Читать книгу Lyrebird: Beautiful, moving and uplifting: the perfect holiday read - Cecelia Ahern, Cecelia Ahern - Страница 13

Jimmy is standing by his patrol car, doors open, garda radio on, car directed straight towards the trees at the bat house. It’s still daylight on this summer evening.

He lifts his arms in an apologetic way as they approach. ‘Mossie was running around the car, I didn’t see him.’

‘Where’s the girl now?’ Bo asks.

‘She grabbed the dog, carried it to the cottage, and now she won’t come out or let anyone in. She’s in a hysterical state. Joe said to call you.’

He looks as stunned as they had been when they first witnessed Laura’s vocal outburst.

‘She asked for Solomon?’ Bo asks, eager to move things along.

‘She asked for Tom first. Kept demanding I get him, that he could tell me who she is. I told her that he was dead and she went even more doolally. Then she mentioned Solomon.’

They were in the forest, both unable to break their gaze.

‘Hi,’ he said gently.

‘Hi,’ she said softly.

‘I’m Solomon.’

She’d smiled. ‘Laura.’

Bo is looking at him in that same uncertain way.

‘I told her my name before we had sex,’ he snaps. Jimmy prickles, Bo glares at him.

‘Are you going to get her?’ she asks.

‘Not if he’s going to arrest her.’

‘I’ve nothing to arrest her for. I need to talk to her, find out who she is and why she’s on Joe’s property. If she’s a squatter, those laws are complicated, and if Tom gave her permission, there’s not much we can do. I’m only here to put Joe’s mind at ease. And I went and hit the feckin’ dog,’ he says guiltily.

‘So what do you want me to do?’ Solomon asks, feeling the pressure build.

‘Go to the cottage and see what she wants,’ Bo says.

‘Okay, Jesus,’ he curses, running his fingers through his hair, retying it in a knot on the top of his head. He walks up the trail to the cottage; the other two follow him but stay close to the bat house when he goes to the cottage.

Solomon’s heart pounds as he approaches the door and he has no idea why. He wipes his clammy hands on his jeans, and prepares to knock but before he even lifts his hand, the door opens. He can’t see her, assumes she’s behind the door and so he steps inside. As soon as he’s in, the door closes. She locks the door and stands with her back to it, as if to reinforce it.

‘Hi,’ he says, shoving his hands into his pockets.

‘He’s by the fire,’ Laura says, eyes barely able to settle on him. She seems nervous, worried.

Even though she introduced herself earlier, Solomon is almost surprised to hear her speak. In the woods she had a wild girl feeling about her; here in her home she seems more real.

Mossie is lying on his side on a sheepskin rug before the log-burning stove, his chest rising and falling with his slow breaths. His eyes are open, though he seems unaware of what’s going on around him. The fire blazes beside him, a bowl of water and a bowl of food sit untouched by his head.

‘He’s not eating or drinking anything,’ she says, getting on the floor beside Mossie, arms over him, protecting him.

Solomon should be looking at the dog but he can’t take his eyes off her. She looks up at him, lost, worried, beautiful enchanting green eyes.

‘Is he bleeding?’ He goes to Mossie and slides beside him, opposite Laura, the closest they’ve been. ‘Hiya, boy.’ He places a hand on his fur and gently rubs.

Mossie looks at him, the pain obvious from his eyes. He whimpers.

Laura echoes Mossie’s whimper in an astonishing likeness that forces Solomon to study her again. ‘He’s not bleeding. I don’t know where his pain is, but he can’t stand.’

‘He should see a vet.’

She looks at him. ‘Will you take him?’

‘Me? Sure, but we could ask Joe, seeing as he’s his dog.’ And then, at the look on her face, he adds, ‘Too.’

‘Joe doesn’t like me,’ she says. ‘None of them likes me.’

‘That’s not true. Joe isn’t used to change, that’s all. Change makes some people angry.’

‘Change with the change,’ she says, but her voice has drastically altered. It’s lower, deeper, Northern England, someone else’s.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Gaga. My grandmother. That’s what she used to say.’

‘Oh. Right. Will you come with me to the vet?’ he asks. He wants her to come with him.

‘No. No. I stay here.’

It is a general statement. Not, I will stay here. But I stay here. Always.

Her clear skin is illuminated by the firelight. It’s so calm and serene in this room, despite Mossie’s struggle to survive and Laura’s quiet panic.

She strokes Mossie’s belly, which moves up and down slowly.

‘When is the last time you left the mountain?’ he asks.

She hides her face behind her hair, uncomfortable with the question.

‘How long have you lived here?’ he asks.

