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454 lines
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<h1>5</h1>
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<p>Jimmy Allison insisted on me joining him along at the Chandler on the west side of the harbour. As he pulled on his overcoat, he asked me how the work was going.</p>
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<p>'I just can't get into it,' I explained as we strode along the road. A slight smirr of rain, more a heavy mist, was blowing in from the estuary, and we bent our heads to keep it out of our eyes. The night was still warm, so the fine spray was not unpleasant on our faces.</p>
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<p>'I can't seem to get a start on it. Like everything's in my head and just can't get out.'</p>
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<p>' I wouldn't worry about it. Any author will tell you that books have a hard time being born.'</p>
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<p>' It's the conception, not the birth, I'm having difficulty with. Coitus is interruptus, you might say.'</p>
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<p>' You'll make it. Give yourself some time.'</p>
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<p>The Chandler is not like Holly's bar. It's more modern for a start, at least inside, although the building is easily as old as the Arden Inn. It's been a sailors' bar for decades, since the days when the little fishing boats used to go out on the firth and up by the Mull of Kintyre after the herring. Now the sailors were the weekend sort, and the Chandler did a roaring trade in the summer.</p>
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<p>The bar was where the local guys, the men who worked on the boats and helped repair and refit the craft, came to do their drinking. This was where my grandfather had spent a lot of the time when he was home from the sea, although to tell you the truth, he did a power of drinking at Holly's as well. I imagine he got round most of the bars in the area, and everybody who was anybody in Arden knew old Nick Westford.</p>
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<p>The Major was a short man with a moon face and sharp blue eyes and a thick head of iron-grey hair that was cut short and neatly parted.</p>
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<p>When I was introduced to him he shook my hand strongly and warmly and told me he'd heard a lot about me.</p>
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<p>' All good, I assume,' I said, trying to return his grip just as firmly and probably failing.</p>
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<p>'Well, I suppose so,' he said, in a deep, lilting island accent, that pleasant slow speech that makes everybody think that the people of the islands are just as slow as they sound. Most of them find out too late.</p>
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<p>'I suppose so, if you can believe a word of anything this old storyteller says, which none of us do, at all.'</p>
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<p>I laughed along with Jimmy, and stuck up a round for the three of us. Both men had a taste for the dark malts, and I stuck to half pints.</p>
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<p>' You're not a whisky man yourself'?' the major asked.</p>
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<p>'No, I don't really like it. Just at weddings and funerals. That's my stretch.'</p>
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<p>'Oh, it's a pity that. I wouldn't like to be drinking that stuff,' he said, indicating my beer, 'it's just like cold tea.'</p>
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<p>The major was one of those slow-talking men who give an outward appearance of being placid, and maybe a bit soft.</p>
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<p>But he was as hard as nails. I discovered he'd been to Oxford University, then Aldershot and then almost every trouble zone you care to mention. According to Jimmy he'd a list of decorations as long as your arm. Another thing I discovered later was that his rank was really brigadier, but he'd been in one of the special regiments which nobody really knows much about and was quite content with the rank everybody else seemed to think he had.</p>
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<p>' I've been telling Nick he should think about writing a book about Arden,' Jimmy told him.</p>
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<p>'Maybe he should at that,' the major mused. 'Then again, nobody would believe a word of it.'</p>
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<p>'You mean the history?' I asked.</p>
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<p>' Aye, the history. ' He nodded. 'It's as strange as anywhere. You know, my people came from here. I should have been born in Arden, but my father moved up to the islands when the fishing went bad, and that's where I was born. But I've always thought of this place as home. When they pensioned me off, this is where I wanted to stay. But as Jimmy will tell you, it's got a lot of history.'</p>
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<p>' Donald's been helping me with the Gaelic,' Jimmy said. 'It's the one language I never picked up.'</p>
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<p>'Aye, and it's a beautiful tongue. I'll be going up to the islands in a week or so in the boat. I've a nephew who's getting married, and you know what the weddings are like. Probably last most of the week, I shouldn't wonder.'</p>
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<p>It must have been after midnight when the landlord - an Englishman, but none the worse for that - called time and we had to leave. We all went back to Jimmy's where he and the major polished off the bottle of malt the old man had broached before, and I had a beer.</p>
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<p>Sometime in the early hours of the morning the major went home, walking steady as a rock despite what to me would have been enough to have my head down the toilet. I slept fully clothed on top of the spare bed and didn't dream. In the morning I had no hangover and felt good. Jimmy woke me with a cup of tea and toast which went down a treat. He looked worse for wear. He had coffee. Thick and black.</p>
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<hr/>
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<p><em>From the Kirkland Herald: 1906.</em></p>
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<p><em>Mystery of Missing Trawler</em></p>
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<p>
