Birthday: A Novel (The Seaton Novels) Read online

  ‘I can’t believe in ghosts,’ Ronald smiled

  ‘So what was it?’ Eileen said.

  ‘Maybe she’d broken out of Mapperley Asylum,’ Arthur suggested.

  Harold’s hands shook while lighting a cigarette. ‘Say what you like. When I got to the village I delivered my packages. Then I had to go in the pub for a sit down and a drink, I was so shaken up. An old chokka at the bar asked why I was looking so white at the gills, and when I told him he laughed, his false teeth doing a dance from one side of his mouth to the other. “There’s been a lot of accidents at that spot,” he said, “but it’s nothing to worry about. You’ve only seen the ghost. People do from time to time.”

  ‘Then he told me what happened about a hundred years ago. He said that just off the first bend of the lane was a place called Abbey House. The owners were abroad at the time, and the housekeeper was living in, with her twenty-year-old daughter. Anyway, on a winter’s afternoon the mother took ill, didn’t she? The girl put on her cloak and bonnet to go and get a doctor from the village.’

  Everyone was quietly waiting to hear what happened next, as Harold, now knowing that he could take his time, reached the arm of a chair and shook ash from his cigarette. An increasing ferocity of rain reminded him to get on with it. ‘She thought she’d take a short cut, down the fields and through the wood, and it was nearly dark when she got to the trees. She must have been wet through, because it was the worst afternoon you can imagine, and just as dark as it is today.

  ‘Anyway, she went into the wood, but she never came out. She was found next day, or her body was. She had been raped and murdered. A shepherd found her, and they never got the one as did it. The old bloke told me all this in the pub. Funnily enough, he said, all the accidents at that spot had been to men drivers, never to women, though these days with everybody having long hair you’d think she’d make a mistake now and again. But she never did. He told me to be extra careful on the way back, because she’d be angry I’d got away, and might have another go. She wants to kill all the men she can. “Fuck that,” I told him, “she ain’t going to get another chance with me. She’s blown it already. That was my lot.” I drove the other way out of the village, went like a bat out of hell, flashing everybody in front to get to the A614. And I’ve never been that way since. I never will, either. I don’t see why the daft bitch should want to do me in. It wasn’t me as raped and killed her.’

  Oliver stood by the mantelpiece to fill his cold pipe. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t an hallucination?’

  ‘You bet I am. I wouldn’t even go that way on a bright summer’s day. I’m not a coward, but I was shit-scared. If she hadn’t had such big mad eyes I might have fancied her, but she looked like trouble, so I didn’t. I couldn’t clear out fast enough. Anyway, it’s you I love, ain’t it, duck?’ he said to Harriet.

  She reached for his hand. ‘And I love you. Luckily, I talked you into getting rid of that poncy long hair and buying a proper suit, not to mention pulling out that daft earring.’

  ‘She nearly yanked my tab off over that.’ He sounded in no way regretful. ‘And I got a job as well, didn’t I? I ain’t had the sack yet, and I won’t either.’

  She was a tall girl, wearing slimline trousers and a green duffel coat, and Brian saw a resemblance between her and Avril that wouldn’t be lost on Arthur. ‘You’d better not get the push, either,’ she said, ‘or you’ve seen the last of me. I go to work, so you’ve got to. I don’t need a house-husband yet. Not that I believe you ever saw that ghost. I’ve heard too many of your tales.’

  ‘There you go, showing me up in public again.’ He released her hand and straightened himself. ‘If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s being called a liar. It ain’t right. I tell everybody about the most terrifying experience of my life, and the one I love most says I didn’t see it.’

  ‘You’re worse than Arthur.’ Eileen helped Rachel to clear away cups and plates. ‘I’ve never heard such a daft story.’

  ‘I believe you: thousands wouldn’t.’

  He laughed. ‘I don’t care about the thousands. All I know is I’m telling the truth.’

  ‘The place is on a hill that used to be an ancient camp,’ Brian said. ‘Or so it says on the map. Maybe there is something spooky about it.’

