Death be Not Proud Read online

  Who was he? What was he? If human – good grief! – that was an avenue I fought shy of exploring – if human, he must have been born somewhere and at some time, and he would have had parents, possibly siblings. A sudden rattle followed by scratching noises from behind my head brought me back to reality with the night antics of the resident mice. I thumped on the wall half-heartedly and the scuttling stopped just long enough for me to imagine them cocking their heads before they ignored me as usual, and continued their game of running up and down inside the framework of the old wall.

  What did I have at the moment? His name and three dates – consistent in the 1930s, 1970s and 2000s. And possibly – just possibly – a country. He sounded too English not to be, despite the slight American accent that all but disappeared when we were alone together. His reaction to being asked about his name, the mention of his colouring – although little in themselves – when put together added up to a big heap of… what? If I took another, say, twenty to thirty years off 1932 – it would give a birth date of around 1900 to 1910. So, that was where I would start; I needed to look for references in the UK or the US about a hundred years ago. If I treated this as any other research project, applied the same methods, the same rules, I might be able to get closer to the “Who?”

  That would only leave me with the “What?” – and that was too big to contemplate, too scary to consider. And without the who and the what, I had nowhere to go with this relationship. Matthew might as well be a figment of my imagination, as solid as grasping at air.

  I pressed my fingers against the bruises his lips had made on my skin, and felt with relief – with gladness – the welcome twinge of pain it brought, because it made him real. I laughed out loud at the thought: a relationship? I could no more contemplate a relationship with a man about whom I knew nothing except that he shouldn’t exist, than I could with a phantom.

  A ghost, yet as substantial as me? No. An alien? A Time Lord? Something from another world or a freak of nature? For an instant I considered whether he might be dredged up from the underworld, a demon disguised, but instantly knew it not to be the case with a certainty beyond understanding. I pressed my cross to my lips and strained to hear the guiding voice again, but my own thoughts drowned it out. Matthew had said it was something I should be scared of, or something that he thought would scare me. Would his age be enough to frighten me? Not really; I lived so thoroughly in the past that at times I found it a wrench to leave it and come back to the present. If anything, what worried me most was not who or what he was, but that I didn’t care about it as much as I should. I should be running scared. I should – were I sane – reject him and save my own skin and sanity. I shouldn’t be sitting here in the twenty-first century thinking how long it would be before I would see my anomaly again. That posed another question – and one which I found potentially far more frightening: had I lost my mind?

  The possibility alarmed my parents. It lay behind the young doctor’s eyes in the hospital, and framed Mike Taylor’s questions earlier today. Could they see something I missed in myself? Had I spent so much time in the company of the dead that I could no longer relate to the living? Had so much happened to me in the past weeks that I sought refuge in the solitary confinement of my mind? And would I know if that were the case? Would I care?

  Of some facts I could be certain: that Matthew Lynes existed in the present seemed evident enough. That he practised medicine – without doubt. I knew he had been married and I had met his niece and nephew, but what else? Could I be confident that the photograph in the newspaper was indeed Matthew? Could it be coincidence that several years before my birth, Mike had seen a man – a doctor – who looked like Matthew and shared his name? Had I imagined his strength, his speed, or the moving lights like flames in his eyes? Did he eat and sleep as I did, and mere chance prevented me from seeing him do so? Had the bear rent his jacket and a miracle saved Matthew’s skin from being torn from his back, and his life with it? Where, on this sweet earth, did the boundary lie between reality, certainty, sanity and what I had found in this strange man? And where, on that frontier, did I sit?

  I raised my head at the sound of footsteps outside my door and covered my face with as near normal a smile as I could muster as my mother came in bearing a tray.

  “Darling, I can’t see a thing – put the light on, please!”

  I hadn’t noticed I had been sitting in the dark, the light from the laptop casting a lurid glow against the walls. I switched on the bedside light and its muted terracotta shade warmed the room instantly. The fork rattled against the glass on the tray as my mother set it down on the bed in front of my crossed legs. I steadied the glass as it slid precariously to the edge of the tray, and put it on the bedside table.

