“Their what?”
“I am able to visit the realm of the spirits, to seek help and guidance and to heal those who need it. Shamanic practitioners cross the borders between reality and nonreality at will. We seek the portals that lead to the other side of the sky. The higher realm and the lower realm.…,”
“How long have you been doing this, sir?” asks Catherine: her mousy voice almost lost above the hubbub of excited vowels.
“Since I changed my ways,” says Sixpence, turning soft eyes upon her. “I used to be a different person, Catherine. A different man, with a different name. I was in the Royal Navy, if you can believe such a thing. I wanted what other people seemed to want. Money. A girlfriend. A nice house and maybe a couple of kids somewhere down the road. I didn’t get that kind of life. A different destiny chose me.”
“Sir?”
Sixpence looks down at his boots. He twitches his face, moving his glasses up his nose. A sadness settles upon him like snow. “I made bad decisions when I was a young man,” he says. “I wasn’t as kind as I should have been. I was angry a lot of the time. I think I was looking for something and I didn’t know what it was. So one day I decided to seek it out. To turn my back on what everybody else believed to be the right way to live. I travelled. I saw the world. I learned how other people lived and I came to the conclusion that we have gone awry. We’ve lost our way. We’ve lost sight of what is important. It took a special person to show me the true way.”
“Some hippy like you, sir?” asks Violet, smirking.
“If that word helps you understand then yes, Violet,” he replies, quietly. “But to me he was a teacher. A doctor. A philosopher and a guide. He showed me how to journey. I drank the herbs that he bade me drink and I opened my eyes to a different reality. He healed me. Retrieved the parts of my soul from the dark place where it was lost. And at length, he taught me how to open those doors within me.”
“Was this in the Sixties, sir?” asks Cassandra, with her cut-glass vowels.
“I don’t know,” he says, quietly. “I sometimes don’t even know how old I am. None of it matters. I feel a connection with all things. A oneness. I try to help people….,”
“Daddy says you charge people to help them,” says Violet, obstinately.
He looks at her, his voice softening. “I don’t need many material things, Violet. I have my campervan, up there in the woods. I have enough to eat. I have books to read and records to listen to and I have friends who come to talk with me and listen to the birds. Sometimes, I have people stay with me so they can learn how to put right those parts of themselves that go wrong. This school – the school that is trying to open your eyes to see a different way of living – this school sometimes asks for donations. That’s between the board and the patrons. But I would never deny my services to those in need.”
“What’s it like, sir?” asks Catherine, quickly. “The other place. You know my dad’s a vicar, yeah? Well he says that heaven is a place of pure happiness; pure peace, pure love. Is it like that, sir?”
Sixpence turns his eyes upon her, pupils swelling to devour the dark irises. “Sometimes,” he says, softly. “Sometimes the sensation is of absolute serenity – a oneness, a place within a greater whole. Sometimes, if I journey in tandem with a particular soul, it is a darker, more menacing environment. Imagine being trapped for eternity in the worst nightmare you ever had. There are those whose minds are so troubled that such a realm exists within them. I have journeyed to such worlds to help retrieve their lost souls. I have glimpsed things that have terrified me.”
“Tell us, sir. Tell us what it’s like ….,”
Sixpence looks at Violet. His gaze is so intense that the space between them seems to crackle with energy. Violet does not look away.
“I would not wish the knowledge on any of you,” he says, at last. He shakes his head. “But there are those of you who will one day see.”
10
The day is only a little past noon, but the cars and vans that swish down Whitehaven High Street all have their headlights on, pitching great circles of lurid yellow onto the grubby shopfronts and the condensation-streaked windows of this tired, rain-lashed road. The Lake District starts a few miles inland, and the difference in atmosphere and affluence is remarkable. Rowan knows from checking on his phone that he’s worryingly close to the nuclear power station: a big silhouette of oblongs, orbs and squares. A mile the other way, the crumbling clifftop drifts into the village of Seascale; all rusty goalposts and untended playing fields; a wind-pummeled swathe of muddy beach and guest houses closed for the winter. Rowan likes the grit of the place – the heartfelt lack of pretension. West Cumbria has a sense of itself that always seems to raise a coal-grimed middle finger in the face of gentrification. It’s always seemed a place much more at ease with the opening of a new kebab shop than with any Italian-themed coffee house, as if donner meat and garlic mayo is intrinsically more in keeping with the spirit of this down-at-heel West Cumbrian harbour town than a skinny macchiato with extra foam. But for all that he admires the spit-and-sawdust earthiness, his mood matches his clothes. He’s still soaked to the skin; shivering hard enough to make his teeth rattle. He managed to change into a cleanish black T-shirt and steer his arms through the sleeves of a baggy cardigan but he couldn’t face the rigmarole of stripping off his jeans, socks or boots. Damp material clings to his thighs, his calves, ankles, soles. His toes feel like chipolata sausages straight from the freezer. He’s taking comfort in the fact that he has left a perfect arse-print on the calfskin leather of Jo’s vintage Nissan Figaro. She’s told them she would be back in an hour, dropping them off in the car-park of the DIY store and giving firm instructions not to cause mischief. Rowan had saluted, earnestly, then turned the hand gesture into one more in keeping with his feelings as she drove away in a burst of spray.
“I know I’m working, but will there be time to read?” asks Snowdrop, hopefully, beside him. She’s changed into dry clothes; big baggy lumberjack shirt now spilling down to her shins, where rainbow leggings peep out above sequinned high-top trainers. She’s wearing a genuine Lambretta parka and a floppy hat. She looks to Rowan as though she’s raided the dressing-up box.
“You can do whatever you feel like doing,” says Rowan, scowling. He can smell a pub. Can smell hops and vinegar and the humid embrace of strangers in too-damp clothes. His head’s spinning. The reality of his situation is starting to hit home, his thoughts grinding against one another like plates of pack-ice. He has to give Aubrey something, if only to buy himself time. He’s ducked them long enough. He’s not ready to tell the truth to anybody so he’s going to have to put his faith in a captivating lie.
Wincing into the cold wind, Rowan makes his way towards the big red oblong of the town library. There’s a sale on in the off-licence. A two-for-one offer in Specsavers. Five sausage rolls for a pound in Gregg’s. He mooches down a side street, past a charity shop where a woman in her eighties is standing in the window trying to put a leather jacket on a mannequin. The windows are steamy with condensation and through the smears of damp glass, it looks to Rowan as if two corpses are preparing one another for a night out. He pushes open the doors and steps into the warm, yellowy light of the library. It soothes him like a church. There are posters on the wall advertising author nights; book groups; tea mornings and computer literacy classes. A small woman with spectacles and extraordinarily frizzy hair is sitting on the floor with a toddler lap, reading from a colourful picture book. She’s doing all the voices. Rowan pegs her as a first rate parent.