How I Wonder What You Are Read online

  Since he was still as green as an unripe plum I doubted this was the case. ‘So, is there anyone you want to call? You know, to let them know where you are? Someone who could come and pick you up?’

  Fingers closed over the edge of the duvet and pulled it up to chin height. ‘No. Just give me a few moments more and I’ll go and … I live at the end of the road, you said? Is it a big house? One I’m going to be able to find with both eyes shut?’

  I glanced at him quickly. He’d closed his eyes again but I didn’t think it was the after-effects of the alcohol now. There was something else, something that seemed to be pulling at him from the inside, his expression flickered from shame to hurt and back again but without him acknowledging it. Which meant, I guessed, that he’d been dealing with this for some time. This drunken episode might have been nothing new, nothing even remarkable.

  ‘Have you done this before? Woken up somewhere and not known where you were?’

  ‘I do know where I am. Riverdale. And I’m expecting the elves to come calling any minute.’ He spoke without opening his eyes, tilting his head to rest it on the back of the sofa again, his hair trailing down over his brow and propping itself over his glasses like a wig. ‘Any jokes about my ring will have to wait until I feel human again.’

  ‘Mr Baxter, look—’

  ‘Doctor.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Doctor Baxter. That’s what the PhD is for. I’m a doctor. Astro-bloody-physics.’ His voice was oddly bitter but with a resigned edge to it. I wished he’d sit up and let me see his face properly, it was extremely hard to read his meanings when, even crouched down in front of him, all I could see was the tip of his chin and a lot of wayward hair.

  ‘All right, Doctor Baxter then.’

  ‘Thank you. I worked hard for that. Wouldn’t want it to go to waste, would I?’

  Now his eyes flickered open and I got the full expression. Wished I hadn’t, it was the look of a man who has been trampled on by fate, and staggered to his feet against all odds only to be run over by the train of destiny.

  ‘Phinneas Baxter, PhfuckingD. Thank you, world.’ A pinch of colour rose in his cheeks and the downtrodden expression was replaced by a flare of anger. ‘Sorry, Molly. Feeling a bit … yeah. Sorry.’

  There was a pause. I could hear him breathing, an uneven restless sound as though he was about to get up and run. Then, to my surprise, a hand extended from the duvet bundle and touched my shoulder. ‘Look. I’m really grateful that you saved me from a putative frozen embarrassment, even if that was at the expense of a good deal of agonising discomfort, but you don’t need to worry about me any further. I’ll just … recover and be on my way.’

  He had gorgeous eyes. Whether it was because the puffiness of alcohol had receded or because his glasses magnified his pupils at this close range, I noticed them for the first time. Almost black, and highlighted with shadows.

  ‘No, you’re right. You’re none of my business, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to save you. You can stay here as long as it takes to get your metaphorical breath back and then …’ I shrugged. ‘It’s fine.’

  A sudden smile dashed behind his eyes. It didn’t touch his lips or raise his cheeks but it lifted his expression out of the desolate category for a moment. ‘Cheers. I’m getting a kind of Wuthering Heights vibe, so I guess I ought to be able to find my way back home. I’ll just follow the consumptive coughing.’

  ‘It’s an old farmhouse. I think Mr Patterdale sold off the land when the last of his sons moved out, but he kept the house on. Do you know why you’re there?’

  A sudden, dismissive shake of the head and then a stretch that made the duvet slide a little lower. ‘This is a nice room. Lots of books.’

  ‘Yes. They’re research. I work for a walking magazine, that’s a magazine about walking, not a magazine that moves about a lot. It’s called Miles to Go and we review equipment and maps, all kinds of gear like that. I’m in charge of the Outerwear section and I also write articles based around the North York Moors.’

  ‘Nice.’

  A conversational slump ensued.

  ‘Doctor Baxter?’

  ‘Phinn.’

  ‘Phinn, then. I don’t mean to sound rude but do you mind if I get on with some work? I was out on Stan today getting some material for an article on bridleways for the summer edition and … they need it by tomorrow. Six months lead time, and all that.’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry I’ve held you up.’ He spoke a little stiffly. ‘I would have arranged to collapse a little further down the dale if I’d known.’