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<em>Arden fishermen and the tugboat association from Greenock have discontinued their week-long search for the crew of the Herring Gull which went missing off Ardmhor Point last Tuesday.</em>
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</p>
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<p>
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<em>The Herring Gull, a Clyde-built trawler, disappeared in thick fog while netting for herring in the firth with two other Arden boats, the Sea Spray and Otter, all three owned by the Arden Fishermen's Association.</em>
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</p>
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<p>
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<em>The mystery of the Herring Gull 's disappearance is unexplained. The captains of both vessels maintained that the three boats were fishing in calm water only two miles out from the home harbour in an unseasonal, but welcome shoal, when the Herring Gull drifted into a fog-bank.</em>
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</p>
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<p>
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<em>Such was the success of the catch that the absence of the Herring Gull was not noted by the other boats for more than an hour, and due to the calmness of the firth, the alarm was not raised until six hours later when the boat failed to arrive to unload in Arden.</em>
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</p>
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<p>
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<em>Boatmen from north and south of the estuary have spent many hours dragging the coves around Ardhmor, but no trace of survivors or their boats have been found.</em>
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</p>
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<p>
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<em>Association Chairman Mr Walter Wood, having taken advice from Sergeant Mclntyre of Levenford Station, has allowed his boats to discontinue the search.</em>
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</p>
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<p>
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<em>Mr Wood said he was unable to explain the mystery. He told the Post: 'Captain Mellow and his crew have fished these waters for two decades without incident.</em>
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</p>
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<p>'<em>I can only assume that their vessel became lost in the fog and drifted on the firth into open water. 1 have no doubt whatsoever that it will be recovered in due course. The absence of wreckage gives us all hope that the captain and the seven members of the crew are safe and well. '</em>
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</p>
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<p>
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<em>The Clyde Pilot, Mr. J. Thomas, said that to his knowledge the I Herring Gull had neither been sighted, nor put into any of the western ports.</em>
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</p>
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<p>' And it never did show up,' Jimmy Allison said as he took the old newspaper clipping out of my hand. 'I heard an old story that months later they found bits and pieces of that boat all over the rock, far up from the high-tide line. But there was nothing in the papers about that. There was too much going on here by then.'</p>
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<p>'So when is this supposed to have happened?'</p>
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<p>' Not supposed.
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<em>Did</em> . In 1906, a vintage year for Arden. I was thinking about it last week when you were telling me about the sugar boat. I knew I remembered something similar.'
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</p>
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<p>' It's hardly the same, though, is it? I mean, the Cassandra went down in a storm. Even then, it didn't sink, just rolled over on a sandbank. And half the crew were none the worse for wear except a couple of cracked skulls,' I said. 'For all we know, the crew of the fishing boat just took off for new fishing grounds. They were part of the Arden Association, weren't they?'</p>
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<p>Jimmy nodded and I went on. 'So there was nothing to stop them taking off and starting somewhere else where they would get a full share of the catch.'</p>
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<p>' That's true enough. But there would have been word of it. Some rumour even. But they weren't even sighted by anyone, and you know what a clannish lot those old fishermen were. Everybody knew everybody else's business from the Minch down to the Irish Sea.</p>
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<p>'But that's not the point,' he continued. 'The point is that they went missing off Ardmhor, and they were never seen again. That boat from the Cassandra went missing off Ardmhor, and that hasn't been seen since, either.'</p>
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<p>'But it's only been a week.'</p>
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<p>' Come on, Nick,' Jimmy said, putting the clipping down on a substantial pile of papers and old notes. 'You know as well as I do that if a boat goes down anywhere on the firth there's always some trace. I mean, it's not the open sea with a clear run straight out into the Atlantic, is it? That boat disappeared. And I tell you it's gone for good.'</p>
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<p>'What makes you think that?'</p>
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<p>' Because it's too like the first time. Or even that might not have been the first time for all I know. But it's the same, and remember what I told you; it was 1906 and that was a bad year. The disappearance of the Herring Gull was just the first in a whole series of strange happenings in and around this town.'</p>
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<p>'Like what?'</p>
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<p>' I'll tell you
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<em>like what</em>next week, when I've got the whole lot looked out from this mess. Listen. I'll do a deal with you. If they don't find anything down at that rock by the weekend, which they won't, you can buy me another bottle of malt and read all the notes I've got.'
