‘You’re the teacher. Yes. Robbie’s teacher. You was his favourite, you’re…’ Mrs Mumford started to prise herself up. ‘You’re his… history teacher!’
‘Well, I—’
‘’Course you are.’ Reg Mumford was leaning over the chair from behind and pointing a forefinger at his own head, making screwing motions. ‘And we’re very glad to see you, aren’t we, Phyllis?’
‘He loved history,’ Mrs Mumford said.
‘Yes,’ Merrily said. ‘Yes, he did.’
‘Much bloody good it did him.’ Reg snorted. ‘Should’ve been out playing football. If he’d played football like a normal boy he’d still be alive. I’ve always said that.’
‘Dad, for Christ—’
‘Andrew, we gotter face facts. We’re all terrible sorry ’bout what happened, but it en’t no use blamin’ ourselves for ever and a day, is it? Boy was a bloody dreamer, head in the clouds, no gettin’ round it.’
‘All right, Dad,’ Mumford said, desperate. ‘We’ll go to the pub, you and me, eh? Half an hour, Mrs Watkins, will that be all right?’
Merrily nodded, grateful.
‘Now, I know I had something to show you,’ Mrs Mumford said. ‘Where did I put it?’
Merrily had made tea for them both. The kitchen wasn’t as clean as it might have been; she’d wondered if there was a home help. Mrs Mumford didn’t seem to be disabled, but she was very overweight.
‘Look in that top drawer, would you?’ She seemed to be accepting Merrily, now they were on their own, but not as a priest; she wouldn’t be ready for that. ‘No, no, not that one… the long one… that’s it.’
‘This?’ Merrily opened the drawer and found a hard-backed sketch pad inside.
‘There it is. Will you bring it over?’
‘Phyllis… why’s this picture turned to the wall?’
‘Eh?’
‘The picture.’ Merrily touched it.
‘No! You leave that alone!’
‘OK.’ She drew back, took the sketch pad to Mrs Mumford who put it flat on her knees. Merrily pulled up a dining chair. An envelope fell out of the sketch pad and she caught it and put it on the chair arm.
‘Don’t know what that is,’ Mrs Mumford said. ‘Now, look at these. He spent hours on these. You’ve got to be careful not to touch them or it’ll all come off. He had a spray, he did, but it still comes off.’
They were charcoal sketches. The first one was clearly of St Laurence’s Church, but its size was exaggerated so that the townhouses seemed like dog kennels. The second had been drawn from directly below, so that the tower resembled a rocket about to blast off. The perspective looked, to Merrily, to be spot on. There was light and shade and he’d smudged the charcoal to produce mist effects.
‘He was very talented, Phyllis.’
‘Sit there for hours, he would, drawing pictures of the church and the black and white houses. The others… we never sees them, they never comes to see their ole gran. Only Robbie.’
‘He loved being here with you, didn’t he? What’s this one? Is that what they call the Buttercross? With the little clock tower on top.’
‘Town council meets there. That one’s the Feathers Hotel.’
Mrs Mumford was much calmer now, leafing through the drawings, some identified underneath: Castle Lodge, The Reader’s House, the Old College.
‘Did he sit outside with his sketch pad?’
‘Too shy. He went out, see, and he looked at the old houses for a long time and he’d walk all round them and then he’d come back and he… you know… what do you call it?’
‘Drew them from memory?’
‘That’s it.’
Either Robbie had had a photographic memory or he’d really studied these buildings, come to know them intimately. Whichever, it was remarkable. Merrily said this to Phyllis, and Phyllis began to cry silently, the tears just coming, her cheeks swollen and shiny like the pouches that fed hospital drips, and Merrily held her hand, and Phyllis said, ‘He’s dead,’ looking up at her, as if pleading for a contradiction.
‘You’ll see him again, Phyllis.’
‘No.’ Phyllis’s fingers tightening in a spasm, flooded eyes gazing past Merrily now, at the picture turned to the wall.
The atmosphere in the room seemed brown and felt dense, as if the air was flecked with clouds of midges. The sketch pad slid to the carpet.
‘Phyllis, will you say a prayer with me?’
‘The only one of ’em ever come to see his ole gran,’ Phyllis said.
Did she mean still?
‘Can I say a prayer?’
‘When’s the Bishop coming?’
‘I’ll make sure he comes,’ Merrily whispered. ‘I’ll bring him. I promise.’
‘Can’t see the Bishop like this.’ Phyllis pulled her hand away. ‘State of me.’
‘You’re upset, and you’ve got every reason to be.’
‘Going to the bathroom.’
‘OK.’ Merrily helped her up. Phyllis had a bandage on one leg, rumpled, and it wasn’t clean. ‘Will you be all right? Does that dressing need…?’
‘I’m all right. That woman will come… my… Gail, is it?’
‘Andy’s wife.’
‘She’s a nurse.’
Her daughter-in-law of… thirty years, was it? Merrily held open the door that led to the hall. ‘Have you got a downstairs…?’
‘I’m all right, girl.’
Merrily left the door open, went to pick up the sketch pad. It had fallen open at a drawing of what looked like a high stone wall with a jagged white hole in it the shape of a figure, like when a cartoon character crashed through brick-work. She picked up the pad, took it back to the open drawer, listening for Mrs Mumford’s movements down the hall.
Problems here, and nobody would challenge Saltash’s assessment.
When she was putting the pad away, light from the front window showed how she’d misinterpreted the drawing. It wasn’t a hole in the wall, it was a white figure in the foreground, a vaguely female figure with the charcoal smudged around it to suggest a glow, a halo. It was two-dimensional, without contours, featureless.
It seemed to be the only figure in any of Robbie’s drawings.
Merrily closed the sketch pad, put it away in the drawer, went back to plump up the cushions on Mrs Mumford’s chair and spotted the white envelope that had fallen from the sketch pad.
It seemed legitimate to open it.
Inside the envelope was a picture postcard, an atmospheric filter photo of Ludlow Castle in a pink and frosty dawn light, the message written in black fibre-tip across the full width of the card.
Dear Marion,
I am in Ludlow again as I told you and it’s brilliant here even on my own altho when I am walking through the castle I feel you are there with me and then I feel really happy.
Sometimes I pretend you are walking next to me and we are holding hands and it’s brilliant!!!! Everything is all right again, and I never want to leave cos this is our place.
I was so miserable I didn’t think I could stand it till the end of term. Its worse than ever there. I hate them, they are stupid and ignorant and they are trying to wreck my whole life. The nearer it gets to the end of the holidays the sadder I feel and don’t want to go back there and I wish I could stay here with you for ever.
Please come like you promised you would.
Please, please, please come.
I’ll be waiting.
