Darkmans

He was still watching the hand as it moved slightly higher and strummed the single-string-harp of her collar bone.

‘I feel terrible about it,’ she added, ‘if that helps in any way.’

‘Pardon?’ He finally made eye contact with her. He hadn’t heard a word.

‘I said I’m sorry,’ she reiterated (her cheeks flushing). ‘This is all my fault. I should never have involved you…’

She paused, briefly – as if hoping for some kind of reassurance – but then rushed on, denying him the opportunity (had he taken it) to respond. ‘Although if it’s any kind of compensation, it’s made such an amazing difference, simply sharing the burden with someone. It’s been such a relief… And I’m just so…so embarrassingly…so absurdly grateful to you.’

She laughed on ‘absurdly’ – slightly hollowly – and then swallowed, involuntarily, on ‘grateful’ (so that it emerged in a half-gulp). Beede rapidly gathered his wits together (he’d been remiss before). ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Elen…’

He’d hoped to make this sound tender, but failed abysmally (his tender parts were as creaky, ill-used and rusty as the hinge of an ancient door).

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘I mean…’ she shook her head ‘…No. You’re right. I should just…’

Her hand flew, briefly, to her mouth. She cleared her throat. Her hand dropped. She seemed quite composed again, but her lips were just a fraction too straight. He stared at her mouth, fascinated by this straightness. Then, before he knew it, she’d collapsed forward, buried her face in her hands and was sobbing. No sound. Just her shoulders – her fragile shoulders – jerking, rhythmically, up and down.

Beede was completely overwhelmed. He pushed back his chair (it screeched, maddeningly), glanced anxiously through the window, tensed his legs (as if about to stand up), but then stayed exactly where he was. Five seconds passed. Finally, he reached over for a tissue – it was a long reach – and then fell to his knees, proffering it to her. ‘Please stop,’ he murmured, ‘crying won’t help anyone.’

He processed these words internally and then promptly tore them into a thousand pieces –

You clumsy, heartless old fool!

He felt like an earthworm in the midday heat, trapped on an endless-seeming expanse of tarmac – crispening up, frightened. He longed for a moist, damp crack to crawl into; for the soil, the dank, the dark.

It took a mammoth effort, but he reached up his arm and cupped his large hand over the back of her small head (like a father might, with his son, or a priest, to a grieving widower). Elen responded to his touch. She drew a deep, shaky breath. She tried to control herself.

‘Here’s a tissue, you foolish thing,’ he murmured.

She removed one hand from her face – it was soaking – and took the tissue from him, clenching it – like a child – for succour.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her voice just as calm and as soft as before. ‘Everything’s so…so complicated, that’s all. And sometimes I don’t really know…’ she paused, ‘how to…’ she paused again, drew another deep breath, and then shuddered, in wordless conclusion. She looked exhausted. She dabbed at her face with the tissue.

Beede removed his hand. He twisted around and pulled his chair closer, then clambered to his feet and sat back down on it. They were knee to knee.

‘You’re still not sleeping.’

It was a statement of fact.

‘No. I mean yes. I mean I’m absolutely fine. It’s just the…the roof,’ she back-pedalled, desperately, ‘it’s still leaking. And the builder, Harvey – Mr Broad – he keeps on stalling…’

‘Harvey Broad?’ Beede echoed, stiffening slightly. ‘Harvey Broad is your builder?’

‘And I’ve had a request from Fleet’s teacher to come in and see her,’ Elen continued (almost as if she hadn’t actually heard him). ‘I think there might be some kind of…of problem there.’

‘But mainly it’s Isidore,’ Beede spoke with a quiet authority, ‘he’s much worse again, isn’t he?’

She glanced up, dismayed. ‘Isidore’s fine. He’s fine. He’s…’

She groped around, desperately, for a better word.

‘Fine,’ Beede echoed, dryly. ‘Yes. I get the picture. Even if he did just steal a horse and ride it, bareback, along a busy dual carriageway.’ Her former – somewhat shaky – resolve seemed visibly undermined by this callous summation. Her shoulders drooped, pathetically.

