PSX: I Am Half-Sick of Shadows
Title: I Am Half-Sick of Shadows
Author: puddlesofun
Prompt: 1. A maze; 2. A dictionary; 3. Water; 4. A knight.
Wordcount: 4,830
Every morning, I solve the labyrinth. Left, right, past the little Pan statue, straight on past that odd dead patch in the wall, left at the T-section, straight, straight, through the odd curving bit, right, and straight out at my favourite spot by the lake. I could do it in the dark, had I a mind too. I say labyrinth, it's really just a medium sized hedge maze. I guess I call it that because I like to imagine a pint-sized Theseus and the Minotaur running about the place. Call it a quirk.
Often it's still foggy in the morning, lending a beautiful ethereal immediacy to the journey, the way fog does. It eliminates all the clutter of distance, and puts you where you are. And when I take my customary seat on the shore, I get to watch the spring sun cut through it all, until there's just those few little clouds holding on stubbornly in the shaded corners of the lake, and then nothing at all.
It would, of course, be quicker and easier to walk around the labyrinth, but it never seems as satisfying. It doesn't even really feel like I've come to the same place.
I don't know how long we've been here. I should probably look into that, given I have a job to get back to. I shudder to think of whichever young turk it is filling up my column inches, proclaiming Next Big Things left, right and centre. I'll figure it out later, though, when I get back to the manor. It's not really important right now. Right now I have my crossword, and a thermos full of coffee, and an expensively bound piece of trashy 1940's fiction from the Manor library to keep me busy for the whole morning.
I lay out the crossword and start chewing absently on a pastry packed for me by the kitchen staff. Oh yes, they have maids and everything here. I feel like a regular class betrayer. A relaxed, pampered, class betrayer. The Manor belongs to Laura's uncle. The first time we stayed here, she said: "I always told my parents that if I died they should have the wake here, so everyone could stay and not have to drive. So it'd be a proper wake, with drinking until the place spins, and dancing, and yelling and crying, and laughing, and remembering."
Which sounds a bit morbid I suppose, but her work is dangerous, and I can't say that it never crossed my mind that I might lose her that way.
I feel like I haven't seen Laura in days. Which should worry me. We came here to sort things. To fix them. Or more likely to bring them to an end, if I'm honest. It's not like it was an unspoken thing. We said, one of us said to the other, I can't remember which: "It's dying, this thing. We need to get away from all that other stuff and figure out what we can salvage."
And it's not like Laura is one to avoid things. I doubt she's even capable of it, so purposeful is her nature.
Maybe it's me that's avoiding her. I hadn't thought of that. Well, I'll worry about it after this crossword and a couple of chapters.
*
Out of the midday sun and back in the cool air of the Manor, I notice as I am walking through the parlour (well, one of them) that another move has been taken in the chess game. I stop to study the board. We haven't played in so long, I'd forgotten how good she was. Our styles are different. I play conservatively, defensively. She seems to trade pieces willy-nilly to clear the board and get herself into a better position, until she puts you in mate and you realise that it wasn't willy-nilly at all. Her knight is threatening my bishop. But moving it will open up the board for her Queen. I move my own knight to protect it, and absently start a mental list of songs about chess - let's see... Your Move, by Yes; Chess, by Weezer; some indie Australian band did a song about Bobby Fischer, I'm sure of it; after that column I did on wizard rock I guess I could include Wizard's Chess by Harry and the Potters...come on, if I can't at least make a top five then I don't deserve my job....Chess Piece Face. But it always feels like cheating to fall back on They Might Be Giants. Not many English bands in there. That's odd. I'm making a mental note to see if I can spin a piece out of it, something controversial on anti-intellectualism maybe, when the bell for luncheon sounds.
Laura's uncle, William Ponsonby Hocking, is already tucking his napkin into his collar when I arrive in the dining room. The man has a knighthood, although he's always been a little shady on the subject of why. He's so well pickled that it's quite hard to determine his age, another subject he's evasive on. When I first met him I had trouble believing he was genuine, so exactly did his upper class accent appearance fit the stereotype of a gruff, ancient, scotch soaked fox-hunting lord. But I have to admit that I like the man despite myself. He's relentlessly friendly, and has none of the reserve I've come to expect from so many other members of Laura's family.
"Ah! Nicholas! Good man. I hope you've brought your appetite. Nelly's been doing a roast."
That sounds delicious, I say, catching a little of his infectious good-humour.
"Seen that wife of yours?"
I'm afraid not, William. I haven't seen her all day.
"Most irregular. Yesterday you didn't turn up, and today it's her."
I'm sure it's not on purpose, I say a little too defensively, I just lost track of time yesterday when I was reading by the lake, and you can't hear the bell out there. Perhaps she's gone for a stroll and done the same.
"Yes, yes, I'm sure that's it. That's what you're here for, after all. To lose track of time. You'll have to decide whether you want to do it apart, though." At this moment, one of the staff, a shy looking young woman, brings a lamb roast to the table and begins to carve. "Ah! That looks beautiful, Nelly."
*
I finally run into Laura on the stairs as I head up to the bedroom.
"Hello, you," she says. Laura has a plummy accent that sounds deeply sexy on her, and yet deeply unsexy on every other member of her family.
But then, it's her voice as much as her accent. It's like the words are dipped in honey.
"Nick?"
Oh, hi.
"Lost in thought, I see. Where have you been?"
I've been by the lake, doing the crossword.
