I turned to Gray's Anatomy. I had found an old copy propping up a table leg in a forgotten, tarped-over corner of the bookshop's small yard. The boards were warped and mouldy, the pages fat with rain, but I was able to turn them. On one of the endpapers, a figure posed balletically, half its skin flayed to reveal the muscles and bones and blood vessels beneath. Its head was turned away, as if in embarrassment at this super-nudity. It looked as though a tree was growing through the chest and neck, searching fingers into the cavities of the head. Walnut brain. Vertebrae like the fossil of some ancient, impossible sea creature, moving muscularly, peristaltically, through the primordal waves. This is how I saw the body now, as a series of separate, almost independent items. Like the jets in my dream I felt jammed together, ill-fitting. There was no syncopation, no sense of an organic machine working on instinct. I was conscious of every breath I pulled into my torn lungs, every malignant beat of my heart.
Seeing the images of these body parts so dispassionately rendered, described clinically with neutral words, was of help to me. I could bear to consider my physicality if I considered it the same way. I could believe that healing was a process that would lead to a brighter future, rather than a constant reminder that I was something damaged and diminished. I could focus on one particular part of me: the hands, the face, and see how I was getting better. There was no such positivity if I continued to see myself as a whole. I was broken and bent that way. I was a mess. How could I ever come back from that?
I read a little more, dipping into the pages that concerned the sections of my body that had suffered the most. Lots of them. I gorged on Latin names: another buffer between myself and the damage.
Quadratus Lumborum. Tibialis Posticum. Astragalus.
Split. Shredded. Compacted. Shattered. A knock at the door and I loosed a breath I had been holding for too long.
I shuffled over and opened it.
'Charlie, hello.'
Charlie nodded and thrust a white paper parcel into my chest. I almost asked him if he needed it burning, but I caught a fresh marine whiff and realised it was fish.
'Turbot,' he said. 'All gutted, scaled and boned for you. I know how you London types like your clean fillets.' He nodded again. 'You'll eat like a king tonight. And here's a little something for your help.' He passed me an envelope containing three fifty-pound notes.
'I should come fishing with you more often,' I said.
'Y'should. We won't always catch, y'know, th'unusual stuff.'
'Cannonball and the like, hey?'
He laughed, sourly. 'Aye.'
Charlie seemed hesitant, as if unsure of what to do next, whether to say something or make his excuses. I was seeing more and more of him. I wondered if it was because he was concerned about me, or about my proximity to Ruth. Or maybe it was just getting too cold in that old fish shed of his. Even though the sea was in his veins, I imagined that days spent with plastic crates filled with ice and the constant stink of bait could stick in anybody's craw. I felt I should ask him in for a cup of tea, or a whisky even. I was going to ask him about Ruth, what their relationship was, but forming it into a thought made the question seem inappropriate. How could it sound anything other than offensive?
'Well,' he said. His eyes were wreathed in wrinkles and dark hollows, but still seemed young. 'I'll be off.'
'Come and have dinner,' I said. 'I'll cook for the three of us.'
He nodded again and turned away. It was only as I was moving to close the door that I saw the box on the ground.
Secrets and deception. There was a lot of it going on. I thought of every house in Southwick as having a skeleton hanging in the cupboard. Everyone with a dark little corner where things grew that ought never to be allowed to take root. You might feel that you were exorcising them by giving them to me to burn, but it wasn't true. It was like fighting old man's beard. It always comes back. And there was always the memory of it. You couldn't tear those out. No amount of flame would consume them.
I tried to remember how I had come by this peculiar job. I had not asked for it and nobody had suggested it to me. One morning, shortly after I had returned, shakily, to my feet, I found a package outside the door with a note pinned to it. A box of matches too. The note was typed. It read:
Thing unclean.
I picked the box up, thinking, Me or it?
This new box might have come from Charlie, or it might not. It didn't contain anything I'd immediately connect with him, but then I supposed that was the point of secrets. You weren't necessarily meant to be able to trace them back to the source. But he didn't seem the type of person who would need help. He didn't come across as the kind of person who accreted pain, despite his grief regarding Gordon. He was an external kind of person, in every way. I doubted he spent too much time worrying about things. An afternoon out on the sea must dispel as many, if not more, demons than a bottle of whisky, or half an hour on a psychiatrist's lounger.
As I carried the box towards the beach, I wondered if what I was doing helped people at all. Did they feel as though they were handing over the burden to someone else? Could relief be as easy as that? Surely not. Maybe it was all just a plan to keep me active, and to take my thoughts away from Tamara. Well it wasn't working, if that was the case. I thought about her all the time, even when Ruth was around.
I thought of her now, and grew impatient with my task. More of the same. It was fascinating how other people's belongings - collections and clothes and books and letters - could mean absolutely nothing to the person who inherited them, or turned them over with impatient fingers in a junk shop, or burned them on a fire. I wondered if Tamara had discarded the trinkets I had gifted her, or whether she kept them as a secret declaration of a love she could no longer stand. Maybe that was it. She loved me too much to see me suffer. I felt my heart thud with need for her, and my own desperation. I was grasping for every possible salve.
I burned everything in the box, and then I burned the box too. A bra melted around its wire frame. A plastic medicine bottle became so much hot glue. Something caught my eye in the moment it was consumed. I flicked at it with my toe, but it was too late. I peered into the flames and tried to confirm to myself that I'd seen the gold braid of a first officer's cuffs, but it wasn't likely. Just part of a coat, in the end. All I'd seen was the silver trail of a slug, or the sticky remnants of some spilled drink.
But I felt uncomfortable. There was something going on here. There were too many odd things going on in my life, all of them since the accident. Patterns and signs. I wondered if someone was playing around with me, trying to put the frighteners on me for some imagined insult. Maybe it was just someone in the village who didn't like the idea of a stranger burying bad secrets, poking his nose in where it wasn't wanted.
