Who Sent Clement? Read online

  Who Sent Clement?

  By Keith A Pearson

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  Copyright © 2017 by Keith A Pearson. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  NOVEMBER 1988

  Edward Baxter’s journey home usually took around fifty minutes.

  Not on that evening, though.

  Fourteen miles from home and the traffic on the motorway had barely crept above walking pace in almost an hour. He found himself behind a stationary white van, its brake lights steadfastly glowing red. The rain continued to fall heavily as the windscreen wipers on his Austin Maestro rhythmically whumped back and forth.

  He let out a sigh and stared down at the copy of James and the Giant Peach on the passenger seat; a present for his seven-year-old daughter. He couldn’t wait to see her face when he handed it to her, and that thought raised a smile.

  The brake lights on the van disengaged and it slowly moved forward. He slid the gear stick into first and followed.

  Wary it might be yet another false dawn, he tentatively moved through the gears until the Maestro hit thirty. His right foot twitched nervously, ready to dab the brakes again if the white van stopped for the umpteenth time.

  The procession continued to move cautiously forward.

  Apart from the van ahead of him, there was little else to see beyond the rain-dappled windows. A curtain of black sky hung over the hard shoulder to his left, and the equally black tyres of a lorry filled the window to his right.

  The speedometer displayed his speed at forty. He let himself relax a little. Hopefully the worst of the delays were behind him.

  His hope was short lived.

  The brake lights on the van lit up, and the expanse of empty tarmac in his windscreen quickly shrunk to barely thirty yards. He pressed his foot down on the brake pedal.

  “Not again,” he groaned.

  For ten minutes, his right foot switched between the accelerator and the brake pedal. With no opportunity to move beyond first gear, his left hand remained redundant.

  Mild agitation moved towards sheer frustration. He just wanted to get home.

  The Maestro crawled forward for a long minute until the van stopped again. He cursed under his breath and gazed off to his left, hoping for a change in the vista. He spotted the edge of a blue sign with three diagonal stripes — three hundred yards to the next motorway exit. It wasn’t the exit he usually took but it had to be better than another six miles of congestion.

  He checked his left mirror and swung the car onto the hard shoulder. He knew it was only supposed to be used in emergencies but he doubted a three hundred yard dash to the exit would land him in trouble.

  Seconds later, the Maestro sped down the exit ramp, away from the motorway and away from the queue of stationary traffic.

  He was free at last.

  At least he thought he was.

  The rush hour traffic was almost as slow as that on the motorway. Thankfully, he knew a short cut. He navigated two roundabouts before a tortuous crawl along a two-mile stretch of dual carriageway. He took a left turn onto a quiet lane which meandered across the countryside. It would take him to within a mile of his home. Very few people knew of the shortcut and for that he was grateful.

  Keen to make up for lost time, he pushed the Maestro up to forty. The headlights provided a tunnel of light in the darkness, illuminating the hedgerows which bordered the ribbon of greasy tarmac.

  A sharp left-hand bend crept up on him.

  He dabbed the brake pedal and the book on the passenger seat slid forward, disappearing into the darkness of the footwell. It pulled his attention for barely a second, but sufficient time for the car to enter the bend.

  As he returned his eyes to the road, his heart dropped to his stomach. He buried the brake pedal into the floor and the front wheels locked. The Maestro slid across the rain-slicked tarmac, the steering wheel of no use to him.

  If he’d hit the brakes a split second earlier, the point of impact would have been different. The finest of margins.

  But he didn’t.

  The Maestro launched from a low berm on the outer edge of the lane. All four tyres lost contact with the road and the residue momentum propelled the car towards a five-bar gate. That gate had only been replaced two weeks before, its wooden predecessor finally losing the battle with rot.

  The replacement was unforgiving.

  Metal struck metal as the steel gate and the body of the Maestro become entwined. A steel cross section snapped away, and the jagged end pierced the car’s windscreen.

  Silence.

  He could feel the wetness, the warmth. He could see the length of steel tubing embedded in his chest, just below his collar bone. If it had been on the left, rather than the right, he knew he’d already be dead.

  As he could barely catch a breath, it was scant consolation.

  He knew his time was short but he wasn’t scared of what awaited him. He was scared of what awaited his wife, and his young daughter.

  Husband. Daddy. Neither home tonight. Neither home ever again.

  His breath was almost spent and his life expectancy could only be measured in seconds.

  He smelt earth, and petrol. A flicker of yellow light reflected in the rear view mirror. Fire, he thought.

  His eyelids flickered and his chest stopped moving.

  The final seconds.

  As he prepared to leave, he felt a presence. Help maybe? Too late he thought.

  A voice whispered, although he couldn’t be sure if it was just his imagination; a cruel trick played by an air-starved brain.

  “We will watch over her.”

  It was the last sound he heard.

  The final question his mind would ever pose — who are you?

  He died without an answer.

  The Maestro and its occupant were reduced to skeletons by the ensuing fire.

  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

  BETH BAXTER’S BEDROOM

  PRESENT DAY…

  1

  I used to love bedtime.