She rolls her eyes. "What would people think? You'll be wearing a tie and bowler hat next."
Hey, it's a brave new world, I say. Keith Richards is off the sauce, Lou Reed does Tai Chi. I talked to your uncle, too.
"Drunk?"
Yeah. Hey, you haven't told him why we're here, have you?
"You know I haven't."
It's just, he said some things.
"About a choice or something? Yeah, he was rambling on to me about something yesterday, I'm not sure what he was talking about. It weirded me out a bit. I had lunch elsewhere today."
I noticed, I say. Now that Why We Are Here has raised its head, the air is more expectant. I try to keep pleasantries going. How are you? I ask, as if we are friends long separated by distance and time, rather than a couple separated by our own respective willfulness and resentment.
"Oh, you know," she says, and I do. And I don't. "I heard odd noises last night. It sounded like a woman crying."
We've been sleeping in separate beds, which was a stupid idea. Sure, sex complicates things, but it does so as much by its absence as its presence, and in the meantime I have to sleep alone.
I suggest that perhaps it is over-emotional mice.
She shakes her head.
The maid?
"Could be, but she doesn't sleep near me. I checked."
Ghost?
She shrugs, but isn't dismissive like I'd expect. "There's a whole bunch of family history stuff I've never seen in the library," she says "I'm going to go take a look." And she's gone.
*
I wake up, I don't know what time it is but it's dark, and I have the strangest feeling that something has happened, something important. I struggle in vain to remember, but whatever it was I dreamt melts back into my subconscious without leaving a trace.
I reach out to the empty space next to me in the bed, and think, maybe we can sleep together tomorrow. I wake up alone all the time, it's been like that for years, but it's different when she's in the same building.
It's taken me a long while to admit it, but the problem with living with Laura is that she is genuinely better than me.
Now, I'm very successful in my chosen field. I'm possibly the most respected music journalist currently working in Britain (and not in rehab). I have everyday contact with people who look up to me and go out of their way to kiss my arse. But, as much as I believe in the transformative powers of pop music, and as much as I love rhapsodizing over it and communicating this love to others, at the end of the day I have to submit that I'm doing something that doesn't actually matter.
Laura, on the other hand, is an actual, bona-fide saint. She sacrificed a very promising career in journalism to work full time for a non-profit organisation that catalogues and exposes various crimes throughout Europe relating to the trade in humans. Her job is to investigate and gather evidence wherever there are occurrences of slavery, often risking her own safety in the process. I often find it hard to believe that she can come home to a man, after seeing the sorts of things that men do.
But mainly, what her job means that she is away an awful lot of the time, and often when she is at home her mind is at work, to the point where I feel guilty for even wanting her there, like every moment she spends away from work is a moment she could have spent saving someone. She'd never say such a thing, of course.
I don't hear much about it, what happens when she's away. I don't think she really wants to think about it when she's with me. I'm her respite, or I have been. But we're not happy. I miss her when so much every time she's gone that it makes me angry.
I did something stupid, something hurtful. The first time I apologised, the time when I first told her what I'd done, she'd barely reacted. Just stared at me for a couple of seconds, said "Later," and left on one of her missions. You'd think I'd be relieved, but I was angry. This, even this, was not important enough to stop for?
See what I mean? Saving lives. How can I begrudge her that? And yet I did.
*
Left, right, past the little Pan statue, straight on past that odd dead patch in the wall, left at the T-section, straight, straight, through the odd curving bit, right, and straight out. The fog is thick this morning. Today I have a crossword, like usual, and a dictionary from the library to check my answers. I also have a poetry anthology. An odd choice for me, I know, but I wanted to check up on some classical reference from a Leonard Cohen song.
I'm reading "The Lady of Shalott" when I look up and see Laura walking along the bank towards me. She must have gone around the maze rather than through. I wave.
"I thought I might find you here," she says. She looks down at what I'm reading. My books, paper and thermos are all layed out on a stone table. Not the big, messianic-lion crucifying type, just a normal size table. She frowns. "Lancelot raped her, you know."
Who? I say, caught off guard.
"Elaine. The Lady of Shalott. Whoever. Women don't die of love, Nick. They die of other things."
I want to argue that interpretation, but she sighs and I know it would be a meaningless argument, or it would go places I didn't want to dig.
"Why did you fuck her, Nick?"
Like there, for instance. For a moment I can't say anything. The mist still hangs heavy on the lake. I don't know, I say truthfully.
"Yes you do," she whispers, more truthfully. "Try harder. Tell me how you fucking feel. There was a time I couldn't get you to stop telling me how you felt about things. How you felt music affected people's lives, how you felt about manufactured pop. Believe it or not, you used to tell me how you felt about me. So talk." She gestures around her. "It's now or never, do you understand?"
It's not like it's that easy, but she's right. She's always fucking right. I dig. I take a deep breath, and don't quite look at her, and say it: "Nothing I feel matters. You're gone so often, and when you're here I don't feel like my problems are important enough to burden you with, because they're nothing to what you've seen."
"And her? Did you share your problems with her?"
"No. Sort of."
I didn't look for it, you know. So I had some young thing around for dinner, I do that all the time. I like adulation. I look for that. I thought she was bringing her boyfriend, instead she brought stories about him and how he was never there. It seemed weird and inappropriate, a stranger revealing all her fears. I wanted to make her feel better, so I told her about Laura, how she spends so long away. Bright Young Thing took that the wrong way, or maybe the right way, because I didn't stop her. It's the worst thing I've ever done.
