SHADOWS

By David Gardiner

(This story may be reproduced in whole or in part for any non-commercial purpose provided that authorship is acknowledged and credited. The copyright remains the property of the author)

Alex was annoyed with herself for having tried to drive all the way to Scotland in one day. Especially with Clara in the back getting bored and wanting to eat and to go to the toilet all the time. Fran had said on the phone that it would be too much and she had been right.

The snow was just getting heavier and heavier. It was rather beautiful now. It seemed to sweep up at the windscreen and part in a graceful arc to let the car through, like the bow-wave of a great ocean-liner. In fact the world outside resembled a midnight ocean, an undulating plain of white stretching away and quickly out of sight beyond the low hedges. Here and there the dark shape of a tree loomed, but indistinct, lost in the beautiful curved living arc of snowflakes. Only the few yards of country road in the direct beam of the headlights was really sharp. Alex wondered if she was going too fast, checked her speedometer, slowed to twenty. That should be safe enough.

The engine was very quiet now, the steering very light. It was more like guiding a boat than a car. Restful, somehow. Calm and effortless. Her thoughts drifted back to the morning and the circumstances of their leaving.

When she was honest with herself, she could see plainly how bad it had been, and for how long. She could admit to herself how she used to dread his coming home, how she used to hide things from Clara, tell her lies, make excuses for him, pretend that that was just the way adults were with one another. She could see now that that had been the worst betrayal of all. To let the child think that that kind of thing was normal. To allow her to grow up expecting the same when her turn came. Alex shuddered at the thought.

Of course sometimes he would flip over, like a coin with two sides. He would tell her how he loved her, how he would never do anything like that again, how he couldn’t live without her... What a shit, she thought to herself. What a Grade 1 lying, manipulative little shit. She hated herself for having put up with it for so long.

But in the end - and this morning had been the end - Henry had made it quite easy for her. Hitting her, calling her those names, slapping her in the face once in front of Simon even, that had been bad enough. It had been humiliating, degrading, sickening. But hitting Clara? That was something else. That was the end.

There weren't going to be any more lies between herself and Clara. That was a decision that she had come to. Instead of lying she would live a life that she didn't have to lie about. She would accept no more shit like that, from anybody.

Up ahead, where a smaller road joined, she spotted a little notice-board half hidden in the hedgerow. Thank heavens for that she thought. She had obviously missed a turning somewhere, this couldn't possibly be the main road.

She stopped the car very gently, noticing that it slid the last few feet, and, taking the flashlight from the glove-compartment, disembarked to read the board.

She hadn't realised how bitterly cold it was outside. A sharp wind whipped the snow into her face and made her eyes sting. The two names on the notice-board were completely unfamiliar.

She hurried back to the welcome warmth of the car's interior and closed the door as quietly as she could, hoping not to wake Clara who was stretched out along the back seat. She found the road-atlas, turned to the index and started to search.

"Are we nearly there, Mum?" came a forlorn little voice from the back. Here was the first test of Alex's new resolution of honesty.

"I'm not sure where we are, sweetheart," she said calmly. "We should be on the main road but we're not. There's a notice-board outside but the names on it aren't in the index."

"Are we lost?"

She swallowed. 'Well... yes, a little bit lost. But we can't be too far out of our way. It'll be all right"

"What are we going to do, Mummy?"

"We're going to keep on driving until we find a village, or a main road, or maybe a farmhouse where we can ask for directions."

"But it's night time, Mummy. And it's snowing. Everybody's going to be in bed."

There was some truth in this, Alex thought. "Then we'll just have to waken them," she said evenly, "they won't mind. I wouldn’t mind if somebody needed directions on a night like this."

Clara seemed to be satisfied by this. She shuffled around to get comfortable and said nothing more.

Alex moved off again. The snow seemed to be getting heavier all the time, and the wind was getting stronger. What if there are snow-drifts she thought? What if the road is blocked? She kept her speed steady at about twenty and let her thoughts drift off again, back to the events of the morning, and the whole miserable saga of her life with Henry.

The road seemed never-ending. She found her attention being caught by the rhythmic swishing of the wipers, and the beautiful moving patterns of the falling snow. It was quiet in the warm cocoon of the car’s interior. The snow seemed to deaden all sounds. The quietness and the lightness of the steering made her feel detached from the scene outside, as though the windscreen was a TV screen showing a picture from far, far away. She was extremely tired, she realised. How many more hors before she would find Fran's welcoming front door? Swish, swish. Swish, swish. A regular pattern of two beats The wipers were getting inside her head.