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</p>
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<p>Somehow I knew he was going to win. On the following Sunday, I would have my nose buried in a mass of old and yellowing paper, culled from the old Post, the Herald and the big broadsheets from Glasgow.</p>
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<p>But it wasn't just the fact that the boat from the Cassandra never turned up. Not a stick of the lifeboat was ever found. But there were one or two things that happened in the following days that made me think Jimmy Allison might have a point. I was just at the prologue to a story, and it wasn't any fairy story either. I was just at the 'once upon a time' stage, not really interested. It had to get to the big bad wolf bit before I would sit up and take a bit of notice.</p>
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<p>I was slowly sinking into a dream, the kind of fuzzy dream that was going to take a little hitch somewhere along the line and the rules to get bent right out of shape before I was going to plunge down into a black nightmare. You know the kind of dream I mean, where things just begin to change a little and you keep right on because it's only a dream, and while things do look a little bit strange, it's not yet time to wake up because you can handle it.</p>
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<p>So hey ho, on we go. At this stage, I didn't even know the story had started, but it had, and I was in it and even then things were beginning to take their sideways hitch out of true. But only Jimmy Allison knew more than me. He'd been around longer. He'd been places and seen things. And right soon, I was going to be seeing some things. And worse than I'd ever have believed.</p>
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<p>I didn't give much of a thought to what had happened to the men on that old fishing boat that disappeared into the fog way back when my grandad was just a boy. Nor did I concern myself over much about the fate of the men from the lifeboat. At that time, it wasn't a mystery. A tragedy, maybe, in newspaper terms, and certainly a tragedy for the families of those men who were not coming back.</p>
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<p>The reason I wasn't dwelling on that- and my agreement with Jimmy, was that on the afternoon that I'd read the old clipping, the sun came out from behind a cloud and beamed down on me.</p>
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<p>Life took an upward flip and I was looking good, feeling fine.</p>
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<p>And the reason for that was that I met a girl. Not any old girl. A very special one.</p>
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<p>And in meeting her, all the prime characters were in place to get this story out of the prologue and into the main tract. In some ways it might have been better if I'd never met her, but I reckon it had to be. It was
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<em>meant</em>to happen.</p>
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<p>She was standing at the side of the supermarket where the sun bounced off the yellow brick wall. Her arms were tanned brown and smooth and moving quickly as she threw the two rubber balls down to bounce them on the concrete and catch them on the upward rebound from the wall.</p>
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<p>I could hear the rhythmic child jive chanted in time to the sound of the bouncing balls. I was passing by the girl and had edged away just enough to avoid getting in her way when she mis-caught one of the balls and it bounced high over her head. I was just in the right place to reach out and snatch it out of the air.</p>
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<p>'Good catch, mister,' she said, in a high voice which had more than a hint of an East Coast American accent. She was maybe seven years old.</p>
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<p>' No, it was a <em>great</em> catch,' I said, turning away from the sun which was right in my eyes, to look at her.</p>
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<p>When I looked down, my heart gave a jolt, and suddenly I was a boy again. It was like walking into a time-warp, the kind of total recall so vivid that you can hear it and smell it.</p>
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<p>Barbara Foster squinted up at me, the hand with the ball shielding her eyes from the glare, and the other one outstretched for its companion. She was standing hip-shot in the same pair of faded jeans and white tee-shirt, wearing the same big smile and those pretty freckles over her snub nose.</p>
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<p>I had last seen her like that more than twenty years before, and there she was, ever the tomboy, my best pal in the whole world, and she'd stayed just the same.</p>
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<p>' Barbara?' I blurted out without thinking. If I had thought, I would have known it was utterly impossible, but just seeing her had thrown me right off balance.</p>
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<p>'No, I'm Paddy,' she said, smiling brightly. 'Can I get my ball back mister?'</p>
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<p>I looked at the ball in my hand. It was just the same as the balls you could buy in the ironmongers for a few coins then. Soft and spongy, a good bouncer, just made for small agile hands to juggle. I squeezed it in my hand, feeling the familiar give.</p>
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<p>' Please?' the girl said.</p>
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<p>' Oh, sure, here,' I said, and handed it over. She reached up and grasped it and threw it up in the air in a quick juggling motion. I'd seen her do that before too, except it hadn't been this girl.</p>
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<p>'You called me Barbara,' she said, still grinning.</p>
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<p>'Well, you look very much like somebody I used to know. She was called Barbara,' I said, and smiled back at her. The resemblance, as they say in all books, good and bad, was uncanny.</p>