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘No. I know you didn’t.’ His mouth twisted as he bit his lip. ‘Look, just ignore me. I mean completely. Take no notice of anything I say or do, in fact, pretend I’m not even here. I feel as if I’m only half in the world as it is, so you’ll be doing me a favour. Work, write, whatever, I’m only sorry that I can’t help you with anything practical. Astrophysics and horses – not really any point of compatibility there, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ I waited another minute in case he was going to follow up but he didn’t. He sighed and slid a little further down on the sofa until the duvet reached his nose. ‘I’ll just … get on then.’

  Moving as slowly as was compatible with trying to give the impression that I cared a damn about his opinions, I collected my things together and set myself up at my usual workstation on the end of the big dining table that occupied the major part of my single living room. I’d already started on the article, which was about access for horses across National Park land. Several bridleways had been reported as being closed off recently with concrete blocks and barbed wire and I’d been following up and taking pictures for the past couple of months. So it wasn’t as if I had masses to do, but I did want something to take me away from the necessity of making conversation with Doctor Phinn Baxter.

  As I uploaded some of the photographs to go with the article I found my eyes occasionally drifting over to where he sat. It looked as if he’d fallen asleep, his head had settled at an odd angle against one shoulder and his hands lay relaxed on the portion of duvet where I would guess his lap was. Every so often he would twitch as though his body was preparing for flight while he slept, his head would jerk up and his eyes would open but he didn’t seem to be aware of his surroundings when it happened, as though he was dreaming about being awake.

  He looked sad. All right, I knew nothing about the man, wanted to know even less – he was just a stranger who’d needed me for a division of time and now only needed a place to sit quietly and let his brain regain control of his functions – but he had a kind of sad aura about him. There was a lack of eagerness to smile, as if he’d forgotten how to, a haunted look about the eyes when it seemed that his mind whispered things to him that he’d rather not acknowledge. It all added up to a man in the throes of despair, or at least a deep misery not occasioned by everyday disappointments or setbacks.

  Plus the fact that his wallet was full of antidepressants. That gave me a bit of a clue too.

  Chapter Three

  Phinn kept his eyes shut. He knew she was looking at him from time to time because the rattle of the keyboard would stop and she’d move her chair a fraction against the bare wooden boards of the floor so that she had a view of him unobscured by her screen. He was playing dead, he knew. For the same reason as possums did probably. Was it possums? His brain swam through the brandies and broke surface, treading vodka, while he tried to bring his thought processes online. Yes, possums. Pretending to be dead to avoid predators. Or, in this case, questions.

  Why he was scared of questions from … what was her name again? Polly … no, Molly … yes. Molly put the kettle on. No, that was the other one, Polly. This was Molly. A softer name, a floppy rag doll of a name. She didn’t seem floppy though. Was more stern. A bit schoolmistressy, but that was probably because she didn’t speak to many people. Working for a magazine, sending in the articles
, living in this rural backwater with a friend she spoke about as if it was her only one. So. Maybe a bit shy? That might account for the awkwardness of their conversation – oh, wait. The awkwardness might be because she’d seen him naked and he was unable to string together a sentence that wasn’t curling at the edges with bitterness or just plain alcohol-induced confusion. Yeah. The situation was awkward.

  Still. Another half-hour, say an hour tops. Then he’d be feeling steadier, get dressed, get out, get his bearings, make his way back to where he’d been staying; sleeping on bare stone floors wrapped in inadequate sleeping bags. Waiting.

  His half-sleeping brain sucked him back through time until he almost believed he was in his own flat in Bristol, crashed out on the futon after another argument. Another desperate attempt to explain himself, to justify his existence. Another sleepless few hours spent waiting to see if it would be all right in the morning, his fears flicked off and forgotten, his emotions dismissed. He twitched, his muscles attempting to put him back on his feet, send him back into the fray, and he was suddenly awake again to the knowledge that this was not where he should be. But then, where was? Everything was gone, everything.