She takes a while to answer the question. ‘Since I was sixteen. Ten years ago,’ she replies, stroking Mossie.

‘You haven’t left since then?’

She shakes her head. ‘I’ve had no reason to.’

He’s staggered by this. ‘Well, you have one now. Mossie would probably prefer it if you came with him,’ he says.

And as if in agreement Mossie breathes out, his body shuddering.

Bo is outside with Jimmy, pacing, making awkward conversation, watching the flickering fire in the windows, the scent of chimney smoke pumping from the cottage.

‘Interesting Joe never noticed the smoke.’ She looks up at the plume of smoke rising from the chimney.

Jimmy looks up. ‘I suppose farms are always burning something or other.’

Bo nods, good point. ‘So you don’t know who this girl is?’

‘I’ve never seen her before,’ he shakes his head. ‘And I’d know everyone around here. In a rural town like ours with a population of a few hundred, all spread around the mountains. It’s a mystery. My wife reckons she’s a tourist, not from around here, one of those hikers who stumbled across the cottage and stayed. We get a lot of them. Over the years a few have stayed. They fall in love with the place, or someone in the place, decide to put down roots here. She might not be here very long.’

Bo ponders that but his wife’s conclusion does nothing to quell Bo’s curiosity, only further fuels her multiplying questions. Why would Tom lie about renting the cottage? Was it for his own financial gain? She doubted that. She filmed on this mountain three years ago and Tom never brought them here, never even mentioned it. She guesses the girl has been there at least that long or they would have filmed here. ‘Why the secret?’ she asks, confused.

Jimmy looks thoughtful, but doesn’t reply.

The door to the cottage opens and Solomon appears. He fills the tiny doorframe with his physique. The firelight is behind him, he is a dark large shadow. He looks like a hero, carrying a dog from a blazing fire.

Bo smiles at the image.

Solomon turns and speaks to the girl behind him, encourages her to come outside.

‘Come on, Laura, it’s okay.’ And there’s something in the way that he says that, or looks as he says that, that causes Bo’s smile to freeze.

And then the girl appears, in a belted checked shirt-dress, with Converse and a chunky cardigan over it, her long blonde hair falling over her shoulders.

‘We’re going to take Mossie to the vet,’ Solomon tells them. ‘Where do we go?’

‘Patrick Murphy, in the main street. Surgery will be closed now, but I’ll give him a call,’ Jimmy says, studying Laura. ‘Hello, Laura,’ he says kindly, wanting to make up for his earlier approach.

Laura stares down at her Converses. She looks terrified. She reaches out and holds on to Solomon’s arm. She grips him so tightly, he can feel her body shaking.

‘We should go quickly, Garda.’ Solomon starts to move. ‘Mossie isn’t doing very well. I’m sure Joe would want him seen to first before anything else.’

‘Right so,’ Jimmy says, stepping back. ‘Laura, we can arrange to have an informal chat over the next few days. This lad can be here with you if you like.’

Head down, Laura continues to cling to Solomon’s arm, another protective hand on Mossie. She makes a sound that appears to be the crackle of a dispatch radio.

Jimmy frowns.

‘We can arrange a time for you and Laura to talk,’ Bo says to him, walking along with Laura and Solomon. ‘And perhaps you’ll agree to do the interview?’ She’d asked him to talk about finding Joe at the house when Tom was lying dead on the ground, she wanted to hear the peculiar scene explained by someone else. Now is a good time to negotiate. She’ll help him speak with Laura if he speaks with her.

Laura stops walking.

‘Come on,’ Solomon calls to her, gently, in a tone of voice that Bo has never heard him use with her, or with anyone for that matter.

Laura just stares at Bo, which puts Solomon in an incredibly difficult position, but this is getting ridiculous now. He’s exhausted, he wants to sleep. Mossie is getting heavier in his arms.

‘Jimmy, would you mind driving Bo to our hotel, please?’ He avoids Bo’s eye as he asks. ‘I’ll meet you there later, Bo.’

Her mouth falls open.

‘You told me to help,’ he snaps, following the trail that leads to their parked car, adjusting the dog in his arms. ‘I’m helping.’

Laura sits in the back of the car with Mossie. The dog lies across the seat, his head on her lap. Bo gets into the garda car, a scowl on her face. It would be a funny sight if Solomon were capable of being remotely amused by what is happening.

‘Thank you, Solomon,’ Laura says, so quietly that Solomon’s body immediately relaxes and the anger leaves him.

‘You’re welcome.’