I didn't-
"Don't tell me you didn't mean for it to happen, Nick. Don't you pretend it wasn't your choice."
I chose it. I wish I hadn't. I'm sorry, Laura. It's the worst thing I've ever done.
"Yeah," she says quietly, "I hope so," and walks back around the maze.
*
I couldn't do the crossword this morning and I couldn't sit still. I tried getting lost in the maze but I couldn't do it. The night I did the deed keeps coming back to me. Bright Young Thing hadn't seemed like she had a guilty conscience. She had slept contentedly there next to me, while I lay awake all of that night feeling certain I was the worst person in the world. And I'm standing in the maze thinking about how it was so not even remotely worth it, it wasn't even anything but bad feelings when it happened, and for that I've hurt the person I care the most about. Even if we are at an end anyway, nothing is worth that. And we must be at an end. I want us not to be, but I can't see a way clear. Even if things changed and she were around - and I would never think of asking her to stop doing this thing that makes her who she is - how could she ever trust me?
I'm back at the manor in time for lunch, although I'm not sure I want to be. Laura is absent again. Sir William and I sit there sipping soup.
"Spiffing soup," he says, eyeing me. "She's progressing much faster than I thought she would. Whereas you...."
I'm too wrapped up in my thoughts to really pay any attention to him.
He smells even more strongly than usual of whiskey.
"....man has to get his affairs in order. No good leaving what you could do now..."
I don't really need to deal with this right now, so I make my excuses.
*
I'm back in my bedroom, flicking through my mp3 playlist and thinking, well, maybe she's right, maybe Lancelot did rape the lady. History is written by the winners, after all (rock songs are written by losers, that's where their voice is, but I suppose that's neither here nor there) when she knocks on my door. I get up to meet her and I can see that she's been crying.
Oh, Laura...
She shakes her head impatiently. "Save it. There's something weird going on."
She leads me down the hall until we stop outside one of the bedroom doors. "This is the bedroom next to mine," she says opening the door.
I know. What-
"Go on," she says, motioning me in, so I walk into the room. It's a normal looking guest room, more or less the same as mine. A queen sized bed, an antique dresser and wardrobe, a window overlooking the grounds. Nothing seems odd about it. Laura closes the door behind me. I'm confused about what I'm meant to be doing, so I stand and stare at out the window, and then at the mirror on the dresser. It's overcast and the light isn't on so I'm spared any new wrinkles and the like.
Focusing on my appearance is something I'm in the habit of avoiding. True, I'm known to many as an arbiter of cool, but mainly, those people haven't met me.
Suddenly, the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and what I'm looking at makes me unbelievably sad. I'm filled with this sinking, unassuageable sense of loss. I stare, disbelieving, at my reddening eyes in the mirror, and try to hold back the tide. I collapse into uncontrollable sobbing, and think: things can't go back the way they were. And then I think, what things? What am I thinking of?
There's a knock at the door and I don't know that I can face her, but I run, I swear to you, run to the door and out, and into her arms, and we just stand there with her holding me and tears still running down my face, and straight away feel so much better.
"You felt it too", she says. "I thought I was crazy."
What is it? I whisper.
"It's the room, it has to be. There's something in it."
No wonder your uncle drinks all the time.
She pulls out a hip flask.
I didn't think you'd -
"I don't, but I thought that you might."
Gratefully, I take a swig. I look down the hall at all the other doors. There must be thirty bedrooms in the house, and about a dozen in this wing.
Have you tried any of the others? I ask.
We spend the rest of that afternoon trying the other rooms in the wing. None of them provoke anything as extreme as the first - I doubt we would have got past another if they did - but in most of them there is the definite sense of some sort emotional presence. We go into each of the rooms together this time. After eight rooms and several swigs of whiskey we are exhausted, but filled with the relief that follows a cathartic experience. We collapse on her bed.
Just as well there's nothing in our bedrooms, I say.
"Yeah."
We lie silently for a while. She pipes up suddenly; "Are you scared?"
I don't think so. No.
"No. It's just, ghosts are meant to scare people, aren't they?"
Is that what's really happening?
"I suppose there could be some other explanation. I mean honestly, I have enough trouble with the living without having to deal with this."
You can't leave it alone, though, can you?
She smiles sleepily. "Neither can you."
Got to have the story.
"Yes," she closes her eyes, "have to find the truth."
As I drift off I hear her repeat again in a whisper, as if she's just figured something out: "I've had enough trouble with the living..."
But maybe I'm dreaming it.
*
I'm standing in front of that dresser again, staring into the mirror, but I don't feel anything. When I look closer at the mirror I see that it isn't my reflection at all, it's my mother's, and she's reapplying her make-up after she's been crying, and I look around me and I'm not in the guest room after all, I'm in the hedge maze, but I don't know where, and I can see the walls fine but if I look past the maze there's nothing in the distance but inky black, and I'm about to go one way in the maze when the little Pan statue says "Maybe you should rethink that", and I stand there unable to decide between two paths, and I hear a bull's snort behind me...
I wake up staring at the moon through the window and I'm still lying on the bed next to Laura, both of us fully clothed. God knows what time it is, though I guess He'd think it irrelevant. I take off my shoes and hers, kiss her on the cheek and pull a blanket over both of us.
*
There's a note when I wake up: Thought I'd go for a stroll whilst the weather holds. See you at lunch. We will work this thing out. -L.
P.S. You're in check.