  The lights were the only constant now. The lights and the permanent headaches, the hangovers which padded along at the back of his brain like faithful hounds awaiting their unleashing. There was nothing else.

  I read through the article once again, checked that the pictures were in the right format, and mailed the whole thing off to Mike, editor of Miles to Go. The article had come together just right, the pictures taken from Stan’s ample back earlier in the week showed the moors in their spring colours and, although my words had a bit of a condemnatory tone regarding farmers who blocked rights of way, the pictures would please the Tourist Board, so it all cancelled itself out in the end. Deprived of any further activity that would distract me, I pushed my chair away from the table and stood up, stretching out my back.

  ‘I’d better go and turn Stan out into the paddock.’

  He didn’t move or acknowledge my words although I had a feeling that he was pretending to be asleep again. The rhythm of his breathing was nowhere near steady enough to be that of someone sleeping. Well, that was fine by me.

  I squinted another look at him as I pulled my jacket on. He was what Caro would call ‘cute’, but I didn’t know if I’d go that far. He did have good bones, most of which were visible under the tightly stretched skin and unruly hair, but he certainly looked like someone who either doesn’t care or doesn’t do anything to maintain good looks, what with the stubble and the shadowed eyes. I found myself wondering what he’d look like if he relaxed, had a few good nights’ sleep and put on a bit of weight. Nice, I should think. Pretty, in a rock-star kind of way, perhaps.

  My jacket settled over my shoulders bringing the smell of wet horse and damp blankets to my nose and I gave an inward sigh. How or what Phinn Baxter might be was none of my business. I had about as much interest in men as I had in … well, astrophysics, and I wanted it to stay that way. After Tim, who hadn’t so much hurt me as killed me stone dead and then jumped on my corpse, it was going to take mankind to evolve into a whole new species before I seriously looked at a bloke again in any way other than the practical.

  I tried to close the front door quietly in case Phinn really was asleep, but it stuck and I had to drag it closed over the lino, with a squealing noise like a rabbit in deep distress. I listened from the garden side, if the noise had woken him then he might call to find out where I’d gone, but there was nothing, so I shoved my hands deep in my pockets and went to rug up and turn Stan out for the rest of the day. Exercised, fed and let out, one less thing for me to feel guilty about.

  * * *

  When I returned to the house, Phinn wasn’t on the sofa. The duvet was folded up and draped over the cushions and his clothes were gone.

  I stopped, frozen in the act of taking off my coat, feeling ridiculous at missing someone who’d only been in my life for a couple of hours. He had woken up, felt better and remembered where he was supposed to be, that was all. Recovered and headed out. Wasn’t that what I’d wanted him to do? It wasn’t as if I’d offered to cook him lunch or put him up overnight until he felt well enough … Woah. Was that what I’d been going to do? In the back of my mind, had that intent been working away? And if it had, then why?

  I felt sorry for him, of course I did. No one drinks themselves into a stupor and then tears off all their clothes on a chilly March morning on a whim. Although he walked and talked coherently, he’d had the air of a man who’s hanging on to sanity by the tips of his fingers, which wasn’t really the sort of thing I needed right now. What I needed was what I’d come here to find: quiet, peacefulness. A horse to plonk around on without the attendant excitement of occasionally being hauled off into the next county at speed.

  Calm. That was what my life was beginning to be, a little oasis of peace after the tumultuous events of the previous year. Untrammelled, if that word meant what I thought it did. And the last thing I needed in all this lovely serenity was some bloke with issues making me feel like I had to do something. Even if the bloke in question did look like a science pin-up.

  No. The events of today would seem like a dream in a few weeks’ time. Doctor Phinneas Baxter would have moved on from his squatting impermanence in the deserted and largely derelict farmhouse. I would have regained my feeling that this tiny village hidden away in the depths of the moors was the only secure spot in a frightening world, and I’d be able to roll my eyes at Caro if she ever wondered in my hearing about ‘what happened to that naked guy you found that time’. It had been a little blip in my semi-hermetic existence.

