Page 21 of Lost Souls

Melisande is back on her phone. “You hear that? My husband is obviously not mentally competent.” She thrusts her phone at the nurse. “Wouldn’t you say?”

“He was talking to himself as he left, but he—”

Melisande starts to lighten up. “Are youlistening?” she barks to the voice at the other end. “Qualified medical witness – Endowment, Endoscopy, something; it’s on her badge – will say Arnie Garth’s a total nut job. Draw up the papers; I’ll divorce him after we put his sorry ass in a cheap institution with bars on the windows, and Bulge Entertainment, with all its back catalogue and pleasure-enhancing merchandise, will be in more mentally stable hands.”

The thought of stable hands brings back unbidden but not unpleasant memories, so it is some seconds later when she notices that the nurse is just staring at her.

“What?”

“Why not just kill the sorry bastard and put him out of his misery?”

Melisande suddenly stops breathing. She nods thoughtfully. “So, tell me, Eldorado – any tips on that from nursing school?”

Chapter Eleven

Hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper.

(Latin proverb)

We’re back inthe lovely but distinctly chillier Lake District and on to the following morning. Which, as I’m still utilising the powerfully immediate present tense (as employed by some of my favourite, not so present authors), is actually right this minute. And isn’t staying in this actual moment – the very now of things – what all the therapists these days are swearing is the key to a longer, happier life? At least, the ones I meet are.

Mind you…

Anyway. Onwards.Avanti!

Arnie Garth, cleansed, shaved and clad in a freshly inappropriate outfit, is making his painful way down the stairs to a much-needed English breakfast. Before he can even grab a rustic chair, he hears a commotion in thenormally quiet, and by all accounts quaint, village street.

Suddenly, the pub door flies open and locals of all sorts, male and female, old and young, drab and – well, drab – start piling into the pub. They appear in some sort of a panic, and within seconds the small, fusty room is full.

“What’s up?” asks the bemused guest. “They playin’ a Romanian movie in the street?”

The villagers all stare at him, blank-faced, as well they might. With a sigh, he strolls over to the pub door and starts to pull it open.

“What are you doing, man?”yelps one of the older villagers.

“Are you mad?” calls another.

“Don’t go out there!” warn almost all the rest.

Arnie gives them a look of contemptuous pity – he’s seen that movie – and exits onto the newly vacated pavement (or ‘sidewalk’, as Arnie would call it).

Normally the high street of Rough Fell, which is pretty much its only street, would be bustling with people going about their daily business. Arnie can’t imagine what such business might be, in this godforsaken place in the middle of nowhere, but he assumes that the locals know and are happy to bustle at it. This morning, however, the drizzly street is completely empty. He thinks that he does catch one stray person, in the distance, hammering frantically at a closed door, which opens just a fraction to allow the desperate soul a full-bodied launch inside. Cars and vans travelling down the road appear suddenly to pick up speed, as if fleeing a major disaster. And a horse can be spotted galloping off, leaving an inordinate amount offresh manure on the cobbles.

It is the noise that first alerts a bemused Arnie Garth as to the whereabouts and identity of Rough Fell’s keenest and most dire threat. He turns to see a strange figure in the distance. A strange, bulky, clanking, chinking figure, lumbering down the high street like an automaton out of a vintage science-fiction movie, newly landed from a mechanically advanced but merciless planet, come to take over the world without removing a single cardigan. It is pulling a limping and vaguely disgruntled sheep on a rope tied to the waist.

Arnie, who tells himself that he was more than half expecting this, watches as Noreen Millburn makes her laboriously jangly approach. The woman is almost completely swathed in collection tins and cans and boxes of all colours and causes. They dangle round her neck, hang over her shoulder, droop under her woolly armpits and swing threateningly whilst clamped to a thick leather belt. In fact, it appears as if every square inch of her body is given over to good causes. One collecting can, supporting the oft-ignored plight of distressed Cumbrian donkeys, even hangs from the sturdy bobble on her hat. The lady gives a whole new meaning to charity case.

“Jesus Christ!”mutters Arnie Garth. And this is not a religious man. “Good morning, Noreen.”

“I’m not talking to you, Mr Garth,” says the rattling woman. “Long-lost cousin or not, you’re creepy and very odd.” Despite her personal antipathy, with a well-practised bob and lunge, she shakes a can right in his face. “Spare a little something for some charity or another?”

Arnie is utterly baffled by the entire concept ofsurrendering money to someone without even the slightest likelihood of profitable return, at least in this life, but naturally puts it down to the sad weirdo having two souls, one of them rightfully his, so maybe it isn’t her fault entirely. Although he seriously doubts that he would be into a whole lot of giving or collecting were he himself to retrieve the precious missing item.

“Charity?What charity?”

“I know,” the despairing collector sighs, “it’s so hard to choose, isn’t it? The sadness and deprivation in the world. So much suffering. So many poor people. I could weep for—”

“Yeah, yeah. Enough already. I ain’t even had breakfast.”