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<p>'What did you say your name is?'</p>
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<p>'Paddy. It's for Patricia, but I hate that. It's a cissie name.'</p>
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<p>' Nothing wrong with Patricia,' I said, 'but Paddy's nice. It suits you.'</p>
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<p>I bent down and extended my hand. 'I'm Nicholas. But I hate that. It's a cissie name too. I like Nick, but my friends call me Nicky.'</p>
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<p>The little girl smiled. We had something in common. She transferred the ball into the other hand which now held two of the sixpenny bouncers and took mine, shaking it manfully.</p>
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<p>' Pleased to meetcha, Nicky.'</p>
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<p>I was still taken aback with her appearance. The resemblance was striking, and I was about to say something else when I heard a shout from behind one of the cars in the park.</p>
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<p>' Paddy! Come here at once,' a woman's voice came loud and sharp. I heard the click, click of heels on the concrete and turned to see a tall, fair-haired woman striding towards me.</p>
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<p>'What are you doing'?' she demanded, but she was looking at me, not the child. Her eyes were flashing.</p>
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<p>' Nothing mommy. I was just saying hello.'</p>
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<p>The mother threw me another stinker of a look, and right then I felt at a loss for words. I could see how it looked. A strange man talking to a little pretty girl behind the supermarket.</p>
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<p>'What have you been told about speaking to strangers,' her mother said, grabbing her by the arm and preparing to haul her off.</p>
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<p>' I'm sorry. It was my fault entirely,' I started to say.</p>
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<p>' You bet, buster,' she said, and prepared to turn away.</p>
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<p>'He called me Barbara, mommy. He said I looked like his friend.'</p>
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<p>' I'll bet he did,' the woman said in a stage whisper that made me feel about two inches high. Then she stopped in mid-stride. 'He called you what?' she asked, and started to turn round, and in that moment everything fell right into place.</p>
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<p>Barbara Foster, the real Barbara Foster, turned her blue eyes on me, the hostility battling with uncertainty. She stared at my face in that intent way of someone with a glimmer of recognition, trying to bring it into focus.</p>
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<p>' I'm sorry Babs, it wasn't Paddy's fault. I made all the running. ' I grinned, and even as I did so I realised how stupid that would look. 'For a minute, I kind of thought she was you.'</p>
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<p>' Do I know you?' Her eyes weren't so frosty now, but she wasn't yet ready to be nice to the stranger who'd buttonholed her daughter.</p>
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<p>'His name's Nicholas, but he hates that,' the little girl piped up. 'His friends call him Nicky,' she said, matter-of-factly.</p>
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<p>' Nicky.' A statement.</p>
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<p>' Nicky Ryan,' I offered. 'I know it's been a long time, but I thought at least you would have remembered.'</p>
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<p>'Nicky Ryan?' A question. Then: 'Nicky Ryan. Dear God, Nicky Ryan. I don't believe it.'</p>
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<p>'The one and only,' I said. 'The original one and only.'</p>
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<p>'Only the lonely one and only,' she said, and started to laugh, then stopped to think of what had come tripping off her tongue, our chant from way back then. She laughed again.</p>
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<p>'It really is you, Nicky. Oh dear, it must be .... '</p>
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<p>'At least twenty years,' I completed for her. She was still staring at my face, trying to see where the boy had gone.</p>
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<p>'Well how are you?' I said, offering my hand, which she took with a cool, firm one of her own and shook warmly.</p>
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<p>'Great, just great. You've changed.'</p>
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<p>'Now there's a surprise. I was four feet tall the last time you saw me.'</p>
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<p>' No, I mean, you're not how I thought you'd be. God, I can't believe meeting you after all these years. I didn't think you lived here any more.'</p>
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<p>'I don't. Well, I do now. I mean I've just moved back again.'</p>
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<p>'Me too. Last week.'</p>
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<p>' That's a coincidence. So did I.'</p>
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<p>I looked her over. She was tall and slim and well shaped, obviously a woman who kept herself Ht. Her honey-blonde hair fell in waves to her shoulders, and her deep blue eyes sparkled in a face that was heart-shaped with a well-chiselled nose and a strong, feminine chin.</p>
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<p>' You've changed too,' I said, then looked at the girl. 'But
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<em>she's</em>still the same. She's exactly like you when you were her age. It gave me a jolt when I turned round the corner and saw her. I thought I'd gone back in time.'