I'm not sure which thing she means, the important one or the mysterious one. I feel terrible for what I've done to her but I know that if things go back to the way they were I'll still be unhappy, and she will be too, because how can she trust me after this? How can she even forgive me? I can't see a way clear.
I decide I have to tell her this, today. There's no way I can see that we can continue.
I pull back the curtains, and rain is running down the windows.
*
Crossword, coffee, books, but I'm not going out in this weather. I sit in the parlour, the same where the chess set is. I am indeed in check, and on closer inspection, mate. It's cold here, but I have my coffee, this time served on a tray by Nelly. Thanks Nelly.
Five across: Plan to dash back to get the fastener. No idea. I finger Laura's note, which I've left in my pocket. Things seem different here.
Sir William strolls into the room, seeming a mite more sober than usual. "Ah, there you are," he says. "Rather close to the end game, I see." He refers, I assume, to the chess game.
"Oh, she's already got me," I reply.
"Is that so? Well, make sure you know what's going on. Women, you know. Sometimes it feels like you need an interpreter." He pats the dictionary absently, ignores my puzzled look, and strolls right back out.
I decide to let the Cryptic stew for a while and warm up a bit on the Quick. One down: Occurs when brain synapses spark. Thought. It fits. Not sure if there's actual sparking though. I look in the dictionary, still curious at Sir William's odd allusion.
Thought:
1. Faculty or power of thinking.
2. Notion or idea.
3. I forgive you.
4. ...
The entries next to it seem normal. What an odd dictionary. Is this Sir William's idea of a...?
I take out Laura's letter and start looking up more words.
Stroll:
1. Short leisurely walk.
2. Go from place to place giving performances (strolling players).
3. I forgive you.
Weather:
1. State of such natural conditions such as temperature, sunshine, wind and rain.
2. I forgive you.
I start to flick frantically through the pages.
Lunch:
1. I forgive you.
We:
2. I forgive you.
Will:
3. I forgive you.
Work:
4. I forgive you.
This:
5. I forgive you.
Out:
6. I forgive you.
Check:
7. I forgive you.
8. Just don't ever do it again.
I sit very still and try to calm down. Where am I that this can happen? That any of this can happen?
And is it true what I'm reading? Is there a way through if it is? Does it change anything?
Where the fuck am I?
"Figured it out yet?" asks Sir William from behind me, and suddenly I get the sense that maybe I have, but I push it to the back of my mind.
"She's outside," says Sir William. "And the weather's cleared up."
She's sitting just outside, on a bench in the garden. She looks like she's waiting for me. The bench isn't wet, and neither is anything else. It looks as if the sun has been shining all morning. I still have the dictionary in one hand and the newspaper and her note in the other, simply because I've forgotten to put them down. I dump them on the bench next to her.
"I'm a bit scared now," she says, although she doesn't look it in the least, "because I don't know what happens next."
Listen, I say, I start, because I know the time has come: I love you. But it's the situation. I don't know how it can work.
She doesn't even look like she's listening. She's turning over the newspaper and smoothing it out with that same casual look on her face.
But I have to continue:
Laura, if things were different...
"Nick, things are different," she says, managing cheeky and beatific and the same time, and passes me the re-folded newspaper. I read the article she's given me.
Oh.
Reading it isn't shocking in and of itself, it's more like remembering something that you forgot. But now that I've remembered, I have to rethink everything.
"I've made my decision," she says, already standing. "Now it's just up to you."
What decision?
Sir William appears out of nowhere to answer me. "The same one you came here to make," he says, sounding not even slightly drunk. "It's time for both of you to move on. You have to decide whether you want to do it separately or together."
You're not really Laura's uncle at all, are you?
"What? Of course I am. I died coincidentally of a heart attack on the same day two you did."
You're lying.
"True."
It seems unfair that you can lie to us, given our situation.
"Life isn't fair. What made you think that anything would change afterwards?"
It's funny, I think to myself, I'd always thought that everybody dies alone.
"Most people" the old man says, eyeing me somberly, "do."
I think hard. As much as I've thought about breaking up, I haven't really been able to imagine life without her, let alone eternity. And I don't think that mulling it over for any amount of time will make the decision any easier though. Just go with it. I look her in the eye.
Laura, I want to go with you.
She takes my hand, and we face Sir William together.
What happens next, I ask?
"Buggered if I know. You know the way, though."
I do. We solve the labyrinth. Left, right, past the little Pan statue, straight on past that odd dead patch in the wall, left at the T-section, straight, straight, through the odd curving bit, right, and straight out into the light.
*
Music journalist dies in car crash
Respected music journalist Nicholas Birmingham died yesterday when his car ran off the road near Edale on the way to visit family. His wife Laura also died in the crash. Birmingham was credited with being amongst the most "literary" of British music critics.
*
I first met Laura at a party for journalism graduates (yes, I'm a music journalist who actually studied journalism, try not to fall over) and I would like to say that there was a particularly poignant song that was playing when I first saw the woman who would be the love of my life, but the truth is that it was S-club 7. I don't know what got into me when I saw her, but I somehow fearlessly bluffed my way into her conversation on international politics (I don't know very much about anything, but I know enough about most to bluff), and impressed her with my ability to deconstruct the lyrics of inane pop, and we ended up drinking alone on the balcony, talking about our lofty ideals and the holy union of curiosity and integrity.
And I said, Do you trust me? And she said, Not as far as I could throw you.
And I said, But you've got to have the story, right?
