Stymied in his enquiries, Faraday warned that this interview would not be the end of the matter. There would be identifications to be made if and when the culprits were apprehended. She wished him luck in finding them, and he departed, with his colleagues in tow.
The interview had taken up almost all of the day, but with what was left of it she set about the melancholy business of planning Sherwood's funeral. She would go over to the hospice in Skipton tomorrow, and find out from the doctors if they thought she should tell her mother the sad news. Meanwhile, she had a lot of organizing to do.
In the early evening, she answered the door to find Helen Morris, of all people, come to offer her condolences. Helen had never been a particularly close friend, and Frannie harboured the suspicion that the woman had come calling to garner some gossip, but she was glad of the company anyway. And it was comforting, in its petty way, to know that Helen, who was one of the most conservative women in the village, saw fit to spend a few hours with her. Whatever people were surmising about events in the Donnelly house, they would not find Frannie culpable. It made her think that perhaps she owed Helen and the rest of the folks puzzling over this mystery a helping hand. That maybe in a month or two, when she was feeling a little more confident, she'd stand up between the hymns at the Sunday service and tell the whole sad and wonderful truth. Maybe nobody would ever speak to her again if she did so; maybe she'd become the Madwoman of Burnt Yarley. And maybe that would be a price worth paying.
CHAPTER XVII
0ut on the hills, Will just kept moving, his body trekking the cold slopes while his spirit wandered in far stranger places. He plunged deep into ocean trenches, and swam with forms that had not yet been found or named. He was carried as a motey insect over peaks so remote the tribes in the valley below believed divinities lived upon them. But he knew better now. The creators of the world had not retreated to the heights. They were everywhere. They were stones, they were trees, they were shafts of light and burgeoning seeds. They were broken things, they were dying things, and they were all that sprang up from things dying and broken. And where they were, he was too. Fox and God and the creature between.
He wasn't hungry, nor was he sleepy, though in his passage he encountered beasts that were both. Seemed sometimes to travel in the dreams of sleeping animals. In dreams of the hunt; in dreams of coupling. He seemed sometimes to be a dream himself: a dream of the human, being experienced by an animal. Perhaps dogs barked in their sleep, sensing his proximity; perhaps the chick grew restless in the egg when he brought it news of the light. And perhaps he was nothing but a figment in his own haunted thoughts, inventing this journey, so as not to go back, not ever go back, to the city of Rabjohns and the house of Will.
Every now and then, he'd cross the path of the fox, and he'd move on before the animal could make its formal farewells and depart. But somewhere along the way - who knew how many days had passed? he chanced upon the creature in the back yard of a house he vaguely knew. It had its head in the rubbish, and was rifling through the muck with no little enthusiasm. Will had better places to linger than here, and was about to depart for those places, but the fox turned its besmirched face his way and said:
'Do you remember this yard?' Will didn't answer. He hadn't spoken to anybody in a long time, and didn't particularly want to start talking now. But the fox was ready with an answer anyhow. 'This is Lewis's house,' the creature said. 'Lewis? The poet?' he prompted. Will remembered. 'This is where you saw a raccoon, so rumour tells, doing much as I'm doing now.'
Will broke his silence, finally. 'I did?' he said.
'You did. But that's not why you're here.'
'No ...' Will said, now sensing the significance of his presence.
'You know why, don't you?'
'Yes. I'm afraid I do.'
So saying, he left the yard, and went out into the street. It was early evening, the sky still warm with light towards the west. He walked along Cumberland to Noe; then on to 19th and so to Castro Street. The sidewalks were already crowded, so he assumed it was either Friday or Saturday; a night when people were casting off the restraints of the working week and were out on the town.
He didn't know what form he had travelling here, but he soon found out. He was nobody; he was nothing. Not a single gaze came his way as he climbed Castro; not even to despise him. He walked amongst the beauties and the watchers of beauties (and who here wasn't one or the other?) unnoticed, past the tourists out to see how homosexual heaven might look, and the hustlers, checking their pants and their reflections, and the high queens, pronouncing on every other sight they saw; and the sad, sick men who were out because they feared they'd not see another party-night. He passed through this throng like the ghost he'd perhaps become, his trek bringing him at last to the house at the summit where Patrick lived.
I've come to see him die, he realized. He looked around him for some sign of the fox, but the scurrilous animal, having brought him here, was now hiding its head. He was alone in this business; already slipping up the steps and through the door into the hallway. Here he halted for a moment, to gather his wits. This was the first place of human habitation he'd visited in a little while, and it felt like a tomb to him: the silent walls, the roof keeping out the sky. He wanted to turn and leave; to get back out into the open air. But as he started up the stairs to the apartment door, the memories began to come. He'd undressed Patrick climbing these stairs, so eager to have him naked he couldn't wait until the key was in the lock; stumbled over the threshold, hauling his lover's shirt from his pants, fumbling with his belt, telling Patrick how fine he was, how perfect in every particular: chest and nipples and belly and prick. No man in Castro had been more beautiful; nor any wanted him more in return.
He was at the apartment door now; and through it; and moving towards the bedroom. Somebody was crying there, pitifully. He hesitated before entering, afraid of what he would discover on the other side. Then he heard Patrick speak.
'Please stop that,' he said, gently, 'it's very depressing.'
I'm not too late, Will thought, and slipped through the door into the bedroom.
Rafael was standing at the window, obediently stifling his tears. Adrianna was sitting on the bed, watching her patient, who had before him a bowl of vanilla pudding. His condition had deteriorated considerably in the days since Will had departed for England. He'd lost weight, and his pallor was sickly, his eyes sunk in bruisy shadow. Plainly he needed to sleep; his lids were heavy, his features slack with exhaustion. But Adrianna was gently insisting he first finish his food, which he did, conscientiously scraping the bowl to be sure he'd eaten it all.