Stephen Booth - One Last Breath

Isabel Cooper was waiting in the lounge of the Old School nursing home, wearing her best coat and her best shoes, and looking expectant. Somebody had joked with her that she must be going to a wedding, and now she wasn’t quite sure whether she ought to be wearing a hat.

The staff of the nursing home knew Ben. He visited regularly, and more than one care assistant had been ticked off for spending too much time talking to him. And today Cooper’s mother recognized him, too. She got up to greet him, and he bent to give her a hug and a kiss.

‘I need to find a hat before we go,’ she said.

‘No, Mum, you’ll be fine as you are.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘We’re only going to Bridge End.’

She didn’t answer, and he knew she’d noticed the careful way he referred to the farm. It was awkward trying not to say ‘home’. He would always think of it as her home, and he was sure that she must, too. But the family had an unspoken agreement that it was a word they should avoid saying out loud.

She brightened up when they got into the car and drove out of Edendale. After they passed through a shower, the evening sun broke through again and lit up the fields and wet trees, revealing fresh colours in the landscape. In town, Cooper quite liked the odour of hot pavements dampened by rain. But on some days, after it had rained, parts of the valley would steam like a tropical swamp as water vapour rose through the trees.

‘I’ve got you a present, Ben,’ said his mother. ‘It’s your birthday.’

‘Yes, I know. Thank you, Mum.’

He was aware of her opening her handbag and rummaging among the tissues and spare glasses, Polo mints, family photographs, and whatever else she kept in there.

‘I think we’ll have to go back,’ she said. ‘I’ve forgotten to bring it.’

‘No, you haven’t, Mum. It’s at the farm. Matt and Kate have got it. You can give it to me when we arrive.’

‘Oh, yes. I remember.’

Kate was very good at organizing these things. She planned ahead so that they could anticipate what Mum might do and make things easier. Most things were accepted without question, or any need for lengthy explanations. His mother knew that she forgot things a lot.

‘Your Dad and I can give it you together,’ she said.

Cooper’s heart sank. ‘What, Mum?’

‘It’ll be nice to see Joe. He hasn’t managed to visit me this week. I suppose he’s too busy.’

He didn’t answer. A moment later, she began to hum quietly to herself. She was happy as they passed familiar landscapes — the houses of friends she remembered, the old cottage hospital where she’d worked for a while, the stone bridge over the river where Joe had once scraped the side of the car against the parapet and she hadn’t been able to open the door to get out.

And then something brought out another memory. Cooper had no idea what it was — a glimpse of a particular hill, or the look of someone’s face in a car going the other way, or maybe just something floating to the surface of his mother’s mind, like a rotting leaf disturbed from the mud on the bottom of a stagnant pond.

‘I heard that Mansell Quinn is out,’ she said.

Cooper almost lost control of the car and steered into a field full of Friesians. They’d have got as big as a shock as he’d just had.

‘What?’

‘Mansell Quinn. Do you remember, Ben?’

‘Yes. Yes, I do, Mum.’

Isabel frowned. ‘You must have been quite young at the time. We tried to keep it from you.’

‘You didn’t keep as much from me as you thought.’

‘Oh.’

Cooper hesitated, but couldn’t resist asking the question. ‘How did you know he was out?’

‘Somebody at the Old School mentioned it.’

‘Do you remember the case? I mean, the murder?’

‘Murder?’

‘Mansell Quinn killed a woman. Do you remember, at the time, did Dad …?’

Cooper turned to look at his mother as he spoke, and saw a look of terrible anguish on her face. He could have been looking at a child facing some unseen terror in the darkness.

‘Ben,’ she said, ‘your dad’s dead.’

Ashamed, he faced towards the road again and took the next bend a little too fast, forgetting to brake, or not bothering.

‘Yes, Mum,’ he said. ‘I know.’

Two minutes later, Cooper swung the car up the hill towards Bridge End Farm. On the upper slopes, the leaves of the limes and sycamores shone almost yellow against the background of dark clouds still shouldering their way across the moors. He thought it would probably rain again later.

When they arrived in the farmhouse, Cooper was immediately surrounded by a scrum of family. There seemed to be more of them than he remembered. His sister Claire was there with a new boyfriend who said he was a doctor but looked more like a car salesman. Uncle John and Aunt Margaret were there with a whole gaggle of cousins. And of course there were Matt and Kate, and Kate’s parents. But it was his nieces, Josie and Amy, who insisted on crowding in first to deliver their presents.

When Cooper had made all the right noises and a birthday cake had been cut, the fuss finally died down and he found himself sitting among a pile of wrapping paper and cards with a glass of beer in his hand. One of those momentary quiet spells had descended, allowing him a second or two to think. But Cooper looked up and found Josie standing at his elbow, waiting patiently for him to notice her.

‘Uncle Ben, I’ve got the poem,’ she said.

‘What poem, Josie?’

‘The one the man was talking about at Peak Cavern. It’s by Ben Jonson.’

Cooper smiled when he heard Josie call the place ‘Peak Cavern’, hoping that he would notice she’d used the polite name. Her sister Amy took pleasure in saying ‘the Devil’s Arse’, for the opposite reason. Or perhaps it was for the same reason — to get his attention.

‘What was the poem called again?’

‘Well, the man said it was The Gypsies Metamorphosed , but that’s the name of a book, not the poem. Anyway, the poem’s called “Cock Lorrel”. Do you want to read it?’

‘Er …’ Cooper looked at the book Josie was holding, and then at her face. ‘OK. Thank you.’

He took it and read the first verse of the poem aloud: ‘Cock Lorrel would needs have the Devil his guest, And bade him once into the Peak to dinner, Where never the fiend had such a feast Provided him yet at the charge of a sinner.’

He began to read the second verse, then paused. ‘Did you read this, Josie?’

‘Yes. It’s a bit gruesome, I think.’

‘Yes, it is a bit.’

Silently, Cooper scanned the rest of the poem. It seemed to be a catalogue of the dishes enjoyed by Cock Lorrel and the Devil during one of the notorious cannibalistic feasts in the cavern — the Beggars’ Banquets. There was: ‘A rich, fat usurer stewed in his marrow,/ And by him a lawyer’s head and green sauce’ and ‘Six pickled tailors sliced and cut,/Sempsters and tirewomen, fit for his palate.’

‘What are tirewomen?’ said Josie, effortlessly following his progress through the poem.

‘I don’t know. You’ll have to look it up.’

Then Cooper wondered whether that was the right thing to have said. For all he knew, tirewomen could be some kind of prostitute. Matt would be thrilled if he thought his brother was encouraging his daughters to do that sort of research.

But the passage that made Cooper stop was roughly halfway through the poem. Ben Jonson had really managed to hit a nerve with this one: Then carbonadoed and cooked with pains, Was brought up a cloven sergeant’s face: The sauce was made of his yeoman’s brains, That had been beaten out with his mace .