Straker follows Simon Taverner down his narrow hall and into a large room at the end. Once inside, he looks round, examining each item in turn, making himself see everything slowly. His hands are shaking and he needs time to calm himself.
The room has tall windows looking out on to a leafy area of large houses and gardens. There are a few similar blocks of flats nearby, all about six storeys high. Most of the windows in the flats opposite have net curtains, but where they haven’t, it is possible to see inside the rooms. This glimpse into other people’s lives is unnerving, and Straker moves back from the windows in case he can be seen.
In Simon Taverner’s room, the carpet is wine-coloured, dotted with tiny yellow daisies, flattened with age, but very clean. Two brown leather sofas are creased with wear, moulded and hollowed into the shape of invisible bodies, comforting and welcoming. A long, low coffee-table is overflowing with open, well-thumbed reference books, all on the subject of battleships. Around them, several sheets of paper are scattered, covered with indecipherable handwriting, a pair of glasses lying on top of everything. There’s a cabinet of china and glass, including several intricate models of ships, a piano, several bookshelves, all overcrowded, and there are photographs everywhere. They fill all the remaining wall space, the shiny black wood of the piano, the top of the cabinet, some even on the floor.
Once Straker stops to look at the photographs, he can’t see anything else. Maggie is here, in the room with him, beaming out of every surface. Maggie at a daughter’s wedding, holding on to her hat as she’s caught by a gust of wind, squinting into the sun; sitting before a table of food in a restaurant, sipping wine; pretending to stand to attention next to a guard outside Buckingham Palace, tiny next to him, but still significant; sitting in the car of a Big Wheel, her arm round a child, her face fixed into an expression of forced delight. Maggie in gardens, sitting in deck-chairs, smiling at a newborn baby in her arms. Different children in every picture, boys, girls, babies, toddlers, older children sitting by her legs, teenagers towering over her, standing awkwardly, but somehow belonging to her, the family resemblance drifting through all their faces. Did this woman ever stop smiling?
‘I see you recognise Maggie,’ says Simon Taverner, making Straker jump. He’s been unconsciously counting the photographs. Forty-two so far. ‘Wait there,’ says Simon, and goes out of the room. He returns a few seconds later with armfuls of books.
‘Look,’ he says, and opens them on the floor. They are photograph albums. Straker kneels down and starts to turn the pages slowly, chronologically, watching Maggie’s life grow before his eyes. He sees her in black and white as a girl, a young wife with her first baby, her second, her third, her fourth. The children grow up, and she gets older, less glamorous, but more motherly, warmer and more comfortable with the passing years. Her waistline expands, her hair begins to go grey, but she remains the same, the real Maggie, the voice he knows from his dreams. She’s exactly as he imagined. He feels that he has known her all his life. As if she were his mother. The children grow tall and rebellious in their appearance—jeans, long hair, casual neglect—but they are still drawn to her, and she still accepts them. You can see this in the way they gather round her for the photographs.
Then the weddings. Two of them, everybody present, a family that knows how to grow together and is happy to welcome new members. And the grandchildren. Babies, toddlers, cats, dogs…
Then it changes. There is no more Maggie. The family goes on without her. They still seem to be close, to support each other, but Simon is now at the centre without her, growing older, loved, but somehow lost.
Straker reaches the end and looks up at Simon. He’s sitting on one of the sofas, pouring tea out of a silver teapot into two china cups. ‘Tea?’ he says.
Straker gets up off the floor and rubs his knees. ‘You know who I am?’ he says.
Simon nods. ‘Do sit down, Mr Straker.’
He takes the mug of tea that is offered. ‘I mean, you know who I really am?’
‘Yes. I know who you really are.’
Straker doesn’t know what to say. Why is he here? Simon seems almost to have expected him.
They sit together, sipping tea.
Simon’s movements are slow and careful, as if he’s afraid of a sudden weakness in his hands, which will send the cup tumbling to the floor. He’s almost bald, with just a few wisps of white hair above his ears. He has a kind face, wrinkled and worn, like his room, but not hostile. He exudes a benign, fatherly air that is very reassuring.
