Thursday, 30 September
The air was tense when I arrived at Elmfield House on Tuesday morning.
My repeated ringing of the doorbell went unanswered so I opened the front door
and entered the workroom to find Leonard and Luke embroiled in a fierce disagreement.
I had interrupted at the worst possible time when the argument had reached its
climax. Both fell silent upon my arrival, then Luke stood out of his chair and
quickly collected his jacket, deliberately avoiding eye contact with me.
Leonard watched him storm out of the room with the cold eye of a father who had
scorned a disobedient child and, as the front door slammed shut, Leonard collapsed
back into his chair and proclaimed in a loud voice:
'Man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief
authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s
most assur’d,
His glassy essence, like an
angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks
before high heaven,
As make the angels weep…'
Shaken by the confrontation that I had witnessed and the solemnity of Leonard’s tone, I asked “did you write that yourself?”
“Shakespeare,” he answered
simply, then added “I’m sorry if Luke’s little show has upset you…”
“No, not at all,” I replied as
I sat down in the leather armchair as though nothing had happened.
Hooter was pacing in circles and
he was clearly distressed by the hostile atmosphere in the workroom, so Leonard
fished around by the side of his chair and took hold of the dog’s collar. “Are
you hungry? I’m sorry dear friend, I’ve neglected to feed you, haven’t I?” he
said as he stood out of his chair and walked into the kitchen with Hooter following
obediently behind. Amidst the clattering of cupboards and dog bowls, I heard
Leonard’s voice ring out from the kitchen telling me that he had bad news;
Sophie's illness has worsened and it is unlikely that she will be well enough
to visit us for a while. I told him that I was sorry to hear that she was
unwell and I asked him to convey my best wishes to her and her father when they
spoke again, although, to be honest, I had forgotten entirely about Sophie’s
imminent visit since Leonard has not mentioned her for some time.
Leonard emerged from the
kitchen and stood before me in the centre of the room and then, rather than
returning to his chair, he drew in a deep breath and said something along the
lines of “well, it’s a lovely day outside and although I am desperate to
continue with our work, I can’t expect a young woman to spend her last days of
summer shut away indoors with an old man in an old house now, can I?”. I
laughed and suggested that we worked in the garden but Leonard insisted that we
should go for a walk since ‘that way we can do something productive and healthy’ and, before I knew it, he had
his beige jacket in hand and he
was searching through the pockets for his house keys. It was an irresistible
proposition and so I gathered my things together, helped Leonard to put on his jacket
and Hooter barked from the kitchen door in utter disbelief as we left the
drawing board and biscuit tin on the workroom floor and walked out of Elmfield
House.
After checking, double-checking
and checking once again that the front door was securely locked, Leonard
finally put his trust in the door locks and joined me by the gate. The dogs in
the nearby garden barked wildly as we passed them by and Leonard jeered playfully
at them as we headed through the archway and onto the main street. It was
difficult to maintain a conversation over the noise of the heavy traffic and the
hordes of students rushing around us in their identifiable tribes; members of
sports teams in shorts and hooded tops, postgraduates with armfuls of library
books, first years looking bright and fresh in the latest fashion trends and
downtrodden final year students in sloppy jeans and scruffy trainers. I
was mindlessly following the broken pavement and the back of Leonard’s jacket
when he suddenly came to a halt on a street corner and asked me to take him
somewhere. I was taken aback by his request and asked where he would like to go; a coffee shop maybe?
Or another visit to the university? He insisted that I took him to a location
that had a special personal significance to me and I should not consider distance
to be a constraint since we had the entire day at our disposal. I stared
bemused at him for a while. He has visited St. Bartholomew’s Church and the university
campus many times before, so where else could I take him? The only remaining
location ‘of special personal significance’ that came to mind was the housing
estate that I grew up on. It was only a little further along the bus route past
St. Bartholomew’s Church and it wouldn’t take too long to get there, besides there
were one or two childhood haunts on the estate that I had been meaning to
revisit for some time.