From out of nowhere a man in a blue anorak was standing in the road a few feet in front of the car! Alex shrieked and slammed on the brakes. For a moment nothing seemed to be happening, the car continued forward unchecked, then the back end started to swing around so that the vehicle was travelling sideways. Alex knew that there was something you were supposed to do - steer into the skid? What did that mean? She released her foot momentarily from the brake, which had the effect of sending the vehicle lurching forward, but forward was now straight into the hedge and the ditch which were directly in its path. There was a sickening, gut- wrenching thud as the wheel fell into the deep fissure, crumpling the front end of the car's body against the trench's frost-hardened wall.

There was a yell of "Mummy!" from the back and Clara began to cry. She had been propelled onto the little strip of floor between the two rows of seats, where she lay frightened but obviously unhurt. The whole incident had taken perhaps three seconds, from Alex's seeing the figure to Clara's terrified yell.

The blood had drained from Alex's face and her hands were trembling. "Its.... its all right," she said in a rasping voice that she barely recognised,"don't be frightened, Clara. We've had a little accident, that's all."

She sat for a moment unable to move. Clara's crying turned to a breathless gasping. She was trying to disentangle herself from the coat that had she had been using as a blanket and pull herself up from the floor. When Alex had recovered a little she leaned over the back of the seat and helped her up. Clara's little face registered terror.

"Don't be frightened, sweetheart," Alex reassured her,"It isn't serious. Nobody's been...."

But was that true? What about the man? Where was he? With a knot of pure dread forming in her stomach Alex threw open the car door and plunged out into the blizzard. She could see very little: one headlamp had been smashed and the other was facing into the field.

"Hello!" she yelled frantically, "are you all right? Where are you?" There was no reply. She reached back into the car, found the flashlight and started searching the accident site. She shone it into the ditch, behind the hedge, and underneath the crippled vehicle. There was nobody.

Shaking from a combination of delayed shock and the piercing cold, she returned to her seat and tried to comfort Clara while in her mind she went over the details of the accident. The man had come from nowhere, and just as abruptly he was gone. It was impossible. Could she have nodded off for a fraction of a second? She had certainly been tired, and there was that hypnotic swish, swish of the wipers. It was the only possible explanation. God, what a stupid thing to have done! Why couldn't she have been more patient? Why hadn't she agreed to break her journey? It was all her fault. Her pig-headedness. She had wanted so much to get to Fran. To talk to her. To be with someone who would understand.

"Listen, sweetheart. We've had a little accident. There's nothing we can do about it now. We just have to put on the warmest clothes we've got and find somewhere with a telephone. We have to go on foot. Okay?"

"But it's so cold out there, Mummy," Clara pleaded tearfully.

"I know, sweetheart. But without the heater it's going to get just as cold in here, very quickly. We've got to find help. There's nothing else we can do.

**********

"Mummy! There's a house up there! I can see it?"

"Can you? Where? Oh yes. I think I can see something. Up that little lane." The dim outline drifted in and out of view as the snowflakes swept across Alex's line of vision.

Clara grabbed her mother's gloved hand and almost dragged her up the pathway. It was a couple of hundred yards to the house, which was a shabby single-storey cottage with some rusting farm-machinery piled in the front yard. There was little sign of life, but parked by the side of the door was a large, expensive-looking four-wheel-drive estate-car. The kind of vehicle that businessmen drive when they want to look like country gentlemen.

"Good girl, Clara! Well spotted! There's a car - there's got to be people!"

Soaked through to the skin by now, and shivering uncontrollably, they almost ran the last few yards to the front-door and Alex wrapped loudly with a fist that was virtually numb.

They waited patiently. No sound. No sign of a light. Alex's spirits began to sink. Then, from behind the frosted-glass upper section of the door she saw what looked like the yellow flicker of a candle. She couldn't resist knocking again, for no particular reason except to let them know how desperate she was for warmth and shelter.

The candle seemed to steady-out, as though placed on a table, and there were vague scraping and clicking sounds as someone unlocked the door.

