How I Wonder What You Are Read online

  His eyes were open and he was watching me.

  Chapter Two

  Phinn came round slowly to realise that he’d been better off unconscious. Everything hurt. Something inside his head was jerking and twitching, his eyes burned and his body was in more pain than he could ever remember having suffered before in his life.

  ‘Ow. Ow. No, really, ow,’ he muttered, prising his eyelids apart. ‘Why do my elbows hurt?’

  A brief moment of lucidity showed him that there was a woman crouching down next to him. At least, it seemed to be a woman, his sight was too blurred for anything more than bare outlines to register. ‘Where am I? Actually, never mind where, can we start with who and work our way out from there?’

  The figure next to him stood up. ‘I was hoping you could help me with that,’ she said. ‘I mean, I know where you are, you’re on my living room floor. In Riverdale.’

  A vague memory knocked politely at the inside of Phinn’s skull but he was too bemused to take any notice. ‘Oh, yeah. Riverdale. Always think it sounded a bit Lord of the Rings.’

  ‘So, you can remember Lord of the Rings, but not your own name?’ Now the voice, which had sounded rather pleasant before, had overtones, undertones and just general tones of sardonic disbelief. ‘Can you remember what you were doing up on the moors without your clothes on? Or does something have to come with a literary fantasy reference in order for your memory to kick in?’

  ‘Without my …?’ A quick, agonising wriggle so he could peer down his torso showed him that she was quite accurate. Under this, whatever it was that he was wrapped in like something that has just had the sarcophagus lifted off it, he was stark naked. ‘Why haven’t I got any clothes on?’

  ‘Again, waiting for help on that one.’

  The woman moved closer and now he’d stopped his eyeballs from rotating in opposite directions he could get a better look at her. She seemed to be wearing a pair of yellow leggings and a dark top, and had the most untidy hair he’d ever managed to partially focus on. ‘Ow,’ he said again, less experimentally. ‘If I ask why everything hurts, are you going to refer me to your previous answer?’

  ‘Well.’ She crouched down and now he could see that she had a smudge of something on her nose, a face that inclined towards the interesting end of the attractiveness spectrum, and a pair of really rather lovely blue eyes – eyes that currently held an expression of shiftiness. ‘It might be because I had to bring you down off the moor on my horse. Not exactly my horse, I sort of borrow him on a permanent basis because nobody else wants anything to do with him on account of him eating anything that’s not nailed down. Actually, now I come to think of it, sometimes he even eats things that are nailed down.’

  ‘I see.’ Phinn tried to move again and found that he could lift his head about twelve degrees before the agony cut in. ‘I don’t like horses much but on this occasion I’m prepared to let that go.’

  ‘And then I had to drag you over concrete to get you inside.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘And I think I might have banged your head on the lino in the hall. I’m really sorry, but I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want to leave you out there, what with the no clothes on thing and it’s really chilly today and so …’ She raised apologetic hands. ‘I hope I didn’t do you any damage.’

  ‘Okay. Well, nothing seems to be broken. Except for some skin.’

  ‘You did get a bit scuffed.’

  ‘But, on the whole, I think it’s better than dying of the cold, so thank you. Whoever you are.’

  ‘Oh. My name’s Molly.’

  ‘Then, thank you, Molly.’ Phinn lay quietly for a few seconds more. ‘Do you think I could have some trousers or something? I’m feeling a bit … Swiss roll.’

  There was a blur of dark hair as Molly vanished from sight for a moment and then came back carrying a pair of black jeans and a leather jacket. ‘Are these yours? I found them near where you were lying, or at least Stan did, so I brought them with you.’ She shook the clothes and a pair of underpants fell to the floor to be ignored with a degree of assumed dignity.

  Somewhere behind his eyes Phinn could feel a tiny blacksmith getting the day started. ‘I think … they look familiar.’

  ‘Good. Because I’m not sure that I have anything that would fit you. Can you sit up?’

  Cautiously Phinn lifted his head another few degrees, and then laid it back down on the carpet, breathing carefully. ‘Not right at this moment, no, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Then maybe you should stay there and not worry about your clothes for a bit. You do look very pale.’