  ‘I’m glad you believe me, Uncle Brian.’ Harold reached for Harriet’s hand. ‘We’ve got to be off, though. I told the gaffer I’d do the afternoon shift, and he’s starting to rely on me.’ He embraced Arthur. ‘You’ll be all right, dad. We’ll see you at the weekend, won’t we, love?’

  ‘I like your dad, even though he’s wary about me because I’m a social worker.’

  ‘Don’t be so daft,’ he said.

  She kissed Arthur. ‘We’ll see you in a few days.’

  ‘I thought Avril was marvellous,’ Harold said. ‘She was always good to me, and I’m dead sorry she’s gone. She was one of the best. She was lovely and generous.’

  Arthur, unable to speak, kissed his son, and let him go. He looked gravely after him, Brian noticed, as if he couldn’t fully believe in Harold wearing a smart suit, and even regretted the lack of earrings, ponytail and jeans. Maybe Harold’s settling down – if you could call it that – in some way disappointed Arthur, who saw him as ceasing to rebel against the toffee-nosed poxed-up loudmouthed swivel-eyed fuckpigs who had plagued him all his life and would continue to do so. It was no good thing when a bloke stopped wanting to dynamite the Houses of Parliament. Nor was it so good that Harold no longer looked as Avril had secretly liked to see him, a saddening factor because she couldn’t see anybody from now on.

  ‘It’s like being in a submarine.’ Arthur sat in the front seat, Derek’s car smoothing its way through Burton Joyce and up the Trent Valley. ‘Round here, the sky sucks water out of the river and spews it on the road.’

  Brian, sitting behind with Eileen, thought he might create a character called Joyce Burton. She’d be a bit of a tartar, tall, statuesque, with red hair, and wearing little gold-rimmed glasses, an opinionated woman always convinced she was right, but causing mayhem wherever she poked her sharp nose, ending in bed with someone totally unsuitable at the end of each episode.

  It was main beams on and all systems go, though plenty of cars came with panache and confidence from the other way. Derek turned on to a lane out of Thurgarton village, the car splashed as if trundling along a stream bed. ‘What a rotten night,’ Eileen said.

  ‘It would be, today of all days,’ Arthur said, in the gloom of the car. ‘I’m glad the funeral’s over.’

  ‘We all are.’ Derek swerved slightly, then righted. ‘We’ll be in a snug pub soon. It’s quite close to the river.’

  A car coming head on, no time or inclination to dip its beams, nearly drove them into the hedge. ‘We could have been in the river just then,’ Arthur said, everyone glad to hear him laugh. The all-enclosing dark after Bleasby was as if drifting through space. ‘You’d better slow down. We don’t want four more funerals. At least not for twenty years.’

  ‘I’ll be driving back,’ Eileen said, as Derek slotted into a space at the car park. They ran through the rain into a comfortable lounge warmed by flame from real logs, a score of people at tables and by the bar; an aroma of meat and chips and mellow beer filling the air. ‘Now we can warm our arses,’ Derek said. ‘Though let’s get tanked up first.’

  Brian stood by a table laid for supper, and let Eileen choose their seats. Arthur took his pew, as always without using his hands, looking straight before him, and when the pint came, elbow at an angle of ninety degrees, he lifted the rim to his mouth, and took the first long draught with movements, Brian recalled, exactly like those of his grandfather.

  The pub was isolated in the Valley of the Trent, strong gusts across sodden meadows spattering rain to fill the dykes and runnels, driving swans into hiding and fish under wavelets on the river. ‘I don’t suppose the water ever comes over the lanes?’ Brian said.

  ‘If we do get stuck,’ Arthur
said, ‘we’ll be all right as long as the beer doesn’t run out.’ Avril had been with them last time, which he remembered, because his hand shook so much on lifting the glass for another go that he had to put it down.

  ‘It’ll be like that for a while.’ Brian thought it better to mention than not. ‘It’ll take a good year to get over a blow like yours.’ Eileen and Derek said comforting words as well, till diverted by a waitress asking what they wanted to eat.

  No one had much to say during the meal. Brian went to the bar and replenished their pints, and Arthur was unable to finish his cutlets. ‘It’s the first time it’s happened to me.’

  Eileen put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t let it bother you.’

  ‘Grandad Merton would have forgiven you,’ Brian said.

