They both nodded, but it was the tanned one, squatting down now to remove his leggings who added: ‘Sure. Mostly. But he must remember something because that’s not just pain in his eyes. He’s terrified of something.’ They turned then to go. ‘Or he’s terrified of someone. Nightmare is he can’t remember who.’
11
Dryden checked with the news desk that the paper had gone and then walked back into town in the sun, tourists beginning to appear as he walked the towpath south. The Isle of Ely rose up from the fens ahead, the cathedral trailing a pennant of low cloud, all that remained of the morning’s leaden sky.
He wondered what it was like not to have a memory. A blessing, perhaps. Laura’s coma had been marked by a complete absence of any recall of their accident. The hours spent trapped in the lightless car beneath the winter water was literally a black box; a memory too terrifying to allow a replay. His wife’s recovery had been marked by many advances. But not a single shaft of light had fallen into that lost world.
Ely, bathed in sunshine now, had come to life. In Market Square he spotted that one newspaper vendor was already on his pitch. The
Dryden had to admit that Skeg was not quite so easy to pigeonhole. He lived on one of the dilapidated river boats which took up cheap moorings in the town’s clay pits, and he’d come across him several times working at Wicken Fen nature reserve, clearing weed from the waterways, tagging and counting birds. And always, at his heels, the half-drowned short-haired terrier, tugged along on a blue rope. Sometimes Skeg would disappear from his pitch for months, trying another job, but he always reappeared.
Dryden bought a paper, even though he could have waited and got a free one back at the office, and flicking it open at the fold enjoyed the sight of his double front-page bylines. The thrill, even after twenty years on newspapers, was palpable.
Skeg had sensed the inner smile: ‘Done all right then,’ he said, and Dryden remembered instantly why he didn’t like him as much as he normally liked outcasts. There was sarcasm beneath the conviviality, and something cruel about the eyes. At his feet the dog lay curled, ribs showing. Skeg had his own copy open to the feature on Jude’s Ferry, and the picture Dryden had taken inside St Swithun’s, the now shattered crusader’s tomb beside an inset of what it had looked like before the wayward shelling.
‘Yeah,’ said Dryden. ‘Decent day’s work.’
Skeg took his pound coin and rummaged for the change in a wooden tray. The dog edged forward to snuffle at Dryden’s feet and he felt the first wave of panic as it bared its teeth. He drew in breath, fighting the impulses which were coursing through his nervous system.
‘Wow,’ said Skeg, bending down and pulling the dog back. ‘You’re not a big fan of dogs, are ya?’
Dryden tried a smile that failed, aware that his phobia was painfully apparent.
‘Think of something else,’ he told himself. So he checked the space on the back page where his fudge box on the man in the river should have been and found it blank: either he’d bought one of the earliest copies off the run or they’d failed to get it in at all.
Dryden scanned the badges on Skeg’s quilted poacher’s jacket as he took his change: Troops Out of Iraq, Shelter, RSPCA, a sticker which proclaimed Green Planet, and another in support of a campaign to stop Cambridge University building a laboratory for animal testing of new drugs.
‘Just found the bloke in the river without the fingers,’ said Dryden, trying to mask his dislike of someone less fortunate than himself, and edging back still further from the dog.
Skeg nodded. ‘That’s good. That’ll keep the story going then.’ That smile again: mocking.
In The Fenman bar he found the entire newspaper staff – minus the editor and Jean from reception – engaged in the ritual press-day binge. Garry was counting peanuts on a tabletop while Charlie Bracken was retelling an anecdote about a riverbank flasher, complete with hand movements. Dryden was unable to catch the mood of timeless celebration. He was bothered by a bizarre double image: the marble broken finger on the stone floor of St Swithun’s and the pale stumps of human flesh and bone in the fisherman’s net.
He challenged Garry to a game of pool, beat him twice, and then slipped away. Zigzagging across town he reached an acre of empty tarmac now baking in hot afternoon sun, a mirage contorting the image of a cat tip-toeing towards the shadows. On one side stood an ugly red-brick Victorian barracks. Gold letters over a tall pointed doorway read: 36th (Eastern) Signal Regiment. The interior was cool and clinical, walls whitewashed, and the drill-hall floor waxed to a military shine. A raised stage at one end had a crude pro scenium arch carrying a regimental crest and the words ‘The Territorial Army in East Anglia’. Dryden examined the silence and could almost hear the precise thud of boots coming to attention.
The drill hall had been radically reduced in size to accommodate a suite of offices on one side, glass partitions shielding an array of high-tech computers. Dryden had his nose pressed against the glass when a cough made him jump.
It was Major John Broderick.
‘Hi,’ said Dryden. ‘What’s all the gear?’
‘This stuff? Signals. It’s what the TA’s got to offer these days – qualifications. IT, computer maintenance, communications. Popular stuff. And the army needs it; we’ve got people out in Iraq now on active service. People from here.’
They went into Broderick’s office: a sad room, cold despite the sun and dominated by an oak desk which looked too important for the building. Attached to the blotter was a small silver photo frame containing three shots: wife, wife and son, wife and daughter. On one wall was a framed sepia portrait of a soldier in the Indian Army. Dryden touched the frame: ‘And this… ?’
‘It’s my father; 1944.’
Dryden declined a seat. ‘The evacuation of Jude’s Ferry. The army organized everything, yes? You said there were records. Those questionnaires the villagers had to fill in?’