It was opened by a tall, pale, rather drawn man with a few day's growth of stubble and a shock of unkempt reddish brown hair. His manner however was authoritative and he wore an expensive leather jacket with fur lining. The most disconcerting thing was that his face showed no expression, neither surprise, nor annoyance, nor even very much interest. He barely looked at Alex and Clara, seeming to focus instead on a point midway between them, and he said nothing.

Alex was thrown off guard. She had been prepared for some lecherous old farmer who would try to maul her, or an angry housewife demanding if she knew what time it was, but complete indifference, especially from a man in her own general age-group, was surprisingly unnerving.

"Hello," she began awkwardly, "We're very sorry to disturb you, but we've had an accident. We need to use your phone."

He seemed to pause for a period that bordered on insolence before he replied. "I have no phone," he said in a quiet, almost dismissive tone, and actually started to close the door.

"No! No! Please! Don't close the door! We need help. Please! Don't leave us out here!” Alex couldn't believe this was happening. What kind of man was he? Couldn't he see the state they were in?

He paused, the door now half shut. "I have no phone," he repeated, "no electricity. Nothing. You'll have to go somewhere else."

"Oh God! Please wait! For pity sake, Mister, I've got my eight-year-old daughter here we're soaked to the skin... Our car is wrecked. I mean where are we going to go? How far is the next farmhouse?"

"How far?" He seemed to consider the question very carefully. "Far," he said at last, "yes, quite far." He made a movement to close the door once again.

"No! No! Don't! For heaven sake, show a little bit of humanity. We need shelter. You can't leave us out here. What are we going to do? let us come in and get warm at the very least."

"I'm sorry. It isn't possible. Good night."

This time Alex actually took hold of the door and tried to stop him closing it. The man seemed to relent.

"All right," he said in a su11en undertone. "Come in if you must." With this he let go of the door and walked away towards the little desk at the back of the room where he had left the candle. Alex and Clara kicked the snow off their boots and followed him wordlessly into the dim space, closing the door firmly behind them.

Apart from the desk, and the wooden chair beside it where the man now sat down, the room contained only an old-fashioned three-piece suite draped with improvised dust-sheets, and a couple of packing-cases. There was a fireplace with a little pile of chopped logs and pieces of wood beside it, but it had not been lit. The room was only fractionally warmer than the snowstorm outside: Alex could see her breath in the candle-light She sat down on the old sofa and motioned to Clara to do the same.

She watched the man at the desk, completely at a loss as to what to say next. As she watched he did a rather strange thing: he locked the single drawer with a small key which he slipped into his inside pocket. On the desk, Alex noticed, was an open bottle of vodka and a single glass. Apart from these items, the room was bare and featureless.

"My daughter is very tired,” she said, "is there somewhere she could lie down?"

"There are beds," said her host in the same bored monotone, "but no bedding. She'll have to leave her clothes on."

"Fine," Alex accepted, "may I borrow your candle?" The man nodded. She walked up to take it, and realised, on seeing his face more c1early, that there was something very familiar about him. His voice too. Very clear, precise, well-modulated. A hint of a Scottish accent, but overlain by years of living in the South. She was certain she had heard that voice before.

Hand-in-hand, Alex and Clara explored the little house. They found the two small bedrooms, with, as their host had said, beds stripped down to the bare mattresses. She got Clara settled down on one of these as best she could and kissed her good-night. "Remember what I told you about the bad men," she said very quietly. "We don't know who that person is, so if he comes anywhere near you I want you to shout, really loud. I'll be just outside. Okay?" Clara nodded.

Alex returned to the front room and replaced the candle. The man ignored her. She studied his impassive face.

"Look, I'm sorry about this," she said quietly, "I didn't mean to intrude. We really are in bad trouble." He showed no response. "I see you have a car. Do you think you could drive us to somewhere with a phone tomorrow?.... I would pay.."

"Drive yourself," he said, equally quietly. "Take the car. Take it now if you want."

It suddenly struck Alex, and with considerable force, that this man was in a worse state than she was. She had never seen acute depression before, and it frightened her. "You... you aren't really thinking very straight," she said gently. "You're very upset, aren't you?"

He looked at her, meeting her eyes for the first time, but did not reply.

"Why don't we light the fire," she said more conversationally, "and get a little bit of warmth? Do you mind if I light it?"

He shrugged. She went over to the grate and sorted out some pieces of kindling, but there was no paper to get it started. The man saw her problem and came over with a large glass of vodka, which he poured on the wood, then lit the little pyre with the candle. It jumped into immediate life. "Thank you!" she said with genuine gratitude, and fancied that a trace of some kind of reaction flickered across his face.

