Authors: Monica Ali
What interest in science? A chemistry O-level. A notebook, written up at the Manchester Jarvis, while he was still a trainee, of his 'experiments' with grilled steak, listing times, temperatures, results, his keen observations regarding the Maillard reactions, the denaturing and coagulation of muscle protein. Gabriel started to feel his own coagulation, the blood thickening in his veins.
He opened the book again, The Universe in a Nutshell. He started to read. What did it matter, anyway, when he was just a speck less than that, much less
on a planet orbiting a star in an outer arm of the Milky Way, one galaxy among billions and billions of galaxies, in a universe that is ever expanding, without boundaries in space or time.
His chest began to burn. He ignored it, turned the page and read about black holes.
He couldn't breathe. The only black hole he could comprehend was the one opening now before him. He shifted his legs carefully over the side of the bed and pushed his shoulders back, trying to expand his lungs. Oxygen, they needed more oxygen. Tingling in his hands and feet. Not enough oxygen. His blood was too thick. His heart couldn't push the blood. It was throwing itself against the inside of his ribs, getting all mashed up. He'd end up having a ... heart attack. Christ, he was stupid. He tried to call out to Lena, but no sound came. His mobile was on the stand beside his bed, he grabbed for it and it fell to the floor. Gabriel fell too.
The pain in his chest and shoulder was searing. He managed to dial the number.
He thought, this may be the last thing that I ever do.
'Emergency services.'
'Help,' said Gabriel. 'Help.'
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE MORNING SUN SCATTERED SUGAR HERE AND THERE ACROSS THE moors which stretched out ahead, white glowing spills among the russet tones of green and brown. Gabriel squinted into the distant cut and swathe. This gently sloping, ever-reaching land was filled with a vague kind of longing. The peaty ground was soft beneath his boots. The red winter bracken shouldered the wind.
It was Christmas Eve. They used to walk up to the tower on Christmas Eve and the whole of Blantwistle, it seemed, would be there, airing the children, the old folk, the dog.
'Where's everyone gone?' said Gabe.
Ted leaned two-handed on his walking stick. 'Shops. Shopping, I'll be bound.'
'We can stop here if you like.'
Gabriel had driven them up (raised Ted's old Rover from under her shroud) and parked in a lay-by. They'd walked scarcely a third of a mile.
'Give over wi' that fussing,' said Ted. But he stayed where he was.
Gabriel drifted off the path. He crossed some rocky ground. 'Back in a minute,' he called to Ted, and hoped the words weren't blown away.
It was all bracken. Where was the heather? When he was a boy there was bell heather here, and cross-leaved heath and of course there was ling common heather everywhere. In summer there'd be great thick purple carpets of the stuff. After they'd moved to Plodder Lane, they'd march out of the garden, him and Jen, across the cow fields, across Marsh End, over by Sleepwater Farm, and run on the moors. They'd not be missed until Dad got home. He'd take a stick to the nodding cotton-wool heads of the cotton grass. Jenny collected bilberries and tart little cloudberries and sometimes she found crowberries, hard and black, and didn't eat them but drew with them on a rock. And there was lime-green sphagnum that sprang up when you pushed it down and the scattered yellow stars of the bog asphodel, and the sundew that ate insects, and if you were lucky you could lie on your belly in the soft and soggy ground and watch a butterfly slowly dissolving in the plant's red and yellow hairy mouth.
There was nothing now but coarse grass and ferns. Nothing to keep a boy here.
When they were kids they'd spend a summer's day. If he came back in the summer maybe he'd find berries and flowers.
They'd always keep Twistle Tower in view because they knew the way home from there, and it was easy to get lost on the moors. There was a proper name for the tower but he couldn't remember it. He remembered pretending it was a space rocket, eighty-five feet of stone topped with a glass-domed cockpit. You could see Morecambe Bay from up there. You could see Blackpool Tower. You could see the Isle of Man. When the mist wasn't in, which it usually was. He'd smoked his first cigarette in the dank stairwell, French-kissed Catherine Dyer against the two-feet-thick stone wall, counted the eight sides, sixteen windows, ninety-two steps, one hundred and fifteen rivets in the viewing deck platform so many times he would take the numbers to his grave.
