The Various Haunts of Men (Simon Serrailler 1)

‘The process of healing and harmony has begun. I am pleased with you. I see love and light surrounding you and a joyful future, once we have cleared the darkness and the obstacles from your path.’

There was a long silence. Dava had closed his eyes.

One of the incense sticks burning in a jar on the table flaked into a pile of soft grey ash.

Dava opened his eyes and got up in one, brisk movement.

‘I will send you another appointment for a time which is auspicious.’

She looked directly into his eyes but they had an opaque, veiled look now, as if he had shut down the electricity of contact between them. His face was expressionless.

‘Thank you … yes. Thanks.’ She stumbled out of the door, feeling herself flush with embarrassment. The woman in the long skirt was standing there, so that in the dimness of the hall Debbie almost knocked her over. She said nothing. The front door swung silently open as she pressed a switch on the wall and Debbie found herself in the lane alone. It was drizzling.

Confused, and light-headed, she half ran down the steep slope and round the corner to the wholefood café, where two tables were now occupied by women with shopping bags and young children, chatting together. It was ordinary. Normal. She wanted to sob with relief.

It was only when she was halfway through her mug of sweet coffee and thick slice of carrot cake that Debbie remembered she was forbidden to have either. But she needed them. She felt as if she were thawing after her body had been frozen and the blood was flowing again through her veins. She stayed in the warmth and cheerfulness of the café until it was time to walk up the hill to catch her bus home.

She woke a little after eight o’clock the following morning, and lay trying to make sense of where she was and how she felt. The first thing she realised was that she had indeed slept deeply, peacefully and without dreaming. She waited, lying in her cocoon as calm as a baby. Fifteen minutes later, she was still lying, wide awake and blissful in the realisation that the black fog had not crept over her to blot out the rest of the day. She felt slightly detached, slightly odd, but not depressed. Not anything.

She got up tentatively, as if she might feel a sudden shooting pain or that movement might trigger the sudden descent of the blackness. But she showered and dressed and it did not happen.

Sandy was in the kitchen, putting clothes into the washing machine.

‘You look different,’ she said at once.

Debbie put the kettle on and reached for mugs and milk. She did not yet know how much she wanted to talk about Dava, partly because she had not yet sorted out what had happened and the things he had said, partly from some deep sense that the consultation was meant to be private. She ought to have asked his permission to talk about it. She realised she needed more guidance from him about a great many things.

‘You all right?’

‘A bit blotto. I slept too long. Come on, tell me about your holiday.’

For ten minutes or so, Sandy did. The kitchen was pleasant with the winter sun coming through the window. Debbie kept testing herself to see how she felt, as if she were touching a tooth the dentist had drilled to see if it were still sore.

‘OK, that’s enough about me,’ Sandy said.

They sat in silence at the wobbly Formica-topped kitchen table and even the pattern, like a grey rash all over its surface, looked beautiful to Debbie, just as the peeling wall and the front of the washing machine and the chipped mug hanging on the peg looked beautiful. Dava. It was all because of Dava.

‘Well, something’s happened,’ Debbie said.

The first few sentences came slowly as Debbie tried to find the right words to describe everything and to convey the power and the impact and the beauty of Dava, but then the words poured out in a stream like water over rocks, rushing together, what he had told her about her childhood, her future, her character, what he would do for her inner self, her hopelessness, her whole being. Sandy listened intently without interrupting once, occasionally looking carefully at Debbie, but mainly staring down into her mug.

The sun moved up the wall behind them.

Debbie’s words dried up and stopped flowing and the kitchen was quiet. She was damp with sweat round her neck, between her breasts, down her back; the effort of concentrating and of trying to convey everything, as well as reliving the emotions, had drained her and left her limp.

‘What happens next?’

‘My life turns around.’

‘Right …’

‘Starting now.’

‘Are you going again?’

‘He’ll send me an appointment … that’s what happens. You can’t make one, he sends it for exactly the right day and time … when it’s auspicious.’

‘Right.’ Sandy’s voice conveyed nothing, neither approval and enthusiasm nor suspicion.

‘He’s sending me some tablets … herbal things for the headaches and some skin ointment.’

‘Is it expensive?’

