Harry was delighted to hear from Morgan, and it came as no surprise when he suggested meeting at the Sea Bell, about which nobody was going to complain. Morgan didn’t mention that he’d been unwell, just warned Harry not to lead him astray as he was going light on the sauce at present.
By the time they reached the pub, the little car park was crammed, probably because the rain showed no sign of relenting. Rather than trying to squeeze Dominic’s car into half a space, they parked up the road and huddled under a large umbrella which Morgan had remembered to put in the boot. They were only a bit damp when they fell in through the door of the bar, glad to have escaped when they’d seen another poor sod get soaked by a car which had sped through a puddle.
“Don’t be smug,” Dominic said as he shook the brolly and put it into a stand. “Karma will come and get us, mark my words.”
Morgan flung the drips off the arm of his coat. “I know. But did you see his face?”
“Whose face?” Harry asked as he came up behind them.
“Some poor grockle who got too near to a puddle at the point a Chelsea tractor came through it. We were smug because it wasn’t us, and Dominic reckons we’ll pay for it.”
Harry grinned. “Why not head it off at the pass by paying for my beer instead?”
“Deal.” Then Morgan could make sure he only had a half rather than Harry converting it to a pint. He got the drinks in, taking them to Harry’s favourite table, where he and Dominic were already ensconced with a pile of paper, deep in discussion about Mary Lusmoore.
“Thanks,” they said, taking their beer as Morgan laid it on the table, well away from Dominic’s documents.
“Fascinating stuff, this.” Harry pointed at the papers with his beer-free hand. “I’d always wondered if those old stories were a load of old tripe. Not that I was going to dash your hopes last time you were here, but things do grow in the telling. Glad to see there’s a grain of truth in them.”
“It’s the size of that grain that bothers us.” Dominic took a long, languid drink of beer. “At least the grain in this never disappoints.”
“Are his jokes always that bad?” Harry asked Morgan, with a roll of his eyes.
“Worse, usually.” Morgan sipped at his pint; easy did it until he knew what effect the alcohol would have on his slowly recovering sense of balance. He listened while Dominic finished explaining what the last few days had turned up, avoiding—thank God—any mention of Morgan’s illness.
Harry nodded at the account, chipping in with questions here and there to clarify things, demonstrating a real enthusiasm and not a polite interest.
“Right,” he said, as Dominic completed their theories about the ballad. “That all makes sense. Nothing contradicts anything else.”
“No, it all hangs together beautifully. Maybe too beautifully for my sceptic mind.” Dominic stared into his glass, as though the true story of Midshipman Lawson and who killed him might be lurking at the bottom.
“Pessimism to go with the bad jokes.” Harry smiled indulgently. “Clown who wants to play Hamlet?”
“Lay off, Harry.” Morgan grinned, but he felt suddenly very protective of his lover. “If you start to think the story through, bits don’t hang together. Why didn’t Lawson’s family come and look for him? Why didn’t he try to get away?”
“You’re thinking about this with a twenty-first-century mind. Do something these days and it’s all over Twitter and halfway around the world in minutes. Things didn’t work like that back then, and if you wanted to hide away, or keep something hidden, it was a damn sight easier.” Harry turned to Dominic. “Am I right or am I right?”
“You’re right,” Dominic agreed. “Although ‘news’ can’t be relied on these days, and the same would have applied when they painted those pictures of the wreck and managed to get the ship details wrong.”
“That’s always been the way.” Harry twirled his empty glass. “Take The Fighting Temeraire. That’s supposed to be inaccurate, as well.”
“She wouldn’t have had masts.” Dominic nodded. “Not en route to be broken up.”
Harry gave Morgan a wink. “He knows his stuff, doesn’t he?”
“Regular encyclopaedia when it comes to ships.” And when it came to making the best use of a double bed, but he wasn’t going to tell Harry that. “And if it hadn’t been for Troilus, he’d never have come down here and we’d have had to find someone else to annoy us.”