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</p>
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<p>'Well, I can't deny maternity there,' Barbara said, and ruffled her daughter's hair.</p>
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<p>I stepped back for a real look, at both of them. Barbara had changed indeed, as could only be expected in two decades, but there was still something of the girl I knew - the third one-and-only - that brought a series of pictures right into my head, like fast-forward re-runs of old movies. The tomboy had evolved into a head-turner, and the new version was a clone of her mother.</p>
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<p>We both started to say something, and stopped to allow the other verbal right of way. Barbara laughed and I said: 'Fancy a coffee?'</p>
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<p>'Coffee would be just great. There are one or two things I've got to pick up, but they can wait. Is there somewhere around here that does anything decent'?'</p>
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<p>'Your guess is as good as mine. Remember I'm the new boy here, but Mary Baker's tearoom is still going. Let's try there.'</p>
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<p>It wasn't far along the main street and we walked in the sunshine, a little awkwardly asking questions of each other, framing them politely like two strangers, which in a sense we were. But there was a feeling of unreality about that because, despite the fact that Barbara and I had not set eyes on each other for more than twenty years, there was a feeling between us that's hard to explain. She and I and the other one-and-only had been as close as any three kids could be until something happened that blew it all apart.</p>
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<p>In Mary Baker's back pantry, as the tearoom had been known since anybody could remember, the coffee was thick and strong, and the cream even thicker. Paddy ignored her mother's warnings over the sugar on the pastry, then Barbara ignored them too and demolished one in a few big bites.</p>
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<p>' Mmm, they're delicious,' she said, or at least that's a fair translation of how it sounded through a mouthful of Danish pastry. 'I'll put on pounds,' she added when she had washed it down. 'I haven't tasted one of these since God knows when, and they're still exactly the same.' Over several cups of coffee, we exchanged bits and pieces of life history, while Paddy worked her way through a mountain of calories and listened intently to every word we said. .</p>
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<p>'
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You're <em>that</em> Nick Ryan? I must have read about you a million times.'</p>
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<p>'None other,' I said.</p>
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<p>'The name never clicked. I mean I must have seen you on TV and all, but I never thought for a minute.'</p>
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<p>'I wasn't looking my best,' I said. 'Anyway, what about you? What have you been up to for most of my life'?'</p>
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<p>I discovered that Barbara had grown up near Boston, in between bouts of schooling in England which had helped merge the Scottish and English accents into a well-rounded, pleasant one. She had married at twenty, had had Paddy within a year and something went wrong with her tubes and she couldn't have any more - another one and only, she said, nodding in her daughter's direction. Her husband, a doctor called Hartford, had been killed in a car crash five years ago and when her father, who had been a surgeon at Levenford General, retired, and decided to come back to Arden, Barbara had followed him home.</p>
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<p>' I felt it was the best thing for Paddy. I mean, Arden's a better place for a girl than anywhere in the States. It was okay for me growing up, but things have changed, and they're getting worse.'</p>
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<p>'So what do you plan to do?' I asked.</p>
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<p>' There's no rush. John's insurance - that's my husband - his insurance was pretty comprehensive, so everything's fine there. I was a qualified physiotherapist in the States, so I might go back to that if my papers are worth anything here.'</p>
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<p>Barbara told me her father had bought back the old family house in Upper Arden and spent most of his time re-planning the extensive gardens. Barbara had spent the past week just settling into the old town. Paddy had fallen in love with the place immediately, and her mother felt she had made a good move.</p>
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<p>Sitting in Mary Baker's tearoom brought back a whole stack of memories one after another, that just came slotting into place like records in an old juke-box. The way she looked, the way she turned her head, and even the way she sat would trigger off another far-off memory that would come zooming into focus like a delicious aftertaste. We stayed there for almost two hours, until we couldn't face another coffee, and Paddy had got past the stage of being interested in the pastries. Barbara said she would bring her daughter down to visit me, and I agreed I'd go up to Upper Arden and say hello to her father. He had never been that keen on me as a youngster, but I expected him to have mellowed. We parted in the car park, standing once again in the bright sunlight, and instead of shaking my hand Barbara gave me a feather soft kiss on the cheek.</p>
