Chapter 10: Home Sweet Home
I was dropped off at a small army base near Bedford and driven in to town by an extremely talkative private who, without pausing once for breath, related to me the complete history of American Football in Britain. Apparently there is a team from Milton Keynes who are particularly good, beyond that I can't remember a word. Neither could I remember at the time just where I had parked, and we drove around randomly for about twenty minutes before it occurred to me to tell him it was near a nightclub where we saw a rock bad, he took me straight to the place. The car had a ticket, but had not been clamped, I got in it and drove home. The private, I think, was meeting some friends for a drink.
I got home about seven in the evening and collapsed like a sack onto the sofa, opposite the flatmate.
'Hey,' he said.
'Hey.'
'I thought you were coming back yesterday.'
'So did I.'
I lay there, thinking first that I was very tired, second that I was hungry, third that I had put my feet up on the sofa without taking my shoes off and they were all muddy, fourth that I was too tired to care, fifth that I needed a drink, and sixth that there was something wrong, something deeply, profoundly, irksomely wrong.
'What's going on,' I asked the flatmate, 'why isn't the television on?'
He looked up at me from where he was sitting at the kitchen table, he never sits at the kitchen table, and proudly held up his notebook. 'I'm working,' he said.
'What on?'
'Can't tell you yet man, got to wait till I've ironed out all the little details, but I'm almost there.'
I dragged myself up and into the kitchen and towards the fridge. It was empty.
'Have you drunk all the beer again?' I shouted.
'It's hard work this inventing.'
I rolled my eyes and weighed up my options. 'I'm going to buy some more,' I shouted, 'do you want anything from KFC?'
'Yeah please,' he shouted back, 'some chicken.'
I shuddered at the unpleasant sensation of pulling on an already sodden coat, and stepped out once more into the dark, the cold, and the rain. As I trudged down the street, with that one-two quickstep to avoid staying too long in the elements that is definitely not a run but is faster than a walk, I planned my evening. Beer and fried chicken, I thought, followed by a long hot bath accompanied by another beer, and then maybe a bit of telly, but more likely straight to bed. I had a lot of things to worry about, what with Selkie, and the Black Goat, and everything else, but the time and place to worry about them was at my desk at work tomorrow. I made a mental note to make sure the hot water was on when I got back, and bought six bottles of lager and two chicken meals. I caught myself wondering, as I walked home, if and what Selkie had eaten that day.
'You're a star,' said the flatmate as I dropped an open beer and cardboard box of greasy chicken on the table in front of him. I sat down opposite and started eating greedily.
'So,' said the flatmate between mouthfuls, 'did you spend last night with that girl then?'
'Actually,' I said, 'I spent most of it in a prison cell.'
'Cool, where you raising hell together?'
'No,' I said, unable to see any humour in the misunderstanding, 'I got involved in a murder.'
'Christ!,' he said, dropping his half eaten drumstick back in the box, 'what happened?'
'It wasn't anything really,' I said, 'someone got stabbed in this nightclub we were at and I got arrested because I was running away.'
'I bet you were bloody running.'
'It really wasn't anything,' I said, lying easily, 'I barely saw it happen.' I do not know why I did not tell him the truth, perhaps just because it would have been hard to explain. He looked at me with such sympathy and understanding I felt bad about lying to him, the real story would have elicited more compassion from him than I deserved, more than I had any right to ask.
I went quiet after that, the memory still too close for me to easily put aside, and god bless him he kept the silence away, describing in detail an old war film he had watched on the telly and a long phone call he had received from his sister. I was withdrawn, not really listening, I was thinking of Stokes, Nugget, and Corner. Most of all I was thinking of Selkie.
'Hey,' he said, ' do you want to see what I've got so far?'
I made a deliberate effort to snap back to the present, shaking my head vigorously. 'Sure,' I said.
He opened his notebook and spun it round on the table for me to see, in it there was a biro sketch of a cross between a spoon and a fork. 'I've invented the spork,' he said proudly.
I looked at him to see if this was all a joke designed to cheer to me up.
'What?' he said.
'That's already been invented.'
'It has?'
'Yes.'
'Really?'
'Yes.'
'Oh.'
'You can buy them in camping shops, you get little plastic ones in with those expensive salads from Waitrose.'
He grabbed the notebook back, scribbled in it frantically and pushed it back over for me to see. 'I've invented the spife.'