Laura is quiet in the car, whimpering occasionally along with Mossie in what he guesses is a show of support. He turns the radio on, lowers it, then decides against it and turns it off. The vet is thirty minutes away.

‘Why was the garda there?’ she asks.

‘Joe called him. He wanted to find out who you are and figure out why you’re living there.’

‘Have I done something wrong?’

‘I don’t know, you tell me,’ he laughs. She doesn’t and he gets serious again. ‘You are living in a cottage on Joe’s land, without his knowledge, that’s … well, it’s illegal.’

Her eyes widen. ‘But Tom told me I could.’

‘Well, that’s okay then, that’s all you need to tell them.’ He pauses. ‘Do you have that agreement on paper? A lease?’

She shakes her head.

He clears his throat, she copies him, which is quite off-putting, but her innocent face suggests no malice, nor any sign that she’s even aware of what she did.

‘Were you paying him rent?’

‘No.’

‘Right. So you asked him if you could live there and he said you could.’

‘No. Gaga asked him.’

‘Your grandmother? Could she support you on that?’ he asks.

‘No.’ She looks down at Mossie and strokes him. She kisses his head and nuzzles into him. ‘Not from where she is.’

Mossie whimpers and closes his eyes.

‘Is it true that Tom is dead?’ she asks.

‘Yes,’ he says, watching her in the mirror. ‘Sorry. He had a heart attack on Thursday.’

‘Thursday,’ she says quietly.

They park in the main street and knock on the surgery door. There’s no answer but the front door to the attached house opens and a man appears, wiping his mouth with a napkin, the smell of a home roast drifts out the door to them.

‘Oh hello, hi,’ he says. ‘Jimmy called me. Emergency, is it?’ he asks, seeing Mossie in Solomon’s arms. ‘Come in, come in.’

Solomon sits outside the surgery while Laura goes inside. He leans his elbows on his thighs and rests his head in his hands. His head is spinning, the ground is moving from the jet lag.

When the surgery door opens, Laura appears with tears rolling down her cheeks. She sits beside Solomon, without a word.

‘Come here,’ he whispers, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her to him. Another loss in her week. He doesn’t know how long they stay like that, but he would happily remain that way if the vet wasn’t standing at the open door patiently waiting for them to gather themselves and leave so he can to return to his family after a long day.

‘Sorry.’ Solomon removes his arm from around Laura’s shoulders. ‘Let’s go.’

Outside in the now dark night, music drifts from the local pub.

‘I could really do with a pint,’ he says. ‘Want to join me?’

A fire-escape door opens at the side of the bar and a bottle goes flying outside and lands in a recycling skip, smashing against the others inside.

Laura mimics the smashing sound.

He laughs. ‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

They sit outside the pub, at one of the wooden picnic tables, around the corner from the gang of smokers. When Solomon pulled the door open, and all the heads turned to stare at the two strangers, Laura quickly backed away. Solomon was relieved to not have to sit inside and be examined by the locals. Now she sits with a glass of water, while he drinks a pint of Guinness.

‘Never drink?’ he asks.

She shakes her head, the movement causing the ice to clink against the glass. She imitates the sound of the ice perfectly. It’s something Solomon still can’t wrap his head around, though he’s unsure of how to broach the subject; it’s as though she doesn’t even notice.

‘Are you okay?’ he asks. ‘Tom and Mossie – that’s a lot to lose in one week.’

‘One day,’ she says. ‘I only learned about Tom tonight.’

‘Sorry you had to hear it that way,’ Solomon says softly, thinking of how Jimmy had blurted it out.

‘Tom used to bring the shopping on Thursdays. When he didn’t come, I knew something was wrong, but I had no one to ask. I thought Joe was Tom today in the forest. I’ve never seen him before. They’re identical. But he was so angry. I’d never seen Tom so angry.’

‘You’ve lived there for ten years and you’ve never seen Joe?’

She shakes her head. ‘Tom wouldn’t allow it.’

He’s about to ask why, but stops himself. ‘Joe’s grieving, he’s usually more accommodating. Give him time.’

She sips her water, concerned.

‘So you haven’t eaten anything since Thursday,’ Solomon suddenly realises.

‘I have the fruit-and-veg patch, the eggs. I bake my own bread. I have enough but Tom likes … liked … to supply some extras. I was foraging when I saw you.’ She smiles shyly at him as she remembers how they met. He smiles too and then laughs at himself for his schoolboy feelings.

‘Jesus, let me get you some food. What do you want, burger and chips? I’ll get some for me too.’ He stands and looks across the road to the chipper. ‘It’s been a whole two hours since I ate.’

She smiles.

