Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart (29 page)

“And I think if you were genuinely enterprising,” he said, “you might have learnt to hide those gentlemen behind dust jackets borrowed from
The Famous Five
or
Just William
.”

“Oh, you do, do you?
William the Showman
, actually, and
Swallows and Amazons
. But Mr Marshall in the bookshop believes I've got the best-read family in the whole of Bucks and that there's always one of them celebrating a birthday. He feels sorry for me and lets me have things for practically nothing. Oh! I've suddenly got an idea you may know Mr Marshall! If you do, please tell him how his kindness unfailingly touches me. Tell him I shall never stop feeling enormously grateful to him.”

“Point taken. How are you enjoying your childhood in general?”

We were walking slowly round the various counters.

“Oh, it's brilliant!”

“Tell me.”

“I don't know how. Do you want a list of things?”

“Why not?”

“Well…” Where did I begin? A sense of wonder had gradually been restored to me, a boy's-eye view of the world that noticed as if for the first time the patterning on a snail's shell or the inside of a foxglove. It had been fun being pushed along in one's buggy, having rides on shoulders, owning a tricycle, scooter, roller skates—electric train set—wind-up gramophone. It had been fun to stay again with grandparents, riding in an open car, eating honey from the comb, scattering grain for their Rhode Island Reds, going mushroom picking in the dawn. It had been fun being taken to children's plays and circuses and pantomimes, and knowing that this time one had to hang onto everything one could, since it was all so transient and precious and unrepeatable. (Essentially unrepeatable.) But it wasn't easy in a few minutes, and without warning, to pick out the thousand contributing ingredients. “I honestly can't do it justice.”

“But if you're not even going to try I shall think it very feeble. And feel truly disappointed.”

I needed no greater incentive. As well he knew.

“Okay, then. Completely at random. One's first glimpse of the sea out of a train window. Birthday parties. The smell of a grocer's shop. Tobogganing on a tin tray. Treasure hunts. Riding on a pram base. Running after car tyres. Playing rounders. Storming the enemy's camp, or castle, on summer evenings in the dark. I think this all sounds very naff.”

Zack was riffling through some sheet music. “It's 1947,” he said. “I don't know the meaning of that word.”

“But naff or not…it's been phenomenal!”

“And what about your looks?”

“My looks? Oh, fine. Yes.” But somehow they didn't seem so important any longer. Maybe they would come to do so as I grew older and got interested in girls, or maybe it was the usual story of someone wanting what he hadn't got and not reflecting too much on what he already had. But at least I liked to think of meat and fish and peanut butter slowly transforming themselves into muscle. (I hadn't yet become a vegetarian. Why
not
, I was to wonder later.)

“I note you've made no mention of the poor, the maimed, the halt and the blind.”

“What about them?”

“Renewed opportunities for the helping thereof.”

“Don't mock,” I said. “It may not amount to much but I do try.”

“I wasn't really mocking.”

“I'm only a little boy of ten. Unfortunately there are limits to what people will accept from little boys of ten.”

“You could run errands. Read newspapers. Make lovely cups of tea.” He smiled, spread his hands, then added, “But never mind. You'll get older. I give you my word on that.”

“Big-Hearted Arthur,” I said.

He turned from his desultory inspection of assorted loose biscuits and looked at me closely. “Why do you say that?”

I was cock-a-hoop.

“Oh, Zack, you surprise me. I thought you knew everything. And you haven't even heard of Arthur Askey!”

“Ah, right. ‘Hello, playmates'… ‘Bzz, bzz, bzz, bzz, honey bee, honey bee…'”

“Too late,” I said complacently. “You can't bear to think I caught you out, that's your trouble.”

“You jumped-up specimen! Don't break a lance with me!” He smiled as he ruffled my hair.

I'd never met that expression. “Is it derived from jousting?”

“Which in turn derives from
jouster
, Old French. To fight on horseback.”

“That's something I'd like to take up as soon as I can.”