He sat at one end of the sofa as she nursed the fire into life, adding progressively larger pieces of wood until its survival was assured. When she was satisfied with it she joined him and took off her gloves and her boots. She felt a good deal better as the warmth soaked into her body.

"You.... you don't live here, do you?" she probed, hoping to re-open the conversation.

He shook his head. "It was my father's house. He died here, two years ago."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Were you very close?"

"Very close," he repeated. Yes, we were very close. My mother died, you see... he brought me up....." his voice faded.

"Won't you tell me about it?"

"You're humouring me. I don't want to be humoured."

There was a long pause. "Do you want to hear about me?" she inquired at last.

"If you like."

Alex's story took about half an hour to tell. She felt at ease with the impassive stranger. He said nothing but she could tell that he was listening. When she had finished she waited for him to comment, but he remained silent. That was okay.

"I was trying to remember where I'd seen you," she said after a pause, "I think I remember. You're on TV, aren't you? You're a news reporter. Jamie somebody? Jamie McKee?"

"Jamie McKay," he corrected without much interest.

"You were in the news yourself a few days ago. I remember now. You were injured in a bomb-blast somewhere. Belfast, was it? A bomb went off when you were filming. I remember it.."

"I wasn't injured," he corrected her without enthusiasm, "I got a tiny scalp-wound from a bit of flying glass. Just enough to make a little trickle of blood down my forehead. Central Make-up couldn't have done a better job."

"But didn't they say you were getting some kind of award? Because you kept the camera running or something?"

"Some kind of award? Yeah, they probably did." At last there seemed to be a little passion entering his voice. "Do you want to know what a foreign correspondent is, Alex? Somebody paid to turn human misery into entertainment. That's my trade. That's what we do. We go in and we look for blood, and pain, and cruelty, and despair and degradation... and if we can't find enough of it we go away for a while and come back when things have got worse. There's no point filming a starving baby who'll still be alive tomorrow. You want one who'll be dead five minutes after you've done the item, or better still one who'll die on camera. In Belfast we used to pay the local teenagers to throw a few stones at the soldiers on a Saturday night to get things warmed up. A film crew costs money - a lot of money - and you don't want to go home without a bit of riot footage, now, do you? And of course it's always a good idea to have a few officials on the payroll for tip-offs, and privileged access to where the action is. Sometimes a carton of Marlboros is all it takes. And of course politicians are good people to make an arrangement with as well. You agree to put the proper spin on something and doors open. You get interviews. You get exclusives. You get footage. That's the product we deal in. Footage. Copy. Mug-shots. Sound-bites. It doesn't matter how you get them. You just get them, that's all. I've got more respect for pornographers. At least it's a normal, healthy human function that they're turning into entertainment. Not some kid's guts strewn over a field."

Alex was shocked into silence for a moment. "I can understand why you feel that way," she said, "there were nineteen people killed in that blast, weren't there?"

"That's right. I should know. I killed them."

This time, Alex was completely speechless. She said nothing for a long time. "You..... you killed them?" she repeated almost inaudibly.

"It was a little break-away Republican faction who planted the bomb. I'd interviewed their leader a few days before They had my phone number They knew I was staying at the Phoenix Hotel. That's where it was. Twenty minutes before it was due to go off they phoned me and gave me the warning to pass on. I knew it was genuine. I knew the person who spoke to me. But I didn't pass it on. Instead I set up my crew a hundred yards down the street, with the Phoenix Hotel in the background, and I started to film an item speaking to camera. I knew exactly what was going to happen. I chose the camera-angle very carefully. It worked. I got the first live news-shots of a Belfast terrorist bomb going off. And like you said, I made sure that the camera kept running. I got the fire and the ambulances, and the bits of bodies, and the screaming wives and husbands, and mothers and girlfriends. I got it all. It was a great piece of work. Well worth a journalistic prize." He paused to let these facts sink in.

"And you know the worst part? I did it without hesitation. Without qualms. I didn't even perceive it as a moral issue. Not until afterwards when I realised that I knew a lot of these bits of bodies when they used to be complete bodies, and work for news-agencies. That was the only thing that brought me to my senses. The realisation that I had been responsible for the deaths of at least four of my colleagues. People I knew very well. Not famine babies. Not ignorant African villagers. Not bystanders. People I used to go to the pub with. That was the only thing that made me admit what I had become. That was my level of... moral awareness. I didn't think of that phone-call as a chance to save lives. I thought of it as an opportunity for an exclusive. That was my..... degree of connection to the human race."