  I’d lie in my childhood bed with my dad sitting beside me, and we’d pluck the prose from the pages of my favourite books. For half-an-hour every evening we’d enter our own little fantasy world — it was our time, our world.

  After my dad kissed me goodnight and turned out the light, I would snuggle beneath my duvet to dream of handsome princes, unicorns, and cats in hats.

  I was seven years of age when my dad walked out of that bedroom for the final time. The man who filled my sky left an empty horizon. I had to read my own stories to fill the void he left behind.

  I grew into a solitary adolescent, content in my own company. With every passing year, memories of my dad, like my childhood dreams, slowly ebbed away.

  My love of books remained.

  At some point I passed seamlessly from teenager to young woman. But while my peers hankered for handsome young men on the beaches of Ayia Napa and Ibiza, I hankered for Orwell, Woolf, and the Brontës.

  My love of books became an obsession.

  Somehow, life then bowled past at a frightening pace. One moment I’m dressed in robes and a mortar board, standing on the steps of Durham University for our graduation photos, and the next, I’m a thirty-six-year-old woman, living with Karl — a planning officer from Croydon.

  Whatever future I envisaged as a young woman, it probably wasn’t this.

  “For fuck’s sake, Beth, just let it go, will you?”

  I sit up in bed and cross my
arms.

  “No, I won’t,” I snap. “I’m sick and tired of finding your dirty laundry scattered around the house.”

  My thirty-year-old fiancé rolls his eyes like a sulky teenager.

  “Whatever," he grumbles. “I’m tired.”

  He rolls onto his side and pulls the duvet tight around him. The snores soon follow.

  And this is my life.

  It’s been one month since Karl transitioned from boyfriend number five to fiancé. We’ve been together just over four years, and despite the fact I’ve agreed to marry him, I’m not sure if I’m totally in love with him. I’m not even sure I know what love should feel like.

  When I was young, my expectations were drawn from the cream-coloured pages of tatty paperbacks. I hoped for Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester, Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy, even Heathcliff and Catherine.

  If life has taught me anything, it’s that the real world is a pale imitation of fiction.

  I do like Karl though, a lot. He possesses a boyish charm and a carefree attitude that balances my pragmatic outlook on life. There’s a lot to like, but he doesn’t set my heart racing. He doesn’t make me want to swoon, if indeed swooning is still a thing. I’m fairly sure no man has ever made me swoon and that is a major disappointment.

  But in spite of Karl’s propensity to leave skidmarked underpants on the bathroom floor, he remains the best of a bad bunch.

  Boyfriend number one was Kevin — the man-boy who stole my virginity. I say stole, it was more of a smash and grab. The event took place in his bedroom on New Year’s Eve, 1999.

  As the clock ticked down towards the new millennium, Kevin grunted away. I recall lying there and thinking how utterly underwhelming the whole experience was, and how much it bloody hurt. My physical pain was brief, as was Kevin’s stamina. He dumped me three weeks later and the emotional pain lasted a lot longer than eighty-six seconds.

  Boyfriend number two was Danny and we dated for over a year. I met him during my second year at university and we connected immediately through our mutual love of literature. We would spend most weekends lying in bed, reading, smoking French cigarettes, eating takeaways, and occasionally making love.

  I actually thought he might be ‘the one’, right up until the moment I entered his dorm room unannounced, and found him performing fellatio on his tutor, Philip. While I was shocked, obviously, it did explain why Danny always seemed more enthusiastic about Byron and chicken madras than having sex with me.

  After a fairly barren period, I started dating Stuart when I was twenty-two. My first proper, grown up relationship. After eleven months of dating, we moved in together and I spent the next five years wondering why. Stuart single-handedly destroyed any remaining preconceptions I had about men, and not in a good way.

  He didn’t have a romantic bone in his body, and our love life was duller than celery soup. He was also obsessive about personal hygiene, to the point where he’d decline any sexual advance unless I’d showered within ten minutes of said advance. I once suggested he might like to go down on me — a big mistake. Instead of hungrily assaulting my nether regions, Stuart looked at me in horror before listing the various strains of common bacteria my mimsy might host.

  Andy was boyfriend number four. What I learnt from Andy is that men who are passionate sometimes have a tendency to share that passion around; quite liberally in his case. He was an incredibly adventurous lover and knew exactly which buttons to press. His problem was one of multi-tasking; he was pressing so many buttons in so many places, it eventually caught up with him. He was as addictive as crack, and just as debilitating. It’s a shame he screwed with my head as much as he screwed other women. I really liked Andy.

  So here I am with boyfriend number five; my future husband, my fiancé. He’s not perfect but, I suppose, neither am I.

  I’m a little too short and a little too fond of cake. My shoulder-length chestnut hair is more an annoyance than an attribute, and some say my light blue eyes are cold.

  But to quote Gloria Gaynor, I am what I am.

  I nestle down under the duvet and slowly drift off to sleep.

  Eight hours later, I awake to an empty bed. Karl is always up first. He usually wakes up with boundless energy and irksome enthusiasm. I prefer to wake up gently and slowly ease myself into the day. I’m green tea and Radio 3, whereas Karl is double-espresso and Kiss FM.