Yes, she said. "I have to find the truth."
Author: puddlesofun
Prompt: 1. A maze; 2. A dictionary; 3. Water; 4. A knight.
Wordcount: 4,830
Every morning, I solve the labyrinth. Left, right, past the little Pan statue, straight on past that odd dead patch in the wall, left at the T-section, straight, straight, through the odd curving bit, right, and straight out at my favourite spot by the lake. I could do it in the dark, had I a mind too. I say labyrinth, it's really just a medium sized hedge maze. I guess I call it that because I like to imagine a pint-sized Theseus and the Minotaur running about the place. Call it a quirk.
Often it's still foggy in the morning, lending a beautiful ethereal immediacy to the journey, the way fog does. It eliminates all the clutter of distance, and puts you where you are. And when I take my customary seat on the shore, I get to watch the spring sun cut through it all, until there's just those few little clouds holding on stubbornly in the shaded corners of the lake, and then nothing at all.
It would, of course, be quicker and easier to walk around the labyrinth, but it never seems as satisfying. It doesn't even really feel like I've come to the same place.
I don't know how long we've been here. I should probably look into that, given I have a job to get back to. I shudder to think of whichever young turk it is filling up my column inches, proclaiming Next Big Things left, right and centre. I'll figure it out later, though, when I get back to the manor. It's not really important right now. Right now I have my crossword, and a thermos full of coffee, and an expensively bound piece of trashy 1940's fiction from the Manor library to keep me busy for the whole morning.
I lay out the crossword and start chewing absently on a pastry packed for me by the kitchen staff. Oh yes, they have maids and everything here. I feel like a regular class betrayer. A relaxed, pampered, class betrayer. The Manor belongs to Laura's uncle. The first time we stayed here, she said: "I always told my parents that if I died they should have the wake here, so everyone could stay and not have to drive. So it'd be a proper wake, with drinking until the place spins, and dancing, and yelling and crying, and laughing, and remembering."
Which sounds a bit morbid I suppose, but her work is dangerous, and I can't say that it never crossed my mind that I might lose her that way.
I feel like I haven't seen Laura in days. Which should worry me. We came here to sort things. To fix them. Or more likely to bring them to an end, if I'm honest. It's not like it was an unspoken thing. We said, one of us said to the other, I can't remember which: "It's dying, this thing. We need to get away from all that other stuff and figure out what we can salvage."
And it's not like Laura is one to avoid things. I doubt she's even capable of it, so purposeful is her nature.
Maybe it's me that's avoiding her. I hadn't thought of that. Well, I'll worry about it after this crossword and a couple of chapters.
*
Out of the midday sun and back in the cool air of the Manor, I notice as I am walking through the parlour (well, one of them) that another move has been taken in the chess game. I stop to study the board. We haven't played in so long, I'd forgotten how good she was. Our styles are different. I play conservatively, defensively. She seems to trade pieces willy-nilly to clear the board and get herself into a better position, until she puts you in mate and you realise that it wasn't willy-nilly at all. Her knight is threatening my bishop. But moving it will open up the board for her Queen. I move my own knight to protect it, and absently start a mental list of songs about chess - let's see... Your Move, by Yes; Chess, by Weezer; some indie Australian band did a song about Bobby Fischer, I'm sure of it; after that column I did on wizard rock I guess I could include Wizard's Chess by Harry and the Potters...come on, if I can't at least make a top five then I don't deserve my job....Chess Piece Face. But it always feels like cheating to fall back on They Might Be Giants. Not many English bands in there. That's odd. I'm making a mental note to see if I can spin a piece out of it, something controversial on anti-intellectualism maybe, when the bell for luncheon sounds.
Laura's uncle, William Ponsonby Hocking, is already tucking his napkin into his collar when I arrive in the dining room. The man has a knighthood, although he's always been a little shady on the subject of why. He's so well pickled that it's quite hard to determine his age, another subject he's evasive on. When I first met him I had trouble believing he was genuine, so exactly did his upper class accent appearance fit the stereotype of a gruff, ancient, scotch soaked fox-hunting lord. But I have to admit that I like the man despite myself. He's relentlessly friendly, and has none of the reserve I've come to expect from so many other members of Laura's family.
"Ah! Nicholas! Good man. I hope you've brought your appetite. Nelly's been doing a roast."
That sounds delicious, I say, catching a little of his infectious good-humour.
"Seen that wife of yours?"
I'm afraid not, William. I haven't seen her all day.
"Most irregular. Yesterday you didn't turn up, and today it's her."
I'm sure it's not on purpose, I say a little too defensively, I just lost track of time yesterday when I was reading by the lake, and you can't hear the bell out there. Perhaps she's gone for a stroll and done the same.
"Yes, yes, I'm sure that's it. That's what you're here for, after all. To lose track of time. You'll have to decide whether you want to do it apart, though." At this moment, one of the staff, a shy looking young woman, brings a lamb roast to the table and begins to carve. "Ah! That looks beautiful, Nelly."
*
I finally run into Laura on the stairs as I head up to the bedroom.
"Hello, you," she says. Laura has a plummy accent that sounds deeply sexy on her, and yet deeply unsexy on every other member of her family.
But then, it's her voice as much as her accent. It's like the words are dipped in honey.
"Nick?"
Oh, hi.
"Lost in thought, I see. Where have you been?"
I've been by the lake, doing the crossword.
She rolls her eyes. "What would people think? You'll be wearing a tie and bowler hat next."