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<p>As I walked away, I heard the little girl ask: 'What's a one and only?'</p>
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<p>I was feeling warm and light after my chance meeting with Barbara. Sadly, that didn't last. While we'd been in the tearoom, an ambulance had shot past on the main street, siren wailing urgently. Just as I was heading towards the jeep, the town's police car screeched to a halt beside me. Murdo Morrison leaned out of the open window, his big face red and sweaty looking.</p>
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<p>' Has that thing got a tow-bar?' he asked, pointing at my jeep.</p>
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<p>I said that it had and Murdo just said: 'Right. Follow me. I need you.' He drove off and turned right at the car park entrance. I was puzzled, but I jumped in the jeep right away and the engine roared at the first turn of the key. I took off after him, along Main Street, heading west, and right on half-way to Milligs. We got to the end of the row of houses on Elm Street and Murdo, his blue light still flashing wanly in the bright sunlight, took a left down a single track. We had gone about a quarter of a mile when he stopped at a five-bar gate that gave on to a large pasture.</p>
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<p>The ambulance was parked just outside the gate, and I could see why. At the corner, where two hedgerows met at right angles, the ground had been churned into mud by the cattle. From the tracks, I could see that the ambulance had tried to get through it and failed. Murdo leapt from his patrol car and swung open the gate, his trousers slick with mud up to the knees, and he jammed the heavy wooden spars against the hedge. He came dashing back, opened the passenger door and got in.</p>
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<p>'Right through, Nick. It's Andy Gillon. He's under a tree, by God. He's in a terrible way, and the fire engine's been called out to Levenford.'</p>
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<p>We ran across the field, scattering browsing cows to the corner where the dark green of reeds showed that the land was marshy.</p>
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<p>The four-wheel drive took me through that as easily as it had gone through the mud at the gate, and as we neared the end of the field, I could see why they needed my jeep.</p>
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<p>A big oak tree had toppled over and underneath it the heavy trunk, pinned into the mud, I could see a pair of boots twitching and jerking. I hauled the Subaru into a tight turn and Murdo and I got out. There were a couple of other men, one of them kneeling beside the farmhand who was caught under the deadfall, and an ambulance man was holding a distraught woman in the way that men do when they think that whatever the woman wants to see is something she had better not.</p>
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<p>Andy Gillon was conscious when I got there, but he was stuck fast under a couple of tons of oak which had squashed him into the mud.</p>
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<p>Further along the edge of the field, I saw his bright red tractor angled against the ground. It looked like the axle had snapped.</p>
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<p>Murdo started bellowing orders and organised a team to rig the rope on to the jeep while he fixed up an ingenious lever and fulcrum of logs, wedging them under the fallen oak. He lashed the tow rope on to the biggest log and told me to take it away when he gave me the call. The other farmhands and the ambulance driver started putting their weight against their levers as I inched forward.</p>
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<p>I had to hand it to Murdo. That big tree groaned and lifted, and coupled with the pull of my wheels and the leverage of the straining backs, it came up into the air, moved in an arc and crashed back to earth a clear six feet away. I stopped the engine and got out. The paramedic holding Andy Gillon's wife let her go and she came running over to where Doctor Brant was kneeling over the still twitching man.</p>
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<p>Then she let out a scream like I'd never heard before. It started off high and went soaring upwards until it sounded like jet engine. Then it just cut out and the woman toppled straight back and fell on the marshy ground. She was out of it in a dead faint. When I got up to where the doctor knelt, I almost joined her.</p>
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<p>Andy Gillon was still alive, still conscious then. But the look on his face showed that he knew it wasn't going to be long. He
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<em>should</em> have survived this. Maybe bruised and battered. Maybe a couple of cracked ribs or even a strained spine. That's what should have happened when that old oak had come crashing down and pinned him in the mud.
