‘You’ve gone pale, Bobby.’
The stone toad crouched over him.
‘OK, listen to me.’ Andy put her hands on his shoulders. ‘C’mon now, what are you feeling? Right this second.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Yes you do. Give me a word.’
‘All right, dread.’
‘Dread? Son, this place saved your life.’
‘You saved my life.’
‘Aw.’ Andy dropped her arms, walked away from him, shaking her head.
‘Sorry. Wrong thing to say, huh?’
‘Bobby, everything you say’s wrong. Walked on your grave. You said grave. This is no to do with graves.’
‘You’re taking it personally.’
‘Damn right I am. All the way down here I’m thinking this was gonny bring you out of it. Out of all this grey stuff, this fear of death, all this February shite.’
‘It doesn’t change what you did. You wanted to think it was linked to your own recovery and whatever happened to you up here. I don’t know why you don’t just accept that it was you … your instincts, your experience …’
He risked another look up at the stone toad on the mound, vaguely hoping it might have acquired a halo, turned to gold.
He shuddered. He could almost smell it. Like the worst smell he’d ever known: when he was with the Met, called out to this house in Islington, this well-to-do suicide couple sitting naked on the sofa, holding hands, dead for three weeks, their heads fallen together. Pills and whisky and hundreds of flies and, on the coffee table, a photo album full of pictures of naked children.
He turned his back on High Knoll. The colours of the eastern sky were flat as a fresco; the dawn didn’t want him.
‘All seemed so meant, Bobby.’
Maiden hated himself. For her, the place was sacred. Why couldn’t he feel it?
But she wasn’t even looking at him any more.
‘Jesus God.’
A short, plump man was shambling and flapping towards them, down the Knoll.
‘Anderson?’ The man slipped and stumbled to his knees. ‘Is it you?’ He was grey-haired, late middle-age. Blinking up through heavy spectacles and a film of sweat. ‘It really is you?’
Andy reached for his hand and he stood up shakily. He was wearing baggy trousers and, bizarrely, a string vest. He clasped her hand to his chest, as if to make sure she was flesh and blood.
‘I’m sorry, Marcus. Unforeseen circumstances. Everything OK?’
‘No.’ Pulling from his trouser pocket a chequered handkerchief the size of a small pillowcase. ‘No, it’s fucking not.’
‘What’s happened? Marcus?’
‘I’m sorry, it …’ Snatching off his glasses, wiping his eyes. ‘Andy, oh God, I think she’s dying on me.’
They heard the noise before they saw her. It was suddenly sickeningly familiar to Andy. Like very loud snoring.
She ran ahead. About six feet back from the monument, there was a low, wooden stockade-type fence, several rows of barbed wire strung over the top. But the wire was cut and hanging like briars. They climbed over the fence.
‘You brought her up here, Marcus?’
‘Course not. She bloody well brought herself up. Oh God, can you do something?’
‘OK. Just … you know … keep calm.’
‘Woke up early, knew something was wrong. She’d come down in the night, let herself into the barn and pinched these … look.’ Holding up a pair of rubber-handled wire-cutters. ‘She cut the fence. Can you believe it?’
Close up, the burial chamber looked like a huge, collapsed crab, the shell split as if someone had stood on it. The old woman was laid out along the damaged capstone like …
… like a sacrifice … Andy smothered the image.
Mrs Willis wore a bright green coat and a yellow woollen scarf. Her hair in a tight, white bun. The volume of her breathing sounding perversely healthy.
‘It’s a stroke,’ Andy said. ‘No question. I’m sorry.’
‘What I feared. Fuck.’ Marcus sighed. ‘Blood pressure. Why wouldn’t she see someone? Someone else.’
The old woman’s head was pillowed by Marcus’s folded tweed jacket. Eyes were closed, mouth open, tongue protruding. Spittle and mucus all round her lips and her chin.
‘Do we get her down, that’s the question, Marcus? Maybe not. She up here when you found her?’
‘Just as she is now.’
‘OK.’ Andy removed Mrs Willis’s glasses, handed them to Marcus. ‘We need to get her in the recovery position. Don’t want her choking, swallowing her tongue. Bobby, can you take … this is Bobby Maiden, Marcus, patient of mine. Easy now. On her side.’
She stepped back. Bars of bright crimson had appeared in the eastern sky like the elements in an electric fire. Marcus said, ‘Look … Anderson … can’t you … you know … do anything?’
‘Limited amount you can do for a stroke. We need to keep her still. Then we need an ambulance.’
‘How the hell’s an ambulance going to get up here?’
‘That’s their problem. You just go back to the house and call them, I’ll stay here.’
‘When I said do anything …’ Marcus stood up. ‘Look, you know what I meant …’
The sun had come out, full and round and red.
‘Aye, I know.’ Andy went to sit behind the old woman in the shelter of the stones, wiped her mouth with a tissue. Took the white head gently between her hands. ‘Come on, Annie, you can hold on.’
The sun was turning to gold. Andy lifted her face to it, closing her eyes, waiting for the warmth to enter through the centre of her forehead, travel down through the chakras, until her hands were burning.
Marcus said, ‘What did you call her?’
‘Oh, Marcus,’ Andy said softly. ‘Old fool that y’are. You telling me it never occurred to you? The natural feeling she had for this place?’
‘Her name’s Joan,’ Marcus said stupidly. ‘Yes. Yes, it did occur to me, the way she just arrived, out of the blue. But Annie would be at least ninety. Mrs Willis can’t be that old. Can she?’
‘If she’d told you she was pushing ninety when she first came, would you have even considered taking her on?’
‘If she’d said she was Annie Davies, I’d have given her the Earth.’
‘You wouldnae have been able to keep it to yourself. Not for a day. And you’d’ve been on at her about it nonstop, questions, questions, questions. She didnae want the Earth.’
‘Oh my God.’ Marcus sat in his string vest, the sweat drying on his arms, staring down at Mrs Willis then up at the sun, his glasses misted. ‘She came here to die.’
‘She came to heal.’
‘No, I mean … here. She came up here to die at the Knoll. In the dawn.’
‘Aw, Marcus …’ Andy flexed her fingers in Mrs Willis’s hair. ‘How do we know what was going through her head?’
Andy’s hands still weren’t warm. She saw that Bobby Maiden had stepped between her and the sun. His face was deeply shadowed, but she could see the Sellotape was peeling away from his skin and he was holding the eyepatch in place.
He said, ‘How about we get her down from there?’
‘Bobby?’
‘Get her off the stone.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know why.’
‘He doesn’t understand,’ Marcus said. ‘She loves this place.’
Bobby turned away from them and the stones. He was trembling. He walked away down the side of the Knoll.
Andy said, ‘Go phone for an ambulance, Marcus. Please?’
‘Yes, of course. Yes. Sorry.’ Marcus scrambled to his feet. Behind him, the sun was full and round and red, like a bubble of blood. He looked down at Mrs Willis. ‘Oh God.’
‘Marcus … go.’
He didn’t look back. When he reached the bottom of the mound, Andy called out, surprised at the tremor in her voice.
‘Bobby, come here. Talk to me.’
He came over reluctantly, not looking at the stone, left hand clamped over his eyepatch.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. What do I know?’