Hey, it's a brave new world, I say. Keith Richards is off the sauce, Lou Reed does Tai Chi. I talked to your uncle, too.
"Drunk?"
Yeah. Hey, you haven't told him why we're here, have you?
"You know I haven't."
It's just, he said some things.
"About a choice or something? Yeah, he was rambling on to me about something yesterday, I'm not sure what he was talking about. It weirded me out a bit. I had lunch elsewhere today."
I noticed, I say. Now that Why We Are Here has raised its head, the air is more expectant. I try to keep pleasantries going. How are you? I ask, as if we are friends long separated by distance and time, rather than a couple separated by our own respective willfulness and resentment.
"Oh, you know," she says, and I do. And I don't. "I heard odd noises last night. It sounded like a woman crying."
We've been sleeping in separate beds, which was a stupid idea. Sure, sex complicates things, but it does so as much by its absence as its presence, and in the meantime I have to sleep alone.
I suggest that perhaps it is over-emotional mice.
She shakes her head.
The maid?
"Could be, but she doesn't sleep near me. I checked."
Ghost?
She shrugs, but isn't dismissive like I'd expect. "There's a whole bunch of family history stuff I've never seen in the library," she says "I'm going to go take a look." And she's gone.
*
I wake up, I don't know what time it is but it's dark, and I have the strangest feeling that something has happened, something important. I struggle in vain to remember, but whatever it was I dreamt melts back into my subconscious without leaving a trace.
I reach out to the empty space next to me in the bed, and think, maybe we can sleep together tomorrow. I wake up alone all the time, it's been like that for years, but it's different when she's in the same building.
It's taken me a long while to admit it, but the problem with living with Laura is that she is genuinely better than me.
Now, I'm very successful in my chosen field. I'm possibly the most respected music journalist currently working in Britain (and not in rehab). I have everyday contact with people who look up to me and go out of their way to kiss my arse. But, as much as I believe in the transformative powers of pop music, and as much as I love rhapsodizing over it and communicating this love to others, at the end of the day I have to submit that I'm doing something that doesn't actually matter.
Laura, on the other hand, is an actual, bona-fide saint. She sacrificed a very promising career in journalism to work full time for a non-profit organisation that catalogues and exposes various crimes throughout Europe relating to the trade in humans. Her job is to investigate and gather evidence wherever there are occurrences of slavery, often risking her own safety in the process. I often find it hard to believe that she can come home to a man, after seeing the sorts of things that men do.
But mainly, what her job means that she is away an awful lot of the time, and often when she is at home her mind is at work, to the point where I feel guilty for even wanting her there, like every moment she spends away from work is a moment she could have spent saving someone. She'd never say such a thing, of course.
I don't hear much about it, what happens when she's away. I don't think she really wants to think about it when she's with me. I'm her respite, or I have been. But we're not happy. I miss her when so much every time she's gone that it makes me angry.
I did something stupid, something hurtful. The first time I apologised, the time when I first told her what I'd done, she'd barely reacted. Just stared at me for a couple of seconds, said "Later," and left on one of her missions. You'd think I'd be relieved, but I was angry. This, even this, was not important enough to stop for?
See what I mean? Saving lives. How can I begrudge her that? And yet I did.
*
Left, right, past the little Pan statue, straight on past that odd dead patch in the wall, left at the T-section, straight, straight, through the odd curving bit, right, and straight out. The fog is thick this morning. Today I have a crossword, like usual, and a dictionary from the library to check my answers. I also have a poetry anthology. An odd choice for me, I know, but I wanted to check up on some classical reference from a Leonard Cohen song.
I'm reading "The Lady of Shalott" when I look up and see Laura walking along the bank towards me. She must have gone around the maze rather than through. I wave.
"I thought I might find you here," she says. She looks down at what I'm reading. My books, paper and thermos are all layed out on a stone table. Not the big, messianic-lion crucifying type, just a normal size table. She frowns. "Lancelot raped her, you know."
Who? I say, caught off guard.
"Elaine. The Lady of Shalott. Whoever. Women don't die of love, Nick. They die of other things."
I want to argue that interpretation, but she sighs and I know it would be a meaningless argument, or it would go places I didn't want to dig.
"Why did you fuck her, Nick?"
Like there, for instance. For a moment I can't say anything. The mist still hangs heavy on the lake. I don't know, I say truthfully.
"Yes you do," she whispers, more truthfully. "Try harder. Tell me how you fucking feel. There was a time I couldn't get you to stop telling me how you felt about things. How you felt music affected people's lives, how you felt about manufactured pop. Believe it or not, you used to tell me how you felt about me. So talk." She gestures around her. "It's now or never, do you understand?"
It's not like it's that easy, but she's right. She's always fucking right. I dig. I take a deep breath, and don't quite look at her, and say it: "Nothing I feel matters. You're gone so often, and when you're here I don't feel like my problems are important enough to burden you with, because they're nothing to what you've seen."
"And her? Did you share your problems with her?"
"No. Sort of."
I didn't look for it, you know. So I had some young thing around for dinner, I do that all the time. I like adulation. I look for that. I thought she was bringing her boyfriend, instead she brought stories about him and how he was never there. It seemed weird and inappropriate, a stranger revealing all her fears. I wanted to make her feel better, so I told her about Laura, how she spends so long away. Bright Young Thing took that the wrong way, or maybe the right way, because I didn't stop her. It's the worst thing I've ever done.
