The Running Grave полностью

‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ said the man, with such obvious sincerity that Strike said, as though to console the stranger,

‘She’d been unwell for a long time.’

‘Ah,’ said the man. ‘Still.’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike.

‘I’ll leave you,’ said the other, his voice now hushed, and he proceeded down the aisle and out of sight, into what Strike assumed was the vestry, probably removing himself so that Strike could pray in peace. He did in fact close his eyes, though not to speak to God. He knew what Charlotte would have said to him now, if she were here.

I’m out of your hair now, Bluey. You should be glad.

I didn’t want you dead, he answered, inside his head.

But you knew you were the only one who could save me. I warned you, Bluey.

You can’t hold onto someone by threatening to top yourself if they leave. It isn’t right. You had kids. You should have stayed alive for them.

Ah, OK. He could visualise her cold smile. Well, if that’s how you want to frame this. I’m dead. I can’t argue.

Don’t play that game with me. His anger was rising as though she were really here in this silent church. I gave you everything I had to give. I put up with shit I’ll never put up with again.

Robin’s a saint, is she? How boring, said Charlotte, now smirking at him. You used to like a challenge.

She’s not a saint any more than I am, but she’s a good person.

And now, to his anger, he felt tears coming.

I want a good person for a change, Charlotte. I’m sick of filth and mess and scenes. I want something different.

Would Robin kill herself over you?

Of course she wouldn’t. She’s got more bloody sense.

Everything we had, everything we shared, and you want someone sensible? The Cormoran I knew would have laughed at the idea of wanting someone sensible. Don’t you remember? ‘Suns rise and set, but for us there’s one brief day then one perpetual night. So kiss me a thousand times…’

I was a messed-up fucking kid when I quoted that at you. That’s not who I am any more. But I’d still rather you’d lived, and been happy.

I was never happy, said the Charlotte who was sometimes brutally honest, when nothing else had worked, and another vicious scene had left both of them exhausted. Amused, sometimes. Never happy.

Yeah, I know.

And he echoed the kindly man in the bicycle clips.

Still.

He opened his damp eyes again to stare at the cross on the altar. He might not believe, but the cross meant something to him, nonetheless. It stood for Ted and Joan, for order and stability, but also for the unknowable and unresolvable, for the human craving for meaning in chaos, and for the hope of something beyond the world of pain and endless striving. Some mysteries were eternal and unresolvable by man, and there was relief in accepting that, in admitting it. Death, love, the endless complexity of human beings: only a fool would claim to fully understand any of them.

And as he sat in this humble old church, with the round tower that lost its sinister aspect when seen up close, he looked back on the teenager who’d left Leda and her dangerous naivety only to fall for Charlotte, and her equally dangerous sophistication, and knew definitively, for the first time, that he was no longer the person who’d craved either of them. He forgave the teenager who’d pursued a destructive force because he thought he could tame it, and thereby right the universe, and make all comprehensible and safe. He wasn’t so different from Lucy, after all. They’d both set out to refashion their worlds, they’d just done it in very different ways. If he was lucky, he had half his life to live again, and it was time to give up things far more harmful than smoking and chips, time to admit to himself he should seek something new, as opposed to what was damaging but familiar.