Sometimes Mum forgot they were playing in the back garden and went out and locked all the doors. There was always Twistle Tower and they'd go in out of the rain, though you could sit there a month and not get dry. If he planned ahead he'd take his binoculars and look for birds. In summer you'd see all sorts curlews, skylarks, lapwings. They didn't interest him so much. Of course he liked the merlins, the buzzards and peregrines, the thrill of spotting a hen harrier or sparrow hawk. He'd seen a golden eagle once.
Today he'd not seen so much as a pipit, not heard the red grouse call go-back-go-back. In London he hardly saw a sparrow, a blackbird. From pigeons there was no escape.
Gabriel thought he should turn, find Ted, but the moor pulled him on a little further and a little further yet. He saw that there was heather here among the bracken and large stands up ahead. Now that he had stopped looking he saw the place was not so barren after all. Creeping dogwood in its purple winter foliage ran under his feet, and there was a clump of bog rosemary, here a juniper bush. He reached a track and looked down the spine of a shallow valley, the moors rising like soft gold wings, and the sun beat white-pale in the sky, sending flurries of light down on the hillsides and over the far clouds that started to roll in now, dark and low.
Gabe breathed deeply and gave himself to a single thought. Yes, I am alive.
Since he had called for the ambulance, over a week ago now, he kept thinking this same thing. By the time the paramedics arrived he had recovered, was only winded by the ordeal, the embarrassment, but they insisted on taking him in.
The doctor ran an ECG. 'We see it pretty often,' he said. 'You'd be surprised.
People always think they're the first person who's ever confused a blocked artery and a panic attack.'
It wasn't a heart attack but it still made him think. I'm alive. He could have a heart attack. People dropped down dead. If it could happen to anyone, it could happen to him. Why not? That he could, most certainly, die made him feel all the more definitely alive.
He closed his eyes for a moment to savour the wind on his face.
Lena hadn't come to the hospital but when he returned, though he told her everything was fine, she rested a hand on his chest and watched him. In the days that followed she kept watching him instead of the television and she even laughed a little whenever he made a joke.
Gabe found Ted by the dry-stone wall. A stray sheep pulled at a tuft of grass.
Ted swung his walking stick in the red-brown brush.
'Here somewhere,' he said.
'What've you lost?'
Ted got down on his knees, the difficulty of the manoeuvre betrayed only by a tightening of the lips. 'This is it,' he said, pushing the vegetation back.
'Memorial stone.'
Gabe bent down to read the inscription. Herbert Haydock, William Railton, Roger Wolstenholme.
'What's this? Not buried here, are they?'
'Buried down by Kitty Fields. In t'cemetery. You not heard this story before?'
'Don't think so.'
Ted got up using his cane and Gabe for leverage. They leaned against the wall.
'I'd always a mind to tell,' said Ted. 'Mebbe I thought you were too young to hear when we came out them Sunday walks. And by the time you weren't too young ... well.'
'Ghost story, is it?' said Gabe.
Ted shook his head. 'You read the papers, these days, look at the television, them reality programmes, all as they show is the worst of people.' He drew his lips into his mouth.
'Dad, are you telling the story or what? Not too young now, am I?'
'These three lads,' said Ted, 'they set off one Saturday afternoon from Sleepwater where one of them lived. It's thought they was headed for Duckworth Fold, though others says Higher Croft and that makes sense n'all because William's uncle lived at Higher Croft Farm. Anyway, it was winter and a snowstorm sets in, worst anyone could remember, and there's folks not long since passed what'd tell you the snow came up high as a bedroom window, and that were down in t'town. Up here, you can imagine it were whiteout.
Whiteout.'
'When was this?' said Gabe.
'Nineteen twenty-one,' said Ted. 'Three lads. Herbert Haydock and William Railton, both sixteen years of age, best friends, so it's said. Roger Wolstenholme were Herbert's cousin. Only just ten, a little boy.'
'This where they died?'
'Found William in near reach of Rough Hall. Gone for help and almost made it, though you'd not see yer hand in front yer face. Few days before they found t'others. When there were a bit of a thaw. Drifts ten feet deep, mind. Easy enough to lose all direction when you can't see that tower. Herbert Haydock were over that direction, if I recall ...' Ted waved his stick. 'About three hundred or so feet from his cousin. Froze to death, right enough. He's decided to try for help. Course he didn't get far when they found him he's only got a thin jacket and shirt.'
