‘Interesting,’ I said, non-committally.
‘I’ve been able to do that ever since I was a child,’ he explained. ‘I knew my father had another woman long before my mother found out about it. I was eight then. I knew that my schoolmistress’s mother had died the moment I saw her walking across the schoolyard that winter morning. Five minutes before she came into the classroom and told us about it. And I knew. . No, I’d better stop. It’s pointless to keep providing proof. It doesn’t matter if you believe me or not.’
I nodded. ‘I’ve no reason to doubt you.’
‘And now you’re sitting there wondering what I have to say about the husband and the house, aren’t you?’ said Mr Britton, taking a swig of beer.
‘Once you’ve started you might as well go on,’ I said.
He laughed. Somewhat nervously, I thought — in any case it was the first time he’d done so during our conversation.
‘I don’t really have anything to go on about,’ he said. ‘I just get a fleeting image in my brain, and all I can do is describe what the image looked like. What it might mean is another matter altogether.’
‘And what exactly did you see in my case?’
He thought for a moment, no more. ‘I didn’t see a lot,’ he said. ‘At first a man, then a white house. . Bathed in strong sunlight — it looked as if it were somewhere in the south. The Mediterranean or North Africa, perhaps. Then came the shadow: it came from up above, and I had the impression that it was your shadow. Or that it had something to do with you at least. And it swept away the man. But the house remained standing. Anyway, that’s all — but it was pretty clear. I suppose “mist” is a better word than “fog” to describe it, by the way.’
I swallowed. ‘What did this man look like, did you notice any details?’
‘No. I saw him standing quite a long distance away. But he was rather elderly, not really old — about sixty or so.’
‘And you saw all this inside my mind?’
He adopted an apologetic expression. ‘Perhaps not quite — but it’s when I observe a face that images like these crop up, and that’s what I did.’
‘You observed my face?’
‘Every man between the ages of fifteen and ninety would want to observe your face. If he could. Do you think I’m being importunate?’
I wondered if I thought so. I concluded that I might have done in different circumstances, but now here we were in the local pub in Winsford in the county of Somerset, and with the exception of Mr Tawking this Mark Britton was the first person I’d spoken to for more than half a minute in over a week. No, it didn’t feel importunate, and I explained why.
‘Thank you. It’s lonely, being a writer, is it?’
‘It goes with the territory. If you can’t cope with loneliness you can’t devote yourself to writing.’
He shrugged, and suddenly looked a little sad.
‘I could be a great writer. If that’s the necessary criterion.’
That was of course an opportunity for me to ask questions about his private circumstances, but I desisted. Instead I extracted some practical information from him. Where I could find a launderette, for instance. Where I could buy firewood. Which was the best place to shop for food.
Mr Britton filled me in on these points and several more besides, and when we left the pub we thanked each other for an interesting conversation. He said he usually visited The Royal Oak Inn several times a week, and was looking forward to meeting me there again.
Then we shook hands and said goodbye. He went off up Halse Lane, Castor and I crossed over the road and walked down to the war memorial, where the car was parked. I realized that I had drunk two glasses of wine rather than the planned one, but I certainly had no intention of walking up to Darne Lodge in the dark. I could see no sign of Mark Britton on the road, and assumed he must have turned off into one of the narrow alleys you pass before coming up onto the moor itself.
I had left the bathroom light on, but that wasn’t visible from the road and I overshot the house by some fifty metres before realizing it. It was not exactly straightforward, backing along the narrow asphalt track, but I managed it. I made a mental note to buy some kind of outdoor lantern to hang on the gate-post, so that I would be able to find my way home in future.
Before I fell asleep — but quite a while after Castor had done so at the foot end of the bed — I made two decisions. I would wait for at least a week before setting foot again in The Royal Oak Inn, and the following day I would be sure to check the computers, both mine and Martin’s. Sixteen days had passed since we left Stockholm, so it was high time.
I would go to an internet cafe in Minehead — Mark Britton had said there were several there — and take a look at the e-mail inboxes. And if necessary answer any pressing messages. It would certainly not be a good thing if correspondents started checking up on where we were.
Certainly not.
10
After Synn’s birth I was stricken with something that was eventually diagnosed as post-natal depression.
I don’t know if that was the correct name for it, but if the two things coincide in time — the birth and the depression — I assume it must be. In any case, it meant that the relationship between myself and my daughter was disturbed from the very start. That important contact between mother and child that everybody talks about didn’t happen until several months later, and by then it was too late.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like my child. The fact was that I had no desire to go on living any longer. I could see no light at the end of the tunnel, and nothing seemed to have any point. Every day, during the weeks I was in hospital, I asked the nurses to bring my daughter to me: but as soon as I had been with her for a few minutes I started crying my eyes out. It was uncontrollable, and after I had fed her briefly they took her away again. I know that I cried more for Synn’s sake than for my own.
I received help of various kinds, and was eventually allocated a therapist. It was the first time in my life I had met one; her name was Gudrun Ewerts, and after only two or three sessions she expressed the opinion that I ought to have been given help much sooner. When I told her the story of my life up to that point — it was 1983, and I had just celebrated my twenty-sixth birthday — Gudrun put her head in her hands and sighed.
‘My dear,’ she said. ‘Have you paused to think about what you’ve been through these last ten years?’
I thought about that, then asked her what she meant.
She glanced at her notebook. ‘If I understand things correctly, what’s happened is as follows: your younger sister has died. Your boyfriend has died. Your mother and father have died, and you have given birth to two children. Is that right?’
I thought once again. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s right. I suppose it’s a bit much.’
Gudrun smiled. ‘You can say that again. And I don’t blame you for reacting as you have done.’
She went on to explain that what I had done was simply to bottle everything up, and that was what was now punishing me. She accepted that bottling things up could be an effective way of dealing with such happenings: but before you do that you need to have a clear idea about what it is that is being hidden away.
She liked to express herself in images, and what we spoke about in all our conversations — for there were many, definitely over a hundred — had much more to do with the fatal accident to my younger sister and the tragic fall that killed my boyfriend than with little Synn.
But it was mainly to do with me, of course.
My life had been badly mismanaged, I was informed. I hadn’t dealt with it as one ought to deal with one’s life, I hadn’t taken it seriously enough. But I was pretty well suited to be a television performer, she was the first to acknowledge that, and I recall that we laughed about it. On the whole it would be an advantage if the television authorities could use cartoon versions of newsreaders, Gudrun thought: it is not good for anybody to sit staring at a camera, knowing that a million anonymous viewers are sitting on their sofas and gaping at your face. Evening after evening. I actually passed on her suggestion to one of my bosses, but as expected it fell on stony ground.