‘I don’t think it can be, not very.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he isn’t someone who would take a lot of money off you, you can tell, he isn’t into getting rich … and he knows I’m on benefits anyway.’

‘Right.’

‘He said to see if the headaches got better with the tablets and walking a lot in the fresh air and the new diet, but if they don’t, he could send me to someone else, he said sometimes things like that aren’t easy … they need other sorts of treatment.’

‘Where would he send you?’

‘He didn’t say. Someone he knows, I expect.’

‘Oh, I expect so, yes.’

Debbie looked at her sharply.

‘Listen, it’s all OK, Sand. It’s fantastic. I mean, I feel really, really better just since yesterday.’

‘Great.’ Sandy got up and took the mugs to the sink. She rinsed and drained them, emptied the teapot and sluiced it out. Then she glanced round. ‘What are you going to do today then?’

‘Go and buy the right things to eat. Clear out the rubbish from the cupboard and the fridge.’

‘OK, but don’t chuck mine out as well.’

‘Then I’ll go out and walk … like he said. Walk and walk in the fresh air.’

‘Right.’ Sandy went to the door. Hesitated. ‘Listen, Debs, don’t take this the wrong way – only you say you can’t remember everything that happened … you sort of came to and you were lying on the couch … do you think he might have given you something, or –’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Don’t jump down my throat. I just mean you have to be careful. You were on your own in this room with him and –’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Sandy. It was just like he sort of hypnotised me.’ She thought of Dava’s eyes and his soft voice.

‘You do look better.’

‘I feel like I’m reborn, you know? He’s rebirthing me; that’s what he said he was going to do, only it hasn’t finished, but when it is I’ll be new … a new Deborah. He said when it was complete, I would change my name – I would feel a real, deep urge to change it … I won’t be Debbie then, I’ll be Deborah. Deborah Parker.’

She straightened her back and felt herself to be a foot taller and floating above the ground as she went out of the kitchen.

The sun slid off the wall, leaving the room in shadow.

Eleven

Jim had to do something, had to be out, and besides, the house was too quiet. When the postman came through the gate, there was silence, and when the milkman whistled and the dustcart turned into the street. Silence. He had often cursed Skippy’s high-pitched bark that made him start up in his chair, but he hated the silence more.

He had combed the Hill and beaten about with a stick in as much of the scrub and undergrowth as he could. Every day, Jim Williams spent most of the morning there, starting out very early, as he had done on the day the terrier had vanished, and often returning, to search and call and whistle until it grew dark.

Christmas he had spent alone and it had meant nothing. Now, it was the New Year and no one else was out on the Hill. He was waiting for the woman with the Dobermanns, who had been absent for a week. It was damp and mild and there was no sign of Skippy.

He had heard a report on the radio about a missing prize pedigree dog, and after that, he had gone through the Lafferton Echo the previous week, and the Bevham Post every night, for reports of dog-stealing gangs. Phyl had told him about them.

‘They take cats, too, they go for vivisection when they don’t go to the canning factory and wind up as pet food. You have to look out.’

But he had not, he had let Skippy off the lead as she never did, and the terrier had gone. He had probed down every rabbit hole he could find and stood listening for some faint bark or whimper of a dog stuck underground.

Silence, except for the wind rustling the dry undergrowth and blowing into his face down the Hill.

He should give up, he knew that in his heart. He wasn’t going to find the dog. He was frustrated and angry and baffled but he should give up all the same.

But not yet, not just yet. What was a week? The terrier had chased off after something and missed a turn, found himself among unfamiliar streets where nothing smelled right, and wandered off, perhaps been into a house, or maybe he’d curled up in a garage or a shed and then been locked in.

Just a week.

He thought he might put an advertisement in the free paper.

Then he heard the yelping bark of the two Dobermanns and saw the woman striding with them towards him up the slope. Jim Williams felt like rushing to her with open arms, so sure was he that she would have seen or heard something. She had been out walking the day Skippy had disappeared, she had seen Jim, even looked back over her shoulder as he had whistled and called.

He stood, trying to get his breath now, desperate to speak to her.

She was not a pleasant-looking woman. She was large and aggressive and wore a huge, heavy sheepskin coat and a hat with ear flaps, and there was something haughty about her expression. She listened with impatience as the Dobermanns pulled at their leads.

