Dark Ages. John Pritchard
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hold it like a strongpoint.
‘Want me to walk you home? I will.’
‘Just to the bus stop, Martin, thanks.’ They turned towards the railway arch. After a pause, she glanced at him. ‘You’re going to keep on looking?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m going off to Uni in October; but anything before that, let me know …’
He nodded wordlessly, and then looked back. The instinct was a primal one: alertness to some danger. Nobody was following, and yet the itch persisted: a nervous urge to grasp her hand and run. To flee, and keep on fleeing down these endless lamplit corridors of night.
3
It was one o’clock when he slipped into the flat. Locking the door, he tiptoed through the dark. Every sound seemed magnified; but Claire didn’t wake. Not even when he slithered into bed.
He settled down beside her, and listened to her breathe; trying not to think of how she must have spent her evening. Coming back from her shift to an empty house and a scrawled note on the table. Perhaps she’d cried a little, as she sat and watched TV. A pang of guilt transfixed him – but it faded soon enough.
Perhaps he’d feel the same with a more everyday addiction: alcohol, or gambling, or drugs. Hurting somebody he loved – and yet not sparing her. Watching while things went to hell, unable to let up.
1
If you fancy her, she’s got a boyfriend. Since leaving school, he’d found it was a universal rule: like the second law of thermodynamics, only stricter. But then he’d met Claire – attractive, unattached. If she goes out with me, he’d thought, the universe collapses. And yet, despite his disbelief, they’d somehow got this far.
He’d been portering at the hospital – the latest in a string of low-paid jobs – and met her when he’d come to fetch a body, of all things. Claire had been the nurse in charge: confident and friendly as she took things in her stride. Heartened, he had noticed she was rather pretty too, with her gilded, gamine haircut and clear blue eyes. He’d asked her out (not then, of course), already gearing up for a rebuttal. But she’d said yes. The universe continued to exist. And six months later, here he was: sharing her flat like a partner, not a boyfriend.
He stirred in the bed, still half-asleep. A shape of warmth was dwindling beside him – as if she’d left her shadow on the sheet. Claire was in the kitchen now; he could hear the kettle boiling in the background. He tried to gauge her mood by her movements. Sloppy and resigned – or brisk and angry? Sitting up, he listened like a guilty little boy.
She hadn’t dumped her sleepshirt, but her dressing gown was missing from its hook. Gone were the days when she’d bring him tea, wearing nothing but her briefs. He pictured her, still pasty and dishevelled – and felt a surge of longing. So maybe it was really love this time.
And he looked set to let it go to waste.
She’d seen behind his mask by now: she knew he’d been disturbed by things he wouldn’t talk about. When she’d failed to coax them out, she’d given him some room: putting up with his moods and his late-night walks. She knew he was in with the ghost-hunting group – though not that he would sometimes watch alone.
He’d moved on from the hospital: he found it too unsettling. It was the district’s psychiatric unit – a grim Victorian barracks on the outer edge of town. Moving through its garrison of patients, he kept on getting glimpses of himself. Hunted faces, haunted eyes. Perhaps he really was as mad as they were.
Claire would call them ill, of course, and talk with them for hours. Perhaps she saw him as a patient too. Perhaps she only kept him on to pity. Or observe.
Shaking off that paranoid thought, he got up, pulled his boxers on, and went into the kitchen. Claire was sitting at the table, glancing listlessly through the paper. Her legs were crossed, and naked to the thigh – but her glance was guaranteed to kill all passion.
‘So when did you get in last night?’
He winced. ‘About one-ish …’
Her baby blues were hard today. ‘Don’t take me for granted, Martin. I know you need your space – but I need to be treated like a girl you care about.’
‘I’m sorry, right?’ He turned away, towards the cafetiere.
‘I suppose something for the rent would be out of the question?’ she went on flatly.
‘Can it wait to the end of the week?’
He sensed her glower at his back, then look down at the paper. Here, in this cramped kitchen, he could feel the gulf between them. But how could he begin to build across it?
The cracks were showing up at last. The universe was crumbling. You couldn’t break a cosmic law and hope to walk away.
2
It was Lyn, in all her innocence, who’d told him of the star-chart.
They’d been wheeling their bikes along the lane: the end of a hot day’s cycling in the country. The sky was beaten gold behind the gables of the cottage, but the air still held a pleasant glow of warmth. Lyn looked sleek and trim in shorts and T-shirt. His mates all called her Martin’s snooty sister, but he knew how envious they were of him. Here she was, this gorgeous girl, and he was living under the same roof. And Martin would smile, content to let them stew. They never saw her loll around, or cut her nails, or sulk. Or come round very timidly to ask if he could help unblock the loo …
Tick-tick-tick said the turning wheels beside them.
‘Is that a star?’ she asked him, looking back towards the east.
He turned, and saw a point of light, pricked out through the deepening blue.
‘Not that bright, this early … It’s Jupiter, I think.’
She shook her head, still staring. ‘I think it’s great, that you can see the planets.’
‘You should look at it through the telescope. See the moons and everything.’
‘I’d like to,’ she said softly. ‘After supper. Give me a knock, I’ll just be reading.’
‘Bookworm!’ he teased delightedly; she giggled, made to swipe at him. But he was pleased beyond measure by her interest. She was going back to college next weekend. He missed her very much when she was gone.
They came up past the orchard. The countryside was quiet, bathed in amber; but some swallows were still spiralling around. The west face of the cottage would be glowing, but the walls this side were dark with dusk and ivy. The place had been a rectory once: a rambling old building which their parents had restored over the years. Cottage was hardly the word for such a warren of rooms. But for children growing up it was a fairytale house: a castle of their dreams.
‘Have you seen that map in Daddy’s book?’ Lyn asked him at the gate.
‘Which one?’
‘There’s a medieval star-map. I found it years ago …’ She let him wheel his bike into the shed.
‘What, a zodiac or something?’
She shrugged, and pushed her own bike in. ‘I don’t know. It’s got all the constellations on it. Used for magic spells, apparently.’
‘Yeah?’ He finished locking his bike, and straightened up. ‘Sounds interesting. Which book?’
‘Magic in the Middle Ages, or something like that. One of the ones we weren’t allowed to touch.’
He