Shining Lights Read online

  Shining Lights

  Barry Litherland

  Bleaknorth Publishing

  Copyright © 2022 by Barry Litherland

  All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  To my family without whom none of this has meaning.

  Chapter 1

  I am sitting here by the window of the lounge, staring at a fading photograph, resting my elbows and forearms on the table to steady my hands, which would otherwise be shaking. I have been looking at the photograph for ten minutes now and I imagine I will continue for some time yet. Waves of melancholy flow towards the shore and I sigh with them.

  Four young people. They kneel, backs upright, arms carelessly slung around shoulders. And they laugh at nothing in particular; just the day and the moment and the joy of being there together. Behind them, the early morning sun rises and their faces darken as if they’re in shadow. Three boys and a girl. The girl’s eyes look towards the boy on her left who is taller by a head than the others. Broader, too. The boys to the right and left of this pair laugh directly at the camera.

  Immediately behind the group is the familiar shape of a triangulation point which, coupled with the rocky ground on which they stand and the backpacks beside them, suggests a mountain top. A mountain top at dawn.

  It is Ingleborough in Yorkshire, and we are sixteen.

  The voices of my wife, Wendy, and my son, Noah—just a year old—bring me back to the present. The lounge door opens and Noah trundles through, wobbling towards his toys, still developing control of those chubby legs. He flops heavily on the carpet and accompanies his play with a continuous flow of babbling. Wendy follows him and approaches me. She circles behind and rests her arms around my shoulders. She lays her head against mine. I can feel her warmth.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ She takes the photograph from my hands and studies it. ‘I recognise you on the right, but who are the others?’

  ‘Old school friends. It was a special day. The summit of Ingleborough at dawn. We’d be sixteen, I guess.’

  ‘I haven’t seen this one before.’

  ‘I don’t have many photos of school friends. Just family ones, mainly. I wouldn’t have this one, but for Isaac. He had the foresight to bring a camera to record the moment. He gave us all a copy. A memory. Or a memorial.’

  ‘Is that Isaac?’

  She points to the tall figure beside the girl, his features finely chiselled even at sixteen, and his body broad and strong. He has the self-assured look of someone who sees the world stretched out before him and is ready to stride optimistically forward. It is all his to control.

  I nod.

  ‘I assume the other two are Eric and Sandra.’ She hesitates. ‘It’s hard to imagine what lay ahead for both of them. It’s sad to think of it, despite everything.’

  Noah toddles across just before I start to dwell on what has happened over the last few weeks.

  ‘I think Noah is trying to tell us he wants to go to the play park and the swings,’ Wendy says. She turns to gather him and lifts him with practised ease onto her hip. ‘Is that it, Noah? You want to go to the park?’

  Evidently, he does.

  ‘Do you want Daddy to come with us?’

  Daddy has taken a week’s holiday, at the insistence of nearly everybody. Looking back, he can see why. After all that has happened, Daddy is in no fit state to return to his work at the Sefton Independent newspaper. He is hardly in a fit state to write a birthday card. Daddy tried for a while to immerse himself in his work. But it was macho nonsense and eventually he failed. Everybody told him he needed a complete rest and time to recover properly.

  Noah wants Daddy to tag along and Daddy is a mug where Noah is concerned. So, it’s the park, the swings, the roundabout, and the climbing frame. I drop the photograph on the table and leave it there. I should put it away, back in the drawer where I found it this morning. Out of sight, out of mind. But I know, even now, that I will return to it this evening and the entire story will unfold in my head and I’ll relive it, over and over again.

  Chapter 2

  When I first became friends with Isaac Thurber, I was twelve and standing with my back to the wall in the first-floor corridor at Sefton Grammar School. I was in the queue outside the modern languages classroom where I was waiting with the other members of class 2A for Mr Bright’s decidedly un-bright French class. Scary and boring in equal proportions; that was Mr Bright.