‘Let me explain,’ he says. ‘When I received your letter, enquiring about Maggie, I had a strong feeling that it was important to you to find out about her. Why, I thought, would you need to have more details about my wife? Because he’s a journalist, I said to myself, and that’s what journalists do. But at the back of my mind was the idea that this was not quite the full truth. I picked up an intense desire to look more deeply into Maggie’s life, more than you would expect from a journalist. It was almost as if you knew her and had some feeling for her, as if you were tied in a more intimate way. An old friend, I thought. But I know her old friends. They all came to the funeral, most are still in touch—or dead. So—someone who thinks he has something in common with her, with the way she died. And then it hit me that what I could feel coming out of your letter was guilt. Once I realised that, I knew who you were.’
He stops talking. Straker can’t look him in the eye. He studies the carpet between his knees, the way it has faded from vacuuming and scrubbing and the sun.
‘Mr Straker,’ he says, ‘please don’t think that I want vengeance. If there was one thing I learned from Maggie it was that you accept people as they are, and you don’t demand more than they want to give.’
‘She talks to me,’ says Straker.
‘Really?’ he says, with surprise. ‘A ghost?’
‘No. In my dreams.’
He sighs. ‘I see.’ He pauses, then nods. ‘Yes, I see.’
‘But you’re right. I do feel as if I have known her.’
‘Help yourself,’ says Simon, putting a plate of chocolate biscuits beside him. Straker takes one and bites into it.
‘I expect you think I’m a potty old man,’ says Simon. ‘Well, I probably am. But I’m not amazed by what you tell me. Maggie’s personality was so powerful that she could easily still influence somebody after all this time.’
Straker clears his throat and tries to talk sensibly. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m just following instructions from Maggie in my dreams. Go and see you, she says. But why? What for?’
‘It’s not Maggie,’ he says. ‘It’s your conscience.’
‘No, it’s not.’ But of course he’s right. ‘Why should I come here?’
‘You are the only one who can answer that.’
‘Well, I can’t. I don’t remember what happened. I just woke up in hospital and they told me we crashed. You know what they said at the inquest. Insufficient evidence to bring a prosecution.’
‘So why do you feel guilty?’
‘I don’t.’
‘I think you do. That’s why you write letters.’
‘I just want to know about them, that’s all. So they don’t get forgotten.’
Something strange is happening. Straker knows he was responsible for the accident. He wakes up every morning with the weight of it pressing him down on his mattress, pushing him towards the floor. He counts the numbers, he debates with the victims all night.
So why is he disowning his guilt now?
Simon looks out of the window. ‘Do you really think any of them would be forgotten? What about their husbands, wives, girlfriends, children, mothers, fathers? How do you imagine people react when they lose someone they love in violent and unexpected circumstances? Do you think we’re sad for a bit, and then carry on as if they never existed?’
‘No, I don’t think that.’
‘Then why do you think you have to take on the burden of remembering all of them?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Guilt,’ he says.
‘I think I’d better go,’ says Straker. ‘I don’t know why I came.’
‘Stay a bit longer. I know why you came.’
‘You don’t know me. You have no idea.’
‘I think you want forgiveness. Absolution.’
Straker stands up, frustrated by Simon’s presumption of his guilt. ‘How can you be so sure there’s something for you to forgive?’
Simon pauses and picks up a chocolate biscuit. ‘I imagine your assessment of the situation is very similar to my own.’
Straker sits down again, somehow defeated. It’s the photographs—they have unsettled him. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘I’m sorry about Maggie, I really am. If I could change things, I would. But I can’t. It’s too late.’
‘It was always too late, from the time she got on that train and said goodbye to our daughter and her baby, and from the moment you took off in that plane.’
‘You mean it was fate?’
‘No, I don’t believe in fate. I just mean that once the events were set in motion they carried on happening, and once they had happened, nobody could undo them. Whatever you feel now, it’s irrelevant. You can’t alter the fact that you’ve changed the lives of all those people. Seventy-eight died, but there were many more relatives and friends who were affected by the deaths.’
‘You’ve already said that.’
‘My point is that it is arrogant of you to believe that knowing the victims better makes any difference to anyone.’
‘So what would you have done?’
He smiles. ‘I have no idea. I’m grateful for the fact that it was you and not me.’
Is he feeling sorry for Straker? Does he appreciate how impossible it is to live a single minute of a single day without thinking of the seventy-eight?