'That's stupid.'
'The knork?'
I sat in stony silence, I was too tired, I had been through too much, I could not see the funny side. 'That's it,' I said, 'that's what you've done all day.' I opened my mouth and all I could hear was my father talking. I hated myself but I could not stop it. 'That's it.'
'Well,' he said with a smirk, 'it was Sunday.'
'I suppose you need to borrow the rent off me again this month?'
'Kind of.'
I closed the flap on my half eaten box of chicken. 'I've,' I said, 'I've got things I have to do.' I stood up.
'What things?' he asked.
'Things,' I said, and then 'I don't know when I'll be back.' I walked into the hall and put my rain sodden shoes back on. The flatmate followed.
'You'll be back tomorrow night right,' he said, 'I need you to help with application letters and my CV. You're much better at that sort of thing than me.'
'I don't know,' I said truthfully, it was not inconceivable, where I was planning to go, that I would never be coming back. 'Write them without me,' I said, and if I get back in time I'll read over them for you. You can use my computer.'
'Cheers mate.'
'Yeah,' I said, pulling on my coat, 'cheers.' We stood apart for a moment, and then I gave him the briefest brotherly hug, no more than a quick pat on the back, and then I left quickly.
When I sat in the car I had every intention of driving straight down to the South Downs and looking for Selkie, but before I even turned on the ignition I realised there was something I had to do first. I turned left at the end of the road and headed towards Witton. Somehow, by trial and error, I retraced our route from a week ago and drove to Selkie's mother's house.
It was late by the time I arrived and there were no lights on and I was not one hundred percent sure I had found the right house. I rang the bell anyway. I waited, and just when I was about to give up a light turned on and Wilhelmina opened the door.
'Mitchel,' she said, sounding surprised.
'I didn't get you up did I?' I asked.
'No,' she said, 'come in.'
I stepped over the threshold. 'I've got bad news,' I said.
'About Stokes,' she said, 'I know.'
'How?'
'Ruth called me.'
'Was she¦ is Corner alright?'
'He'll live.'
'Nugget,' I said.
She nodded her head to confirm she also knew. 'Would you like a cup of coffee Mitchel?'
I said I would, and took off my shoes before taking another step into the house, not wanting to mess up yet another carpet, and then promptly realised that I was still wearing yesterday's socks. I decided that the smell was the lesser of the two evils and padded after her into what looked like a kitchen out of one of those kitchen magazines that come through the door, huge it was, and all gleaming chrome and tasteful soft browns. It was hard to imagine anything had ever been cooked in there, it was the sort of kitchen beautiful people came home to after exciting and interesting nights on the town and, never too drunk, uncorked a bottle of very good wine and retired to a not so comfortable but achingly stylish leather sofa in the living room to have brilliant conversations late into the night. It was exactly the sort of kitchen I would have pegged Selkie as having back when I first saw her and instantly took against her.
Make no mistake, this streak of inverted snobbery I have is pure jealousy.
'I'm a bit surprised,' said Wilhelmina, filling a designer chrome kettle from a designer chrome tap, 'to find you here without my daughter.'
'That's the other thing I have to tell you,' I said, sitting down on a stool at the breakfast bar and trying to wind my feet together so that they each kept in the smell of the other, 'she went to South Downs in search of the Black Goat.'
'Seven Sisters?'
'Yes.'
'Alone?'
'I'm afraid so, she got a lift with from a band, but only as far as Newport I think.'
Wilhelmina did not say anything, instead she took a tin of coffee from the fridge and spooned some into a cafetiere. 'There ought to be a word,' she said finally, 'for the pleasing way ground coffee behaves on a spoon.' It was such a whimsical non-sequitur that, for the first time, she reminded me of her daughter.
'What should we do?' I said.
'You want to go down there and rescue her.'
'Yes,' I said, being more candid than I was used to.
She smiled, filled a china jug with milk and put it in the microwave, and said 'what hope do you have of finding her tonight?'
'I thought maybe you would¦'
She shook her head and poured boiling water over the coffee releasing an oddly satisfying cloud of steam. She placed the cafetiere, milk jug, and two large mugs on the table and sat down opposite me. She looked at her watch.
'There's more,' I said.
'Yes?'
