The Impossible Dead

4



The staff of Lauder Lodge, however, had other ideas.

It was past nine when Fox got there. He could hear a TV blaring in the lounge. Lots of people coming and going – looked like a shift changeover.

‘Your father’s in bed,’ Fox was told. ‘He’ll be asleep.’

‘Then I won’t wake him. I just want to see him for a minute.’

‘We try not to disturb clients once they’re in bed.’

‘Didn’t he used to stay up for the ten o’clock news?’

‘That was then.’

‘Is he on any new medication? Anything I don’t know about?’

The woman took a moment to weigh up whether an accusation was being made, then gave a resigned sigh. ‘Just a minute, you say?’ Fox nodded, and she nodded back. Anything for a quiet life …

Mitch Fox’s room was in a new annexe to the side of the original Victorian property. Fox walked past a room that had, until a couple of months back, been home to Mrs Sanderson. Mrs Sanderson and Fox’s father had become firm friends during their time in Lauder Lodge. Fox had helped Mitch attend her funeral, no more than a dozen people in the crematorium chapel. No one had come from her family, because no family had been traced. There was a new name next to the door of her old room: D. Nesbitt. Fox got the feeling that if he peeled away that sticker, there’d be another underneath bearing Mrs Sanderson’s name, and maybe another beneath that.

He didn’t bother knocking on his father’s door, just turned the handle and crept in. The curtains were closed and the light was off, but there was a good amount of illumination from the street lamp outside. Fox could make out his father’s form under the duvet. He had almost reached the bedside chair when a dry voice asked what time it was.

‘Twenty past,’ Fox told his father.

‘Twenty past what?’

‘Nine.’

‘So what brings you here, then?’ Mitch Fox turned on the lamp and started to sit up. His son moved forward to help him. ‘Has something happened?’

‘Jude was a bit worried.’ Fox saw that the shoebox full of old family photos was on the chair. He lifted it and sat down, resting it on his knees. His father’s hair, wispy, almost like a baby’s, had a yellowish tinge. His face was thinner than ever, the skin resembling parchment. But the eyes seemed clear and untroubled.

‘We both know your sister likes her little dramas. What’s she been telling you?’

‘Just that your memory’s not what it was.’

‘Whose is?’ Mitch nodded towards the shoebox. ‘Because I couldn’t tell her the exact spot where some photo was taken fifty-odd years ago?’

Fox opened the lid of the box and lifted out a handful of snaps. Some had writing on the back: names, dates, places. But there were question marks, too. Lots of question marks … and something that looked like a tear stain. Fox rubbed a finger across it, then turned the photo over. His mother dandled a child on either knee. She was seated on the edge of a rockery.

‘This one only goes back thirty years,’ Fox said, holding the photo up for his father to see. Mitch peered at it.

‘Blackpool maybe,’ he said. ‘You and Jude …’

‘And Mum.’

Mitch Fox nodded slowly. ‘Any water there?’ he asked. Fox looked, but there was no jug on the bedside cabinet. ‘Get me some, will you?’

Fox went into the adjoining bathroom. The jug was there, along with a plastic tumbler. He reckoned the staff didn’t want Mitchell Fox guzzling water at night, not if it meant trouble in the morning. The pack of incontinence pads sat in full view next to the sink. Fox filled jug and tumbler both and took them through.

‘Good lad,’ his father said. A few drops dribbled from his chin as he drank, but he needed no help placing the drained tumbler next to him by the bed. ‘You’ll tell Jude not to worry?’

‘Sure.’ Fox sat down again.

‘And you’ll manage to do it without falling out?’

‘I’ll try my best.’

‘Takes two to make an argument.’

‘You sure about that? I think Jude could have a pretty good go in an empty room.’

‘Maybe so, but you don’t always help.’

‘Is this you and me arguing now?’ Fox watched his father give a tired smile. ‘Want me to go so you can get back to sleep?’

‘I don’t sleep. I just lie here, waiting.’

Fox knew what the answer to his next question would be, so he didn’t ask it. Instead, he told his father that he’d just spent a fruitless day over in Fife.

‘You used to love it there,’ Mitch told him.

‘Where?’

‘Fife.’

‘When was I ever in Fife?’

‘My cousin Chris – we used to visit him.’

‘Where did he live?’

‘Burntisland. The beach, the outdoor pool, the links …’

‘How old was I?’

‘Chris died young. Take a look, he should be in there somewhere.’

Fox realised that his father meant the shoebox. So they lifted out the contents on to the bed. Some of the photos were loose, others in packets along with their negatives. A mixture of colour and black-and-white, including some wedding photos. (Fox ignored the ones of him and Elaine – their marriage hadn’t lasted long.) There were blurry snaps of holidays, Christmases, birthdays, works outings. Until eventually Mitch was handing a particular shot to him.

‘That’s Chris there. He’s got Jude on his shoulders. Big, tall, strapping chap.’

‘Would this be Burntisland then?’ Fox studied the photograph. Jude’s gap-toothed mouth was wide open. Hard to tell if it was laughter or terror at being so high off the ground. Chris was grinning for the camera. Fox tried to remember him, but failed.

‘Might be his back garden,’ Mitch Fox was saying.

‘How did he die?’

‘Motorbike, daft laddie. Look at them all.’ Mitch waved a hand across the strewn photographs. ‘Dead and buried and mostly forgotten.’

‘Some of us are still here, though,’ Fox said. ‘And that’s the way I like it.’

Mitch patted the back of his son’s hand.

‘Did I really love it in Fife?’

‘There was a park up near St Andrews. We went there one day. It had a train we all sat on. There might be a photo if we look hard enough. Lots of beaches, too – and a market in Kirkcaldy once a year …’

‘Kirkcaldy? That’s where I’ve just been. How come I don’t remember it?’

‘You won a goldfish there once. Poor thing was dead inside a day.’ Mitch fixed his son with a look. ‘You’ll put Jude’s mind at rest?’

Fox nodded, and his father patted his hand again before lying back against the pillows. Fox sat with him for another hour and a half, looking at photographs. He switched the lamp off just before he left.