The fire was weakening. I gazed at the shrivelled remnants and tried to see a message in them. It occurred to me that I might have put together the box myself.
I kicked sand into the cinders and hobbled away, rubbing my face as I mulled over this fresh theory. If this was true, then was I trying to tell myself something about the near miss? The cockpit voice recorder and the gold braid and the flying charts... were their disposal some subtle method I had for jettisoning that part of my life for good? Maybe once I'd rid myself of the tangible objects, the mental flotsam would follow suit. God knew I had a lot of dark clouds in my head that needed blowing away. I was acutely aware of the fact that psychiatric disorders were the main cause of licence loss among commercial aviation crew after cardiovascular disease. Or maybe I was just looking for a way to distract myself from the crippling loss of Tamara.
Jesus, what a mess. I even felt guilty about not feeling that great still to be alive. I had nipped away from the jaws of death just as they were closing around my neck and all I could do was pule over my woes, and drift around like surface sand scared up by the winter squalls.
I got off the beach and went to the bookshop. I let myself in and switched on Ruth's computer, brought up her music player and got something jazzy on. It improved my mood straight away, as did the warmth from the radiators and the sight of Vulcan as he came trotting up the road. I let him in and he purred so hard he sent vibrations up my arm. He made a beeline for his bed and I put out some food and water for him.
I turned to the bookshelves and thought again about that pamphlet I'd seen. There were other histories of the village and its bloodiest day, but I could find no further references to children, either in the text itself or scribbled in the margins.
I sat down at the desk and let my swollen fingers trace the keys of the vintage cash register Ruth used. The last sale she had made had been a pretty good one: £14.50. But as I read it, there was another little prick to the heart: 1450 HRS had been the time officially logged for the airprox incident.
I almost laughed out loud at the coincidences raining down, or perhaps my knack of flagging everything with a significance that it probably didn't deserve. These thoughts were interrupted by the computer making a little chiming noise; I wouldn't have heard it if I hadn't stopped trying to bend my painful body into positions where I was able to read the titles on the book spines. It took a lot of concentration, forcing the little jars and sprains and aches that lanced into me every time I did so much as arch an eyebrow.
I dithered the mouse on its mat to get rid of the screensaver and there was a new email message in the box. I felt a pang of guilt as I opened up the email application, but Ruth had not said I couldn't use it. I'd given the woman at the airline her email address, after all. What was I supposed to do?
I tried not to look at the list of names in her inbox but my eyes picked up a couple anyway. NHS addresses, colleagues' names I recognised: someone called Penny, someone called Lou, as well as a few standalones I didn't recognise. Funny how a green eye will settle on the male moniker. Who the hell was Danny? Who the hell was Jake? My mouse finger was itching to find out, but I held firm. Ruth was popular. Ruth was kind. She had friends. Many before I was around. Danny and Jake should be worried about
me
.
The new message was from
Beck, Catriona.
Tamara's friend.
Dear Paul, This is Catriona. Elodie Pascal at Air France contacted me about your message. I'm very sorry to hear about your break-up, but there's nothing I can do. I haven't spoken to Tamara for a while. I actually tried to get in touch once I heard of your news, but she isn't picking up. I understand how upset you must be. Maybe she's upset too. If I know Tamara, and she did send me a long letter singing your praises, I think she must be. I hope you can work it out. Sorry I can't be more helpful. Good luck. Cat.
I hovered the cursor over that 'break-up', wishing I could scratch it out. We didn't break up, I wanted to tell the world. It hasn't been confirmed or denied yet. It isn't official. She's still mine.
I dispatched a brief thank you and closed the application. Then I thought about it and opened it again and deleted her email to me, then my reply from the 'sent' folder. Ruth would only be stressed if she found out I was chasing down what would in all probability turn out to be one great, miserable dead end. It was no big deal if she weren't to know about it.
I was suddenly very tired. I'd invested more hope in Catriona than I probably ought, but I felt frustrated. It was easy to dismiss strangers from your life these days, a click of the mouse, a problem forgotten. I was angry that she hadn't bust a gut to do more. I fished out the address book and tried the Amsterdam number again. Constant ring. No answerphone; she didn't like them.
I pushed back from the table smartly and felt my back grind like something trodden under the heel. A young mind in an old body. Death creeping at the edges, looking for some filthy toehold. What were you if you didn't have love? A ghost. Something lighter than you were meant to be, missing an essential part. Always hungry for something food could not assuage.
Disgusted with myself for feeling so uncharitable and morose, I left the shop, tickling the bridge of Vulcan's nose on my way. For the first time, I actively wanted to burn something and I was disappointed not to find some mysterious box awaiting my attention.
I fished the knot out of my pocket and tried to undo it but the edges were gone. There was nowhere to gain purchase and my fingers were too blunt and dumb to do anything beyond scrape around its navel shape.
I watched as a coachload of pensioners parked by the Red Lion came down the steps in a series of arthritic jerks. A couple of ladies, hair carved into frosted sculptures, having already disembarked and huddled into their cardigans, leant back against the wall overlooking the beach and favoured me with sympathetic smiles.
This might have been you one day,
those smiles seemed to say.
But instead, it's you now.
I trudged past them, past the men with their sprucely knotted ties and brogues, so many bellies ready for cream teas and a cheeky half of Broadside, and angled down the ramp to the sand.
I saw her straight away. There were other people on the beach this afternoon - quite a few, considering how cold and windy it was. There were couples exercising dogs, children leaping off the exposed groynes, elderly men in tracksuits powerwalking. Someone was trying to control a red slash of kite. Other days you could come on to the beach and find it utterly deserted. I preferred it when it was.