‘Which doesn’t mean that I absolve you. I haven’t made a decision on that yet. I confess that I spent many, many years after the accident bitterly resenting you, and the effort of it has worn me out. The ache of losing Maggie has never truly left me, but I have gradually learned to accept it. You have to let things go in the end, or you don’t survive. I think I’ve changed again in the last two years, although I’m not sure why. I have been thinking about it more, going over the details in my mind, trying to understand what really happened.’
This is curious. It was just over two years ago that Straker saw Felicity in the poster outside Sainsbury’s, and started his investigation into the victims’ lives. Did the air between them start to vibrate, sending silent and invisible messages, eventually leading them to the same place? Has Straker been waiting for nearly twenty-five years to end up here, facing this old man who would have good enough reason to murder him if he could summon the strength?
Simon gets up. ‘Come with me,’ he says, walking to a door at the side of the room.
Straker watches him, unsure if he trusts him. ‘Why?’
Simon opens the door. ‘There’s something you might find interesting.’
Reluctantly, Straker follows. The room is a little study, as cluttered with books and photographs as the living room. He’s surprised to see a computer set up on a desk just under the window.
Simon looks pleased with himself. ‘My hobby,’ he says. ‘There’s a whole world of information out there and I can sit in my own flat and access it. You can find out anything you want to, you know.’
He sits at the computer and presses a few buttons. With a rush of sound, a picture appears on the screen. He starts typing, very fast, clearly familiar with the keyboard.
‘Sit down,’ he says, indicating a second chair. ‘I often have a grandchild with me when I use the computer. Although it’s usually one of them sitting in the driving seat, while I’m the spectator. They seem to know so much, these days. They work everything out for themselves.’
Straker watches as Simon types on to the screen: www. disaster 25.9.79.co.uk. The date of the crash. He begins to feel very uncomfortable. There’s a pause, and then the screen changes to a cartoon picture of an aeroplane, a train, some houses, separate from each other but linked by a series of dramatic lines. Then he clicks something and the screen changes again. Now it’s a kind of written conversation, like a play, with the writers’ names at the beginning.
Simon grunts. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Wrong page.’
The screen changes several times and then stops. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘This is what I think you should read.’
Straker leans forward.
TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY—25 SEPTEMBER 2004 Schedule: 8.30 coach leaves birmingham, should arrive in hillingham by 12.00
Please make every effort to be there, this may be our one chance of finding out the truth, the chance to let some of it go
Carmen Halliwell
Straker reads it several times. Carmen Halliwell. He remembers her. She responded very badly to his letter. What does she intend to do? Come and find him? She won’t be able to. The letters go to a post-office box number, so she won’t know his address. Nobody can find him. How does she know he lives near Hillingham?
‘What do they want from me?’
Simon shrugs. ‘I don’t know. I won’t be accompanying them, I assure you. I’m too old for that kind of thing.’
‘Will anyone go?’
‘Possibly. The website has been set up for some time now, and they’ve been corresponding regularly.’
‘They write to each other?’
He smiles. ‘Yes. But it’s a kind of open letter. The site has been growing rapidly in the last couple of years. There must be hundreds of people registered now.’
Straker stares at the screen. ‘Hundreds? Who are they all?’
‘Relatives.’
‘But there were only seventy-eight victims.’ He’s never said that before. Only seventy-eight. The number has always seemed too big.
‘I’ve told you. Every person is surrounded by people. When they die, the people all come together, people whose lives have changed for ever. I was introduced to the site by a great-grandson.’
‘He can’t possibly have known Maggie.’
‘No, but he’s been affected. Grief spreads down through generations, ripples outwards. If you lose a parent, it affects the way you bring up your children, which then affects the way they bring up their children. It would take generations to obliterate the damage. It never goes away, never gets any easier. You just get used to living with it. You have to.’
Straker imagines a growing pyramid of people, Simon at the top, old and shrivelled, babies at the base, squirming, crawling, all of them looking for someone, aware of an emptiness in the centre. ‘Do you think they want revenge?’ Is that what he’s wanted all this time? Not forgiveness, but justice? Has he been waiting for the hand to come out of the darkness to kill him, so that he can join the seventy-eight?
Simon shrugs. ‘Who knows? I don’t suppose they know themselves. It gives them a purpose, a common focus. They’ve hated you for a very long time. It’s not unreasonable that they would want to see you. You stirred them all up with your letters. I wasn’t the only one to realise who you were. It took them some time, but they arrived at the same conclusion as me.’