  In those days, twelve-year-olds were not to be trusted in a classroom on their own; so we waited outside until the be-gowned teacher approached. God alone knows what they thought we’d do if they unleashed us five minutes before the teacher arrived, but unsupervised entry to classrooms was a privilege strictly reserved for sixth formers.

  We queued a lot in those days; especially for Mr Bright, who was never the most enthusiastic of educators.

  I can’t remember why Alan Lambert had me by the throat and was holding me against the wall, or why my nose was bleeding, or why he was sneering at me. No doubt he thought he had good reason. But then, Alan Lambert never looked very far for a reason to hold someone against a wall and induce blood loss. You just had to be smaller than him and have a presence on planet Earth. I can still remember his face clearly; especially his narrow slits of eyes and his tight mouth. I also remember that he had been like a shard of glass in my life’s yoghurt for weeks and that he was a year older than me and built like a turd monolith.

  On that day, I’d made the cardinal error of attempting to fight back. It was a futile gesture given his size, age and proclivity for violence; not to mention my timidity and lack of prowess in martial arts.

  I was following the advice of my Uncle Arthur.

  Fight back, Philip. If you stand up to them, nine times out of ten these bullies turn out to be cowards and back down. Show him you’re not to be messed with and he’ll run away howling before you know what’s happened.

  Uncle Arthur, my mother’s brother, was a well-intentioned council official with a platitude for every occasion. I doubt he’d ever been called upon to put into practice the gems of wisdom he bestowed on me, or he’d have known the consequences of such folly. Bullies are bullies because they have the ability and the skills to bully. Victims are victims because they don’t. The consequence of my audacity that morning was finding myself leaning against the corridor wall and bleeding profusely from a battered nose while being throttled by someone with breath like a chemical experiment.

  On reflection, it was Uncle Arthur who had also advised me that the best way to learn to swim was simply to go for it.

  Take a deep breath, Philip, and jump in. The deeper the better. If you’re brave enough, go straight for the deep end. You’ll be round that pool like a dolphin in no time. It’s second nature for people to swim. It’s the same for dogs. You don’t need to give dogs a swimming lesson, do you? They just run straight in and get on with it. It’s the same for you. Trust me. I know.

  Call me naïve, but I followed his advice to the letter. I was very much in awe of Uncle Arthur in those days because he brought packets of sweets when he visited, and bought me books for birthdays and Christmas. Someone really should have advised me not to follow his advice too literally; but they never did, and I had to be dragged out of the pool by a far from happy lifeguard. A sadistic teacher whom I hate to this day subsequently mocked and humiliated me in front of my friends. And I still can’t swim.

  I learnt from these experiences that it was unwise to take Uncle Arthur’s advice without significant forethought. While it often contain
ed a germ of truth, it was better to ground it in the realities of grammar school life and to translate it into grammar school English. So, over time, I translated his advice on bullies into something more helpful.

  Bullies will never stop as long as they see you as prey to their carnivorous appetites. You must make yourself less appetising.

  There was no need to offer myself as a human sacrifice by fighting the likes of Alan Lambert. Lying on the floor covered in blood, bruises and tears was no solution. Far more effective against thugs was the cultivation of protective friendships. If your friends are bigger and tougher than your adversary, he’ll think twice before declaring war. Being tough by proxy has stood me in good stead over the years.

  I suppose I ought to thank Uncle Arthur.

  So, there I was, outside the classroom, bleeding and fighting back the tears that inevitably spring to your eyes when someone assaults your nose. Alan Lambert held me firmly by the throat and leered round at his audience of bloodthirsty classmates, like he was taking part in some sort of ritual sacrifice. I guess he sensed this was when he could take a moment to enhance his status as an intolerable thug.

  His confidence wavered when his eyes fell on Isaac Thurber, who stared at him impassively from the back of the group. For a moment, he hesitated. Even through my watering eyes, I could see how Isaac studied him as if he was watching bacteria in a culture.

  He stared at Alan Lambert and then allowed his grey eyes to scan the assembled crowd. It was impossible to read what he was thinking, but to be fair, I was in no position to make an intelligent judgement.