  ‘I expect he’s looking down on us,’ Arthur smiled.

  ‘If he can he will,’ Derek said.

  ‘When I used to go to his house on Sunday morning,’ Arthur recalled, ‘grandma would set a place for my dinner. I once left something on my plate. It couldn’t have been much, a bit of potato or some gristle. Grandad looked at it. He had his eye patch on, and the good eye glared as if it would burn right into me. So I swallowed what was left. He’d never let anybody leave a scrap of food on their plates.’

  Brian remembered the copy of Mrs Beaton always on the sideboard. ‘He didn’t want you to insult grandma’s cooking.’

  ‘He needn’t have bothered. Everything she brought to the table was good to eat.’

  ‘I hope she’s listening,’ Eileen said.

  He tampered with what remained of his meal. ‘I never know what to think about that.’

  Brian knew that right now he was wondering about Avril. ‘Nobody does.’

  ‘It’s hard to imagine she isn’t still looking.’ Eileen had picked up Brian’s thoughts, which she knew Arthur wanted to hear.

  ‘Have one of these.’ Derek pushed his case across, the top section off, five cigars like a magazine of ammunition waiting to be slotted into a rifle. Tears were in Arthur’s eyes as he pulled one out, as if only a bullet for himself would soothe the anguish. Derek peeled off the cellophane, lit it, and put it into his hand. Laughter from the bar, but nothing to be done except stay calm and help their brother to endure. Every tortuous minute of the year to come would, at a quick calculation, need over half a million before the worst of the pain wore off.

  His face was fluid of feature, uncertain in its age, and in a feat of control his hand was rigorously coaxed to normal. He looked into the distance as if hoping to get some comfort, not seeing the bar, or tables at which people were eating, or the farmer-like man who stopped on coming from the gents to stroke a big docile dog blocking his way. He turned back to them and gestured an apology for his weakness, as if to say I won’t embarrass you anymore. Let’s just carry on as if you didn’t see anything.

  ‘It’s still throwing it down.’ Derek glanced at the windows. ‘I think February filldyke’s got here in January. We might have to swim back.’

  Arthur smiled, as if to face such mortal peril would be a pleasure. But whatever the weather, they were safe and warm and fed, and between puffs at his cigar he tackled the pint Brian set before him, listened to their chaff, returned some of it, and looked at the pretty waitress when they paid the bill, of forty-seven pounds made up to fifty because she had been so charming.

  A waiter brought the receipt. ‘I thought I’d let you know there’s water on the lanes, so look out for it on the way back. A chap just came in and told us.’

  They got into their coats. ‘We’ll take care,’ Derek said.

  Eileen coasted through the shallow floods, and even on the main road drove carefully under the rain, mindful that Arthur above all had to go on living.

  FIFTEEN

  Brian said to Jenny: ‘Let’s go to Matlock. The weather’s miserable, but we’ll be all right in the car.’

  ‘Do you mean it?’ – as if unable to believe he could suggest something so pleasant.

  Every decision could be the wrong one, but he’d opened his mouth and it would be cruel to dim the light in her eyes, though in the old days she wouldn’t have been shocked if he did. ‘I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.’

  ‘I’d love to. I haven’t been since I nearly went on the bike with you.’

  ‘I was sorry about that,’ he said, as if it was yesterday.

  She didn’t want him to be sorry. ‘But I got to Matlock in the end, because you took me a month later on the train.’

  He’d hoped she’d remember. ‘Did I?’

  ‘You know you did.’

  ‘Now I do.’

  ‘George always had to go the other way on his travels, to Skegness or Mablethorpe. He loved the sea.’

  He hadn’t come to hear about dead George. ‘We’ll get there by one, and have something to eat. You won’t need to cook dinner today.’

  She gathered the cups and saucers. ‘Eunice was coming to see me, so I’d better phone and tell her I’m going out.’ Laughter from the kitchen: ‘I’m not letting on where he’s taking me. Don’t worry, he’ll bring me back. You think we’re going to run away together? I should say not. See you tomorrow, then. I’ll tell you all about it.’ Another laugh. ‘Or I might not. I’ll see you then, then.’