  ‘Yeah. I feel a bit … ow.’ Phinn rolled so that he lay on his side and could look around him without having to move his head. ‘Have I got a wallet?’

  Molly shook the jacket. ‘Why, do you think you were robbed? I wondered if you’d been knocked out but you don’t seem to have a head injury or anything. I checked you over before I put you on the horse.’

  ‘Great. Thanks. I feel so much better knowing that a woman has been checking me out while I’ve been lying there naked and unconscious. Gives me a real sense of being in control.’

  ‘I said I checked you over, not out. I wanted to make sure nothing was broken before I moved you.’

  ‘Oh. Right. ’Course.’ Phinn closed his eyes but the swimmy feeling continued inside his head. ‘So, where are we on the wallet question?’

  ‘Hang on.’ There were noises of energetic clothing agitation and a heavy thump. ‘Yes. It was in your jacket pocket, and there’s a set of keys. So at least you weren’t robbed.’

  ‘Right. Am I carrying ID?’

  ‘Caro … that’s my friend, Caroline … she said that she thought she recognised you and that you were … um, staying in the old house at the end of the village? It’s called Howe End, I think. Howe something, anyway.’

  Phinn screwed his face up in an effort to remember. There was … he could remember … Bristol. An empty flat. Bottles, yes, lots of bottles. And then a sense of cavernous space, the smell of mice and … lights.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I still think the wallet might help. I’m getting a name, but the way I feel at the moment it could be coming through from the world of the dead.’

  He had to open his eyes again, the spinning feeling inside his head was making him feel sick. The woman with the startling eyes and deranged hair was flipping open a black leather wallet and the sight of it brought everything raging back, cresting through his head like a razor blade tsunami. ‘Stop …’ he tried to say, but it was too late. Innocence shattered.

  ‘Your name is—’

  ‘Phinneas Baxter. Doctor Phinneas Baxter, PhD. And somewhere in that jacket are my glasses, which will help enormously, so if you don’t mind—’

  ‘You knew? All that “I can’t remember” was fake?’

  ‘Sorry, you misunderstand. I remember now. I wish I didn’t, but that’s my business. Oh, my glasses, thanks.’ He took the narrow black frames from her fingers with a hand that ached in places he wasn’t even sure it had and hooked them on carefully. The world came into sudden focus.

  ‘Gosh,’ said Molly, now revealed to be a lot neater and cuter than the blurry half-impressions had led him to believe. ‘You look different with your glasses on.’

  ‘So do you. You look human for a start. God, I wish my head would stop hurting so I could think properly. This is Riverdale?’ His brain felt like a giant game of Connect Four, things slotting into place with an inevitability that made him think he was losing. ‘I was staying here … there were …’ A tiny voice that he really hoped she couldn’t hear was muttering no, you didn’t come here, you were running away and here just happened to be in the way. You didn’t aim for Riverdale, you fell at it from a great height. And now you’re naked on some woman’s floor with a head that feels like a bladder infection. You are such a screw up, Baxter. ‘Could I have a drink of water, please?’

  She was wearing jodhpurs. He could see that now, not leggings, for wh
ich he was grateful. Jodhpurs had a reassuring air of competence, of practicality. Molly was evidently a woman who got things done, even if one of the things she did was to practically abduct naked strangers by throwing them over her saddle like some kind of reverse romance novel. Her hair was as wayward as it had looked even before he put his glasses on, it flew outwards from her scalp as though some source of static electricity walked with her through the world and formed a dark background to her face – which was pale, although he had to admit that might be because of the aforementioned naked stranger on her floor. And her eyes really were a lovely dark blue. He’d always noticed eyes. It came of wearing glasses. Jealousy, probably. He wished his head would stop hurting.

  ‘Water? Are you sure?’ She hovered around on the edge of his vision making him squint out of the corners of his eyes, which didn’t help the headache one little bit.

  ‘Unless you’ve got vodka.’ Then another memory lurched up, borne on a tiny bit of acid and he had to swallow hard. ‘Water. Yes.’