He expects her to mill into her food, but she doesn’t. Everything about her is calm and slow. She delicately picks at the chips with her long elegant fingers, occasionally studying one before she takes a bite.

‘You don’t like them?’

‘I don’t think there’s any potato in it,’ she says, dropping it to the greasy paper and giving up. ‘I don’t eat this kind of food.’

‘Unlike Tom.’

Her eyes widen. ‘I always told him to fix his diet. He wouldn’t listen.’ She looks sad again as the news of his death and her loss sinks in further.

‘Joe and Tom aren’t the types to listen to anybody.’ Solomon senses her blaming herself.

‘He once told me he had a ham sandwich for dinner and I gave him such a lecture about it when he came back the next week he was so proud to tell me he’d had a banana sandwich that day instead. He thought the fruit would be healthier.’

They both laugh.

‘Perhaps I was wrong,’ Solomon says gently, ‘he did listen to somebody.’

‘Thanks,’ she says.

‘How did your grandmother know Tom?’ Solomon asks.

‘You ask a lot of questions.’

He thinks about it. ‘I do. It’s how I make conversation. How do you make conversation?’ he asks and they both laugh.

‘I don’t. Apart from Tom I never have anybody to talk to. Not people, anyway.’ Somebody at the table around the corner stands, pushing aside the bench, which screeches against the ground. She imitates the sound. Once, twice, until she gets it right. The bar girl clearing the table beside them gives her a funny look.

‘I have fine conversations with myself,’ Laura continues, not noticing the look or not caring. ‘And with Mossie and Ring. And inanimate objects.’

‘You wouldn’t be alone in that.’ He smiles, watching her, completely intrigued.

She makes a new sound, one that makes him laugh. It sounds like a phone vibrating.

‘What is that?’ he asks.

‘What?’ She frowns.

And then suddenly he hears the sound again and it’s not coming from Laura’s lips, though he has to study her closely. He feels his phone vibrating in his pocket.

‘Oh.’ He reaches into his pocket and takes out his phone.

Five missed calls from Bo, followed by three messages of varying desperation.

He puts it face down on the table, ignoring it.

‘How did you know Tom?’

‘More questions.’

‘Because I find you intriguing.’

‘I find you intriguing.’

‘Ask me something then.’ He smiles.

‘Some people learn about people in other ways.’ Her eyes sear into him so much his heart pounds.

‘Okay.’ He clears his throat and she imitates the sound perfectly again. ‘We – me, Bo and Rachel – made a documentary about Joe and Tom. We spent a year with them, watching their every move, or at least that’s what we thought. You seemed to elude us. My experience of Joe and Tom is that they had no contact with anybody at all, apart from suppliers and customers, and even then it was rare for it to be human contact. It was just them, every day, all their lives. I’m not sure how Tom would have met your grandmother.’

‘She met him through my mum, who brought them food and provisions. She cleaned their house.’

‘Bridget’s your mother?’

‘Before Bridget.’

‘How long ago are we talking?’ Solomon asks, leaning in to her, enthralled, whether she’s spinning bullshit or not. He happens to think it’s the truth. He wants to think it’s the truth.

‘Twenty-six years ago,’ she says. ‘Or a little bit more than that.’

He looks at her, slowly processing. Laura is twenty-six years old. Tom did her grandmother a favour. Her mother was a housekeeper at their house twenty-six years ago.

‘Tom was your dad,’ he says in a low voice.

Despite knowing this, him saying it aloud seems to unsettle her and she looks around, imitating the clink of glasses, the smash of bottles in the recycling bin, the cracking ice. All sounds overflowing and overlapping each other as a sign of her distress.

He’s so shocked that his summation is true. He places his hand over hers. ‘I’m even more sorry you had to learn about his death like that.’

She imitates the sound of him clearing his throat, even though he hasn’t made the sound; she has linked it to his feeling of awkwardness, is perhaps telling him she feels uncomfortable, is trying to show him how she feels, connect it to those moments when he feels like that. Perhaps there is a language in her mimicry. Perhaps he’s losing his mind completely, investing such time and belief in someone that Bo considered unsophisticated, or developmentally delayed. But there doesn’t seem to be anything unsophisticated about the woman who sits before him right now. If anything she operates and communicates on more levels and layers than he’s ever experienced.

‘Laura, why did you ask for me tonight?’

She looks at him, those bewitching green eyes. ‘Because, apart from Tom, you’re the only person I know.’

Solomon has never ever been the only person that someone knows. It seems to him to be an odd thing, but a beautifully intimate thing. And something that isn’t to be taken lightly. It’s something that carries huge responsibility. Something to cherish.