Now I Know (5 page)

‘But you finally went for the police.'

‘Daft, I know, running all that way. Could have dialled the three nines. But somehow I just had to
see
somebody to tell.'

‘You arrived at the station at six thirty-three, according to the report sheet. Told the duty officer what you'd found. He sent you in a car with two officers back to the scene.'

‘And he'd gone.'

‘But the officers believed your story?'

‘The driver knew me. Stan Fields. Belong to the same bowling club. He could tell I wasn't joking. And of course there were the footprints. The cross was lying on the ground directly under the crane and strips of polythene were scattered all round. They'd been cut. But that wouldn't have made a case, would it? The footprints did though. Very fresh, and all round the cross. I knew mine because of the pattern of the soles. I was wearing new running shoes, expensive, with an unusual pattern on the instep. We could see the print of them all right. But the other prints crisscrossed over mine, so they must have been made after I'd been there.'

‘You were at the station by six thirty-three. How long to run there from the scene?'

‘Oh, eight minutes. Ten at most.'

‘You were back at the scene by six fifty according to PC Fields' report. So there was a maximum twenty-seven minutes for whoever it was to get the boy down and away. And you didn't see anybody anywhere near the scene all the time you were there?'

‘Nobody.'

‘And you can't identify the boy?'

‘Sorry. Never seen him before, as far as I know. Not that I go round looking at kids his age. See enough of my own two, thanks.'

‘They about his age?'

‘Fifteen and sixteen. He might have been seventeen. Hard to tell under the circs. Certainly not younger than sixteen, I'd guess. Too well hung—if you'll pardon the pun.'

‘I've the other details you gave the sergeant, sir. But perhaps you've thought of something else since then?'

‘Sorry. Would help if I could.'

‘Then I'll not hold you up any longer, sir. Thanks for your time.'

‘Best of luck. Hope you catch them. Need to crack down on this sort of thing. Too much violence everywhere these days.'

†

JULIE
:   Dear Nik. Can't start without saying a name, as if I'm talking to thin air and not to another person. When I pray I start Dear God. Same thing. Somebody . . .
other
 . . . has to be there. So: Dear Nik.

[
Pause.
]

Funny about names. At the beginning, when I thought I was dying, names suddenly seemed very important. I used to say my own over and over to myself. Julie . . . Julie . . . Julie. JulieJulieJulie. And Sarah . . . Sarah, because that was the name my father called me when I was little. I was christened Sarah Julia, did I ever tell you? But when I was twelve I took against Sarah because I read in the Bible about Sarah being childless till she was very old. I thought, I want children when I'm young, so I won't let anyone call me by a name that might put a hex on me. As if names could work bad magic. I told everybody they had to call me Julie, and everyone did, except my father, who said I'd always be Sarah to him. Sarah my solace, he'd say.

When I thought I was dying I thought: There you are, you're going to die without any children after all. Dad was right to call you Sarah. SarahSarahSarah, I said. And saying it over and over made me feel like I used to feel when I was little, as if all my childhood was inside that name, and saying it made me into a child again.

[
Chuckles.
]

SarahSarahSarah I said in my head until it stopped making any sense at all but was just a sound that didn't mean anything. As if I'd worn it out. And then my childhood faded away too and I was in hospital again, thinking I was dying and feeling the pain.

I thought I was only saying those names in my head but Simmo told me I was saying them out loud some of the time. She told me this last week when we were talking about you. She said yours was one of the names I kept repeating. Nik . . . Nik . . . Nik. I shouted it sometimes, as if I was calling to you. That's why they sent for you to come quickly. But most of the time, Simmo says, I just said Nik . . . Nik. Quietly, like it was a magic spell that would make something good happen.

And names do, don't they? Even babies know that. They soon learn if they say Mummy they get fed or hugged or looked at. If you speak a person's name they come to you or look at you. And when someone else speaks your name you feel pleased. You feel wanted. You feel
there.
Alive. Even if they're saying your name with dislike, at least you know you're you, that you exist.

Once, when I was little, about eight, I asked my dad, ‘Is there a God, Daddy?' Dad said, ‘I'm not sure. I think so.' And I said, ‘But there must be, mustn't there, because he has a name.'

Anyway, that's why I kept saying your name and my own name when I thought I was done for.

Does this mean anything? Am I just rambling? The drugs make me ramble sometimes.

[
Pause.
]

I'm only trying to explain that names make sense of the nothing you feel you're going into when you think you're dying. At least they did for me. Thinking you're going to die is like setting out on a long journey that frightens you to a place you know nothing about. And saying the names of the people you love seems to bring them to you, to be with you. And your own name is like a space suit you live inside. While you've got it on you're all right. You live inside it. Without it you'd melt into the nothingness and be nothing yourself and never reach your unknown destination.

[
Sounds of Julie drawing in and exhaling deep breaths.
]

Sorry! Simmo says if I breathe in deeply when the pain comes and let it out slowly I'll feel better. As if the big breath comes inside, wraps up all the pain and fear and sadness like broken glass in cotton wool, and carries it away when you breathe out. Sometimes it works. This time it left some glass behind.

[
Breathing in. Breathing out.
]

I never knew pain is so . . . consuming. I mean
real
pain, not just hurt. Real pain sort of eats you. Gnaws you all over like a thousand rats chewing at your bones. And it burns you with sharp flames.

Now I know why people in the old days talked about hell being a place of fire and torture. Real pain is a kind of hell.

I've been trying to think about what pain
means.
Why do we have to have it? Why do people suffer?

I haven't got far yet. Except to hate it with a deep deep loathing. I've never felt such hate for anything before. Perhaps I have to get rid of the hate before I'll be able to think about what pain means? Just as I had to stop thinking I was dying before I could begin to get better. I managed to take that step thanks to you, Nik. Perhaps I have to do this thing about pain on my own? Perhaps that's what it means – what it's for. For learning to be on your own. Do you think it could be?

