And then, coming nearer and bending over him, Fleming's face.
This was it – the moment of death.
He waited for it.
Fleming said coolly. "You're good. In another few years when you're heavier and stronger you'll be better." He took out his handkerchief and wiped away some of the blood. He understood Durrani's unspoken question and answered it. "No… I might want to kill you, but I can't. You'll understand why when you're well."
He helped Durrant to sit against the wall. He looked repulsive and pity suddenly flooded Fleming.
Durrant was muttering through blood-caked lips. "The power in my head is low. It will gain momentum."
"Undoubtedly."
"Bend closer. I want to touch you."
"With death rays in your fingers?"
Durrant looked mildly surprised. He was completely rational now. "No -just touch you.".
He reached out his -fingers and rested them on Fleming's forehead. Fleming forced himself not to withdraw. Durrant remembered Innis and began to cry. He wished this man were his father – his lover – his enemy – his friend. He wished Fleming had killed him. He was glad he was alive.
Fleming removed his fingers. "You'll be cared for by people who care."
"Slay with me."
"I can't. You have your own strength. You don't need mine."
He went over and unbolted the door. One of the panels had been kicked out. They had believed him capable of retributive murder – even Jenny, perhaps, had believed it. He didn't blame any of them.
He spoke first to Brannigan. "Get him the coffee now." And then to Jenny, "And some water and a sponge. He needs cleaning up."
He began walking away. He couldn't look at Durrant again. He was like a dog cast out on a motorway – a rabid dog in search of a hearth. God knew what would happen to him.
Jenny caught up with him at the outside door. "You did what you had to."
"Assault and battery?"
"A promise kept."
"You heard what went on?"
"Yes. Before you bolted the door."
That an act of kindness could be brutal was a concept she had only just begun to understand.
She said, "You were strong enough to begin – and strong enough to stop."
He didn't want to talk about it any more. He said sharply, "He's bleeding. Go and see to it."
He stood in the doorway and felt the night air on his face. It was clean and sweet with the smell of summer. Jenny touched his grazed knuckles and then left him standing there. What he had done was possibly outside the law. He didn't know. He didn't care. The wounds he had inflicted on Durrant had been minimal. There was nothing to regret. He felt as if he, too, had lost blood and that the wound had been washed clean.
Twelve
DAVID WAS BURIED in a hurricane of publicity. Fleming, in the eye of the storm, saw nothing of the crowds of sightseers, the cameras, the trappings of the media. He saw David. Not David dead, he and David together in a strange unnatural silence. There were prayers, hymns, words with a mystical meaning which whispered through his mind without impact. At the grave-side he saw the coffin going down and couldn't connect David with any of it. He hadn't thought of getting a wreath. A wreath for David didn't make sense. The hearse was full of them. Great mounds of colour, expensive, pretentious. He wondered if Jenny had added a posy to the pile. If she had it was hidden by massed roses and lilies. David had owned an album of pressed flowers once, until he had decided it was cissy and had thrown it out. An interest in entomology had come next – what Ruth had called horrors in jars. A research scientist? He still hadn't cracked that one. And now never would.
Jenny, at his side, said quietly, "If we start going now while the police hold the crowds in check we can get to my car." Her eyes were tearless, but full of an almost maternal compassion for him. He, at the grave-side, was her child, her care, the one to be protected, her love. On the way down the path to the cemetery gate the cameras whirred and a reporter stepped out of line with "Just a word on your murdered son, Mr. Fleming – what are your feelings on the child's killer?"
Jenny furiously pushed him aside. She guided Fleming to the car and got him in. The car started up jerkily as if it shared her rage and shot off into the crowds, scattering them.
She didn't take him home. Nelson Street had to be kept inviolate from the Press hounds. They had bayed around The Lantern for days and he had suffered them grimly, saying little. She drove out through the town and five miles along the coast road to the old coastguard look-out. They could spend an hour or more here until the crowds dispersed. It was a place of high wide views and solitude. In the past, in moments of stress, it had brought her peace. She offered it to him now wordlessly.
He got out of the car and stood looking around him. Today the North Sea was textured like grey crepe, but with threads of silver. Marristone Port, incredibly neat at a distance, formed a geometric pattern above the harbour. The Maritime Museum with its bright and ancient craft was a point of pain which did nothing more than stab briefly at him as his eyes lingered on it. He could look with some coolness at the school half-hidden in the belt of trees. When one walked through hell one had to emerge at some stage or never emerge at all. David, in his mind not yet dead, would in time be accepted as dead. Until that happened he would talk to him in his mind. He would dismiss that cemetery down there as a nonsense. He would see this moment up here with Jenny as the only acceptable reality.
He took David's sketch of the caterpillar out of his wallet and gave it to her. "Tear it up."
She took it from him, remembering their fury with each other when she had first wanted it destroyed – fury that had turned into an act of love, violent and then tender.
Shutter's words came back to her: A mind sick with the grief of bereavement. Some day, healed, would she mean anything to him at all?
She looked down at the drawing. Wolly Bear. The words creased along" the fold were distorted and smudged. She thought briefly of Innis. He had packed up and gone. Brannigan gave the impression he would like to go himself but was held to the school like a prisoner locked in the stocks. His near-nudity in the gym had had more dignity than pathos – something he was never likely to know, and something no-one could find the words to tell him. If the school survived, then he deserved to survive with it. He had had the courage to attend the funeral and had stood alone at the grave-side, a few paces away from the other male members of staff.
The caterpillar, mad-eyed like Durrant, leered up at her. With sharp vicious movements she tore it into small pieces and flung them into the air. The breeze caught them and scattered them.
Together they watched them go.
He thought, Peace to you, David. No more nightmares. Sleep quietly now.
Ruth had always breathed a sigh of relief at the ritual tearing up, but Jenny was still and tense.
He smiled at her. "That was always the turning point -• tearing it up. Afterwards it got better."
She spoke with conviction, "And will again."
He wished the lines of strain, would ease from her face. He regretted the burden of pain that he had placed on her. He loved her but couldn't find the words to say so.
He asked her abruptly if she liked Paris.
"What are you talking about?"
Life, he thought, and going onwards. But mainly I'm talking about you.
He tried telling her, clumsily and awkwardly, and her smile came slowly as she listened.
