“Mr. Knightly?”
“Thanks. Thank you. I’ll be there as soon…” I drifted off.
“Very well, Mr. Knightly. I’m so sorry.”
I thanked her again and cut the connection.
I continued the section of wall I was working on, placing the stones with slow deliberation, ensuring a solid finish.
I had anticipated this day for months: it would mark the start of a temporary freedom, an immediate release from the routine of visiting the nursing home. For six months I would be free of the thought of my father on Earth, demanding my attention.
It was perhaps two hours after receiving the call that I drove into the car park at Bradley General and made my way along what seemed like miles of corridors to the acute coronary ward. My father had suffered a massive heart attack. He was unconscious when I arrived, never came round, and died an hour later.
The sudden lack of a regular bleep on his cardiogram brought me from my reverie. I was staring through the window at the snow-covered fields, thinking that a few walls out there could do with attention.
Then the bleep changed to a continuous note, and I looked at my father. He appeared as he had before death; grey, open-mouthed, and utterly lifeless.
A ferryman came for him, asked me if I would be attending the farewell ceremony—I declined—and took him away in a box they called a container, not a coffin. I signed all the necessary papers, and then made my way to Elisabeth’s house.
That night, after making love, we lay in bed and watched the first energy beam leave the Onward Station at ten o’clock.
“You’re quiet,” she said.
I hesitated. “My father died today,” I told her.
She fumbled for the light, then turned and stared at me. “Why on earth didn’t you say something earlier?”
I reached out for her and pulled her to me. “I didn’t think it mattered,” I said.
She stroked my hair. I had never told her of my relationship with my father, always managed to steer the subject away from our acrimony.
She kissed my forehead. “He’ll be back in six months,” she soothed. “Renewed, younger, full of life.”
How could I tell her that that was what I feared most?
The following Thursday I finished work at five and drove to Elisabeth’s. The day after my father died, she had asked me to move in with her. I felt that our relationship had graduated to another level. I often had to pause and remind myself how fortunate I was.
We settled into a routine of domestic bliss. We took turns at cooking each other meals more daring and spectacular than we would have prepared for ourselves alone.
I was expecting, that night, to be assailed by the aroma of cooking meat when I entered the kitchen, but instead detected only the cloying fragrance of air freshener. The light was off.
Then I made out Elisabeth. She was sitting on the floor by the far wall, the receiver of the phone cradled redundantly in her lap.
I saw her look up when I came in, and I reached instinctively for the light.
Her face, revealed, was a tear-stained mask of anguish.
My stomach flipped, for I knew immediately.
“Oh, Ben,” she said, reaching for me. “That was the nursing home. Mum died an hour ago.”
I was across the room and kneeling and hugging her to me, and for the first time I experienced another person’s heartfelt grief.
The funeral was a quiet affair at the village church—the first one there, the vicar told me, for years. A reporter from a national newspaper was snooping, wanting Elisabeth’s story. I told him where to go in no uncertain terms. There was less I could do to deter the interest of a camera crew from the BBC, who kept their distance but whose very presence was a reminder, if any were required, of the tragedy of Mary Carstairs’s death.
Every day we walked up to the overgrown churchyard, and Elisabeth left flowers at the grave, and wept. If anything, my love for her increased over the next few weeks; I had never before felt needed, and to have someone rely on me, and tell me so, made me realise in return how much I needed Elisabeth.
One evening I was cooking on the Aga when she came up behind me very quietly, slipped her arms around my body and laid her head between my shoulder blades. “God, Ben. I would have gone mad without you. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
I turned and held her. “Love you,” I whispered.
I introduced her to the Tuesday night crowd, where she became an instant hit. I think my friends were both surprised and delighted that I’d found someone at last.
We were in the Fleece, three months after my father’s death, when Richard Lincoln entered the main bar and handed me a package. “Special delivery from the Onward Station.”
I turned the silver envelope over. It was small and square, the size of the DVD I knew it would contain. My name and address were printed on both sides, below the double star logo of the Kéthani.
“A message from your father, Ben,” Richard said.
I could not bring myself to enjoy the rest of the evening: the package was burning a hole in my pocket.
When we returned home, Elisabeth said, “Well?”
I laughed, wrestling her towards the bedroom. “Well, what?”
“Aren’t you going to play it?”
“Don’t think I’ll bother.”
She stared at me. “Aren’t you curious?”
“Not particularly.”
“Well, if you aren’t, I am. Come on, we’ll play it on the TV in the bedroom.”
I lay in bed, staring out at the rearing obelisk of the Station, while she inserted the DVD into the player. Then, with Elisabeth in my arms, I turned and stared at the screen.
My father had decided against a visual recording: only his broad, bluff Yorkshire voice came through, while the screen remained blank. I was relieved that I would be spared the sight of his new, rejuvenated image.
“Ben, Reg here. I’m well. We still haven’t seen the Kéthani—can you believe that? I thought I’d catch a glimpse of them at least.” He paused. The fact that his voice issued from a star twenty light years away struck me as faintly ridiculous. “I’m in a group with about a dozen other resurrectees, all from different countries. We’re learning a lot. I still haven’t decided what I’m doing yet, when I get back…” He hesitated, then signed off. His murmured farewell was followed by a profound silence.
And that was it, as casual as a postcard from Blackpool; except, I told myself, there was something almost human in his tone, an absence of hostility that I had not heard in years.
But that did nothing to help lessen my dread of the bastard’s return.
Whenever Elisabeth broached the topic of implants, however tenuously, I managed to change the subject. In retrospect, I was ashamed at how my reluctance to undergo the implantation process affected her; at the time, selfishly, I could apprehend only my own frail emotions.
More than once, late at night, when we had made love, she would whisper that she loved me more than anything in the world, and that she did not want to lose me.
A week before my father was due to return, she could no longer keep her fears to herself.
She was sitting at the kitchen table when I returned from work. She indicated the letter I’d received that morning from the Onward Station. My father was returning in seven days; he had asked to meet me at a reception room in the Station.
It was the meeting I had dreaded for so long.
She was quiet over dinner, and finally I said, “Elisabeth, what is it?” I imagined that the news of my father’s return had reminded her again of her mother’s irrevocable demise.
She was silent for a while.
“Please don’t avoid the issue this time,” she said at last. “Don’t change the subject or walk off.” Her hand was shaking as she pushed away her plate.