  “Mum, you didn’t have to bring this up – I’d have come down for supper.”

  “I called and called but you didn’t answer, so it was much easier to bring this to you and save my voice. I need the exercise anyway. Are you engrossed?”

  “I must have been. I didn’t hear you, sorry.” I listened to myself, and wondered if what I said could be interpreted as a sign of madness.

  She squeezed my arm. “Not to worry, darling; I’ll never know how you can expect to hear anything, let alone think when you’re plugged into your music machine.”

  She twanged the long cord of my earphones hanging around my neck; I had forgotten it was there.

  “It helps me concentrate. Thanks for bringing my supper up – it looks good.”

  I picked up the fork with what I hoped looked like eager anticipation, but my mother continued to sit on the edge of my bed, her hand still resting on my arm.

  “What is it, Mum?”

  She played with the edge of my sleeve, tidying the cuff so that it sat neatly against my bandaged wrist.

  “Guy phoned today; your father spoke to him.”

  She pulled a stray hair out of the weave. I put my fork back down on the plate abruptly, the noise cold.

  “And?”

  “He’d heard you’d had problems in America, and he wanted to know how you are.”

  “I hope Dad told him everything’s just fine,” I said, with an undercurrent of a threat.

  “Yes, but he still wants to see you. He wants to come over.”

  I shoved the tray angrily to one side. “Not a chance. No way. Get Dad to phone him back; I don’t want him anywhere near me. I’ve got enough to deal with at the moment.”

  “That’s what your father told him,” she said quietly.

  “He did?”

  “Don’t underestimate your father, Emma. I know he gets it wrong sometimes – well, quite often – but he’s on your side, don’t forget that. He didn’t get to know you like I did; we grew up together, didn’t we? He never had that, so you’re still a bit of a mystery to him. But he’s making a real effort at the moment, and he knows that he was wrong about Guy and wrong about how he handled the situation with you, too.”

  My shoulders slumped, my anger deflated like a pot going off the boil.

  “Oh.”

  “Another thing…” she said, seeing my defences down, “Beth’s been asking how you are and she’s been over a few times; now you’re feeling a bit more like yourself, perhaps you can get together? You haven’t seen Archie for months and he’s gorgeous – all red hair and dimples.”

  “Poor child…” I began, and she looked at me reprovingly. “Yes, all right, I’ll see them. I know all this has made me… oh, I don’t know… too self-obsessed, I suppose. You must think I’m barking.”

  I glanced swiftly at my mother and, catching the hint of a frown, suspected I was right.

  “She’ll be at the coffee shop tomorrow, if that’s any help,” she suggested.

  Game, set and match to my mother – as proficient off the court as on it. She had accomplished exactly what she wished to achieve without so much as a murmur from me.

  “OK, I’ll see how I get on here,” I acquiesced without making any promises, and she
smiled her golden smile, where her face lit up and the tired years fell from it, softening the lines. I put my arms around her, trying not to thump her with my cast. “I don’t know how you put up with me, but thank you, anyway.”

  “You have your grandfather’s passion and your father’s determination – how could I not put up with you? All I ask for, darling, is that you allow yourself to be happy; just for once, let happiness find you.”

  I unfolded myself from around her.

  “And there’s no need to look at me like that, Emma; you have a knack of pushing people away and keeping them at a distance – and you know you do.”

  “Circumstances and complications,” I muttered.

  “Well, perhaps, but you have a part to play too. Sometimes you have to make things happen.”

  She regarded me with her deep, wise eyes, but I couldn’t tell her what I wanted more than anything at this moment, because it registered off the scale of absurdity and I was trying to be normal – if such a thing existed.

  “Now eat, before your food get cold. I don’t want your father fussing any more about you not eating enough.”

