Peter Robinson - Not Safe After Dark

‘Sir Titus,’ the interloper said, after a quick bow, ‘my apologies for barging in like this, but you must come. There’s a man on the mill roof.’

Sir Titus and I frowned at one another, then we followed him outside. I walked slowly, in deference to Sir Titus’s age, and it took us several minutes to get around to the allotment gardens, from where we had a clear view.

The man stood atop the mill roof, full six storeys up, between its two decorative lanterns. I could also make out another figure inside one of the lanterns, perhaps talking to him. But the man on the roof didn’t appear to be listening. He stood right at the edge and, even as we watched, he spread out his arms as if attempting to fly, then he sprang off the roof and seemed to hover in the air for a moment before falling with a thud to the forecourt.

It was a curious sensation. Though I knew in my heart and mind that I was witnessing the death of a fellow human being, there was a distant quality about the event. The figure was dwarfed by the mill, for a start, and just in front of us, a dog scratched at the dirt, as if digging for its bone, and it didn’t cease during the man’s entire fall to earth.

A mill hand came running up and told us that the man who had jumped was Jack Liversedge. Again it was an eerie feeling, but I suppose, in a way, I already knew that.

‘An accident and a suicide,’ muttered Sir Titus, fixing me with his deep-set eyes. ‘It’s bad enough, but we can weather it, wouldn’t you say, Doctor?’ There was hope in his voice.

My jaw tensed. I was tempted to tell him to go to hell, that his vision, his experiment , wasn’t worth lying for. But I saw in front of me a sick old man who had at least tried to do something for the people who made him rich. Whether it was enough or not was not for me to say. Saltaire wasn’t perfect – perfection is a state we will never find on this earth – but it was better than most mill towns.

Swallowing my bile, I gave Sir Titus a curt nod and set off back up Victoria Road to the hospital.

In the days and weeks that followed, I tried to continue with my work – after all, the people of Saltaire still needed a hospital and a doctor – but after Jack Liversedge’s pointless death, my heart just didn’t seem to be in it any more. Jack’s dramatic suicide lowered the morale of the town for a short while – there were long faces everywhere and some mutterings of dissent – but eventually it was forgotten, and the townspeople threw themselves back into their work: weaving fine cloths of alpaca and mohair for those wealthy enough to be able to afford them.

Still, no matter how much I tried to convince myself to put the matter behind me and carry on, I felt there was something missing from the community; something more than a mere man had died the day Jack killed himself.

One day, after I had spent a wearying few hours tending to one of the wool sorters dying of anthrax, I made my decision to leave. A month later, after sorting out my affairs and helping my replacement settle in, I left Saltaire for South Africa, where I eventually met the woman who was to become my wife. We raised our three children, and I practised my profession in Cape Town for thirty years. After my retirement, we decided to move back to England, where we settled comfortably in a small Cornish fishing village. Now, my children are grown up, married and gone away, my wife is dead and I am an old man who spends his days wandering the cliffs above the sea watching the birds soar and dip.

And sometimes the sound of the waves reminds me of the roar of the Saltaire weir.

More than forty years have now passed since that night by the weir, when Jack Liversedge told me he had killed Richard Ellerby; more than forty years have passed since Sir Titus and I stood by the allotments and saw Jack’s body fall and break on the forecourt of the mill.

Forty years. Long enough to keep a secret.

Besides, the world has changed so much since then that what happened that day long ago in Saltaire seems of little consequence now. Sir Titus died three years after Jack’s fall, and his dream died with him. Fashions changed, and the ladies no longer wanted the bright, radiant fabrics that Sir Titus had produced. His son, Titus junior, struggled with the business until he, too, died in 1887, and the mill was taken over by a consortium of Bradford businessmen. Today, Saltaire is no longer a moral experiment or a mill workers’ Utopia; it is merely another business.

And today, in July 1916, nobody believes in Utopias any more.

He had onlygone out to the convenience store for cigarettes, but the park across the intersection looked inviting. It seemed to offer a brief escape from the heat and dirt and noise of the city. Cars whooshed by, radios blasting rock and funk and rap into the hot summer night. Street lights and coloured neons looked smeared and blurry in the humid heat. A walk among the trees by the lake might cool him down a little.

He knew he shouldn’t, knew it was dangerous. What was it the guidebooks always said about big city parks? Not safe after dark . That was it. No matter which park they talked about – Central Park, Golden Gate Park – they were always not safe after dark .

He wondered why. Parks were quiet, peaceful places, a few acres of unspoilt nature in the heart of the city. People took their dogs for walks; children played on swings and teeter-totters. Parks provided retreats for meditation and the contemplation of nature, surely, not playgrounds for the corrupt and the delinquent.

There was more danger, he thought, among the dregs of humanity that haunted the vast urban sex and drug supermarkets like Times Square or the Tenderloin. There you got mugged, beaten up, raped, even murdered, for no good reason at all.

Hoodlums and thugs weren’t into nature; they were happier idling on street corners harassing passers-by, starting fights in strip clubs or rock bars, and selling drugs in garbage-strewn alleys. If they wanted to mug someone, they had more chance downtown, where the crowds were thick and some fool always took a short cut down a dark alley. If they just wanted to scare and hurt people for the fun of it, crowded places like shopping malls guaranteed them both the victims and the audience.

Or so he found himself reasoning as he stood there by the traffic lights. Should he risk it? Over the road, the dark, tangled mass of branches tossed in the hot breeze like billowing black smoke against the starlit sky. A yellowish full moon, surrounded by a halo, gilded the tree tops. The traffic lights changed to green, and after only a moment’s hesitation, he began to cross. Why not? What could possibly happen? The entrance, a long, tree-lined avenue, seemed rolled out like a tongue ready to lick him up and draw him into the park’s dark mouth. Maybe he had a death wish, though he didn’t think so.

Muted wrought-iron street lamps flanked the broad cinder path, which led under a small imitation Arc de Triomphe gate overgrown with weeds and lichen. Beyond that, the branches swayed slowly in the muggy gusts, leaves making a wet, hissing sound. The dimly lit path, he noticed, was lined with statues. He went over to see if he could make out any of the names. Writers: Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, Tennyson, Wordsworth. What on earth were they doing there?

The avenue ended at a small boating pool. In the water, a child’s yacht with a white sail turned in slow circles. The sight brought a lump to his throat. He didn’t know why, but somewhere, perhaps buried deep in his memories, was just such a feeling of loss or of drifting aimlessly in circles, never arriving. It made him feel suddenly, inexplicably sad.