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</p>
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<p>Except that where Andy Gillon had fallen, it wasn't just mud. He'd landed on to the only spot in that whole acre of marshy land where a rock had been dumped.</p>
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<p>And Andy had come between the rock and the tree. When that old oak had rolled away, half of Andy Gillon's innards had come away with it. The rest of them were like mashed meat, like the drums of offal you see down at the slaughterhouse on a Tuesday afternoon.</p>
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<p>There was nothing left of him from the navel to his groin. Nothing that hadn't been put through a blender and scraped all over the reeds he lay in. I was nearly sick, with horror and disgust. I could feel the coffee and pastries trying to make a bolt for it. Jesus,
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<em>I</em> wanted to make a bolt for it.</p>
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<p>You know what it's like when you come across something that shocks you rigid. Everything seems to go in slow motion. I remember clearly looking down at Mrs Gillon, who was lying there in the marsh, all by herself, her eyes wide open but only showing the whites. Doc Brant turned away from the mess. His face had gone the colour of putty. Murdo Morrison's face was still red from exhaustion. He stood like a statue, then, strangely, for the good Presbyterian that he was, he brought his hand up and crossed himself like a devout Catholic.</p>
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<p>A bunch of dung flies buzzed up in a cloud from a still-steaming cowpat, and half a field away a cow was lowing loudly. There was a buzzing in my ears that I think was just internal pressure. Like everything had been stretched way beyond its elasticity inside me. Then I looked down at Andy Gillon as he lay there, his head facing right up, and his legs still twitching in their boots although there was nothing much more than rags holding them on to the rest of him. His eyes locked on to mine, great wide, shock-filled, rimmed with watery blood that ran down each side of his face, and I looked into hell.</p>
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<p>Andy Gillon's gaze held on to mine and didn't let go. We stared into each other's eyes, both of us in horror and fear. I didn't know, and I still don't know, how much pain he was in, but there was no mistaking that he knew what the score was. I could read it in his eyes. His chest was working up and down in short, quick motions. It rasped in his throat and the movement made little gurgling noises down where his belly had popped open and the glistening, torn ropes were pulsing out blood and bile and God knows what else. A white, jagged piece of bone, probably from his pelvis, shone whitely through the red at his hips. And between where his hipbones should have been there was nothing but a pulp.</p>
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<p>The old oak trunk had been punctuated with bumps and burrs and one of them had been in the right place at the wrong time and had smashed everything that Andy Gillon had had between his legs into an obscenity.</p>
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<p>The crushed man seemed to look at me for ever, his eyes staring right through me, right into the back of my head, as if there was something important, some meaning, something that would explain how he'd come to be lying with his guts draining into this field on a sunny day like today. His mouth was moving and there was a sound coming out along with the trickle of blood. I moved in close to where Doc Brant, the young resident at the Hermitage Cottage Hospital, knelt beside him. His face was grey.</p>
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<p>The doctor pulled his bag closer towards him and snapped open the catch with a click and pulled out a little cylindrical bottle. He jammed it into a silver syringe which he adroitly jabbed right into a vein in the man's neck. The doctor looked sick.</p>
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<p>I don't know what I expected from that injection, but it didn't work quickly enough for me. Andy Gillon was still conscious and as I hunched down closer to the doctor - I don't even know why I did that - I could hear the burbling whisper.</p>
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<p>' Jumped.' The breath bubbled and rattled deep in his throat.</p>
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<p>' Jumped on me. <em>Tree</em> jumped.' Like a hoarse, garbled litany. He was talking to
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<em>me</em>. His eyes were bright and shockingly sane.</p>
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<p>'What did you give him?' I said to the doctor.</p>
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<p>' Morphine.'</p>
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<p>'Give him some more, will you?'</p>
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<p>'I gave him a lot. It should be working now.'</p>
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<p>But the dying man, who knew he was dying, still locked me with those terrible eyes that glittered in the sun.</p>
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<p>' Please, doc,' I said, 'give him anything. Just put him out of this.'</p>
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<p>The young man turned to me. There was a streak of bloodstained mud down the side of his face, and his expression was torture.</p>
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<p>' I've given him enough. Do you understand'?</p>
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<p>Andy Gillon still stared at me and still dribbled the words out along with the rest of the goo that was trickling out of both corners of his mouth.</p>
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<p>' Tree. Jumped. <em>Jumped</em> .'</p>
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<p>' It's not working,' I said, and grabbed the doctor's tweed lapel.</p>