“Funny how that there ship keeps connecting itself with your family.” The sudden serious edge in Harry’s voice should have been a warning, Morgan realised afterwards.
“How’s that?” he asked.
Harry paused, before tapping Morgan’s arm and wondering aloud, “Did your mother never mention anything to you about her dreams?”
The question sent a sickening jolt up Morgan’s spine. He took a steadying swig of beer and then forced out a reply. “No.”
Dominic stealthily moved nearer, subtly closing ranks.
“She used to have nightmares about the ship going down, poor lass.” Harry rubbed his chin. “She said they felt horribly real, even though she was half expecting them, as her mother had similar. They saw the storm, the ship going down, like they were watching it on the telly.”
Morgan couldn’t answer, dumbstruck.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” Harry continued, hastily. “I forget how hard this business with her has hit you. You don’t want to listen to an old man’s scary stories. I’m a daft bugger, and you should go and forget I said anything at all.”
“That’s all right.” Best to let Harry carry on thinking Morgan’s reaction was about his mother’s state of mind and not his own. He edged closer to Dominic, soaking up his presence like an anxiolytic. “We should have talked about her before now. My fault to have taken so long to get in contact again.”
“No. I’ve been as bad, avoiding you. All mended now, though.” Harry reached out to shake his hand. “You mustn’t blame yourself about what happened to her. Not for any of it. I knew her mother, as well—early memory loss runs in your distaff line. Couldn’t have been helped, not if you’d been the angel Gabriel himself.”
“He’s right.” Dominic’s eyes pleaded for Morgan not to get upset.
“Yeah. Like you said earlier, he’s always right.” Morgan managed a smile he couldn’t match inside.
Outside, the skies had cleared once more, the clouds scudding off to plague Devon and Dorset, leaving blazing sunshine in their wake, but Morgan’s spirits were unlikely to make a similar U-turn.
“Are you all right?” Dominic asked, as they left the pub.
“Never been better,” Morgan snapped, staggering off along the street on legs that felt like jelly.
“Car’s the other way,” Dominic shouted after him.
“Don’t care. I don’t feel like going home at the moment.” He heard quickening footsteps behind him, as Dominic caught up and took his arm.
“Steady on, there. You’re all over the place. Are you dizzy?”
“No.” Morgan wrested his arm from Dominic’s grip. “Leave off.”
“Hey.” Dominic grabbed at him again. “Slow down. I’m worried enough about going back home and you being taken ill again.”
The link to Morgan’s mother having her fall when he had been in London did nothing to improve his mood. “You’re not my keeper,” he said with a scowl, picking up the pace.
“Maybe I’m not. But I’m your friend.” Dominic scurried to keep in step. “What is the matter?”
Morgan halted suddenly, spinning on his heel and almost losing his balance in the process—not that he was going to admit it. “The matter? Don’t pretend it didn’t happen.”
Dominic’s face was infuriatingly blank. “What didn’t happen?”
“Harry talking about Mum’s nightmares. You heard what he said. She had the same dream as I did.” A convenient fence post took the brunt of Morgan’s wrath as he kicked out at it. The contact hurt, but not as much as the tight knot in his stomach. “So did Gran, and I bet her mother did as well. The first sign that they were losing their minds.”
“You don’t know that.” Dominic shook his head. “You’re drawing conclusions where there are none.”
“Don’t be stupid. That’s a hell of a coincidence otherwise.” He drew back his foot to kick the post again, then stopped; he was beginning to frighten himself. “Don’t keep playing everything down. Please. It doesn’t help me.”
“I’m simply trying to put things into perspective. If your family have been telling and retelling stories about that wreck and those beams since the night the ship sank, then maybe they’ve been firing up other imaginations.” Dominic grabbed at Morgan’s arm again. “Odd things happen to people under strain, and you’ve been under a lot of it. Everybody gets bad dreams.”
“Yeah, but they’re not all losing their marbles.” Morgan put his hands to his face, lost in a welter of emotions.