‘You didn’t tell them?’
‘No. I don’t write to them. I just read the messages.’
Straker feels trapped. ‘So, what do I do?’
‘I can’t advise you. You must do whatever you feel is right. Go away, hide, call the police, stay there and confront them. I can’t make that decision for you.’
Straker puts his head into his hands and runs his fingers through his hair, while studying the floor. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I don’t know.’
Simon turns to face him. ‘I forgive you,’ he says.
Straker experiences an unaccountable stab of resentment. ‘Why should your forgiveness make any difference to me?’
‘Nevertheless, I forgive you.’
Before he catches a train back to his lighthouse, Straker investigates the shops in Birmingham. He’s unexpectedly invigorated: all his tiredness has evaporated, and he feels as if he will never need to sleep again. Everything round him is sharp-edged, highly coloured, more real than he’s used to. He goes into a café and orders a pizza and ice-cream. He buys a book, a novel about a man who lives in a lighthouse, which is illustrated on the front cover. It’s not the same as his. Wrong colour. He buys two shirts, one blue, one green and patterned, and two ties to match. Then some leather gloves, wool-lined, and a hat that makes him look like a gamekeeper. He looks at the computers in Dixons and wonders if he should consider buying one. If Simon Taverner can do it, why shouldn’t he? Maybe there are things in the world that would divert his mind from numbers if he could find out about them. He buys a clock for Doody’s kitchen, and a set of six glasses. If she doesn’t want to talk to him, he can leave them on her front doorstep. Then she can throw them away if she wants to.
He goes down the escalators to the station and works out the time of the next train home.
Back in his lighthouse, he tries to sleep, lying in his sleeping-bag with Suleiman and Magnificent curled up beside him. It’s a very still night, and through the window he can see the sliver of a new moon standing out piercingly against the black sky. It produces a surprising amount of light. He moves restlessly, and Suleiman starts to purr. He reaches down and strokes him. Suleiman responds with a little chirrup.
Straker dozes.
‘OK, Straker, you did it.’
Yes. I did it.
‘Thank you.’
I can’t speak. I have dried up.
Maggie has run out of words too. I can hear voices in the background, chattering away, but they seem less distinct than usual. They are fading, like the sound of a train once it has passed, just a mumble, just a whisper in the distance.
Nevertheless, I forgive you. It’s Simon’s voice that comes calmly into his mind.
Straker tests himself, thinks of seventy-eight. Nothing happens. The number is sitting there in his mind between seventy-seven and seventy-nine. He waits for the familiar panic and nothing happens. His thoughts are calm.
But Maggie was more than his conscience. She was his mother.
He sits up suddenly, and Suleiman and Magnificent spill on to the floor. He doesn’t even know if his mother is alive. Or his father. He knows nothing about them. What are they doing? Is his mother still there, disowning him, hating him, quietly going about her cleaning and her pruning? Does she ever think about him? Does his father continue to work, heaving rusty old cars around in his old age, training another young man to be his heir instead of Pete, aware that Andy will never do it? And where is Andy? Does he have children?
Twenty-four years is a very long time. If Straker had been put in prison for life he’d be out by now. Why should his family have assumed he was guilty when nobody really knew what happened? The fact that he believed in his guilt shouldn’t have meant that they automatically assumed it. If Simon can forgive him, why shouldn’t they? Perhaps he’s been forgotten—missing, presumed dead. Just taking the monthly allowance.
He gets up and dresses rapidly, without his usual care, putting on yesterday’s shirt because it’s easier. His mind is swirling, patterns shaping and reshaping, thoughts tumbling over each other in urgent competition with each other. His family are probably just the same, alive and functioning, carrying on as before but without him. He’s starting to feel resentment. Why should they keep him shut away for so long?
And he needs to speak to Doody. To explain. To apologise, take responsibility for the death of her husband, and allow her to make the decision about whether she wants to speak to him again.
He leaves the lighthouse while it’s still dark, and feels his way across the headland to the road. He’s familiar with the ground and doesn’t need any extra light.
He walks into the village where the street-lights draw attention to his isolation. Most of the village is sleeping, but some upstairs lights are glowing brightly. Fishermen preparing to go out on an early tide, perhaps. High tide is due just before dawn. A good way to start the new day.
Nevertheless, I forgive you.