  ‘I meant, if you’ve got any kind of head injury you shouldn’t have …’ Her voice tailed off. He supposed his expression must have turned scary. He could feel himself doing it, the narrowed eyes and the drawn in mouth that he’d been accused of doing deliberately.

  ‘Molly whatever your surname is. Look. I don’t have a head injury. The only injuries I have were inflicted on me by your good self and, yes, I’m not complaining because you probably saved me from an embarrassing case of frostbite at the very least, but please take it as read that if I am capable of asking for a drink of water, that I am going to be fit to drink it and for the love of God, please let me have some.’

  She didn’t answer. Stared at him for a moment until Phinn felt himself starting to sweat. It was a look which said that she had just worked out why he’d been naked and unconscious and was now desperate for water. He could only hope that she’d got nice enough manners not to bring it up … urgh, not to mention it right now.

  ‘Right,’ she said, with the air of one making a decision. ‘Water. Yes. Stay there a moment.’

  Phinn blinked his eyes hard. ‘In order to move I would have to roll myself out of this bedcover and the room is spinning quite fast enough already, thanks.’ But she’d already left the room and he could hear the blessed sound of a tap running somewhere out of sight. His throat ached with the need for a cool drink and he could only pray that it would soothe the timpanic activities currently threatening to burst out of his temples and scuttle about on the floor.

  She was back. ‘Water. You’ll have to sit up or you’ll drown.’

  At least she hasn’t brought me one of those kiddie beakers with a spout, Phinn thought. Or a straw, as if I’m eighty and unable to hold a cup. Even though he couldn’t, he was bound inside his wrapping so tightly that he suspected he was going to come out three stone lighter.

  Molly had to move him further into the living room and push him against the sofa so that he could inch himself into a half-sitting position, during which process his glasses fell off twice and a whole new world of hurt opened up to him. ‘Ow. Why does my hair hurt?’

  ‘Not guilty on that one.’ She held the glass of water up and he shakily tried to bring a hand to bear on it. ‘Do you think it might be something to do with drinking yourself into a coma?’

  He paused, one hand rejoicing in the coolness of the condensation around the outside of the glass and the other forming a loose fist somewhere out of sight. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I was hoping you might not have realised that.’

  * * *

  I left him shakily drinking the rest of the water and popped over the road to check on Stan. Although he did belong to Caro, this was a technicality involving the changing hands of money and in all practical ways Stan was my horse. Or, more accurately, pony. Or, still more accurately, a four-legged dandelion clock impersonator with the temperament of a hall table and about the same amount of enthusiasm. His real name was Aethelstan, but it was either Stan or Aethel, and, whilst riding a horse called Stan was a bit … basic, it was definitely better than riding something pronounced as ‘Ethel’.

  ‘Still got the naked man?’ Caro asked without preamble, squeezing past me in the loose-box doorway dragging a filled haynet.

  ‘His name is Phinneas Baxter.’ I nudged Stan out of the way and helped Caro tie the net to the ring in the wall. ‘He’s come round now and there doesn’t seem to be much wrong with him.’

  Oddly I didn’t mention that the reason he’d been unconscious was that he’d had a blood alcohol level of about one-to-one. Okay, it wasn’t my business or anything, but it was still strange that I didn’t tell Caro. Normally I told Caro everything … right, no, scratch that, I told her almost everything. Everything important anyway, and the fact that my naked visitor had been falling-down-and-passing-out drunk probably wasn’t important. Probably.

  ‘Nothing wrong with him, apart from being dragged around the local countryside with his backside to the four winds. Any after-effects on that?’ Caro asked.

  ‘Real interest or prurient curiosity?’

  Caro fixed me with a steady gaze from her grey eyes. ‘Bit of both, really. I’ve done a bit of naked riding in my time – and if you ever give me that look again, Molly Gilchrist, I shall have to rethink our friendship – and one thing I remember is that the aftermath tends to be … well, pinchy. And it’s not even as if I’ve got a scrotum,’ she added, reasonably enough I suppose.

  ‘He says everything hurts, and his word is good enough for me. I’m not about to start feeling him for lumps and bumps.’