“Just hear me out. Please.”
Morgan opened his mouth, then simply nodded. “Not in public, though.” This needed to be a private torture. He crossed the road to where a small, semi-derelict chapel set back from the road was evidently awaiting somebody converting it into a des res.
They perched on the garden wall, away from the pavement and out of view of the pub door, in case Harry came out; Morgan couldn’t face him too, not in this mood. “Go on. I’m listening.”
Dominic took a deep breath. “For a start, dementia seems to run in the female line of your family. You’re a bloke.”
“Yeah, but the blokes in our family have a habit of not living long enough to find out whether they’ll get dementia.” That’s why Morgan didn’t smoke, and kept an eye on his weight—he could guard against heart disease. He crossed his arms over his stomach, trying to quell the nausea. “And that ‘female line’ bit doesn’t explain why I had the same dream as Mum and Gran.”
“There could be a reasonable explanation.” Dominic raised his hand to brook any argument. “No, please listen. What if your mother told you about that dream, when you were little? The same way she must have told Harry.”
Morgan wanted to believe that, but some cussed part of him refused to be mollified. “I don’t remember that happening. Surely I would have done, back when I first had my nightmare and was trying to find an explanation.”
“Maybe you don’t consciously remember, but your subconscious does. Maybe you were very young, or you only overheard her telling Harry and didn’t really register what you were hearing.”
It was a reasonable explanation.
“Then that memory reappeared in the dream you had. That makes a lot more sense than you dreaming about the stories you heard at your granny’s knee. It would be like your mother’s dream because you’d replayed exactly what you heard.”
That was possible; it gave Morgan a straw to clutch at, although he wasn’t convinced it was the truth. “I can’t prove that though, can I? I wouldn’t be able to get a sensible answer from Mum, even if I felt like asking her, which I’m reluctant to do. It might finish her off completely reminding her of something she found so disturbing.”
“Would your brother know?”
“I’m not asking him.” That had pressed all the wrong buttons. Morgan jumped off the wall, to pace up and down the patchy grass in front of the chapel, trying to calm down. “He doesn’t understand about things if they don’t make money.”
Dominic shifted his position. “Isn’t that a bit harsh?”
“You haven’t met him and his wife. Unless James has been telling you all about them too.”
“What are you going on about? Where does James come into any of this? What is eating you?”
“Can you stop this?” Morgan shouted.
Dominic flinched, his voice taking on a deliberately soothing tone, like he might have used with a fractious child. “I thought I’d been helping you. You said it was good to talk.”
“It is and it isn’t. I don’t know.” Morgan stopped his pacing, hands clenching and unclenching. “Maybe our talking is making it worse. Papering over the cracks.”
“Then get some proper help, like I keep telling you to. If you’re that worried about it, then see an expert.” Dominic, pale and shaking, drummed his fingers against his thighs.
“I could do that,” Morgan snapped, “if you’d give me some space to get my mind clear.”
“If you want space, I’ll go.” Dominic muttered.
“What was that?”
“I said I’ll go. Right now.” Dominic reached into his pocket, fishing out the keys to his hire car in trembling hands. “Just give me time to pack my stuff from the house into the car boot and I’ll be out of your hair. I may not be able to find a hotel for tonight, but I’d rather sleep on the backseat than stay where I’m not wanted.”
“Do it, then.” Morgan kicked at a stone. “That works for me.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck whether it works for you or not.” Dominic had never displayed such anger; was that his true colours coming out?
Morgan jabbed his finger repeatedly in Dominic’s direction. “If that’s the way you feel, why bother to run me home? I can get a taxi back to Cadoc. You can go ahead, take my door key and leave it under the flowerpot.”
“Don’t be so bloody ridiculous. You’ll do no such thing. I’m not having my conscience kicking me if you’re taken ill again. Anyway, the sooner I get you home, the sooner you can be rid of me.”