“Jousting?”

“Ha-ha! Yes, and fencing—why not? But what I really meant, as I
think
you must have known, was horse-riding.”

“I agree. It's an imperative. It's also great fun.”

“Along with polo and squash and boxing and…” I laughed. “Zack? Do you ever get the feeling I've a lot to make up for?”

When I'd said that, I had been talking only in terms of wasted time, but ever since then the phrase had intermittently reverberated, and taken on a different connotation.

“I've got a lot to make up for,” I thought now, as I cycled down the hill towards the station.

Once more, when he had gone, it struck me that I had spoken largely of inanities (no doubt carried away by the sheer exhilaration of seeing him again—
very
schoolboyish) and still hadn't alluded to the thing which really cut to the heart of my being: my unshakable guilt over Brian Douglas. It seemed there might be a basic malfunction in that part of my memory, self-regulating as soon as Zack had gone. But it also seemed, whether I alluded to it or not, that he must surely know. Yet why in that case didn't he help? God surely knew, as well—why didn't
he
help? The prayer for Brian Douglas—and for myself—was constantly in my thoughts and yet my burden remained intact (the cross I had to bear, as Miss Evers at the library would have phrased it, an expression I abominated with a force that simply wasn't rational and could sometimes make me shudder). The nightmare continued as before, though not so frequently—only seven times during this past year. It was enough. I didn't have to be asleep to remember its content.

I got to Aylesbury at half-past-ten and then cycled to the village where Major Shipman lived. The Major was one of my father's bosses. He and Mr King owned not only the Regent but, in Chesham, the Embassy and the Astoria, as well as other cinemas in nearby towns. I had met him and his wife on several occasions, received good presents from them over each of the past six Christmases, as well as from Mr and Mrs King—Dad had come back from the war in September 1945 and had almost at once been taken on as the Regent's manager—but I'd never visited the Shipmans at their home, and indeed it wasn't them I'd come to see today. (As a matter of fact, I knew that on the following morning the Major would be calling on us and bringing a tinful of his wife's meringues.) Luckily, though, the way to the village had been decently signposted.

I hoped to heaven that the Shipmans had only one set of neighbours nearby, for if there were houses all about, then my job would be a lot more difficult, as well as considerably more embarrassing. I began to sweat as I cycled and this wasn't entirely due to the humidity.

It was fortunate, however, that the land wasn't hilly. If it had been, my Aertex shirt would have felt still damper than it already did.

It was also fortunate that, yes, Apple Tree House was the only dwelling in any direction that could have been called close to Shipman's Farm. But my heart was showing no signs of slowing down in gratitude as I pushed open the front gate and walked along the narrow path between rows of neatly planted vegetables, rows prettily interspersed with pinks and marigolds and lavender. Perhaps the apple trees—or at least apple
tree
—were in the back garden. The house itself was unpretentious: redbrick, small and functional: and looked more in keeping with its vegetables than with the high-sounding name picked out for it.

A man of about fifty answered my knock. He was in his shirt and braces and had a crumpled sheet of the Sunday paper dangling from one hand.

I wished him good morning and asked if his wife were home. I knew I sounded polite and middle-class and stupid.

“No, what do you want her for?” His eyes appeared to narrow. “If you're trying to sell her something, lad…?”

I shook my head. But instinct had told me not to deal with anyone other than the woman of the house, not to blunt my message by talking either to the husband or the son. In her absence, though, I wondered if maybe I
should
talk to the son.

“Not here, either. If you must know, they've gone to church, the pair of them. Another hour, round about.” Happily he didn't again ask what I wanted, nor offer to take a message. I settled myself on the ground outside their gate and leant back against the low wall of the garden.

He'd been right about the timing but wrong about their coming back together, and because she was alone I wasn't sure until the last moment that this was the woman whom I had to speak to.

Yet what was encouraging, she gave me a smile as she drew near. “Tired? You haven't got a puncture?”