‘So what now?’ he asked, observing the droop with a bitter pang. She didn’t answer him straight away. Instead, she unclenched the fist in which she’d held the tissue, observed it, balled up, in her palm, and then addressed her next few thoughts directly to it. ‘Things were so much better when you were around,’ she murmured, wistfully. ‘He seemed so much more…’ she paused, ‘so much easier…’

Beede also stared down at the tissue – not a little jealously, at first (I mean what had the damn tissue done to earn itself this gentle homily?).

‘Easier in himself, somehow,’ Elen continued (apparently undeterred by the tissue’s taciturnity). ‘But lately he’s grown so…’ she shivered, involuntarily, ‘dark. Dark. Just…’

A long pause: ‘just furious. Full of…’

A still longer pause ‘…anger. Bile. And then suddenly – out of nowhere – there’ll be that awful, that cruel…the…the laughter,’ she glanced up, fearfully, ‘you know?’

Beede nodded. He did know.

‘He’s homing in on the boy,’ she continued, warming to her theme now, ‘more every day. And at night, if I rest – even for a moment – then he’s up and he’s gone. He just…just flits…’

Beede’s expression did not alter. ‘You need to use those new tablets I gave you.’

She shook her head, looking down, focussing all her energies – once again – on the tissue.

‘Just for a while,’ Beede wheedled. ‘The other approach obviously isn’t working.’

She shifted in her seat. ‘I’d rather medicate myself,’ she glanced up, anxiously, ‘control myself. Don’t you see? To do anything else would just feel…’ she sighed ‘…detestable.’ She paused, shrugged, smiled resignedly. ‘And those other pills helped me enormously. They really did. I used them in conjunction with the ones from my doctor and was able to stay awake for several weeks, just taking quick naps, during the day, between clients…’

‘That’s crazy, Elen,’ Beede interjected, harshly, ‘and dangerous and short-sighted and irresponsible…’

‘I honestly believed,’ she interrupted, almost pleadingly, ‘in fact I still believe, that if I could just keep a close watch on him, build up some kind of a regular…a pattern, then things might have a chance – however slight – of falling back into place again.’

She closed her eyes. She frowned. ‘But everything’s the wrong…the wrong shape, somehow.’

Beede was still furious. ‘How on earth did you persuade me to get involved in all of this?’ he asked (and it was a question as much to himself as to anybody). ‘It’s just…It’s madness, don’t you see? You’re looking after a child, you’re running a household, you’re holding down a job…’

She dumbly nodded her acquiescence, a large tear forming in her eye and then sliding, plumply, down her cheek.

‘You’ve lost so much weight,’ Beede struggled, valiantly, to redirect his anger, ‘you’re so thin. I mean you look like you might just…just blow away.’

Elen shrugged (what did she care about that?). ‘Dory’s still exercising,’ she murmured, trying – and almost succeeding – to maintain her fragile equilibrium. ‘He’s really, really trying. And it’s so…so unbearably sad, somehow. He’s doing the breathing – the yoga breathing – which is all very positive and empowering and everything…’ she paused again, ‘but there are just so many repercussions which he doesn’t know about – which he can’t know about – and I don’t honestly feel like I can tell him – kill off that little bit of…of hope. But the more control he believes he has, the worse it becomes for everybody else. The less he goes under…I don’t know…when he does go…’ she bit her lip, ‘it’s just so much more terrible. I mean the consequences…And if the police get involved again…’

She shrugged, helplessly.

‘Dissolve a tablet into his tea,’ Beede instructed her, ‘or whatever he drinks before bed. That’s the most difficult time, isn’t it? The REM? When everything’s in transition? He’ll get to sleep much quicker. It’ll be deeper. And that’s bound to take the pressure off.’

‘Oh God,’ Elen clenched her hands together. ‘If only it were that simple…’

‘Try, at least,’ Beede cajoled her. ‘Think about Fleet. Your main priority has to be the boy. And yourself, obviously…’ he paused, frowning, ‘I’ve let you down recently. I can see that now…’

He scowled. ‘We’ve been short-staffed here for a while. I’ve been taking too much on. And then there’s this whole Monkeith situation. I seem to have become…’ he shrugged ‘…horribly enmeshed in the whole thing…’