  He held the umbrella over her to the car, and threw a couple of cardboard boxes into the back so that she could sit down. ‘Which way do we go?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘We make for Cinderhill, get onto the A610, and head for Ambergate, through Langley Mill and Ripley.’

  ‘I love them names.’

  He turned for the main road, feeling strange having her by his side in a car, the girl he had so intimately known turned into an unfamiliar old woman. What he wanted he couldn’t say, nor knew why he was taking her to Matlock, but there was no turning back, so he decided to enjoy it.

  ‘I remember struggling up all the hills. It was so hard I didn’t even feel good when it came to freewheeling down.’

  Less traffic after the motorway turnoff, rain still splashing the windscreen. ‘Do you want a cigarette?’

  ‘I don’t smoke, as a rule, though I will today. It’s nice to puff on a fag now and again.’

  He passed the packet. ‘Light one for me as well.’

  ‘George smoked a hundred a day sometimes. But you can understand that, can’t you?’

  He certainly could. ‘I usually smoke cigars, though not too many.’ The rain stopped as he drove up the gentle slope into Derbyshire, usually the opposite. ‘Do you ever think of getting behind the wheel again?’

  ‘Sometimes. I’ve got a licence, but a few years ago I had a near miss coming back from Skegness, and I haven’t been brave enough to drive since.’

  ‘You’d enjoy it, now there’s less to look after. You won’t have anymore near misses.’

  ‘I might try next summer, roam around a bit.’ Both at their ease, he was taking this old age pensioner out for the day. They were the same age, but he couldn’t believe it, because there was no retirement for him, nor any pension either, since he had never bothered with stamps, though a private scheme was there to be milked if he stopped earning. ‘What happened to you after we split up?’

  She needed time to think, as he weaved through Langley Mill and went towards Ripley. ‘It’s going a long way back. Too far, maybe. We were different people then, weren’t we?’

  He shouldn’t have asked. She might think he’d only brought her for that reason, and was taking advantage. ‘True, yet we’re still the same people. It’s just that such a lot’s happened to us.’

  ‘We don’t look the same,’ she laughed. ‘Anyway, about a year later, I had an affair, as they call it now, and I got pregnant. The man didn’t want to know. He told me to get rid of it, and when I said I couldn’t do such a thing he ran away. He was married, though I didn’t know at the time. Gordon was his name.’

  ‘It would be.’ Yet he didn’t want to denigrate someone she must have loved.

  �
��He was a draughtsman. He got a job near Bristol, and took his family because he didn’t want his wife to find out.’

  ‘You didn’t think of chasing her up and telling her?’

  ‘There wasn’t any point. He wouldn’t have come back. I had the baby. You’ve met her. It’s Eunice, and she’s fifty now.’

  ‘She wrote to me about the surprise party.’

  ‘A couple of years later I met George, and when he said he loved me, and I told him about Eunice, he said it didn’t matter. He would take her in, and she would be all right with him. And she was. He looked on her like one of his own, and when I had six more she just blended in. So you can see how I had to care for him after the accident. Not that I thought I wouldn’t, though I did sometimes wonder how long it was going to go on, mostly for his sake, especially near the end. Well, you would, wouldn’t you?’

  You would indeed. He thought about the tolerance and mutual affection between himself and the women he had been with, where it had always been a gamble as to who would flee first. Such signs as had been in the offing were mistaken for those of undying love which, as he well knew, never ran smooth.

  ‘I feel a lot better now,’ she said, ‘even if the weather isn’t very good. It’s nice to come out, a real change from being stuck in the house.’ She touched his arm as he overtook a gravel lorry on a few yards of dual carriageway. ‘I never thought you would be driving me around in a car.’

  ‘Nor did I.’ He followed the white arrows, and got in front of the enormous lorry just before the road became a single lane, the perfect end if they were killed at the same moment, both so maimed they’d be shovelled into plastic bags rather than coffins, at least not divided in their deaths.

  She pointed. ‘You can see blue sky and a bit of sun over there.’

  ‘I got God on the blower this morning and asked Him to make the weather good for us.’

  ‘Did you know by then that you were going to take me out?’

  ‘I thought about it, and hoped you wouldn’t tell me to get lost.’