Dandruff Hits The Turtleneck Read online

  Chapter Thirty Five

  A Forgiving Silence

  A solitary candle, strategically placed in the centre of a table, sputters and stammers in the natural draught of an unsettled evening, as a reliable, old Dormobile fends off the elements to the best of its ability. The flickering silhouette on the inside of the vehicle portrays the shadow of a man who is numb with shock, and every variation of the flame into which he stares, twists and distorts to form an emotional dance which corresponds with the inside of his confused mind.

  The brilliance of the candle’s beam highlights the golden nectar of the whiskey in his tumbler before it temporarily disappears behind his clasping hand as he raises the vessel to his lips once again. He replaces the glass to its previous resting place, as though he were an automaton, before meticulously adding more from an already half-empty bottle. For now, the tears lay in an empty well in the bottom of Arnold Matson’s disbelieving heart, but they will arrive, as surely as the headlights on the police car had arrived earlier in the evening, before the confirmation of the discovery of the body of the reverend was delivered to him in a statement which landed with the inevitability of a Christmas present one has discovered under the parental bed two weeks before it is actually placed beneath the tree as a surprise.

  Matson knew full well that his friend Wheatsheaf couldn’t possibly survive the unforgiving conditions into which he had slipped and fallen, but the mental image of the man being swept away while he himself stood marooned like a petrified statue on the hill above the catastrophe; so helpless to the cause that he may as well have not been there at all; that agonising freeze-frame nightmare which remains fixed and vivid in the forefront of Matson’s mind…

  The occasional buffeting from the wind outside and the pattern of his own breathing, as he inhales methodically before exhaling with a mixture of shock and anguish, are the only sounds in Matson’s world right now, though the agonising cries of a man being taken and carried by a merciless torrent like some kind of children’s toy, keep on returning at unbearable, regular intervals and reverberate through his psyche.

  Arnold has returned to the same spot they stayed barely twenty-four hours earlier. Indeed, it is impossible to believe that this time yesterday the two men were basking in the glory of an almighty supper, prepared and cooked by an individual whose boyish enthusiasm and anticipation of the next day was positively brimming over. But as Matson fingers and contemplates over the Reverend Colin Wheatsheaf’s black and white wedding photograph, as its shiny surface is brought to life by the flame of the flickering candle, the mixture of last night’s memories and the horror of today’s reality collide, and the dam inside Arnold Matson finally bursts. At first the tears are intermittent and the tightness in Matson’s throat combines with the act of swallowing, almost as though the body is trying to help him overcome the inevitable breakdown, or at least, suppress every emotion until they are all in place and ready to surface.

  Moments later, Arnold Matson has broken down completely and his emotional coordination is such that it is all he can do to extinguish the dripping candle and fall into exhausted sleep in the clothes he is wearing.

  Brilliant sunshine had penetrated the Dormobile’s windscreen and teased Arnold Matson into a new day. Somewhat surprisingly, his night’s sleep had been mercifully dreamless, although he was now paying the penalty for the posture of his alcohol-induced sleeping position. Hot coffee and the fresh morning air through the gaping sliding-door of the camper van are the only remedies available to his hangover and aching muscles. He massages the crick in his neck as he sips his second cup of comforting java and looks out across the valley. It is as stunningly beautiful as it was and always will be, but the vast array of shades and colours contained amongst the trees and contours of the hillsides now blend to evoke an emotional melancholy rather than the uplifting splendour of two days ago.

  The horrific images from yesterday are, of course, impossible to subdue and will doubtless spasmodically return to haunt Matson for the rest of his days, but prolonging his stay at this location was not going to help matters.

  A lonesome hawk, perhaps one of the pair Arnold had observed when he first arrived here, soars in the distance, as if it is keeping an interested eye on Matson’s movements down below. He takes a huge draught of his coffee as he admires the wonderment. He watches the bird for a few seconds longer then casts the remaining dregs of his cup into the bitter cold before turning his back on the scenery and firmly slamming the vehicle’s side-door shut on the outside world.

  Some thirty-minutes later, and having enjoyed a decent wash and a basic breakfast to sustain himself, Arnold feels a noticeable improvement in his demeanour as the inevitable, mundane routine of motorway traffic begins to unfold around him. After all that he has witnessed in the last twenty-four hours, the normality of real life, with its preordained sprinkling of careless drivers, road signs and traffic cones, his unhurried journey in the inside lane is proving to be the ideal antidote for his racing mind. The concentration required when driving temporarily eclipses his undeniable heartbreak, and as he checks his unshaven face in the Dormobile’s wing mirror, a philosophical expression of acceptance plays across his tired features. Two car horns clash and remonstrate in the outside lane as the speeding drivers blame one another for nothing more futile than wanting to get from A to B as quickly as possible and Arnold Matson accepts he is slowly returning to the land of so-called reality.