'Not very sensible in a snowstorm.'
'Came up quick by all accounts. Weren't a storm when they set out. And he had a thick overcoat, Herbert, when they left. He's give it to the little un, wrapped it round, made his cousin comfortable as he could, up against this wall. Did right by him, you might say.'
'I would,' said Gabriel. He looked at Ted, watched the bob of his Adam's apple as he swallowed, the tightness in his cheeks. 'I would say.'
'We've to look sharp,' said Ted, moving, 'we want to miss the rain.'
'Bet it was quite a funeral,' said Gabe.
'So it's told,' said Ted. He looked at Gabe and then looked away as he spoke.
'You're a good lad, Gabriel. We've to say these things while there's time.' He nodded and walked away.
Gabriel trailed a short distance behind turning over the things he should say in return. You're a good dad, he decided, plain and simple. But he should have said it straight away. To say it now, it would sound false, as if he'd taken all this time to come up with it, as though it was something he had to force himself to say. The rain began to spot.
'Dad,' he called, 'what about Christmas pudding? Is Jenny bringing one tomorrow or should we stop at the shops?'
Ted and Nana dozed in their chairs in the afternoon while Gabriel, inert on the sofa, drugged by the television, the gas fire, the impossibility of truly living in a room stuffed with tinsel, old people and rubber plants, tried to make a plan to go into town for some last-minute presents. He was still alive, wasn't he? He could drag his sorry hide off the velour upholstery. He still had a pulse. Maybe. But he felt like someone, something, had sucked the marrow out of his bones.
Ted snored loudly, jerked half awake, and settled down again. When his father had answered the door yesterday evening Gabriel had almost cried out, confronted with a skull on a stick. After an hour or so his eyes had adjusted, the horror had gone, and a newly drawn father had emerged. He was like the old Ted, after all, only sharper and tighter and the soft sachets beneath his eyes were looser and rippled as he walked. But he ate his dinner and his breakfast, and with his appetite returned he would, Gabe thought, put on weight again.
This morning he'd managed a walk. Perhaps Ted was in remission. Gabe hadn't found a way to ask but when Jenny came tomorrow she would fill him in.
Nana, her feet on the tapestry stool, was in bedsocks and a flowered garment that was possibly a dress, could be a nightie, and had much potential as an armchair cover. In her sleep she oozed from every visible orifice. Gabriel jacked himself up to the edge of the sofa, reached the tissue box on the occasional table, and was choosing between eyes, nose and mouth when Nana woke up and pulled a handkerchief from between the buttons on her chest. She wiped her nose.
'Is it washday?' said Nana. She moved her lips a while longer but didn't say anything else.
'I think so,' said Gabe.
'It's our Nancy's turn to lead the range. Don't forget I did it last week.'
'That's right. You did.'
'Aye, well,' sighed Nana. 'I don't mind a bit.' She drifted off in some opiate dream.
Gabriel changed channels. He found a news review of the year. They had some business types talking. 'Speaking personally,' said one, 'it's been a lean sort of year.'
Gabriel's stomach contracted. What if it was Dad who was right about the economy? Living in a dream world, he'd said. How long can it go on? If there was going to be a recession, the restaurant trade would be in the shit. All his savings well, it was too late now.
'Hark at him,' said Nana, waking. She screwed up her face, achieving the seemingly impossible feat of multiplying her wrinkles. 'Wouldn't know the meaning of the word. Lean! He's no idea!'
She struggled to sit up, listing to one side and clinging to the chair arms as if being tossed on ocean waves. 'In't it shocking,' she cried. 'The waste! Is that our Gabriel? Is it? Well, they're not brought up right these days.' She pushed her lips around her face. 'Two bob a week, feeds a family of four does that. She were a champion cook, our mother. D'you remember, Gabe? Champion baker. We'd lick the bowls, you and me and Nancy. A sheep's head every week, and it's an economical cut and no mistake. Brains for Dad with a nice bit of bread and butter. Press the tongue for butties. Veg and barley in with the head and, ooh, it makes a lovely broth. Lovely, lovely ... have I to be somewhere soon?'
'No, Nana, you're all right. You've got ages yet.'
But what did Dad know about economics? Fairweather knew, and he'd said the City was booming. Hadn't he? And the City led the way.