To Be A Pilgrim

​Anthony rounded the headland, his breath snatched away by the gusty south westerly, ignoring Lol’s ghost looming on the path ahead. He trudged the coastal path, grateful for the tug of the mud at his boots and the salty slap of the gauzelike mist; a reminder to stay in the moment and not let the past drag him back.

​He pushed determinedly through Lol’s spectre. Anthony’s impulsive decision to get away to walk and think had been met with scepticism by their friends; the same friends who’d known about Lol’s affair with Guy. 

​“Give yourself time at home,” Jo and Tanya had advised, perched on Anthony’s sofa, mugs of nettle tea in hand, the very picture of concern.

​“It’ll be dreadful down there at this time of year,” Vince scolded, “You’ll catch your death.”

​Tomos had thrown his husband a despairing look, but Vince didn’t pick up the cue to shut his mouth and ploughed on, “Why not go somewhere warm?”

​“Like Spain?” Anthony replied, “I could always go to the hotel where Lol fell off our balcony and broke his neck? That’d cheer me up no end.”

​The fretful advice had dried up, unlike today’s weather. The rain was drifting in sheets, as it had done on and off for the last five miles. His boots slurped through ankle deep puddles as he headed downwards to the shingle beach, and his destination of ‘The Fisherman’s Cove’ pub. The large, smoothpebbles were of the ankle snapping variety so Anthony took care hobbling past a skulking clutch of wet and miserablegeography students with tape measures and ranging poles.

​Pushing through the pub door he was greeted with music and warmth and a smile from a bloke at the bar, “Bit wet out there, come in and dry off.”

#

After a couple of pints and lunch, Anthony almost felt the knives in his back slide out a few inches so he could relax a fraction. Lol’s ghost reappeared and stood sullenly by the noisy gaming machine. Anthony ignored the lying, devious, two timing son-of-a-bitch. Lol had hated Devon. He’d hated the weather, the landscape with its red earth and tors and moors, its quaint seaside towns full of retired folk, locals who raced through the high hedged lanes at reckless speeds. 

It always had to be somewhere warm for Lol, somewhere to top up his tan. Anthony tipped his glass towards Lol’s ghost, relishing the irony of Lol haunting a place he’d despised.

Checking the bus times on his phone, Anthony glanced at his messages. One from Joanne, one from Vince and one from Claire Gibbons, the detective assigned to Lol’s case. Firstly heopened the one least likely to cause offence.

“Hi honey, hope all is ok in Devon? Weather abysmal I gather? When you home? Tanya sends love.”

Jo was possibly the most reliable of their friends. Certainly, she could be trusted; she’d kept Lol’s affair with Guy secret for years. He hoped his pain tortured her as much as it stung him still.

He opened Vince’s message with a sigh. 

“Babes, you’ll get webbed feet if you don’t come home soon. We’ve had that Gibbon’s creature asking questions. She’s a suspicious one, not that you’ve anything to hide, have you? Joking! Laters!”

Having Lol cremated in Spain had upset friends and family, with only Lol’s parents flying out at short notice for the impromptu funeral. He’d had to report Lol’s death to the coroner in the UK and the process had been dragging on

for months.  

“I’ve read the Spanish police report. Its raised some questions. Can we talk?”

Detective Constable Gibbon’s manner was abrupt. Jo and Tanya vaguely knew her and described her as socially awkward. Anthony had only met her once, after the coroner suggested Lol’s accident had some unusual factors; despite the Spanish authorities recording an ‘accidental death’ verdict, hisblood alcohol level didn’t seem high enough for someone to act daft and fall off a hotel balcony.

Anthony would speak to Gibbons back home; he didn’t want her intruding here. Devon was, for him, solace. He’d come alone, at least once a year, and walk, Lol happy to stay home, free to spend quality time with Guy. Devon alwaysdrew him back; the happy memories of family holidays and solitude.

“Another drink?” the cheery bartender hovered, smiling.

Anthony shook his head, “I’m good, got a bus to catch.”He smiled and gathered his rucksack, hauling it on to his back, stepping out into another downpour.

He took his seat on the bus, windows fogged with condensation, bedraggled local people chatting animatedly around him. He wiped the glass and looked back towards the pub, Lol’s spirit standing at the pub door, staring as the bus pulled away, expressionless. Anthony knew what was on the spectre’s mind, and pushed it to the back of his.​

#

He'd taken a claustrophobically compact, one bedroom flat for the week. He sat at the little table with a microwave meal for one, poking at it suspiciously with his fork. No appetite. He scrolled through his phone. No new messages, so he reread the thread between him and Jo that made his guts tumble.

“How long have you known?” he’d asked Jo, after returning home early from a walking trip to find Guy in theirkitchen, wearing only the slippers he’d given Lol at Christmas.

“We didn’t think it was our place to say anything,” she’d replied.

“Not your place? You’re our oldest friends! Who else knows?”