  ‘So when are you dragging him back to his front door?’ Caro let Stan step between us to reach at his haynet, and we looked at each other over his withers. ‘Or were you thinking of having him stuffed and mounted on your wall?’

  ‘I’ll let him start to feel better and then he can go. He might not be living here, he might just be staying for a night or two, you know, passing through.’ Given the amount he must have drunk, I’d take bets on some element of passing through anyway.

  ‘How long since you split up with, what was his name again …Tim. Eighteen months?’ Caro, queen of the non sequitur leaned against the horse, who grunted in a rather unflattering way.

  ‘About that. Why?’

  ‘You split up with a bloke you never talk about, by the way – and I’m just adding that in a spirit of total disclosure – and then a naked man falls into your lap eighteen months later? Maybe it’s Heaven’s way of telling you it’s time to move on with your life.’

  ‘Does the phrase “Fantasy Prone Individual” mean anything, Caro?’ I moved round behind Stan, whose ears flickered in response but he didn’t stop munching, even as I slid the bolt. ‘And there’s nothing odd about the fact I don’t talk about Tim. Why would I? He’s just …’ I shook my head. ‘It was just one of those things.’

  Yes, the one thing I didn’t discuss with Caro. Didn’t discuss with anyone. Couldn’t. And who was there to talk to anyway? I’d burned my boats, bridges and all other water-crossing methods when Tim and I had … no, not split up. He was going to be a part of my life for the foreseeable future, but not a part I had to have anything to do with. In fact, he was a part that I would like to remove, slice off like a gangrenous limb. But I couldn’t, so the best I could do was to ignore things. Pretend he had just been a blip, a hiccup in my otherwise tranquil life, and get on with things.

  ‘Okay, you don’t need to do that face.’ Caro joined me and we both shivered together in the needle-prick wind that finagled its way through even the sturdiest outdoor clothing. ‘I’m only remarking on the fact that Mystery Guy—’

  ‘His name is Phinneas.’

  ‘Yeah, Mystery Phinneas … and what kind of name is that anyway? It’s practically Biblical … that this bloke turns up naked in front of you, dead to the world, and he’s not exactly ugly is he, but you’re prepared to throw him back without even … you know, Moll, I think there’s something wrong with you.’

  ‘
I’m not the one bringing Heaven and the Bible into things. That’s wrong. I’m providing a shelter for a poor unfortunate. Like the Good Samaritan,’ I added, dragging what little RE I could remember to the fore.

  ‘A poor, naked unfortunate,’ Caro mused, rubbing a hand through her hair.

  ‘Are you obsessed with sex or something?’

  ‘Very slowly say to yourself “I haven’t had a man for eighteen months”. Then come back to me on that.’

  It had been longer than eighteen months, of course. Tim had lost interest in me long before … I’d put it down to a combination of his being older, having a high-pressure job, stress. And then he’d put it down to the strain of planning our wedding, the general anxiety of ‘taking the next step’ as he’d put it. I’d give him ‘next step’. In fact, I’d give him a whole staircase and a hearty shove if he ever tried to speak to me again.

  ‘Anyway. You’d better get back and make sure he hasn’t run off with your valuables.’ Caro turned to head back into her house, which backed on to the yard.

  ‘I haven’t got any valuables. Besides, he’s only living down the end of the road, I’d just go round and get them back.’

  ‘Whatever. You taking Stan out tomorrow? I’ll leave the tack room key under the mat if you are. I’m going to York for some shopping. Do you want me to call in before I go? To check on progress?’

  ‘You mean to see if I’ve seduced some guy whose name I barely know.’

  ‘Eighteen months. That’s all I’ll say.’ Caro flipped a hand in farewell and headed indoors, leaving me with no alternative to going home and facing a guy marginally less suitable for a quick romp than Piltdown Man.

  When I got back he was sitting on the sofa, with his head tipped back and his eyes closed. The duvet had been rearranged around him so that he could move more freely, and left the upper quadrant of his chest bare.

  ‘Are you feeling better yet?’

  He jerked. ‘Sorry? Oh. Yes. Much better.’