Seventeen
‘I went to sleep,’ Tim said. ‘Now I’m refreshed.’
He tried to laugh. A dry, skittering noise came out.
Merrily vaguely recognized the first words sung by the soul, after death, in The Dream of Gerontius.
‘Feel so much lighter,’ he said. ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Merrily said. ‘That’s very good.’ Time seemed to have slowed. The white clouds had diminished and so had the humidity. A small night breeze rattled among the boughs.
Tim said, ‘You’re jolly pretty. I didn’t… didn’t realize you’d be so young. Way Winnie talked, it was as if you were some old…’ He stopped for a breath. It was a terrifying noise, like a small breeze in a mound of dead leaves. ‘Doesn’t matter what Winnie said, does it?’
‘I suppose not.’
She’d rung for an ambulance, said she’d found a man badly injured, didn’t know how. Syd’s advice. What they didn’t need was an Armed Response Unit. She’d given them directions from the hamlet of Whiteleafed Oak, her name and her mobile number, telling them they could probably get an ambulance across the common without any difficulty if they took it slowly.
Lol had brought half a bale of straw up from the barn, and they put some of it under Tim, raising his legs. Syd’s advice.
He walked over.
‘Both gone?’ Merrily said.
‘Nothing I could do. Not without more of this. Maybe they’ll get to a vehicle in time. Maybe they have arrangements in hand. Maybe they’ll be on a boat out of Fishguard by morning. Can’t see that he wouldn’t’ve made provision: bolt-holes, foreign bank accounts.’
Syd had phoned West Mercia Police on the general number, someone from Worcester coming back to him. Merrily didn’t know what had been said, but Spicer’d had the impression that they already knew some of what he was telling them and they’d confirmed this by asking if he was the man who’d left a message on Malcolm France’s mobile.
Some explaining, then, for Syd. Later.
She whispered to him, ‘There’s hardly any blood.’
‘Internal, then. Keep him warm. Don’t move him.’ Merrily’s head was filled with a prayer that she couldn’t articulate. She felt as if she was hovering over the entire scene, the wooded arena with its hints of neolithic mounds, its ghost of a processional way and the sacred, magisterial oak stuffed with twinkling symbols of vain hopes and dreams and, at its splayed feet, a man whose plea to be taken away had been answered in a blinding flash.
Tim Loste looked up at her from his bed of straw, his face creamed in sweat.
‘Hannah’s pretty.’
‘Yes, she is.’
‘Used to watch out for her when she came past. On her bike. Wished I had a bike. Follow her down. Two of us, whizzing down the hill. Super.’
‘Mmm.’
‘All I ever wanted, really. Thought I might buy a bike, but… Winnie said it would be the wrong kind.’
‘Not like Mr Phoebus.’
‘No.’
‘But you rode Mr Phoebus sometimes. In your… daydreams?’
With Hannah.
Tim’s eyes filled up with tiny pools of moonlight.
‘Know what I don’t want?’
Merrily bent close to him now. His sweat smelled sour.
‘You know what I… really don’t want? Where’s Dan?’
‘I’m here.’
Lol was kneeling on the other side.
‘Dan knows.’
‘Remind me?’ Lol said.
It was possible to speak with normal voices now, but they were whispering because Tim Loste was whispering. Tim smiled under his Edward Elgar yardbrush moustache, through his sweat.
‘Don’t want the Angel of the blasted Agony.’
‘Would anybody?’ Lol said.
Tim looked at Merrily and started to say something. But he was suddenly fighting for breath. She beckoned Syd, urgently, and he pushed more straw under Tim’s legs.
‘Lessens strain on the heart. Don’t move him, and don’t let him get too hot.’
Syd being the soldier again – as if too many priests would spoil the prayer. From quite a distance away, Merrily heard a single gunshot. Not uncommon, except this wasn’t, she was sure, a shotgun. She exchanged a glance with Syd. He went still.
Tim was mumbling something to Lol, who was shaking his head.
‘No, no… you haven’t failed. Winnie failed, that’s all. It couldn’t work for someone like Winnie. You must’ve known that.’
Of course it couldn’t. Winnie and her academic magic, her hit-and-miss, mix ’n’ match spirituality. Try this, try that. Merrily suddenly saw the callousness of it. Whatever happened to Tim, Winnie would have had a book out of it. She could almost see the hovering spirit, outlined in the acid colours of the moon’s halo, making notes. An even better book if Tim was dead.
‘You just need to change the end,’ Lol said. ‘It’s easy.’
‘Seven,’ Tim said.
‘Seven?’
Lol turned to Merrily as Tim said something else. She shook her head.
‘Was that… seventeen?’
Lol thought for a moment and then he smiled.
Tim’s eyes lit up, a quiet glow appearing on the edges of the pupils. Faraway, unknowing eyes, like the light through clouds.
Merrily took in a rapid breath just before the second shot came out of the forestry.
She heard the night-shredding squawks of emergency vehicles and took Tim Loste’s hand and began to pray.