Tomorrow?’ Tomorrow was Sunday.
‘No, during the week. I’ll come up for you. ‘Bye, love.’
She got a seat at the back of the bus and watched Harry through the rear window where he stood alone at the stop. As the bus began to round a bend he turned on his heel and walked along the pavement away from his flat. Wondering where he was headed, Brenda kept watching him as long as she could. The last she saw of him was when he turned in through the gates of the cemetery, with the sun’s last rays burning in his hair.
Then the bus was round the bend and Harry was out of sight.
Harry did not come to see her during the week, and Brenda’s work began to suffer at the ladies’ hairdressing salon in Harden. By Thursday she was thoroughly worried about him; on Friday night she cried and her father said she was a fool for him. ‘That lad’s bloody weird!’ he declared. ‘Our Brenda, you must be soft!’ And he wouldn’t hear of her going down to Hartlepool that night. ‘Not on a Friday night, my girl, when all the lads have their beer money. You can go and see your daft Harry tomorrow!’
Tomorrow seemed ages coming and Brenda hardly slept at all, but Saturday morning bright and early she took a bus in to town and went up to Harry’s flat. She had her own key and let herself in but he wasn’t to be found. In the typewriter was a sheet of paper with yesterday’s date and a simple message:
Brenda –
I’ve gone up to Edinburgh for the weekend. I’ve people to see up there. I’ll be back Monday at the latest and I’ll see you then – promise. Sorry I didn’t see you during the week -I had a lot on my mind and wouldn’t have been much fun.
Love, Harry
The last two words meant a lot to her and so she forgave him the rest. Anyway, Monday wasn’t so very far away – but who could he possibly have to see in Edinburgh? He had a step-father up there, who hadn’t once seen him since he was a child, but who else? No one that Brenda knew of. Other relatives that she didn’t know of? Maybe. And then there had been his mother, except she had been drowned when he was little more than a baby.
Drowned, yes, but Harry had been talking to her in his sleep . . .
Brenda shook herself. Why, some of her ideas were almost as morbid as Harry’s! All graveyards and death and maggots. No, of course he wouldn’t be going to see his mother, for they’d never found her body. There would be no grave for him to visit.
The thought didn’t improve Brenda’s state of mind. Instead it drove her to do something she would never normally consider. She carefully went through Harry’s file of manuscripts, checking every story whether it was complete or barely started. She didn’t really know what she was looking for, but by the
time she was through she knew what she had failed to find.
Nowhere in all his work had she come across a story about a necroscope.
So, either Harry hadn’t started the story yet –
Or he was a liar –
Or –
Or what was bothering her was something entirely different.
As Brenda Cowell stood in a shaft of morning sunlight in Harry’s flat, pondering the strangeness of the man she was involved with, one hundred and twenty miles away Harry Keogh himself stood in the same sunlight on the banks of a drowsy river in Scotland and looked across it at the big house where it stood at the head of a large, overgrown garden. There had been a time when the place was well maintained, but that was a long time ago and Harry couldn’t remember it. He had been too young, an infant, and there were many things he couldn’t remember. But he remembered his mother. Somewhere, deep in his subconscious mind, he had never forgotten about her -and she had never forgotten about him. And she still worried about him.