We walked to the nearest bus
stop and caught a bus that took us directly to the small estate on the outer
boundary of the city (Leonard did not utter one word throughout the entire journey
and I could tell that he was absorbing every detail of this new and unfamiliar
territory). The bus dropped us at the edge of the estate and we both remained silent
as we climbed the steep hill towards the main residential area, then, as we
neared the top of the hill, I began to smile when I spotted a familiar flat
piece of metal rising into view. It was the roof of the old bandstand. It was
still there. And as it came into sight I was pleased to see that it was still
the bizarre, fairy-tale construction that I remembered from my childhood - a
dark green, weather-beaten circular shelter perched on top of the hill like a
cherry on a cake. The surrounding field had grown wild which added to the eerie
and desolate air of a neglected cemetery or abandoned war memorial that I
recalled from years ago, but the shelter itself was largely unchanged; the
green paint on the intricate ivy design railings had flaked away to reveal bare
grey metal underneath and the railings were intertwined with real ivy that had
overgrown most of the seating area and one half of the roof, but the seating
area and the patterns on the inside of the roof were perfectly preserved where
they had been protected from the weather and they were exactly as I remembered
them, although accompanied by a little additional graffiti.
I explained to Leonard that I
had brought him to the bandstand because it had served as a secret place of
sanctuary during my childhood. It was located far enough away from the main estate
to allow me to hide from everyone when I wanted to be alone and it was high
enough to provide a comprehensive, bird’s eye view of the activity taking place
below. I could spot a parent or teacher heading in my direction with plenty of
time to make a hasty escape! Leonard was enchanted by the beauty of the
dilapidated structure and he thanked me for sharing it with him, but he was
annoyed that he had forgotten to bring his camera and he insisted that we must
return sometime soon to take photographs of the area.
We sat together on the top
step of the bandstand and from our high viewpoint we could see the patchwork of
fields and wooded areas below and the warren of narrow roads that spread out like
a complex rete mirabile across the
estate. I drew Leonard’s attention to prominent locations that had interesting
anecdotes associated with them, such as the dense wood that was situated to our
immediate right. Although the wood looked small and ordinary from a distance, I
assured Leonard that it was nothing like the flat and sanitised forests that are
carefully designed and planted for delicate children and elderly ramblers these
days. From what I could recall there was a fast stream that ran straight through
the centre and there were entirely impassable areas with steep slopes and
plummeting crevices that looked as though a giant hand had taken a scoop out of
the earth. My school-friends and I would compete to climb the tallest trees and,
although we spent many a Sunday afternoon beating a path through the wood, we failed
to ever reach the other side. Those who did were revered as heroes at school.
But there could have been another world at the other end, for all I knew.
One particularly prominent landmark that Leonard spotted was the tall brick
water tower that looms like an imposing fortress over the entire estate. The tower
once belonged to the local psychiatric hospital that opened in 1905 and,
although the hospital and the tower have been abandoned for some years now, the
derelict buildings still retained all the qualities of a creepy lunatic asylum
from a horror movie. Unmarked white vans continued to visit the site long after
it closed and rumour had it that if you peeked through the broken windows of
the adjoining hospital chapel then it was possible to make out the rusty
manacles hanging from the ceiling in which patients were hung during sessions
of extreme physiotherapy. A secure mental health unit was built nearby to
replace the old asylum and a number of infamous killers spent time inside the
new clinic, which was always a concern to local residents because at least once
a month a loud siren would wail out to alert everyone in the neighbourhood that
a patient was missing and quite often I would wake in the night to the sound of
a police helicopter circling overhead and the flash of searchlights hunting
through the gardens.
There were several other equally creepy locations in the surrounding
area that set our young imaginations on fire; for example, a short detour on my
morning route to school took me through a field of horses belonging to the local
farm and the walk through the field was always an uneasy experience because rumour
had it that the field was haunted by the ghost of an elderly farmer who would
chase terrified trespassers off his land. There was also an eerie disused Cold
War monitoring bunker nearby and a sprawling maze of abandoned underground
tunnels ran beneath the estate for miles and miles. A few residents reported
hearing loud, mechanical rumblings coming from these tunnels in the middle of
the night and so my friends and I would embark on day-long expeditions to find
the entrances to the tunnels and discover the source of these strange noises.