Alex found that her head was spinning. She was way out of her depth here. Way, way out. At last she said something.

"When we first came in, you did something a bit strange. You went over to that desk and you locked the drawer. What have you got in that drawer?"

"I think you know what I've got in the drawer. That was why I was so angry when you knocked at the door. I'd spent the whole day building up my courage for what I had to do, and then, just when I was ready to do it, you appeared, shoving your nose in. All I wanted was for you to go away. To leave me alone."

"I see. Is that what you still want?"

He shrugged. Alex could feel her heart thumping now and decided to try to lighten things a bit.

"You started to tell me about your father," she ventured after a pause, "what was he like?"

"The best human being I ever knew. This is where he lived, all his life. I could never get him to leave it. He farmed when he was younger, sold the farm when it got too much for him, kept the cottage. The new people had their own place already - they owned the adjoining farm."

"Why do you say he was the best human being you ever knew?"

"Because he was. I honestly believe he went through his whole life without ever doing anything that he had to he ashamed of. All I've ever wanted to do was to please him. To make him proud of me. I wanted to be this great shining campaigning journalist, taking up unpopular issues, rooting-out corruption, making a stand for the little guy, putting the whole world to rights. I believed in bull-shit like that once."

"And why did you come back here tonight? I mean, why here?"

"I've been back several times since he died. I sit here in the dark, and I talk to him. Crazy, isn't it? I can almost hear his replies... as if he was still here. I tell him things.... and I ask him things."

There was a long pause. Alex watched the flames dance in the grate and tried to think of how she would word her next question. "How... did your father die, Jamie? Can I call you Jamie?"

"Of course. It was a hit-and-run driver, not far from the bottom of the driveway. A filthy snowy night just like this. Probably some tourist in a hire-car, coming over the crest of the hill too fast. He could have survived the accident, he was only knocked unconscious. It was the cold that finished him off. They didn't find him until the next day....."

The blood drained from Alex's face. "The night he was killed... was he wearing a blue coat with a hood? A sort of fur-lined hood?"

Jamie turned to face her. "How did you know that?"

"It's completely insane, but I think I saw him in the snow... or maybe just inside my head."

"What are you trying to tell me.... ?" he whispered.

"Maybe... it wasn't just chance that brought me here, Jamie. Maybe I was meant to come here tonight."

"Are you telling me that you saw my father.. ..?" his voice was almost inaudible.

"What if you're right. Jamie? If he hasn't really gone? What if he's still... somewhere, and he still cares about you?"

Jamie didn't reply.

"You came here to talk to your father about what you should do, didn't you? Well, I think he's given you his answer, through me. This isn't the right time for you to die, Jamie. Not yet, maybe not for a very long time. I think you still have work to do, Jamie. That's what I think."

"I came here to join my father, Alex. Not to ask him anything."

"It's too soon, Jamie. You can't join him until you've done those things you spoke about - things to make him proud of you. What does suicide achieve? It ends your pain, maybe, but what does it do for those nineteen people who died, and their families, and all the other people who were injured? Is it going to make them feel any better? Of course not. I think the price you have to pay is a different one. I think you have to go on living, only this time you have to live up to those ideals. Every one of them. I think that's the message from your father, Jamie."

Alex turned now to face Jamie and saw that his eyes were filling with tears. Instinctively, she hugged him.

"My God," he whispered into her ear, "that may have been your voice, but I think those words came from my father."

They held one another for what seemed like a very long time, until Clara's little voice brought them hack to the real world, "I had a funny dream, Mummy," she said, "can I sit with you and get warm?"

"Yes, of course, sweetheart," she released her right arm and pulled Clara on to the seat so that now she was in the centre, hugging both of them at the same time. "What kind of dream?" she asked quietly.

"There were lots and lots of people out in the now just standing and looking at the house, with really starey eyes. It was very scary. Then they just turned and walked away and it was all right again."

"How many people?" Jamie asked in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Oh, lots. About twenty." She paused. "He isn't a bad man, is he Mummy?"

"No, Clara," she hugged them both a little tighter, "he isn't."

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