The night Michael returned he would not go to bed. Steph kissed him so tenderly when she went up, saying that Charlie would be awake and needing her in three hours’ time. I saw the tears start in his eyes when she said that, but he let her go, telling her he could not sleep just yet and would be up soon. We sat until the silence that followed Steph’s leaving us was absolute. I was waiting for him to talk, and he knew it. We sat downstairs until dawn. Still he would not go to bed because he did not think he could sleep just yet. And then, as I almost feared he would, he told me all about it.
I shall not, could not give you all of it here. But Michael had gone east and then north, disposing of those thirty-one bags, in thirty-one different places, between here and Scotland. He brought the road atlas and showed me, as much as he could remember. He had tried to work by night when he could, and in the daytime he would park up somewhere to sleep. The car parks of those large supermarkets on the edges of towns were often suitable, if he used one of the spaces furthest from the store entrances. But he never dared stay for more than two or three hours. He was afraid it might attract attention to be in one place too long, so several times a day he would move and find somewhere else, keeping his eyes open all the time for places to bury the bags that he could return to after dark. He used the washrooms in motorway service areas when he could. He wanted, he said, to keep looking slept and clean and shaved, like somebody who might own a Mercedes, not some ragbag. When a person is described as ‘suspicious-looking’, apparently, it usually means they look tired and poor and not very clean. But he couldn’t eat, and he knew he was beginning to look half-starved and haunted.
By night he would park in as concealed a place as he could find, and then take the spade, a few of the bags, the torch, and go off. After the first night or two he decided the spade was not such a good idea. He bought a trowel and handfork, and another backpack that he lined with plastic sheeting. Each night, with two or three bags from the boot in the backpack, and the tools in his pockets, he would set off looking for burial places. It looked less suspicious, he said, as if he were just setting out on a night hike.
It is amazing when you start to look, he said, how many places there are that never get walked over or noticed, even though nearby people are coming and going all day. He dug holes on those patchy and desolate stretches of ground where people do not go, not even to walk dogs, the soft ditches at field corners where no footpaths cross and where no ploughs go. He even buried two bags deep in the middle of a huge roundabout, planted with thick shrubs and trees.
As he went further north he began to seek out remoter places, though it was hard to judge how suitable the ground would be. He walked long distances in the dark, managing whenever he could by moonlight. On some nights he would hit rock not far below the ground’s surface, and then he would have to give up, the night wasted, and take the bags back to the boot. And the boot was beginning to smell. But he never gave in to the temptation just to drop bags in a litter bin and get away, or to scratch shallow holes for the bags and cover them over quickly. He always dug deep, emptied the contents of the bag in with the remains of the salt, filled the hole and trod over and around it carefully, replacing any turf. The thought of an excited dog with a wagging tail dropping some freshly dug-up part of Gordon Brookes at its owner’s feet filled him with horror. Not one of those bags must ever be found.
But just in case any should be, he avoided leaving them in any discernible trail. He branched off the M1 and wound through the High Peak District of Derbyshire, then continued due west into Cheshire and turned north again on the other side of the country, on the M6. From there he made detours into the Forest of Bowland and Swaledale. He crossed the country again south of the border, and drove east to Newcastle and then set off northwest through the Cheviots, entering Scotland at Hawick. But he could only get rid of three or four bags a night, at the very most. The boot seemed almost as full as when he had begun. So he pressed on, beyond Glasgow, across the Forth Road Bridge into Fife, burying bags where he could. The last two went into the North Sea at a place called Garron Point, north of Stonehaven. The next day he bought a large container of disinfectant, emptied it over the boot of the car, and headed south.
As he told me all this I asked questions: but how did you manage it, were you not frightened, how could you drive so far, on next to no sleep and little food? To my ears it was heroic. It hadn’t occurred to Michael to see it that way, but I was overwhelmed with admiration. Bit by bit as he talked and the day grew bright, some of the flint that was in him began to melt out. It came gradually, his understanding that it was all over. I sent him up to bed just as Steph was coming down. He went willingly. Now he could rest. The massive effort was over and we were back together again, and safe.
Jean was kept busy with the plums. There were six or seven trees, some bearing red fruit and some purple, and a golden one that she told the others were greengages. She decided against jam. But she read up about stewing, purйeing and freezing plums; she made them plum tart and plum charlotte, working in the kitchen with the radio on. She paid special attention to the news, dreading to hear anything about the discovery of human remains. No news came. She was now even more grateful for every day that passed. Each morning she would wake with the thought that another twenty-four hours had gone by which, even as she slept, had been doing their degrading, natural work. With every moment that passed Gordon Brookes was being returned to earth, dissolving hourly into the elements in which he lay.
She watched Michael, willing him to mend. After several days during which he did not get out of bed, he re-emerged with a white face and unsteady eyes. He blinked too often and glanced away to the side every two or three seconds, as if he had suddenly heard a soft but unwelcome noise over his shoulder. He had also developed a habit of giving tight little sniffs which would momentarily convulse the muscles in his throat. But the days of August stretched on, the time between the present and the past grew longer, and the events which had threatened his near-collapse seemed to fade in his mind. He did not get any worse. Jean trusted to the passing of more time and to the house itself to heal him, as she knew they would.
The summer continued hot. Some of the trees all but dried up and began to drop their leaves ahead of time, before their colours changed. They lay like torn paper strips painted dark green on one side and pale grey on the other and set out on the ground to curl under the sun. Jean pointed out to Michael the jobs in the garden that she considered mellow, soothing, and in keeping with the season, sending him out to be among the fallen leaves, not because she wanted them tidied up (she very much liked the dry swirl of them under the trees) but because she thought it would please him to feel their papery weightlessness in his arms.
It was not a particularly theatrical August. These days a mist lay on the garden until late morning. Amber blisters broke out over the remaining plums. They oozed and then rotted on the trees and on the ground; wasps feasted. In the flower beds it was the turn of the geraniums and carnations to eclipse the waning early flowers, the roses and monkshood, but everywhere the colours looked a little exhausted.