  But, as I found when I folded my laptop and went to carry it upstairs, the blip had left his wallet behind.

  * * *

  I arrived in Caro’s huge kitchen carrying the wallet and a bottle of wine just as she came in from evening stables. It was cold and getting dark outside, but her Aga was warm and there were cats and dogs all over the flagstoned floor in total contrast to my slightly sterile cottage.

  ‘I need your advice.’

  Without preamble I opened the bottle and poured two glasses.

  ‘Okay.’ Caro washed her hands, shoved a cat off a chair and sat down. ‘What about?’

  ‘Naked guy.’

  ‘Right.’ She rested her elbows on the pine tabletop and scrubbed her hands through her hair. ‘So, where’ve you left him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I explained about my leaving Phinn asleep on the sofa and his being gone when I got back. Caro listened quietly. It was one of the things that had drawn me immediately to this crop-headed woman when I’d blown into Riverdale in a state of near breakdown a year and a half ago. I’d come in search of somewhere to hide out and lick my wounds, a place where no one would ever think to come looking, and I’d met Caro in the pub, when sheer luck, and the busiest night I’d ever known the place to have, had squeezed me between a darts match and the kindest woman in the world. She’d asked if she could share my table and then drawn me into a conversation, gently teasing out of me some basic story to explain my bleak expression and my red-rimmed eyes.

  With no outward display of sympathy or anything other than practicality she’d offered me the lease on the little cottage opposite her house without even asking for the usual month’s rent up front or bonds or any kind of references. In return all I had to do was help her out with the horses whenever the usual bevy of teenage girls that mucked out and rode exercise were elsewhere, and she’d never once asked me anything about my past. I’d volunteered the occasional piece of information. She knew for example that I’d come from London, that my relationship had ended badly and that if anyone asked, I didn’t live here. But she accepted everything I said with a quiet placidity that belied her tendency for efficiency and hard work. She wasn’t religious, didn’t believe in great acts of generosity – she was just, plain and simply, kind. And Caro, as they said, got things done.

&nb
sp; ‘Okay. You’ve got nothing to feel guilty about, Moll, you know that, don’t you?’ Caro raised her glass to me.

  I wouldn’t say that, I thought, but I knew what she meant.

  ‘It’s not that. It’s that I don’t know if he recovered and went or whether he went because he knew I didn’t really want him there. And I don’t like the idea of him dragging himself out because he thought he had to.’

  Caro twisted her mouth. ‘Did you say anything to make him think you wanted him to go?’

  ‘No.’ I had wanted him to go but not like that, not without warning.

  ‘You can’t second-guess his reasons then. He went, leave it at that.’ She refilled her glass.

  Behind the windows the shadows lengthened, pointed at the light. The air was chilly despite the Aga’s best efforts.

  ‘I know. He probably just felt that he was outstaying his welcome and went back to where he’s living. But he left this behind.’ I dropped the wallet onto the table. It landed with a thump and several cards slid out.

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, take it back then. It’s not like he’s a million miles away, is it? Up to the end of the road, turn left and up the drive.’

  ‘I thought I might wait until tomorrow morning.’ I smoothed my fingers over the leather casing, it felt lumpy with content. ‘It’s a bit dark now.’

  Caro let out an explosive chuckle. ‘Molly Gilchrist! You are not going to tell me that you’re scared, are you? What of, exactly? A bloke you’ve already seen in the altogether, and who might be desperately in need of his wallet? Or the ghost of Mr Patterdale?’

  ‘I don’t … there isn’t a ghost, is there?’

  Caro shrugged. ‘Who knows? That place is old, sixteenth century or something, there’s bound to be things hanging round, spirits of ill-used serving girls, that sort of thing. You know Riverdale, we’re like … I dunno, a magnet for the weird.’

  ‘Well, thanks a lot for that.’ I pulled a face at her. ‘Oh, talking of weird, though—’