I scrambled to my feet.

“Could I ask you something?” I didn't like not knowing what to call her. And
ask
sounded better than
tell
.

“A glass of water? Certainly, my love. Might even find a bit of squash to go in it. My goodness, it is hot, though.” With the screwed-up handkerchief already in her hand she wiped at her forehead. “Real close and muggy. Full of all these horrid gnats and midges.” She inspected her handkerchief and maybe saw that she'd put paid to one or two of them.

“There's going to be a storm,” I said.

“Good thing. That's what we need all right, something to clear the air.” She had now turned in at the gate. “Mind you, we expected one yesterday, and the day before that, too. Will you come in with me or would you prefer to wait out here?”

“No, I know there is. Going to be one. A storm. In an hour or so. That's the reason why I've come.” I was conscious of not having started very well.

She looked at me uncertainly.

I didn't hesitate.

“There's going to be a storm and your cottage will be hit by lightning. And your son will be killed if he's lying down.”

She didn't say anything.

“I'm sorry if I put it bluntly. But I didn't know how else to tell you.”

In a moment she recovered her composure. Or her power of speech.

“Listen, love, you can't go about frightening folks like that—making up wild stories—I think you'd better be off without that glass of lemonade…as a bit of a punishment, you see. You didn't look the type of boy who'd go in for silly pranks like that.”

She turned her back on me then and started up the path. I ran after her, caught her by the arm. The warmth and moisture of her flesh was disconcerting.

“You've got to believe what I'm telling you!”

“No, I think I've got to do nothing of the sort!” Angrily, she shook my hand away. “Now I don't know if this is
your
idea or whether you've been put up to it but I'm not having it, do you hear, and so you'd better be off before I call my old man out here. Or before I telephone the police, which is more what you deserve. And if you ever dare to return…well…” She clearly couldn't think what might make a sufficiently awful threat.

“Please listen. Please! I know what I'm talking about.”

“Oh, I haven't got time for this. Already late and if lunch isn't on the table by one I'll have a sulky husband for the rest of the afternoon. I can't be doing with that.”

“And if it is on the table by one,” I said, “you'll have a dead son for the rest of your life. Would that please you better?”

“Colin!” she called.

“Listen. How do you think I know that your son always goes to lie on his bed immediately after Sunday lunch?”

“Colin!” And then for the first time since I'd revealed the purpose of my visit, she looked at me with more curiosity than annoyance. “How
do
you know?”

“But it's right, isn't it? He does always go upstairs to lie down after lunch?”

“Are you a friend of Billy's? No, you couldn't be, I've never seen you. Who have you been talking to?”

“Nobody. I promise. But your house is going to be struck by lightning shortly after two and Billy's room is right beneath the point where it will strike. His bed—moments later—will be nothing but a mound of ashes. Whether or not he's on it will be largely up to you.”

The front door opened.

“Oh, there you are,” the man said. “I thought I heard you call. I was on the lav.” I remembered—as I didn't always—to offer up a thank-you. “That boy still here? What does he want, for God's sake?”

“Nothing. Nothing. I'll be in in half a jiffy.”

“Well, it's getting late,” the man observed, with noticeable truculence. “Don't give him any money, if that's what he's after.”

He returned inside but left the door open.

“How do you
know
?” she whispered, urgently.

“Just do.”

“That's not an answer.”

“I mean, I have this… I sometimes know that things are going to happen.”

“Like what?”

“But that's got nothing to—” Yet then I thought I would never see her again; could it really matter if I broke the rules for once? “Oh, like the King is going to die next February. Like on the same day Princess Elizabeth is crowned we'll get the news they've conquered Everest. Like, in the year after the coronation, Roger Bannister is going to run the four-minute mile…” It was surely important I should try to impress her.

“And like someone who'll never make the headlines is going to be struck by lightning in an unknown village at the back of nowhere. Why?” She added in the same near monotone: “You don't even know our name, do you?”