unbearable too, so he said in a quiet voice, 'How did you carry on, mate? I don't know what I'd have done… Blimey… His words failed him.
'Why, I carried on. As Maureen would have wanted me to do. But I carried on a different person, as you would have expected. I went into the law, which made my family very happy. And I never married, which was better than they feared, but not what they hoped. I never kissed another woman. I never smelled another woman's perfumed hair. I never touched a woman's skin.'
Veitch felt a lump rise in his throat. He thought he might have to go to the toilet before he made a fool of himself.
But then Reynolds said, 'Come up to my room for one last drink. I have a bottle of malt that is quite heavenly. I retire early these days. It gets lonely when the night falls.'
They moved slowly through the quiet, deserted hotel, their thoughts heavy around them. 'You're a better man than me,' Veitch said as they reached the lifts.
'No,' Reynolds said assuredly. 'I lived a life without hope and thus wasted it. In what you told me I can tell you have hope, or at least the potential for hope. And perhaps I can help you.' They entered the lift and he punched the floor number. 'I lived a life with nothing to believe in,' he continued. 'How could I believe in anything? Family? Friends? Religion? What kind of God would let a thing like that happen? What kind of God was worshipped by the people closest to me?'
The thick carpet muffled their footsteps. It was comfortingly bright in the corridor.
'There is a gun in the drawer of my bedside table.' It seemed like a non sequitur, but Witch was suddenly alert, Reynolds was going somewhere. 'An old service revolver. A family heirloom.' He laughed. 'Fitting, really.'
Veitch looked at him, but he kept his pleasant gaze fixed firmly ahead. 'I'd made my plans, composed my mind and a few nights ago I was ready to kill myself.' His smile made it sound as if he was discussing attending a picnic. 'I'd had enough of the drudgery of days. The emptiness of thoughts. The coldness of life. It seemed time for a Full Stop. Wrap things up neatly. The end of my story.'
'So why didn't you do it?'
Reynolds looked at him in surprise. 'My, you are a blunt man. I like that. You wouldn't get that in my family. They'd just pass the brandy and someone would see fit to mention it a few days down the line. Why didn't I kill myself? Why didn't I?' he mused, as if he had no idea himself. 'Because of my very last conversation with Maureen, that's why.'
Reynolds unlocked the door and they stepped into his suite. It was spacious and well turned-out, but still a hotel room; there were no personal touches to show it had been his home for so long. It spoke of an empty life lived for the sake of it.
'Nice place,' Veitch said uncomfortably.
Reynolds poured two large glasses of twenty-year-old malt and handed one to Veitch. 'It's a place to rest my head.'
Veitch perched on the edge of a desk. 'So, are you going to tell me, or punish me for a bit longer?'
Reynolds laughed heartily. 'I wanted you to hear my story before I got to the crux of the matter. Stories are important. They provide a framework so we can't easily dismiss the vital messages buried at the heart of them.' He pulled open a bedside drawer and took out the service revolver, which he tossed to Veitch so he could examine the archaic weapon.
'Blimey, that's a museum piece. You're just as likely to have blown your bleedin' hand off as your head.'
Reynolds gave a gentle laugh. 'The last conversation with Maureen has never left me.' He lowered himself into a chair on the other side of the desk, put his head back and closed his eyes. 'All those years and I can still smell her hair, feel exactly how her hand used to lie in mine. And I can remember every word we said. Most of it, I'm sure, would seem nauseatingly cloying out of the context of our lives, but it held meaning for us. But there was one point…' He drifted for a moment, so that Veitch thought he had fallen asleep, but then his voice came back with renewed force. 'The only thing left to discuss was what would happen should one of us die. We knew our situation, that anything could happen. And we made a pact that whoever went first would send a sign back to the other that love survived, that there was hope beyond hope, a chance, at the end of the long haul, of being reunited. Love crosses boundaries, that's what we felt. Our feelings were so strong, you see. So strong. How stupid you must think we were.'
'No-' Witch began to protest, but Reynolds held up a silencing hand.
'After her death I waited every day for that sign. Weeks passed, months. Of course, there was no sign. Two people in love create a fantasy world where anything can happen, one that has no connection with reality. In reality there is no hope. Love does not cross boundaries.'
Veitch stared into the golden depths of his drink, his mood dipping rapidly. Gradually he became aware that Reynolds was staring at him and when he looked up he saw the elderly man was beaming.
'And then the other afternoon, when I woke from my nap, I found this on my pillow in a slight indentation.' He dipped in his pocket and held up something almost invisible in the light.
'What is it?' Veitch said squinting.
Reynolds summoned him closer. Between the elderly man's fingers was a long, curly red hair. Reynolds brought it gently to his nose, closed his eyes, inhaled. 'And here I am, all those years ago.' When he opened his eyes they were rimmed with tears. 'Her scent was on the pillow, and again this morning.'
'You're sure-?' Veitch began, but he saw the answer in Reynolds's face.
Reynolds traced away one of the tears with a fingertip. 'I wasted my life believing in nothing when there was everything to believe in. I wasted my life by not holding hope close to my heart. Don't make the same mistake, my boy. Don't wait until you're too old and wrinkled to appreciate what life has to offer, and don't wait until you're nearly on your deathbed before you gain some kind of salvation. There really is a bigger picture. We might have no idea what it is. It might not fit any of our past preconceptions. But knowing it's there changes the way we look at the world, the way we deal with each other, the way we face up to hardship. It changes everything.' He smiled as another tear trickled gently down his cheek.
Veitch took a hasty swig of his whisky as another lump rose in his throat.
'In the last few weeks nothing has changed, really, truly, apart from a way of seeing the world. An old way, made new again. We forgot it for so long, settled for a new reality that seemed better, but was much, much worse,' Reynolds said quietly. 'There may be a lot of trouble that has been introduced into the world in recent times. But everything is defined by its opposite, and with the fear and terror have come hope and wonder. These times are not all bad, my boy. There are a lot of wonderful things out there. And perhaps, for all the suffering, this new world is better than what existed before: all its machines that made our lives so easy, yet no wonder, no magic. This is what we need as humans, my boy. Hope, faith, mystery, a sense of something greater. This is what we need. Not DNA analysis, faster cars, quicker computers, more consumer disposables, more scientific reductionism. This is what we need.'
'I've been thinking,' Witch began; he struggled to find the right words. 'Maybe it's not all as bad as people have been making out. You know, for me, personally, I think it might be better.'
'Then go into your big quest with a strong heart,' Reynolds said, 'but don't try to make things back the way they were, for all our sakes.'
Veitch drained his malt slowly, thinking about Ruth, about the terrors they were facing. 'Something to believe in,' he said quietly, almost to himself. 'That's all we need.'
Chapter Seven
In her deepest, darkest, most testing time, Ruth plumbed the depths of her character for reserves she never knew existed. Every hour seemed torturous, trapped in a minute world that encompassed only the claustrophobic confines of her cell, the ever-present darkness, the chill that left her bones aching to the marrow, the foul odours that occasionally drifted through from beyond the door. Part of her resilience, she knew, came from her ability to view her crucible of pain as a chrysalis. She would store up as much learning from her invisible companion as she