He’d stormed out of the house after confronting Lol, who’d responded, “you’re overreacting, it doesn’t mean anything!” Anthony tried calling Jo and then Vince but no one was answering; clearly Lol had tipped them off. He’d sat cold and miserable in a draughty bus shelter, waiting for Jo’s text response, cars splashing his legs as they sped past through the frigid March evening. His world had collapsed around him. He’d been betrayed. Not just by Lol and Guy but by Jo and Tanya and Vince and Tomos? Everyone. 

“Lol is devoted to you, he’s made a big mistake, he knows it. You need to speak and sort this out. Don’t throw away all of your years together.”

Typing angrily he’d replied to Jo, “Don’t tell me about throwing away twenty five years of what I thought was a committed, monogamous relationship. It’s not me who’s been screwing a friend for who knows how long. Oh, that’s right, you and Tanya know how long it’s been and you didn’t have the guts to tell me.”

He put his phone in his pocket and his head in his hands. A group of noisy kids turned up, drinking cider and horsing about. One nudged into him, and with no apology, laughed amongst his mates. Anthony stood and walked off, anxious to avoid more confrontation. The long walk home to Lol, and to a changed world, was his hardest.

The microwave meal had developed a thick skin as it cooled, making him feel nauseous. He tipped the food into the recycling tub and washed the plate, looking at his reflection in the rain streaked window, when his phone pinged. A new message. Gibbons.

“You haven’t replied to my message from this afternoon. The police report says Lawrence Skinner fell from the thirteenth floor onto a paved patio at the rear of the hotel. The photograph of the balcony shows a guard rail around a metre and a half tall surrounding it. The report doesn’t say how Mr Skinner accidentally tripped over a rail nearly as tall as him. What was he doing?”

Anthony stared at the phone for a good minute before replying, “He stood on a seat we had on the balcony and lost his balance. He was distracted and he died. I don’t appreciate you asking me these questions. Ask the Spanish policebecause I told them everything.”

He switched off the TV and turned down the room lights. He listened to the rain against the window as he emptied his rucksack. It had been too wet to do what he had come to do. It could wait.

#

Anthony hadn’t slept well. He’d dreamed about garden furniture for some reason and Guy had driven a sit-on mower over him. It was only five thirty in the morning and it wasn’t quite light, so he made tea and went back to bed, watching YouTube videos. Reaching for his phone he sighed. New messages from Jo, Vince and Gibbons. And one from Guy.

“When you get back, Tanya and I wondered if youwanted to come round for a bite to eat? It’s been ages since we properly sat down and talked.”

What was it with the overly analytical Jo, and cod-psychotherapist Tanya, always wanting to talk and explore how he was feeling? Jesus. He was grieving, still angry and hurt. He wasn’t replying to her, not yet.

“Babes, news. Tomos and me are flying to Mykonos in July if you want to come? Should be a blast. Got a single room in our villa just for you, ground floor, should be fine. Let me know, Easyjet sale ends Monday. V x”

Is it me, thought Anthony, or is the idea of a perpetual party in a hot country, where I’d be the grief strickenwidower, utterly awful. He was irked by the ‘ground floor’ comment, a jibe or just Vince’s typical lack of sensitivity? Another for the ‘reply later’ pile.

“Why was Mr Skinner standing on a chair on a balcony thirteen floors up? Nothing in the Spanish report. Nothing in the coroner’s report. Why? DC Gibbons.”

Her messages were weird, bordering on harassment. After dumping Guy as his solicitor he needed someone else to deal with the police. He’d found Emma from the other practice in town, on the ball and unlikely to suffer fools; he’dcall her when he got back. Tomorrow! Wow, he hadn’t realised how long he’d been away, trudging the south west coastal path. That meant he only had today left.

Taking a deep breath he read Guy’s message.

“I gather you’re in Devon, again. Never saw the attraction myself. I’ve had that detective hassling me and I told her she needed to talk to you, you were the only one around when Lawrence fell. You may need a good solicitor,but, sadly, I’m unavailable.”

Anthony snorted and deleted Guy’s message and contact details from his phone. Better get a wiggle on, he thought, getting out of bed and pushing through Lol’s loitering spirit atthe bathroom door.

#

The rain had died off and a watercolour blue sky showed in patches through the clouds. Anthony consulted the Ordnance Survey map in his car and plotted a circular walk from the carpark. The ground was still saturated as he set off, squelching purposefully along the sea front towards a rising hill and the trail along the field boundary. 

He followed the acorn way markers and began to huff and puff as the steep hill sapped the strength in his legs.

“It used to be easier than this,” he muttered under his breath, nodding to a sprightly pair of elderly walkers who chirruped a “good morning” at him, striding past. His backpack was starting to feel heavy. Heavier than it had all week.

He stopped to catch his breath overlooking the weathered coastline. He’d looked up the geology to better understand what he was admiring but he was none the wiser. It was striking nevertheless. Battered, with jagged outcrops jutting from the permanently agitated waves. He never grew tired of the restless sea and beauty of the curving trees and hedges shaped by the wind, or the green pastures suddenly tumbling into the wild, foaming sea. Mist rose and spun around him, contrasting starkly with Lol’s spirit which stood, accusingly, on the path ahead.