  Sharp shafts of sunlight drove across the steeple of St Mary’s, irradiating the stone in shades of pale gold that lit the dark canyons of the ancient streets below. Arrows of light glanced off the soft greyed stone roofs where – wet from last night’s rain – the sun caught the surface. I had been awake when the rain stopped sometime in the middle of the night, and still tossed fitfully as I listened to the first calling of the morning birds as the sun rose.

  I took a bath, one limb at a time, when I thought that the sound of my clumsy splashing would alert no suspicion from my parents because of the early hour.

  By the time the great church bell struck seven, I decided that the only way forward would be to approach the whole subject of Matthew Lynes as one of historical research and to do what I did best – methodically, thoroughly and dispassionately. I would begin with what little I had – his name – and the few dates and, like a tapestry, weave the multicoloured strands into a picture I could understand. And then? And then I would see where those strands led me.

  Scooping the last of his special porridge made with raisins and ginger into his spoon, Dad broke through my reverie.

  “Are you seeing Beth today?”

  Bother, I’d forgotten. “I’ll pop down to the coffee shop after breakfast,” I said, a tad too brightly to be real; he raised a heavy eyebrow.

  “While you’re there, pick up a couple of croissants, will you, please?”

  Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved his wallet, handing over a pristine five-pound note and ensuring I went. Much more subtle than usual, he must have been taking lessons from my mother.

  The air stung straight from the east, the light breeze cold and sharp. I wrapped Matthew’s scarf around my face and drew the collar of my coat up to my ears, the zip holding the combination together like the bevor on a suit of armour. I found the narrow passage that led to the old High Street and regarded the tide of humanity in front of me before stepping into the current. Apart from the brief encounter in the computer shop and the hospital, it had been weeks since I’d been among people outside the confines of the college, and the assault on my senses left me unprepared. I felt a stranger, although the blood of my ancestors stained the streets, and their money had built the walls of the old stone houses around me. I knew each cobble, every stone, the smell of the market stalls in Red Lion Square, the familiar voices – teeth gritted against the biting wind – yet I found no comfort in them, cast adrift on an ocean of faces. Out of sorts; out of place; out of time.

  My sister’s coffee shop lay off the High Street, its Georgian windows at odds with its medieval origins. I pushed open the heavy glazed door with a mixture of anticipation and relief as the crowds gave way to the coffee-scented sobriety of the interior. The hour still being early, only a handful of caffeine addicts decorated the warm, mocha-coloured room. Embedded in deep leather sofas set in alcoves, they spread wide their newspapers in defiance of the morning. A few faces looked up as the frigid air made me an unwelcome visitor, stirring the static pages and diluting the heady aroma of freshly made coffee. I walked quietly across the stripped-wood floor which bore the accumulated scars of several centuries of life, to where weak sunlight, the colour of winter, bleached the tones of the oak counter curving seductively towards the back of the shop. Behind it, the back of a tall, skinny man in his early forties, dark floppy hair greying at the edges, stooped as he wrestled with the filter mechanism of the shiny Italian coffee machine. He yanked at the black handle and the filter jerked free, scattering dark coffee grounds across the floor. He swore under his breath.

  I unwound my scarf and drew the zip of my coat down far enough to reveal my face. “Hi, Rob, how’s things?”

  He jumped, spinning round, grinding a circle in the damp coffee under his shoe.

  “Emma! Good grief! Where did you come from?”

  His soft Scottish accent seeped through his precise articulation, as it always did when he was surprised. He came round the end of the counter, wiping his hands on the cream apron around his waist, and enveloped me in a cautious embrace.

  “Beth’s feeding Archie – she’ll be out in a moment. Now, what’ve you been up to?” He held me at arms’ length, inspecting me as he did so, taking in the cast on my arm and the hollow wanness of my face.

  “So what’s happened to the vermin who did this to you?”

  I shrugged, not wanting to go into details of the attack again.

  “They’ve got him banged up somewhere.”

  He took the hint. “They should’ve fed him to your dad; let him sort the scum out, like he did Guy.”

  “Oh, you heard about that, did you?”