However it wasn’t just the
local geography that was responsible for fuelling our superstitious natures. The
community library was heaving with books about the paranormal and reports of hauntings
and ghostly encounters spread like wildfire across the estate and they were
enthusiastically exchanged by children and adults alike. Take, for example, the
rumours that were focused around a street corner only two streets away from my
parents’ house. In a tragic foreshadowing of my own brother’s death, a boy in
my class at school had dashed into the road to retrieve his football one Saturday
afternoon and he had been hit by a speeding car and instantly killed. The local
residents were devastated by his death and the lamp post nearest to the
accident site became a permanent memorial to him, with flowers and cuddly toys strapped
to it throughout the year. Shortly after his funeral took place my friends and
I heard reports that motorists driving past the spot had seen a ghostly figure
standing by the side of the road and people living on the street claimed to hear
a child crying late at night. Needless to say, my pace would always quicken
when I passed by that street corner!
The entire estate was teeming
with similar urban legends and stories of paranormal activity and it was an
ideal breeding ground for irrational fears and nervous disorders. In hindsight
it was little surprise that many of the local children, including myself, were
heavily influenced by the supernatural in one way or another.
“‘Influence’ is a peculiar word,” Leonard interjected at that point, “it
is the poor defence that is given by addicts, serial killers and children who
murder their brothers and sisters. It is the scapegoat that is sent out into
the wilderness of rationality in order to justify the most cruellest
behaviour.”
He paused in his speech to swat at a fly
that had been buzzing around us for a good five minutes or so. I smiled as I
watched him take a swipe at the fly and brought my rambling commentary to a
close, choosing instead to let Leonard take in the atmosphere of the place for
himself. I thought about my words to Leonard and how surprising it is that my
childhood was so heavily steeped in the supernatural and yet I have grown to reject
any belief in the supernatural as an adult. I suspect that my unrequited desire
to encounter the supernatural on a religious level is largely to blame for this,
but I’m not going to dig too deeply into my psychological roots here!
After a few minutes of silence Leonard spoke
again and he said that he was delighted that I had brought him to a location
that was so visually appealing and my decision to choose somewhere from my childhood
had pleased him for two reasons; a) it is clear that I am comfortable with my
past and b) I must trust him enough to share my most personal memories with him.
He made a number of comments that struck a chord with me and they have been
rattling around inside my mind over these last few days. I cannot recall his exact
words but they were pithy and inspirational statements, almost like he was
giving a motivational speech. The first was something along the lines of “your
history is the blueprint for your future and you must not be afraid to embrace
who you were, who you are and who you will be”, the second was “make peace with
your past because the greater it weighs on you the heavier it will be to carry
through life” and the third was “the faster you run from your demons the faster
you will fall backwards into your own personal hell”. The stern look that he
gave me as he spoke was similar to the intense stare that Luke has when he is
growing impassioned in his argument. It was a determined and forceful stare
that pierced straight into my brain as though he was bypassing my conscious
mind and directly addressing a deeper level of consciousness within me. Luke
has given me this look many times before, but it was the first time that I had
seen it in Leonard's eyes.
I was sitting in quiet contemplation and reflecting on Leonard’s insightful
words when he suddenly slammed his hand down hard on the step beside him, instantly
killing the fly that had been bothering us and causing me to jump out of my
skin. The violence of the act was so unexpected and out of character that I was
shaken by the moment and unsure how to react, so we sat in silence for a while
until I felt obliged to speak and apologise, although I was not sure what for.
At a loss on how to pacify Leonard’s agitated state, I apologised for walking
straight into Elmfield House earlier that day and interrupting the heated
debate that he was having with Luke, but Leonard dismissed my apology and he complained
that Luke suffers from ‘the worst plague that is endemic in young men these
days; arrogance’. He said that Luke is arrogant with regards to his intellect -
and arrogance and intelligence, when combined, can be a very formidable combination
indeed...