The problem with this type of break, he knew, was that it left you alone with your mind. Often it was just prattling nonsense like trying to find a new dentist as his had retired and no practices were taking new patients. Sometimes itallowed other thoughts to leak through.

Guy’s snarky message nagged him. Anthony was the only one there when Lol took his tumble, true. Lol had been drinking, but not excessively, true. Lol had been feeling guilty since he’d been busted and was being extra kind and helpful, true. Hence climbing onto the chair to rescue the moth trapped in the balcony light, which he couldn’t see, but Anthony could. 

Beginning his uphill clamber, sliding on the well-troddenpath as he mounted the summit. A fierce south westerly wind stole his breath. The huge swell on the sea rose and fell as if in slow motion and he was captivated by the breaking waves against the rugged coast below. Rooted to the spot he took a deep breath, finally feeling alive, as if he had survived something horrific and whilst not unscathed he was upright, ready to move on. He stepped backwards onto the spongey pasture to steady himself against the gale and spotted Lol’s ghost again. 

“Not long now,” he said out loud, turning the heads of nearby sheep.

#

They’d agreed to attend couple’s therapy together. Lol was being positive, artificially so.

“Look, every relationship has wobbles. That’s all it was, a wobble.” In the car to the appointment, Lol had been upbeat. “We can start afresh, you and me. I’ve made it clear to Guy that me and him could never have worked.”

“Was that before or after you’d been looking at houses together?”

Frost prickled the atmosphere.

“Who told you that?”

“Let’s see, Jo and Tanya, oh, and Tomos let slip that you and Guy had invited him and Vince to a hot tub party at Guy’s place whilst I was in Devon. I also remember your dad said something about seeing you and your new ‘friend’ looking in estate agent’s windows before I went down to Devon. That was just before I found out the two of you had been having a ‘wobble’ behind my back for the last three years.”

Unsurprisingly the therapist looked somewhat worn-out after forty five minutes of them at each other’s throats. The silent drive home and a half-assed promise to ‘explore the positives in their partnership’ only fired Anthony’s dormant resentment. How could he have been so blind, so stupid? So trusting?

He’d agreed to a break to Marbella, if only to get away from the pervasive spite and bitterness poisoning their home. Lol had organised it; a good room in a top hotel on the coast. Anthony had insisted on being up high; he needed a view, especially if it was of the sea. They’d started to get on a little better and the journey out with its striking security staff,delayed flights, lost luggage and missing transfer from the airport left them both laughing at the nightmare.

That night they’d had a decent meal at a restaurant, only Lol kept popping to the loo, where Anthony presumed he was checking his messages. Back at their room, on the balcony, Lol had left his phone on the table and gone to the kitchen for a couple of beers. Anthony saw a message pop up from Guy. 

“Call you soon? Can’t you get rid of him! An accident or something?”

Lol had sworn, crossing his heart and hoping to die, that he hadn’t seen, spoken to, or contacted Guy for months. So what was this? A plot to get rid of him? Anthony was tired, feeling broken, and he didn’t want to be lied to anymore. Him and Lol planning walking tours through Peru and Chile, Lol making reassuring promises of fidelity, it was all bullshit.

“There’s a moth trapped in the lamp,” Anthony said when Lol returned, watching him glance down at his phoneand placing it face down.

“I can’t see a moth,” Lol said, squinting into the harsh halogen light.

“It’s going to burn up in there, poor thing,” Anthony said. “See if you can get it out.”

Anthony knew Lol resisted the urge to say something belittling, but instead he gamely grabbed one of the chairs and clambered onto the seat.

“Hang on, there’s a couple of screws I need to take out…”

Lol stood on tiptoe as his phone began to ring. Anthony turned it over and held it up, hesitating for a moment, “It’s Guy, for you.”

In that second Lol’s eyes snapped towards Anthony, then his ringing phone. Mouth open, he tried to adjust his balance but he was compromised and the chair slipped from under him, spilling him backwards over the glass and metal rail.

#

Anthony reached into his rucksack and lifted out a cardboard box, the wind buffeting him as he turned to shield the contents. Anthony unpeeled the tape securing the plastic bag inside and lifted it out.

“You always hated it here, and never wanted to come with me.” he said, Lol’s ghost at his shoulder, mouth gapingin horror. “The thing is, Lawrence, we don’t always get what we want.” He held the package at arm’s length and tipped it, the trickle of ash caught on the strong breeze. It lifted awaylike smoke, a cloud gradually dispersing along the path Anthony had walked.

“From now on you’ll always be a part of this place,” Anthony tapped the remaining ash out, brushing a little off his jacket. “I’ve decided to move down here. I’ll think of you every time I walk this route.”

His phone pinged. Reaching into his pocket he saw it was another message from Gibbons.

“Spanish police say insufficient evidence to suggest anything other than an accident. I’ve been told to back off. See you around.”

Anthony smiled, waved a hand at the lonely ghost stood in the field, and continued his walk.