Mary held the glass out to Moses. ‘More water,’ she said.
When he returned, she had propped the old man up on his pillows. The old man’s arms lay outside the blanket, limp, stringy, palms up.
‘Are you all right?’ Moses asked him.
The old man nodded, but didn’t trust himself to speak.
Nobody had turned the light on in the room. The air had thickened, a haze of greys and blues, partly darkness, partly smoke. Hands and faces showed up pale, almost phosphorescent. A radiator began to tick in the corner.
‘Those bloody sardines,’ the old man muttered when he had recovered his breath.
He lit another cigarette. His face looked gaunt and dented in the stark orange flare of the match. His perversity resembled Mary’s, Moses thought.
‘I think we ought to leave you now,’ she was saying. ‘You should rest.’
The old man nodded.
‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right?’ Moses asked.
‘I’m fine.’ The old man spoke in a whisper now. ‘I’ve talked too much, that’s all. I’m not used to talking, you see.’
‘And you sang.’ Looking down at the old man, Moses suddenly had an idea. ‘Why don’t you come with us?’
‘I thought you might say that.’
‘Well, why not?’
The old man sighed. ‘It’s not quite as simple as that.’
‘All you have to do is get in the car.’
The old man shook his head. ‘Listen, I’ve told you about the people who live in this village. I’ve told you what they’re like. Well, I live here too. I’m one of them. I’m the same as they are.’
‘But you’re different. You — ’
The old man cut in. ‘I’m the same. Look at me. Lying in bed for years on end. I’m the same.’
Moses lowered his eyes.
‘Don’t push him, Moses,’ Mary said. ‘He has his own life here. And you have yours somewhere else. That was his gift to you.’
Moses looked up at the old man. ‘I wanted to help you, that’s all.’
‘You have helped me. By coming here. By letting me know that you’re alive. You’ve no idea how much that means.’
Moses said nothing.
‘Perhaps you’ll visit me again,’ the old man whispered, ‘sometime.’
‘Of course I will.’ Moses paused. ‘There’s one more thing I wanted to ask you. That pink dress. The one in the suitcase. Did it belong to my mother?’
‘Yes, I gave it to her, but she never wore it.’ The old man smiled sadly. ‘It was a dream of mine to take her dancing in that dress.’ He lifted a hand, let it fall again.
‘A dream of yours? Like that caravan?’
Fans opened at the corners of the old man’s eyes. ‘Like the caravan,’ he said. ‘We had a lot of dreams, Alice and I. But you were the only one that came true.’
Moses bent down and kissed his father on the forehead.
‘Something you should do,’ the old man said, mischief now in his dark eyes, ‘is to go and see your gravestone.’
‘Gravestone?’
‘Yes, gravestone. How else do you think we explained your sudden disappearance? You died, remember? You drowned in the river.’
‘I see.’ Moses had taken in so much during the past few hours that he felt as if he was about to overflow.
‘If you run into a policeman, it might be best to pretend that you’re just passing through. And don’t, for God’s sake, mention your name. As I said, you’re supposed to be dead. If they find out you’re not, well, it could be dangerous.’
‘I’ll be careful,’ Moses promised. ‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right?’
‘I’ve lived here alone for twenty years. I’ll be fine. Oh, and Moses — ’ the old man held his cigarette away from his lips and a slightly embarrassed smile appeared there — ‘next time you can talk.’
*
‘Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ Mary shifted into second. The car began to scale the hill that led to the graveyard.
‘I don’t know,’ Moses said. ‘I feel a bit dazed.’
She nodded as if that made sense to her.
‘You were very quiet,’ he said.
‘It was your scene. I didn’t have a part.’
He watched her driving. You had a part, he thought.
A silence followed. The sun, setting behind an oak, punched fierce orange holes in its black, almost metallic foliage. By the time they passed through the cemetery gate the colours in the sky were vanishing. Still, they found the grave easily enough. Moses knelt down in the grass and tried to decipher the inscription. Mary wandered off to look at the church.
It was true what he had told her. He was having trouble finding room to store everything he had heard that afternoon. The places where it should have gone were already crammed with all kinds of junk from his own life. And yet so much of what he had heard, it seemed, was his own life too. He would have to squeeze it in somehow. It was a strange idea. Like trying to put foundations in a building that had already been completed. Unsettling. He heard footsteps behind him. He turned round, expecting to see Mary. Instead he saw a policeman.
‘Good evening, sir,’ the policeman said.
Moses thought it wise to match the policeman’s politeness. ‘Good evening, officer.’
‘A pleasant cemetery.’
‘Very pleasant.’
‘Even at night.’
There was just the suggestion of an interrogative in the policeman’s amiable remarks, as if he didn’t really understand why somebody should be visiting a cemetery at night and would quite like to know.
Moses hesitated.
Suddenly the policeman’s forefinger flew up to his chin and stuck there. ‘Forgive me if I’m mistaken, sir,’ he said, ‘but aren’t you the gentleman who assisted PC Marlpit in the Dinwoodie case?’ His eyes glittered against the brooding sky.
Moses was too surprised to lie. ‘How did you know that?’
The policeman’s forefinger edged from his chin to the side of his nose where it slid rhythmically against the fleshy curve of his nostril. ‘PC Marlpit described you in great detail. He was, I believe, quite struck by your appearance. PC Marlpit is one of my oldest friends. We shoot together.’
‘Shoot?’
‘Pheasant,’ the policeman said, ‘and grouse, when they’re in season. Otherwise bottles in my back yard.’ The way he lowered his eyes and smiled, he might just have given away a slightly embarrassing secret.
‘Interesting,’ Moses said.
‘Something occurs to me. If you were to accompany me to the police station, I’m sure the Chief Inspector would be delighted to meet you and thank you personally for your part in the unfortunate affair.’
‘I don’t know. We really ought to be getting back.’
‘We?’ The policeman scoured the air for evidence of a second person.
‘She’s looking at the church,’ Moses explained.
The policeman nodded to himself. His eyes returned to Moses’s face. ‘It would take up very little of your time, sir. The station is just behind us. A minute’s walk away. If the lady wouldn’t mind, that is.’
‘If the lady wouldn’t mind what?’ Mary said, appearing out of the darkness.
‘Going to the police station,’ Moses said. ‘The Chief Inspector would like to thank me for what I did in July.’
‘Splendid,’ Mary said. ‘I’ve never met a real Chief Inspector.’
The policeman smiled modestly as if the Chief Inspector had been an invention of his. ‘That’s settled then.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘If you’ll just follow me.’
‘What are you trying to do?’ Moses hissed at Mary as the policeman moved away across the graveyard. ‘Get me arrested?’
‘What for? Coming back to life? Not being dead?’
Mary’s voice was calm, but the calmness hid currents of excitement. He knew this mood of hers.