  I wearily plod to the bathroom and take a shower.

  I return to the bedroom and throw on a pair of aged jeans and a shapeless black jumper; function before fashion. My hair is then scraped into a ponytail before I invest two minutes applying makeup.

  A quick glance in the mirror. Presentable.

  I head downstairs where Karl is eating breakfast at the table in our reclaimed kitchen. I say our, but the kitchen, and indeed the entire house, is actually mine — unfortunately, so is the accompanying mortgage.

  Together with boyfriend number three, Stuart, I purchased 14 Elmore Road almost ten years ago. It’s a twee, two-up, two-down Victorian terraced house and I love it. When I split with Stuart, I used a chunk of my father’s inheritance money to buy his share. That money was scant consolation for losing a father but without it, there is no way I would have been able to extract Stuart from my life and keep my beloved home.

  “The kettle has just boiled,” Karl mumbles as he chews on a slice of cremated toast.

  “Thanks. Is the radio loud enough?”

  He shrugs and returns his attention to a magazine.

  I turn the radio down and make myself a cup of green tea.

  “What’s the magazine about?” I ask.

  “Motorbikes. I’m thinking of getting one,” he replies. “Here. Look at this.”

  He holds up the magazine to show me a picture of a lurid green death machine.

  “Very nice.”

  I could not be less interested. Still, it’s good to see Karl reading something other than a newspaper, although I suspect he might just be looking at the pictures.

  “Lovely, ain’t she?” he says wistfully. “Does 0 to 60 in 2.6 seconds.”

  Karl continues to fawn over the picture while I tuck into a bowl of wholegrain granola.

  I indulge him. “How much does one of those things cost?”

  “North of twenty grand.”

  I almost choke. “Unless we win the lottery, you’ll have to make do with pictures for the foreseeable.”

  He looks up at me with doe eyes, deep and brown.

  “Man can dream can’t he?”

  I flash him a smile and he returns his attention to the pictures.

  Karl is an unquestionable dreamer.

  He dropped out of college at seventeen to start an events company. That lasted eight months. Undeterred, Karl moved on to his next big idea. By the time he’d reached his early twenties, he’d started, and subsequently folded, a dozen different ventures. His entrepreneurial spirit withered with every failure and he eventually settled for a career with the local council.

  Somehow, he found himself starting as a glorified tea boy in the planning department. Credit to him though; he worked his way through the system and became a planning officer two years ago. But even against the backdrop of planning applications and building regulations, Karl kept dreaming.

  I like that about him. Everyone needs a dream, don’t they?

  “Anyway, gotta shoot, babe,” he says as he gets up from the table.

  He strides over and plants a kiss on my forehead.

  “Might be late tonight,” he says. “Four o’clock meeting with a developer which will probably overrun.”

  “Overrun into the pub by any chance?”

  “You know me so well, babe,” he replies with a wink. “That’s why you’ll make the perfect Mrs Patterson.”

  I pad over to the sink and rinse my bowl. Karl nestles up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist.

  “So when are we going to set a date then?” he purrs.

  “I’m still thinking about i
t. I like the idea of a summer wedding though, so maybe July next year.”

  “Not sure I can wait ten months.”

  From the moment he proposed, Karl has been a little too enthusiastic about our wedding timetable. If he had his way, we’d be heading down the aisle next weekend. I, on the other hand, prefer to take my time and plan the big day with military precision. A psychiatrist might suggest a deeper rooted reason for my procrastination.

  I turn around and put my hands on his shoulders.

  “Good things come to those who wait, Karl.”

  He scrunches his face in a way I find hard to resist. Much like a puppy, Karl is too cute to be annoyed with for any length of time.

  “You’re the boss,” he says. “But don’t you go getting cold feet on me.”

  I run my fingers through his unkempt, butterscotch-coloured hair.

  “I won’t. Promise.”

  He responds with a lingering kiss.

  “I need to get going. Seeya tonight.”

  He grabs his magazine and darts out of the kitchen. Seconds later, I hear the front door open and close.

  I’ve never been blessed with children, but I imagine it must occasionally be a relief when they leave for school and the house is quiet. Despite my lack of offspring, Karl’s departure summons a similar feeling.

  I wipe crumbs from the table and put Karl’s plate in the sink. As lovely as his backside might be, I think I’d trade it for a change in his untidy ways.

  I finish my tea and slip my coat on, taking a moment to check the contents of my handbag before I head out the front door.

  The sky is a cloudless blue and the air crisp. Autumn is by far my favourite season, followed by winter, spring, and then summer. I’d rather be too cold and able to warm up than too warm and unable to do anything about it. There’s nothing nice about being hot, bothered, and claggy. No, summer definitely isn’t for me.

  I walk the twenty yards along Elmore Road to where my car is parked. I unlock the doors with the remote control and stand for a moment to appreciate my new car; a custard-yellow Fiat 500. I say new, but it’s actually nine years old. I’ve owned it for just over a month and the way it came into my possession still makes me smile.