I told her about being arrested, about Cholderton and Bauer, about Weatherby and about the Lord Lepusstrom. Finally I tried to tell her of our trip all the way into Scotland to see Mog Ruith, but still my brain felt muddy and confused and I was unable to give a clear account of it.
'Wait,' she said, ducking down and looking into my eyes, 'you need a ritual.' She looked around and then at her watch. 'Give me your hand,' she said. She took my hand and placed it flat on top of the cafetiere plunger, she placed her hand flat on top of mine, told me to put my other hand on top of that, and sandwiched that in with hers.
'Now,' she said, 'look me in the eye, and push.'
We pushed the plunger down very slowly. She took the both mugs, poured the milk very slowly, poured the coffee, twisted one mug around so the handle face me and slid it across the table top towards me.
'Now,' she said, 'take it in both hands, and when I say, drink.' I lifted the mug, as instructed, to my lips. 'Drink,' she said.
Immediately the veil lifted, it was like my mind kicking into a higher gear, the whole interview with Mog Ruith snapped into focus.
'Wow,' I said, 'how did you do that.'
'I didn't do anything,' she said, 'you did.'
'But what...?'
'Just ritual,' she said, 'I made it up on the spot.'
I was impressed, and I felt something, the beginning of an understanding, a flicker off to the side of my brain, just out of view, but growing. Wilhelmina seemed to sense it too. 'Selkie was right about you,' she said, 'now tell me about Mog Ruith.'
'I'm afraid,' I said, 'that not much of what he said makes any sense.'
'Try me.'
'Well he said the Black Goat are fulfilling their side of the bargain they made for land of their own. He said they are going to wake the dragon.'
'Wake the dragon?'
'Exactly those words, does it mean anything to you?'
'Maybe,' she said, 'go on.'
'He said a lot about the land loved them, and the stones would obey his every command.'
'Load of horse manure,' she said.
'It didn't feel like it at the time.'
'Just stuff to scare you,' she said, 'if the stones obey his command what's he still doing in prison. He weaved a pretty good spell on you lot by the sound of it.'
'I don't know,' I said, 'he actually reached across and touched me at one point, despite the fact his hands were shackled to the table.'
'No, you just thought he did. If his hands were shackled they were shackled. What else?'
'He said that in order to wake the dragon they had to summon an enemy he would recognise.'
Wilhelmina nodded.
'And err¦ oh yes, he said they made this deal with "the wolf. He said something else which made us think that might be Lord Lepusstrom.'
'It is.'
'Is it?'
'Angus Lepusstom, used to be known as the wolf, years ago.'
'You know him?'
'I knew him,' she said, 'I knew them both. Mog Ruith's real name was,' she looked upwards, remembering, 'Neil something. He was always a bit of a strange customer, but talented. Angus Lepusstrom used to be one of us but he took a job with the government back in, god knows, seventy nine perhaps. Anyway, what else?'
'Not much really, he said a lot about stones and them giving the land blood and loving it. He said Selkie had claimed me.'
'Oh did he?'
'Yes. And he said she was thinking about returning to the fold.'
Wilhelmina said nothing, she just drank her coffee and looked thoughtful.
'Is that true?' I asked, 'about Selkie.'
'Maybe,' she said thoughtfully.
The conversation ground to a halt, both of us sitting there not saying anything. I had been told once, years ago, I do not remember by whom, that those awkward little silences in conversations only happened at twenty minutes to the hour, or twenty minutes past. Idly, I looked at my watch.
'It's not an awkward silence,' said Wilhelmina.
'What?'
'You were looking at your watch.'
'Tell the truth,' I said, only half joking, 'can you read my mind?'
'Not a word of it,' she said, 'but you looked at your watch, and we were sitting in silence, and those awkward silences are only supposed to happen twenty minutes and twenty minutes after the hour, so I figured that was why you were looking.'
'Lucky guess.'
'Not really. Anyway not every silence is awkward. I don't feel awkward, do you?'
'No.'
'Good.'
'Is it true?' I asked.
'Sometimes,' she said. Only later did it occur to me that this was another way of saying no.
'Is it related to the rain thing.'
She started to answer but then turned to the window. I followed her gaze, and then looked back at my watch, and then at the window again. It had stopped raining, and it was exactly nine forty-eight in the evening.
Wilhelmina asked 'are you a fast driver?'
'I¦ err¦'
'Come on,' she said, 'we need to go.'