  I wondered what exactly he had been told about my father’s confrontation with Guy – not the full story, I bet. He grinned, his smile lifting high cheekbones, and his face looked no longer severe.

  “I heard enough to know I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of his temper – or yours. There’s laws against terrorizing university staff in the States, you know, Emma. They won’t let you back in the country if you persist in molesting academics.”

  An image of Staahl’s face, screwed in terror moments before Matthew released his grip on him, intervened briefly. I recovered, punching my brother-in-law on the arm as hard as I dared. He was the only person I knew who could get away with making a comment that cut so close to my quick. He gave me another brotherly bear hug, reminding me of a leaner version of Matias Lidström. “Yes, well, I’m glad to see you’re in one piece; Beth’s been worried sick about you.”

  A flurry of feet from the back of the room and the high-pitched clamour of children’s voices broke through the muted tones of the adult conversations around us, as my nephew and niece sprang out of nowhere, launching an attack of hugs around my waist. Heads – one curly haired and bright gold, the other straight and dark – looked up at me expectantly. I kissed the tops of their heads, returning their embraces as best I could amid the wriggling.

  “Hello, you two – my, how you’ve grown! Shouldn’t you be at school? Christmas is coming, and I hope you’ve been good little children. Are you eating your greens?”

  My fingers ruffled their hair stiffly and the twins creased up with giggles at the familiar greeting. Flora’s pretend pout lasted for all of two seconds.

  “It’s Saturday, Emma, and there’s no school at the weekend, but Daddy says we should be in school every day and Christmas Day, and he says he’s going to talk to Mrs Abbot about it ’cos she’s the head teacher and she can tell the teachers they’ve got to teach us and Amy’s mum says we don’t because it’s the law we have holidays and Daddy says he’ll get the law changed and have you brought us any presents?”

  “Slow down, slow down, my little river of words, one thing at a time!”

  I laughed at my irrepressible niece, her eyes sparkling and her curls bouncing as she jumped up and down in fro
nt of me. “And no, I’m very sorry, but this time I didn’t bring any presents. Do you forgive me or shall I leave and never come back?”

  She flung her arms around my waist again, managing to nudge a rib in the process.

  “Don’t go, we forgive you. But you have to do better next time,” she smiled impishly.

  I felt a tentative hand on my arm and looked down at my nephew, pale and shy with the dark, soft hair of his father – the opposite of his twin.

  “Does your arm hurt, Emma?”

  I bent down as far as I could, and brushed his hair out of his thoughtful eyes, gentling my voice.

  “No, Alex, it doesn’t hurt any more, but thank you for asking. How’s the coin collection going? Any new acquisitions?”

  The little boy’s face lit up. “I’ve seen a Hadrian sesterce on eBay, but it’s too much money already, but Daddy says he’ll take us to Bloody Oaks at Losecoat Field if the farmer’ll let us. James’ dad found a groat there last summer.”

  I smiled at the light in his eyes and made a mental note for a Christmas present.

  “Your great-grandfather used to take us to the battlefield when I was your age; that’s where my arrowhead came from; do you remember it?”

  Alex nodded eagerly, making his hair flop back into his eyes. “Will you come too, Emma, please?”

  “Yes, please, Emma, please, please, pleeeease,” Flora chanted.

  There was almost nothing I would have liked to do more. Almost.

  “Perhaps, babes – I’ll have to see.”

  Flora started to pogo up and down in front of me again, winding herself up for a full-on begging session, but her father intercepted just in time.

  “All right, you two, the DVD’s set up, if you want to watch it; give your aunt room to breathe.”

  I relieved my muscles of their awkward posture while he shooshed his offspring towards the back of the shop, where they disappeared in a cloud of exuberance through the staff door, passing my sister as she came out. Beth saw me and pulled her dark-blue jumper down over her bottom with her free hand, hiding her white T-shirt in the process. She balanced eleven-month-old Archie on one broad hip, his chubby legs swinging; he was full of milk and good humour.