I didn't-
"Don't tell me you didn't mean for it to happen, Nick. Don't you pretend it wasn't your choice."
I chose it. I wish I hadn't. I'm sorry, Laura. It's the worst thing I've ever done.
"Yeah," she says quietly, "I hope so," and walks back around the maze.
*
I couldn't do the crossword this morning and I couldn't sit still. I tried getting lost in the maze but I couldn't do it. The night I did the deed keeps coming back to me. Bright Young Thing hadn't seemed like she had a guilty conscience. She had slept contentedly there next to me, while I lay awake all of that night feeling certain I was the worst person in the world. And I'm standing in the maze thinking about how it was so not even remotely worth it, it wasn't even anything but bad feelings when it happened, and for that I've hurt the person I care the most about. Even if we are at an end anyway, nothing is worth that. And we must be at an end. I want us not to be, but I can't see a way clear. Even if things changed and she were around - and I would never think of asking her to stop doing this thing that makes her who she is - how could she ever trust me?
I'm back at the manor in time for lunch, although I'm not sure I want to be. Laura is absent again. Sir William and I sit there sipping soup.
"Spiffing soup," he says, eyeing me. "She's progressing much faster than I thought she would. Whereas you...."
I'm too wrapped up in my thoughts to really pay any attention to him.
He smells even more strongly than usual of whiskey.
"....man has to get his affairs in order. No good leaving what you could do now..."
I don't really need to deal with this right now, so I make my excuses.
*
I'm back in my bedroom, flicking through my mp3 playlist and thinking, well, maybe she's right, maybe Lancelot did rape the lady. History is written by the winners, after all (rock songs are written by losers, that's where their voice is, but I suppose that's neither here nor there) when she knocks on my door. I get up to meet her and I can see that she's been crying.
Oh, Laura...
She shakes her head impatiently. "Save it. There's something weird going on."
She leads me down the hall until we stop outside one of the bedroom doors. "This is the bedroom next to mine," she says opening the door.
I know. What-
"Go on," she says, motioning me in, so I walk into the room. It's a normal looking guest room, more or less the same as mine. A queen sized bed, an antique dresser and wardrobe, a window overlooking the grounds. Nothing seems odd about it. Laura closes the door behind me. I'm confused about what I'm meant to be doing, so I stand and stare at out the window, and then at the mirror on the dresser. It's overcast and the light isn't on so I'm spared any new wrinkles and the like.
Focusing on my appearance is something I'm in the habit of avoiding. True, I'm known to many as an arbiter of cool, but mainly, those people haven't met me.
Suddenly, the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and what I'm looking at makes me unbelievably sad. I'm filled with this sinking, unassuageable sense of loss. I stare, disbelieving, at my reddening eyes in the mirror, and try to hold back the tide. I collapse into uncontrollable sobbing, and think: things can't go back the way they were. And then I think, what things? What am I thinking of?
There's a knock at the door and I don't know that I can face her, but I run, I swear to you, run to the door and out, and into her arms, and we just stand there with her holding me and tears still running down my face, and straight away feel so much better.
"You felt it too", she says. "I thought I was crazy."
What is it? I whisper.
"It's the room, it has to be. There's something in it."
No wonder your uncle drinks all the time.
She pulls out a hip flask.
I didn't think you'd -
"I don't, but I thought that you might."
Gratefully, I take a swig. I look down the hall at all the other doors. There must be thirty bedrooms in the house, and about a dozen in this wing.
Have you tried any of the others? I ask.
We spend the rest of that afternoon trying the other rooms in the wing. None of them provoke anything as extreme as the first - I doubt we would have got past another if they did - but in most of them there is the definite sense of some sort emotional presence. We go into each of the rooms together this time. After eight rooms and several swigs of whiskey we are exhausted, but filled with the relief that follows a cathartic experience. We collapse on her bed.
Just as well there's nothing in our bedrooms, I say.
"Yeah."
We lie silently for a while. She pipes up suddenly; "Are you scared?"
I don't think so. No.
"No. It's just, ghosts are meant to scare people, aren't they?"
Is that what's really happening?
"I suppose there could be some other explanation. I mean honestly, I have enough trouble with the living without having to deal with this."
You can't leave it alone, though, can you?
She smiles sleepily. "Neither can you."
Got to have the story.
"Yes," she closes her eyes, "have to find the truth."
As I drift off I hear her repeat again in a whisper, as if she's just figured something out: "I've had enough trouble with the living..."
But maybe I'm dreaming it.
*
I'm standing in front of that dresser again, staring into the mirror, but I don't feel anything. When I look closer at the mirror I see that it isn't my reflection at all, it's my mother's, and she's reapplying her make-up after she's been crying, and I look around me and I'm not in the guest room after all, I'm in the hedge maze, but I don't know where, and I can see the walls fine but if I look past the maze there's nothing in the distance but inky black, and I'm about to go one way in the maze when the little Pan statue says "Maybe you should rethink that", and I stand there unable to decide between two paths, and I hear a bull's snort behind me...
I wake up staring at the moon through the window and I'm still lying on the bed next to Laura, both of us fully clothed. God knows what time it is, though I guess He'd think it irrelevant. I take off my shoes and hers, kiss her on the cheek and pull a blanket over both of us.
*
There's a note when I wake up: Thought I'd go for a stroll whilst the weather holds. See you at lunch. We will work this thing out. -L.
P.S. You're in check.