  Almost one-hundred miles remained between Arnold Matson’s trundling motorway vehicle and that of his homestead as his mind returned once more to the devastating matter in hand. The secret he could never divulge to the Reverend Colin Wheatsheaf about his natural mother was one thing, and whichever way you spun the coin that particular dilemma had fatefully taken care of itself; but how does a man return to his village with the burden and responsibility of notifying the doting mother about the tragic course of events which led to her orphaned son being swept to his death?

  If Arnold Matson could see the old lady who is currently kneeling by the altar of his local parish church, as she gently lifts a black veil to enable her to dry her eyes, he would not be preoccupied by any such concerns.

  To Arnold Matson, the remainder of his slow drive homewards seemed to unfold as some sort of human dreamscape. His mind is undoubtedly in a state of shock and his thoughts criss-crossed and raced as they hurtled around his head, but there are only so many hypothetical points of view the mind will tolerate before it automatically flicks a cooler switch and forces you to calm down. His mind has been tossing and turning in the inside lane of a motorway for a little over ninety minutes and it is high time he turned off from the monotony of traffic whistling past him and took a short break.

  Matson had no intention of entering the chaotic world of the roadside cafeteria, which, as far as he was concerned, is all these places ever are no matter how you dress them up, but as luck would have it he found himself parked in a bay which afforded him the perfect vantage point from which to observe both the dining area and the convenience shop which adjoins it. He pours himself a cup of steaming hot coffee from a thermos flask he had prepared earlier and clumsily scratches around in the bottom of a tired looking carrier bag before finally producing a dog-eared cheese sandwich.

  Simple food and the warmth of the Dormobile’s heater provide Arnold Matson with the comfiest seat in this human auditorium and it is all taking place on the other side of his mud-spattered windscreen. He settles back in the driving seat and observes the world going about its daily business and you can almost hear his brain thanking him for the short sabbatical. As he sips his coffee and takes the odd nibble of his sorry sandwich, Arnold Matson is reminded of something he has mulled over on numerous occasions in the past. It is hardly earthshattering as far as observations are concerned, but nonetheless, there is something richly rewarding about this standard behaviour when you observe it as an outsider which, as he dunks a chocolate digestive into his hot coffee, Arnold undoubtedly is at t
his precise moment in time. Matson’s enjoyable little quirk is simply this… Observe a room full of individuals at the venue of your choice and you will, without a shadow of a doubt, see an overwhelming number of people nodding their heads in agreement and understanding as opposed to shaking them in doubt and disbelief, and yet, as Arnold clumsily loses half his biscuit to the hidden depths of his coffee cup, how come every time we switch on the television news, all we are ever faced with is people arguing until they are blue in the face? Arnold tests the theory for a few moments longer and takes his usual consolation from the fact that there has to be more good than bad before finally abandoning his fruitless search for the escaped prisoner of his dissolved digestive. He wearily places the remainder of the coffee and its sunken wreckage in the plastic cup holder and willingly accepts the oncoming rush of forty winks.

  As it transpired, his motorway siesta led him by the hand into the realms of a good old-fashioned solid kip and snoozing session and once again his visit to dreamland hadn’t uncovered any unpleasant nightmare scenarios. Some eighty minutes later, as he stirs from sleep, his actions are painfully slow, which gives the impression as he comes to life, that he is some kind of newly hatched human larva in the transitional stage of metamorphosis. His brown woolly hat, pulled down over his eyes for extra comfort and seclusion for the duration of his repose, is slowly rolled back by gloved hands to reveal bleary eyes and an unshaven face. The insect, in the form of Arnold Matson, is suitably refreshed and ready to fly.

  The remainder of his steady drive back home was delightfully uneventful. The sleep had worked its wonders and had calmed his nervous system and thought process to an altogether more stable barometer. To an extent he had continued to ask himself more and more pointless and putative questions, but an air of rationality was now seeping into the equation as his intelligent mind compartmentalised the problems and encouraged him to walk the path of common sense.

  It felt more than a little peculiar as Arnold Matson slowly steered a deceased holy man’s vehicle through his home streets, and as with all trips away from what one is familiar, the village gave the impression that it had shrunk in the wash in Arnold’s absence. The explanation was, of course, a simple one, and Matson knew the scale of the scenery to which his mind had been accustomed to on his mini-break, was now being replaced in his consciousness by the equivalent of toy town. Because of the fragile state of his mind and grieving heart, all of the instantly recognisable shops and houses he was slowly driving past, suddenly appeared to Arnold as though they were all so vulnerable; as though a huge hand could emerge at any moment and simply lift a cosy home and its inhabitants into the clouds and thus extinguish life within in the blink of an eye. The Dormobile was now the trundling equivalent of the Space Shuttle. It had returned to land from an altogether different atmosphere and orbit, and its exhausted one-man crew was struggling to come to terms with the loss of his co-pilot.

  The winter sun was just beginning to set as Arnold Matson rummaged for the three keys which will gain him access to his empty public house.

  Three separate keys, and for what purpose? Do they stop the world from entering or do they merely allow Arnold Matson admission to his own solitary cell, where he suddenly feels as though he has become both the jailer and prisoner.