The Sister(42)
Chapter 32
North Cornwall, July 1991
The driver possessed photographic recall, or more accurately, an eidetic memory. His mind was like an on-board video camera. When he wanted to remember something vividly, something turned on in him and recorded it forever. It meant he could switch his voice to match any of a repertoire of famous actors, or any voice he chose from his considerable memory banks. It was why he never needed to take trophies. All the details – sight and sound; touch, taste, and smell, were only a moment of concentration away.
Summer of 1967. The last time he came here. Apart from its freshly painted appearance, the signpost looked the same, but he noticed the directional pointer to the old mine had been removed. Few used to go in that direction anyway, now it would be less. Back then most preferred the walk across the top from the other side of the hill.
Ahead, the road shimmered with rising heat, silver phantom images of water pooled like distant oases, never getting any closer, eventually disappearing as the road changed direction.
Soaring temperature levels charged the air with static. Sweat ran down his face in rivulets. The heat was making him cranky.
A ferocious electrical storm had disturbed him as he slept in the car the night before. Alerted by a flickering flash of pale blue light, he’d sat up, half-dazed, listening to the thunder rumbling away in the distance and, lighting a cigarette, he waited for the rain. None came.
A trader in just about anything, he was a travelling man, always doing a bit of this and that. An asbestos removal contractor by trade, he looked far too bulky for a job usually carried out by smaller men. He felt like Gulliver on a few of the sites he’d worked on, the other guys were so small. Self-employed, it gave him an excuse to be places, and the dirty work a reason for keeping a few spare sets of work clothes in the boot. He criss-crossed the whole country and soon became familiar with places he’d never have found otherwise.
Sweet Mary, it’s hot! The cloying heat enveloped him like a cloak of steam. Even with all the car windows open, the inside was like an oven, the fan just pushing warm air around. He’d have loved to floor the accelerator and get the air moving faster, but on this stretch of road the police often lurked in the bushes, stepping out with the speed gun and zapping any car doing more than 40 miles an hour. Although he was tempted, the thought of the police pulling him in kept him on the limit.
He reached over and pulled a cigarette out of the pack on the dashboard, and lit it with one eye on the road, the other on the cigarette. It made his eyes cross, and one stuck there, an ongoing residual effect of the lazy eye he’d suffered from as a kid. Afterwards, it ached as it always did, and he shook his head to clear the pain.
He leaned forward to drop the lighter back in the tray; his shirt, damp with sweat, felt cold and uncomfortable when he sat back again. To and fro he rocked, easing back against the seat several times despite the discomfort, just to feel the coolness on his back.
The first few deep drags burned the back of his throat as he inhaled, and though he knew it was a crazy thought, it helped to cool him down.
He mused about the benefits of smoking. Cigarettes make so many things so much more tolerable. If you were down, a cigarette would lift you. In a temper, a cigarette would calm you down. After sex and drink, a cigarette was the best thing in the world, and if you combined all three… He grinned at the thought, then toyed with the order. Sex first, then a cigarette…
The doctor recently told him the amount of cigarettes he smoked would kill him for sure. That may be so, Doc, but I know someone who smoked all his life. He was told by a doctor to stop and a few weeks later he died of a heart attack. Giving up cigarettes killed him.
‘That won’t be me,’ he said, surprised he’d said it aloud.
Around a snaking bend in the road, halfway up the hill, a car park sat among the trees, three sides of it contained by man-made mud banks. A wooden sign pointed in the direction of several footpaths.
He guessed if anyone were walking today, it would be at the top, to catch the cooling breeze that always seemed to blow up there.
Tired of driving, he found some shade, parked and closed his eyes.
Too hot to settle, he gave up on trying to nap. A coffee might perk him up; he poured one from the thermos. It was so warm outside there was no steam. Fooled into thinking it wasn’t that hot, the liquid scalded his lips. Mother of Shit! He spat through gritted teeth and bunching his left fist, threatened the windscreen with it.
‘Jeez!’ It took a lot of self-control to stop from punching the screen out. Now he needed a cigarette.
The coffee made him want to piss. Although there were a couple of other cars parked and he hadn’t seen anyone around, he decided to go into the bushes to urinate. He wouldn’t want some old woman to say he flashed his cock at her. A smirk crossed his face at the thought. Would you be able to tell us what he looked like? ‘Well, Officer, I didn’t actually see his face.’ Shaking himself off, he zipped up his fly.
Destiny pulled him along the valley path. He wondered if the stream still ran on the same course, if the woods had changed. The demons of dark desire came alive at the memory of the naked girl and the others he’d met there. He suddenly remembered the boy. Did I give you bad dreams, kid? He decided the kid was too young to understand what he’d seen, but the old man...he’d given him the creeps. He’d looked straight at where he hid in the undergrowth. How did he know? Although he shook his head, he acknowledged if it hadn’t been for that, he might have been tempted to stay, and if he had... Yeah, did me a favour. He was back today; if anyone should ask, he was watching for birds – his favourite pastime. You never know who you’re going to bump into. The element of surprise was what he loved best.