ve only glanced into the latter, as he was reluctant to show me what a mess it is in. There are piles of papers and files all over the place, and computers, and a stuffed parrot in a green wooden cage that he claims has magical powers. The bird, that is, not the cage. In any case, it can apparently solve difficult computer problems if you know how to ask it properly. I was on the point of asking him — Mark, that is, not the parrot — about my little password problem, but I managed to check myself. It wouldn’t be a good idea for him to be aware that it was somebody else’s computer, not my own; and if he eventually managed to open the document I shudder to think what he might conclude.

Now that I come to think of it, it strikes me that I could maintain that it is just something I’m writing about: a main woman character who has that little problem. But I decide not to push it. Another day, perhaps, but not today. Despite everything, I might well not want to know what happened when six men, each of them armed with a revolver, went out at dawn one day thirty-two years ago.

I can smell that he’s frying bacon downstairs. Perhaps he intends to serve me breakfast in bed, but I’m not keen on eating in bed, so I throw the duvet to one side and go out into the bathroom.

A new year, and a new situation, I think again.

I look for Castor, but realize that he is downstairs with Mark. Let’s face it, a kitchen is a kitchen after all. Castor has never had the problems of prioritizing that have troubled his missus.

We decide to walk back up to Darne Lodge and leave Mark and Jeremy at about noon. We can walk back again tomorrow and collect the car — we don’t need it for the rest of today.

In my pocket I have a mobile phone that works. Orange instead of Vodafone, that’s the key difference. Mark rings to check before we’ve gone more than a few hundred metres. I answer and say that it seems to be working, and we close the call. It feels remarkable: I realize that I could hear Synn’s or Gunvald’s voice within a few seconds simply by pressing a few buttons. Or Christa’s? Or Eugen Bergman’s?

I put the mobile back into my pocket and promise myself not to press any such buttons. Not in any circumstances. Instead, when we are back in Darne Lodge I sit down at my table and try to sort out what I have been putting off for such a long time.

Planning. Accepting once and for all that there is a whole ocean of days, weeks and months ahead of me. Perhaps even years. It’s high time I took that into account. A new situation?

The fact is that I have an idea, and I sit there the whole evening playing around with it. It is in fact no more than a very primitive thought, a sort of whim that I have purposely left undeveloped inside its shell, intending to give birth to it in the new year.

Yes, I like to imagine it all in that way: you conclude things in December, and you start anew in January. It’s feeling more and more like a hang-up, but if it’s all to do with magical thoughts, then so what? It doesn’t disturb me in the least.

The equation has only one unknown — at this point, just for a moment, the image of my old maths teacher Bennmann comes into my mind: he was anything but magical, and used to pooh-pooh any problem that didn’t have at least two unknowns. Toss his head and adjust his bow-tie that was always askew underneath his pointed goatee beard, and either red with white dots or blue with white dots. But I don’t want to be disturbed by him at this stage, and I send him back to the cemetery in central Sweden where no doubt he is lying by now.

One unknown, then, and this is the question I must sort out with both patience and precision. If my suspicions turn out to be justified, and my husband in some miraculous way or other managed to crawl out of that damned bunker, that hell-hole I can’t bear to think about any more. . if against all the odds he survived both the cold and the rats, then the fact is that the game is up. More or less in any case, depending on exactly what one means by the word up.

But enough of that. Let me go on instead. If the conclusions I have drawn from various experiences — pheasants, hire cars, missing dogs, written messages on filthy car doors, false e-mails and all the rest of it — if those conclusions are really true, then I can state that. . Well, what exactly can I state? Mr Bennmann rolls over in his grave and tries to fix me with his gaze through six feet of solid earth — there’s something for you to think about, you berk, I think, and remember now that I had him in philosophy as well: logic and argumentation analysis, for Christ’s sake.

Away with Bennmann for the last time. In any case, there is. . yes, that’s the fact of the matter, and I can feel something positive and hopeful stirring in my mind as I come to this simple and obvious conclusion: there is only. . there can be only two beings who know the truth, the solution to the equation — apart from Martin himself, of course: my dog and Professor Soblewski not far from Miȩdzyzdroje in Poland.

Castor and Soblewski.

That’s right, isn’t it? That really must be the fact of the matter. These are the two paths to clarity that are being offered to me. A dog and a professor of literature.

I start with the dog and an acceptable dose of magical thinking. Kneel down on the floor in front of him, look him straight in the eye and say: ‘The boss?’

He puts his head on one side.

‘Have you been with the boss lately?’ I ask. ‘The boss? You know who I mean.’

He leans his head on the other side.

‘If you’ve been with the boss, hold out your right paw.’ This is magical thinking of a calibre I’ve never tried out before.

He thinks for a while, then holds out his left paw.

I can’t make up my mind what that means. I try another approach.

What would be the point of my undead husband stealing Castor from me, keeping him for a couple of days and then returning him? Where’s the logic in that?

Where’s the logic in silver-coloured hire cars and dead pheasants and prowling around in the background all this long time? Where’s the logic in anything at all?

But I brush this aside as well. Shove it down into Bennmann’s grave and return to square one. I try to think of what point there would be in stealing Castor.

It takes a while, but then the penny drops.

A message.

Some sort of indication on my dog that makes me understand where he’s been.

Precisely, I think, and feel the buzzing inside my head change key. That is exactly how Martin Emmanuel Holinek would think. I look hard at Castor. Why haven’t I thought of that before? It’s more than a week since he went missing and then came back.

How do you leave an indication on a dog? What would I do?

It’s not many seconds before the thought strikes me. His collar. That’s the only possibility. You attach something small to his collar, perhaps a rolled-up scrap of paper under a piece of Sellotape. . Or you write something.

I remove Castor’s collar. Examine it closely. I can’t see anything new and different on it. Nothing taped onto it, or fastened in some other way. I examine the inside, check it meticulously centimetre by centimetre: this is how I would do it, I think, just like this. Write Death or whatever I would want to note down and pass on, and that is also what Martin would do. I know him. We’ve spent a lifetime together.

Nothing.

No letter, no sign of any kind.

I slide the collar back over Castor’s head and thank him. Tell him to go and lie down in front of the fire and think about something else. To forget the boss.

I move on to Professor Soblewski.

The buzzing inside my head has died down: instead a sad little creature raises its head and tells me that I’m mad. And that I should be grateful that I don’t have to submit to a mental examination today.

I tell the creature to shut up, and that I need to concentrate.

‘Mark Britton?’ it says even so. ‘And how do you intend to deal with that little problem?’

‘Shut your gob,’ I tell it. ‘Crawl back to wherever you’ve come from. Mark Britton has nothing at all to do with this. He’s just a way of spending the time.’

‘Huh, kiss my arse,’ says the creature. But then it has enough sense to keep quiet. I wish I had a cigarette, which is not a good sign of course, and it soon passes.

Then I get no further. Not a millimetre further.

Much later that evening:

Bach. Wrong.

Handel. Wrong.

Brahms. Wrong.