I'm not sure which thing she means, the important one or the mysterious one. I feel terrible for what I've done to her but I know that if things go back to the way they were I'll still be unhappy, and she will be too, because how can she trust me after this? How can she even forgive me? I can't see a way clear.
I decide I have to tell her this, today. There's no way I can see that we can continue.
I pull back the curtains, and rain is running down the windows.
*
Crossword, coffee, books, but I'm not going out in this weather. I sit in the parlour, the same where the chess set is. I am indeed in check, and on closer inspection, mate. It's cold here, but I have my coffee, this time served on a tray by Nelly. Thanks Nelly.
Five across: Plan to dash back to get the fastener. No idea. I finger Laura's note, which I've left in my pocket. Things seem different here.
Sir William strolls into the room, seeming a mite more sober than usual. "Ah, there you are," he says. "Rather close to the end game, I see." He refers, I assume, to the chess game.
"Oh, she's already got me," I reply.
"Is that so? Well, make sure you know what's going on. Women, you know. Sometimes it feels like you need an interpreter." He pats the dictionary absently, ignores my puzzled look, and strolls right back out.
I decide to let the Cryptic stew for a while and warm up a bit on the Quick. One down: Occurs when brain synapses spark. Thought. It fits. Not sure if there's actual sparking though. I look in the dictionary, still curious at Sir William's odd allusion.
Thought:
1. Faculty or power of thinking.
2. Notion or idea.
3. I forgive you.
4. ...
The entries next to it seem normal. What an odd dictionary. Is this Sir William's idea of a...?
I take out Laura's letter and start looking up more words.
Stroll:
1. Short leisurely walk.
2. Go from place to place giving performances (strolling players).
3. I forgive you.
Weather:
1. State of such natural conditions such as temperature, sunshine, wind and rain.
2. I forgive you.
I start to flick frantically through the pages.
Lunch:
1. I forgive you.
We:
2. I forgive you.
Will:
3. I forgive you.
Work:
4. I forgive you.
This:
5. I forgive you.
Out:
6. I forgive you.
Check:
7. I forgive you.
8. Just don't ever do it again.
I sit very still and try to calm down. Where am I that this can happen? That any of this can happen?
And is it true what I'm reading? Is there a way through if it is? Does it change anything?
Where the fuck am I?
"Figured it out yet?" asks Sir William from behind me, and suddenly I get the sense that maybe I have, but I push it to the back of my mind.
"She's outside," says Sir William. "And the weather's cleared up."
She's sitting just outside, on a bench in the garden. She looks like she's waiting for me. The bench isn't wet, and neither is anything else. It looks as if the sun has been shining all morning. I still have the dictionary in one hand and the newspaper and her note in the other, simply because I've forgotten to put them down. I dump them on the bench next to her.
"I'm a bit scared now," she says, although she doesn't look it in the least, "because I don't know what happens next."
Listen, I say, I start, because I know the time has come: I love you. But it's the situation. I don't know how it can work.
She doesn't even look like she's listening. She's turning over the newspaper and smoothing it out with that same casual look on her face.
But I have to continue:
Laura, if things were different...
"Nick, things are different," she says, managing cheeky and beatific and the same time, and passes me the re-folded newspaper. I read the article she's given me.
Oh.
Reading it isn't shocking in and of itself, it's more like remembering something that you forgot. But now that I've remembered, I have to rethink everything.
"I've made my decision," she says, already standing. "Now it's just up to you."
What decision?
Sir William appears out of nowhere to answer me. "The same one you came here to make," he says, sounding not even slightly drunk. "It's time for both of you to move on. You have to decide whether you want to do it separately or together."
You're not really Laura's uncle at all, are you?
"What? Of course I am. I died coincidentally of a heart attack on the same day two you did."
You're lying.
"True."
It seems unfair that you can lie to us, given our situation.
"Life isn't fair. What made you think that anything would change afterwards?"
It's funny, I think to myself, I'd always thought that everybody dies alone.
"Most people" the old man says, eyeing me somberly, "do."
I think hard. As much as I've thought about breaking up, I haven't really been able to imagine life without her, let alone eternity. And I don't think that mulling it over for any amount of time will make the decision any easier though. Just go with it. I look her in the eye.
Laura, I want to go with you.
She takes my hand, and we face Sir William together.
What happens next, I ask?
"Buggered if I know. You know the way, though."
I do. We solve the labyrinth. Left, right, past the little Pan statue, straight on past that odd dead patch in the wall, left at the T-section, straight, straight, through the odd curving bit, right, and straight out into the light.
*
Music journalist dies in car crash
Respected music journalist Nicholas Birmingham died yesterday when his car ran off the road near Edale on the way to visit family. His wife Laura also died in the crash. Birmingham was credited with being amongst the most "literary" of British music critics.
*
I first met Laura at a party for journalism graduates (yes, I'm a music journalist who actually studied journalism, try not to fall over) and I would like to say that there was a particularly poignant song that was playing when I first saw the woman who would be the love of my life, but the truth is that it was S-club 7. I don't know what got into me when I saw her, but I somehow fearlessly bluffed my way into her conversation on international politics (I don't know very much about anything, but I know enough about most to bluff), and impressed her with my ability to deconstruct the lyrics of inane pop, and we ended up drinking alone on the balcony, talking about our lofty ideals and the holy union of curiosity and integrity.
And I said, Do you trust me? And she said, Not as far as I could throw you.
And I said, But you've got to have the story, right?
Yes, she said. "I have to find the truth."