con forza

Happy days are not even a memory for him. He does not have memories.

Merlin-like, he lives backwards.

He clings to the present, would make it infinite if he could, but inexorably he advances to the past.

Once he woke to flee from dreams. Now he sleeps to hide from visions.

If he pauses to study how he feels, the best answer is he feels safe.

He does not ask safe from what? for knowing what you are safe from means you no longer are.

Forgetfulness is his friend.

For a man in fugue is like a beast of the plains that takes refuge in a dense wood.

He can move but not freely. Trunks impede, roots trip, briar hooks, mire sucks.

He can see but not clearly. The canopy of foliage filters the light and each gust of wind fragments and scatters it.

Forgetfulness is his friend and fear is his companion.

Fear tells him when to move, when to keep still. Fear shows him how to blend with the forest.

He survives by limitation and simple repetition. He makes the unfamiliar familiar by staying in one area. He makes his own existence familiar by following patterns as strict as a square dance.

From time to time a brighter light through the crowding trees tells him he is looking towards the boundary beyond which stretch the sunlit pastures where he once roamed free.

But he looks and turns away, for though he has forgotten who they are, fear tells him there are hunters out there, and he lies very still for fear tells him also that once his presence among the trees is suspected, they will send in their dogs to flush him out.

Yes, forgetfulness is his friend, fear is his protector.

Anything that challenges fear and forgetfulness is dangerous. So the first faint scent of the possibility of happiness sets off alarms like the first faint scent of a distant forest fire. He is not sure what it is, but instinct warns him that it means change and change means movement and movement brings the past closer and the past is pain.

How he knows this he does not know, but he knows it.

But happiness is insidious, it does not make a frontal assault, it creeps up gradually. And because it is gradual, he feels he can control it, just a little step at a time, just the tiniest relaxation with each step, advancing like a wild beast towards the proffered hand, ever suspicious and ready to flee at the breaking of a twig.

And suddenly, without realizing it, he is there, close up, in contact, the hand caressing his head, the fingers combing his hair.

The past is closer now, but no longer does it feel like a pain that must be relived. It begins to feel like a tale that can be re-told.

Then in the space of a few words, happiness explodes into joy.

Joy clears memory but clouds judgment, joy lets him see the sunlit fields but dazzles his eyes so that they miss the hidden hunters.

Joy makes him feel whole again, brings him love again.

But love is his betrayer.

Shirley Novello had not been convinced by her boss’s assurance that scruffy was the new smart.

Refreshed by an hour’s sleep followed by an alternating scalding freezing shower that left her skin glowing like a sun-ripened apricot, she had dressed with care. She didn’t overdo it. When you were on a surveillance job it was daft to draw attention to yourself by wearing your shortest skirt and tightest top. But she certainly looked good enough to make the young man checking lunchers on to the Keldale terrace return her smile with more than professional enthusiasm.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Table for two, please.’

One meant you were either a hooker or just sad.

‘Have to be on the upper terrace,’ he said in a rather sexy Italian accent. ‘Garden terrace she is all booked up. Sorry.’

The terrace was on two levels, the upper one protected from the weather by an awning, the lower open to the skies. Today, with little breeze and lots of warm autumn sunshine, it was the al fresco area that was most popular. Already, just after twelve, most of the tables here were occupied. At one of them, in the right-hand corner overlooking the gardens, sat a striking blonde wearing a frock that looked like it would have cost Novello a month’s pay and sunglasses that would have eaten up another week’s. Fat Andy knew how to pick them!

‘That’s fine,’ said Novello, checking the empty tables on the upper terrace. ‘Could I have that one there?’

‘Sure,’ he said, smiling. She smiled back, full beam. His name tag read Pietro, and he was fairly dishy in a Med kind of way. Bit too slender for her taste, but no harm in being friendly.

He led her to her chosen table, which was right at the edge of the upper terrace. From here she had a good view of both levels.

He said, ‘I’ll keep an eye open for your friend, Miss…?’

‘Smith,’ she said. ‘Yes, she shouldn’t be long.’

She opted for she because when no one else appeared she didn’t want him thinking she’d been stood up. A girl has her pride, even a WDC on an op!

A glance at the menu told her Dalziel was right about the prices. She felt quite hungry, but it was probably best to go through the motions of waiting for her imaginary friend and when a waitress approached a moment later, all she ordered was a Bacardi Breezer.

On the lower terrace, the blonde was still by herself. There was a water jug on the table from which she topped up her glass from time to time. Maybe she wanted to keep her head clear for the encounter to come. The only table close enough to permit meaningful eavesdropping was occupied by two couples engaged in a conversation so animated it verged on the raucous. Novello let her gaze slide over the other tables. Apart from the blonde there were no solitaries on the lower terrace and only one besides herself on the upper, a brawny gingery man, yawning his way through one of the Sunday Supplements. As she watched he was joined by a woman who, tight blonde curls apart, looked like the other half of a matched set.

Of course no reason why watchers shouldn’t come in pairs. In fact, Sunday lunchtime, it was solitaries like herself that were going to stick out.

It was nearly ten past twelve when Andy Dalziel swept past her table without the slightest flicker in her direction.

There was something different about him. Like herself, he had smartened up. This morning he had been decently dressed but with little care for colour coordination or the location of creases, and though his face had been in recent contact with a razor, the effect had been that of a badly mown lawn. Now his drumlin chins were smooth as a bowling green and he wore a dazzling white shirt tucked into pale green slacks whose crease fell like a plumb-line on to matching deck shoes.

Novello made a bet with herself that everything below the waist at least had been bought by the Fat Man’s partner, Cap Marvell. She wasn’t quite so confident that Cap would know, or approve, the occasion of what looked like their first airing.

She watched carefully to see how Dalziel greeted the blonde. Disappointingly (not that she bore Cap Marvell any malice, but what a story it could have made!) there was no embrace, not even the airiest of air kisses. So his decision to smarten himself up didn’t seem to be sexually based. In any case, he’d hardly have invited a subordinate to witness the encounter. Unless of course he didn’t trust himself and she was really there as a kind of chaperone…

She grounded these flights of fancy and once again checked out possible watchers over her Breezer.

Dalziel had attracted a few glances as he made his way across the terrace, but that was only to be expected. He had never been one of Mid-Yorkshire’s blushing violets and his close brush with death in the Mill Street terrorist explosion had got most of the local media trailing their prepared obituaries. But none of the lunchers showed any sign of continued interest.