‘I know you’re always up here, you were here that day, I’ve been waiting to catch you again. Did you see anything, did you hear anything? You know what he looks like.’

‘Yes, ratty little thing, they all are, can’t stand tiddly dogs. But no, I’m afraid I didn’t and I haven’t and really do you wonder? Let one of those off the lead and they just disappear. Run over, trodden on, down a hole. Let that be a lesson for when you get another. Have a decent-sized dog.’

She strode off briskly behind the yelping Dobermanns and when she had gone a few yards, looked back over her shoulder, in the same way she had looked back as he had shouted for Skippy.

‘Sorry.’

Jim Williams felt himself begin to shake. He should have been angry, perhaps even taken her up for being so rude, but all he felt was crushed and tearful. She was right, he was to blame, it was his own fault.

‘Oh Jim, honestly,’ he heard Phyl say. He watched the back of the Dobermann woman going out of sight towards the trees. He wanted to rush after her and beg her that if she saw Phyl not to tell her, not to give him away.

He took out his handkerchief, wiped his eyes and blew his nose. What was he thinking about? What made him want to do that? Phyl was dead, and in any case the Dobermann woman would not have known her.

He was still shaking as he went slowly down the sloping path towards the road.

But later, having calmed himself with a good breakfast, he went out again, first to the office of the free newspaper, where he placed an advertisement, then to the telephone kiosk, where he called Radio BEV, who logged his message about Skippy’s disappearance. After that, he went to Lafferton Police Station.

Twelve

Jake Spurrier took a long time to put on his outdoor shoes and zip up his jacket, partly because everything took ages these days because he felt tired, partly because he was hating the idea of a visit to Mr Sharpe.

‘Jake, it doesn’t hurt.’

‘It did hurt. When I went for my sore throats and he stuck the needles into my neck it mega hurt.’

‘You didn’t have another sore throat afterwards though, did you?’

‘I’ve got one now.’

‘Hm.’

But as he turned away, Jenny Spurrier looked anxiously at her ten-year-old son. He had never been especially robust, unlike his brother Joe who was fourteen and had barely had a single day off school for illness in his life. Jake had been the one with a wheezy chest and constant ear infections, the one who caught mumps and chickenpox and was ill for a month with them, the one who went down with the first head cold in September and did not finish having them until the end of April. Lately, he had been complaining of tiredness, and he was paler than normal. His sore throats had returned, and he had even had a couple of sties on his eyes, which children simply didn’t get nowadays.

Jenny Spurrier was against antibiotics in any form, though occasionally she had given in when nothing else would get to the bottom of Jake’s earaches, and if she took him to see Dr Deerbon, she knew she would have the usual battle about it. Not that this practice was as bad as the one she had transferred them all from, five years before. There, antibiotics were handed out like sweets as a cure-all for every sniffle and headache; you had been able to get them by making a phone call to the receptionist without the trouble of making an appointment to see the doctors. Things were better at Dr Deerbon’s surgery, no question about that. It had been Dr Deerbon who had suggested Jenny try acupuncture for her persistent stomach pains, once every investigation had proved negative.

‘I don’t send people to see alternative practitioners casually,’ Dr Deerbon had told her, ‘but I have a great respect for Aidan Sharpe. He is fully qualified, he won’t fill you with a lot of gobbledegook, and a certain range of problems respond very well to acupuncture. It’s very effective for chronic pain too. A patient of mine with bones crumbling from osteoporosis and arthritis has had great relief from regular treatments with Mr Sharpe. No miracle cure, you understand … there is no cure for crumbling bones, but the relief of pain and stiffness has been obvious. I’m afraid you can’t go on the NHS, but if you have any private medical insurance they’ll usually cover it if I write the referral.’

Jenny had been to see Aidan Sharpe just twice and her stomach pains had gone. She was able to eat normally, though the acupuncturist had recommended that she avoid highly spiced food and white wine. That had been two years ago and the treatment had also cured Jake Spurrier’s sore throats and generally given him more energy and stamina. He had played football for the school team for a whole season and only missed one game because of having a cold, an unprecedented run of good health. In the last month or so though, he had become run-down again, his appetite was poor, and he had been put on the bench by the football coach.