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<p>'Put him out of it, will you? Please?'</p>
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<p>' There's nothing else I can do. Nothing.'</p>
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<p>'Well I can,' I told him and got to my feet and scrambled to the bole of the tree where a tangle of broken branches was strewn. I dragged out a heavy bough about five feet long and strode back, squelching through the wet. I locked eyes with Andy Gillon again.</p>
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<p>He was dying there in his field right in front of me. His insides were squashed into the mud and his eyes were on mine and he was asking me to do something. It was a plea I understood instinctively and I agreed. I hefted the heavy branch right up over my head and braced myself to swing it down with all my strength and Murdo Morrison reached up and yanked it right out of my hand. He shook his head slowly, then chucked my death-giver over the hedge.</p>
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<p>Afterwards he never said a thing about it, and never charged me with attempted murder or anything like that. Then he just looked away, away from me, from the doctor, and the woman still out for a very long count, and away from the man whose life was packing up and moving out only two yards away.</p>
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<p>I couldn't
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<em>not</em>look. It was like a compulsion. I didn't even know the man. As far as I knew, I had never set eyes on him in my life before. But here I was, attending at his death, and he was looking at me as if I was the most important thing in his universe. He was holding on to me for that big crossover, and his litany was for me.
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</p>
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<p>The mumbling stopped suddenly, and the man gave a grunt. He put his elbows down beside him and, still staring into my eyes, he levered himself up a few inches, his body making a slight sucking sound.</p>
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<p>' Jumped. It . . .
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<em>jumped</em> .' Then a gout of thick blood mixed in with anything else he was going to say and he slumped back. The light went out of his eyes, and he was gone.
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</p>
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<p>His dead eyes continued to stare at me for a long time until I turned away.</p>
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<p>Murdo got the ambulance men over with their stretcher and one of them vomited quickly and efficiently into the reeds when he saw the mess, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and carried on. They covered the body with a grey blanket and put it on the green canvas of their stretcher while the doctor attended to the still-unconscious woman.</p>
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<p>Murdo Morrison came over to me, still shaking his head. He was a big, tough man, but there was a glint of tears at the corner of his eyes.</p>
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<p>' Terrible thing,' he said, shaking his head. 'Terrible.'</p>
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<p>' I'm sorry about that, Murdo. I don't know why I did that. I think I .... '</p>
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<p>'I know,' Murdo interrupted. 'I know what you mean. But it's best to leave these things to the medical men.' He clapped his big hand on my shoulder in a fatherly way.</p>
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<p>' He said the tree <em>jumped</em> .'</p>
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<p>'Oh, was that what it was?' Murdo turned round and looked at the bole of the old dead oak and the big roots which had ripped clear out of the ground. He and I looked back at where the old tractor was down on its haunches forty yards away. Through the grass you could see the still-flattened parallel lines where its big treads had run. And there was another line, the last passage of Andy Gillon where he had walked through the reeds towards the place where his life had been squashed out of him.</p>
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<p>The mark followed a roughly straight, faint line, for the reeds were already beginning to straighten into their original positions, but you could make out his track, following the hedge, about twenty feet away from the hedge.</p>
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<p>Murdo and I looked at each other, and back at the tracks. Then simultaneously we looked at the spot where Andy Gillon had been splattered.</p>
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<p>The thick trunk must have been twenty feet long, knobbled and gnarled. Its outline was clearly imprinted on the soft marsh where it had fallen. The root-ball had pulled right out of the ground and lay about six feet from where it had been embedded when the tree was standing.</p>
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<p>Murdo stared at that indentation for a long time, then he looked back at me.</p>
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<p>' That's strange,' he said, through his teeth. 'That's very strange. And there's not a breath of wind.'</p>
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<p>In my mind I could hear the dying man's mumbled chant. 'It jumped. The tree <em>jumped</em> .'</p>
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<p>If it had just fallen over, some of the roots would still be embedded in the ground.</p>
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<p>And what could make it move six feet from where it had grown?</p>
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<p>There wasn't a breath of wind, as Murdo said. Not there. Not in that sunny field. But a cold breath went right through me, right into my bones. Murdo's face looked bleak.</p>
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<p>And in Arden, a very bad summer began to happen.</p>
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