Doesn't sound right somehow. If only you were here we could talk about it, like we talked from the first time we met. I remember our first time together, every moment. Frame by frame, you might say—or your leptonic Director might!

[
Quiet chuckles.
]

That's another thing I'm discovering about illness. And about not being able to see anything, or move, or do anything at all. You remember a lot. Memories come flooding back—like remembering myself so vividly as a child when I say Sarah-Sarah. In the last few days I've remembered things I haven't thought of since they happened years ago.

Which reminds me of that poem . . . how does it go? . . . I expect you think it's trite . . . but, there, you see, I've suddenly remembered it when I haven't thought of it for ages . . . I've got it:

[
Pause.
]

Heavens, it's much gloomier than I thought! How funny! I only remembered the sun peeping in at dawn. That's why I liked it. I learned it when I was . . . what? . . . nine, I suppose. I found it in a book, and thought it was specially for me because the sun came peeping into my room at dawn too.

But I didn't remember the night bearing my breath away. Just shows what you don't notice when you don't need to! There've been plenty of times since what Simmo calls my little mishap that I've remembered the house where I was born and wished the night would bear my breath away so there would be an end to the pain.

I don't remember the rest of the poem, and now I'd rather like to know how it goes on. Could you find it for me?

I wonder if the poet lived in her memories as much as I'm living in mine? I'm beginning to think we only know who we are, only know ourselves, through our memories. I mean, think what it would be like if we couldn't remember anything. We wouldn't be able to do most of the things we like doing, never mind the things we don't like doing. We wouldn't be able to learn anything. We wouldn't even be able to learn from the mistakes we make all the time, because we wouldn't be able to remember our mistakes no matter how painful they were.

Grief! We wouldn't know the people we loved, either! We wouldn't have any memory of them so we wouldn't be able to think about them, or what it was like to be with them. We couldn't love them because we wouldn't be able to remember what we liked about them so much.

And how could we trust anyone? We'd have nothing to go on, no past experience to tell us this person is honest and this other one tells lies. If we could remember nothing of our past could we be anything now? Except confused, I suppose. And frightened, because we wouldn't know what was safe and what was dangerous. We couldn't believe anything because we wouldn't remember anything to believe in. Not that we'd know what belief meant anyway. We wouldn't know what anything meant.

I've never thought memory was quite as important as that! But I suppose it is.

[
Deep breathing.
]

I'm tired out. Time for another drug-scoffing session. I eat more drugs than I eat meals. Till the knockout pills arrive I'll think of you, Nik, and the memory will keep the pain away. You, the first time we met. All that rain! You, the first time I took you to church. Disgracing yourself! You the night before . . .

[
Snatched-at breaths.
]

Sorry, have to stop . . .
Nurse!
 . . .

[
Cries of pain. End of tape
.]

MEETINGS

NIK
'
S NOTEBOOK
:   The vicar of St James is pathetic. St James was the son of Zebedee, brother of John the Beloved, called Boanerges. Boanerges means ‘son of thunder'. St James's vicar is no son of thunder. Son of silence more like.

Except when speaking of golf (said: goff). Waxes chatty then. Goff clubs are the first thing you meet inside his front door. Along with pong of mouldy wellies and decomposing dog. Dog a podgy black labrador with watery eyes, slavery mouth, and a limp in the left foreleg. Turns you off animal rights. Vic calls him Bugsy when not calling him Old Chum.

Vic is a bachelor. Tall, balding, pink-faced, smelling vaguely of Old Spice and musty incense. Also large-bellied. Rumour says he's oathed to celibacy. But what woman would have him? He came along the path from church in flapping black cassock, like a converted Dracula, Old Chum hobbling along behind.

The vicarage is occupied by neglect. Cold even with sun shining in. Took me into what he called his study, a sort of religious knocking shop. Large gooky pic of Virgin Mary in fetchingly soulful pose staring from one wall. A fairly explicit full frontal crucifix made of carved wood hanging over the fireplace. A jumble of bookshelves crammed with heavy dull tomes, mostly holy manuals, tombs for dead words, covering most of the walls. A bulky desk big as a snooker table piled with controlled disaster of paper. (He should persuade the parish to stump up for a word processor, he'd save himself a lot of garbage, but maybe God wouldn't approve? Is there a God in the machine? If there is in mine he-she-it only says what I tell him-her-it to say. That's the sort of God I like.)

He waved me into one of two exhausted armchairs beside the empty fireplace. The fplc mouth blocked by an old headstone, from the churchyard I guess, its inscription worn unreadable by weather. Made the room seem ominous. The room a tomb. Sitting with a memorial to your own death in the great reaper's waiting room.

Selah.

Vic says, suspicious: Wanted to ask about God, did you say?

Me, nervous: Wondered if you could explain belief.

Vic's left eyelid twitches: Belief! Tricky subject. What was it you wanted to know exactly?

Old Chum collapses between us like a whale expiring on the beach. The way he lies, the headstone becomes his. Maybe it is, because I'm not sure he's alive even when he's limping about.

Me: Not sure,
exactly.
What belief means, I suppose.

Vic smiles. Ah! he says with relief.

He picks up a large dog-eared vol. from a stool beside his chair. (Underneath the dog-eared vol. lies
The Times
folded at the crossword puzzle, mostly finished.)

He flips dog-eared pages and says: The dictionary tells us, let's see:
Belief. Noun. One: a principle, idea,
et cetera,
accepted as true or real, especially without positive proof. Two: opinion, conviction. Three: religious faith. Four: trust or confidence, as in a person or person's abilities
, et cetera. There you are.