Morgan opened his mouth, snapped it shut again, then turned on his heel, heading back to the car park. He didn’t want to talk to Dominic, didn’t want to see his face, for that matter. The journey home was going to be agony, but better to go through it now, and make a clean break as soon as possible. Better for all concerned.
“Morgan . . .”
He ignored the pleading voice.
“Morgan, please.”
“Will you stop it, okay?” He kept his eyes fixed ahead. “We’ve got nothing left to say to each other.” From the hush that ensued behind him, Morgan guessed he’d made his point.
When they got to the car, Morgan got into one of the rear passenger seats, and Dominic didn’t argue about it. Staring out of the car window in silence was preferable to having Dominic’s face within sight, the pair of them trying not to catch each other’s gaze. If his guest turned on that smile, Morgan risked weakening, just when he was seeing things plainly. He’d been so tired the last few days, so confused, but the conversation with Harry—shock and all—had shone a terrible light on matters.
It wasn’t only, if at all, about Dominic’s platitudes or his failing to understand how scared he was, how that fear couldn’t be sent away with any amount of touchy-feely crap. Those excuses felt increasingly like something he’d grabbed at on the spur of the moment, to cover over the real reason he wanted Dominic to go. If Morgan was going to slide down the same slope as his mother—and that seemed increasingly like a possibility—he didn’t want to take anybody on the ride with him.
He wouldn’t inflict on anyone else the same pain he’d suffered with her, especially not somebody he’d come to value as much as he did Dominic.
By the time they reached the house, Morgan had broken the painful silence, but only by swearing at a cyclist who’d been swerving all over the road and nearly taken the wing mirror off. Dominic had joined in the stream of invective, evidently relieved that he’d been called back from Coventry. Dominic parked the car, but before he had the chance to get out, Morgan leaned forward to speak.
“I know we’re not supposed to apologise, but I’m saying sorry. About earlier. I didn’t mean to be so aggressive. To use a bloody awful cliché, it’s not you, it’s me.” As Morgan spoke the words, James’s letter flashed through his mind. He was doing to another undeserving soul exactly what the rat had done to him, but it couldn’t be helped. “I’m not myself, and I need some space to get my head clear. It’s all getting too much.”
“So is that simply a politer way of telling me to bugger off and not come back than the last one you tried?” Dominic’s voice was angry, upset, brave, all at once. Morgan focussed on the hand brake, avoiding the bloke’s gaze in the rearview mirror.
“No.” He almost believed the lie. “I can’t think straight. I want to see what the next few months bring and work out how to deal with it on my own.” How pathetic did he sound?
“But you know what’s going to happen. You’ll get yourself screwed up without somebody to help you through.”
“Don’t tell me what to do. You don’t run my life. You’re not—” He’d nearly said, he realised with a jolt to his stomach, my mother. “Anyway, I don’t need to explain. I need a bit of space. Please let me have it.”
He should just get out of the car, unlock the front door, and wait for Dominic to take up his bags and walk. Only he couldn’t move. He had to have an answer, although none seemed to be coming other than Dominic’s steady breathing. Morgan’s patience wasn’t infinite, so he opened the car door and eased himself out all in one careful movement.
“Okay, I’m going.” Dominic followed Morgan along the path to the house. “For the moment.”
Morgan pretended not to hear the last bit.
“You’ve got my number,” Dominic continued. “If you change your mind, you can call. I’ll always be there, if you need me. When you’ve had your space or whatever.”
That had to get a reply. Morgan stopped by the front door, as he slid his key into the Chubb lock, but all he could manage was, “Okay.”
Dominic nodded, then waited in silence As Morgan opened the door and stood to one side. They’d said all they had to say.
Later, as Morgan—once again—watched his guest drive away, the sound of blowing up bridges filled his mind’s ears. Arguments didn’t have to mean the end of things—he and James had argued often, making up again in a flurry of apologies, mainly from Morgan’s side—but that had been different. In this case, he didn’t even know if he wanted to resolve things.
And that was the problem in a nutshell. What did he want? And what the hell was he going to do now?