  When Isaac stepped forward, the group opened before him like the Red Sea before Moses.

  Man, that guy had a presence. He was the same age as me, but you wouldn’t have known it. He was several inches taller than anyone else in the year and every inch and every lean-cut pound told you he was an athlete. I was totally in awe of him. I always reckoned he’d hit puberty at about eight years old because, by the time he was twelve, he was more mature than most of the sixth form. Finely honed features, muscles like a professional rugby player, and the charisma of a Hollywood A-lister.

  ‘Hi, Philip,’ he said, turning his eyes on me and extending a hand. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’ I would have taken the hand, but shaking hands when your feet aren’t touching the ground is a bit too surreal.

  Everyone fell back. A few people drifted away, sensing trouble. Alan Lambert kept the throat-hold on me while he weighed his options. Should he back down and risk the loss of status? Or should he face up and risk the loss of a lot more? He decided that an extravagant bluff was his only option.

  He tightened his hold on my throat and shoulder and leaned in close.

  ‘There’ll be another time,’ he screamed in my ear. And laughed.

  I’m not entirely sure what happened next but I’m positive I heard Isaac say, ‘No, there won’t’, before Alan collapsed in a heap on the floor. Then I felt a supportive hand circle my shoulder and guide me down the corridor towards the French class. Behind us, Alan clambered to his feet, struggling to regain both his balance and his dignity.

  Mr Bright—who must have approached the classroom door while all this was happening—opened it, and guided everyone inside. He said nothing and didn’t even look in my direction; even blood couldn’t wake that man from his lethargy. He compartmentalised bullying as a normal part of growing up. Boys will be boys. That sort of crap.

  I didn’t like him. There were many people I didn’t like in those days.

  I remember that day and that classroom. Wooden double desks, in rows, facing a teacher’s desk at the front. A blackboard behind it. Real 1950s stuff. They called it a traditional education, but I reckon most of the teachers were trapped in a weird sort of time warp. They had spent decades in their single-sex grammar schools and were convinced the education they delivered was the best in the world. Everything else was a fad which would come and go.

  I think several teachers became Conservative politicians. I bet some bullies did, too.

  Best years of my life. I can hear them now.

  The back corner window seat in every classroom was, by a habit established very early in our grammar school lives, the sole preserve of the alpha male; whoever that was. With our class, it was most definitely Isaac. So secure was his hold on that position, beside the window and the radiator, that if he chose another seat, which he occasionally did, the corner seat remained empty as a mark of respect. The seat beside him was one of the most cherished spots on Earth.

  For the rest of that morning, it was mine. Man, I felt like I was the king of the world.

  Like I say, it was an unlikely friendship, me and Isaac; or Tillerman, as we later came to nickname him. I never understood why or how it developed from that inauspicious start, but it did. We were friends throughout several of our grammar school years. We witnessed together the transition to mixed status when the girls from their equivalent grammar school joined us.

  But, inevitably, Isaac achieved success among his new and adoring audience that a minion like me could barely dream of.

  Not that it bothered Isaac.

  But then, nothing did.

  We drifted gradually apart during the sixth form, because of a different choice of subjects. And then university summoned; Oxbridge for him, red brick for me.

  And that was that.

  Until a few weeks back, when I got an unexpected direct message on Facebook.

  Hi Phil,

  I need your help. Meet me on Blackpool Promenade between Gynn Square and Bispham next week. After dark.

  Trust no-one.

  The Dog Star has risen.

  Tillerman

  Chapter 3

  That’s where our story begins. I’m still coming to terms with the consequences.

  So, let’s start at the beginning. Let me take you right back. It’s shortly after dinner and I’m in the lounge, my laptop before me. A direct message arrives on Facebook. It’s from Isaac, so I’m both surprised and intrigued. I open it and read it at once, and now I add bewilderment to my list of emotions.

  Remember, I haven’t seen this guy or spoken to him in over fifteen years, and here I’ve got a message requesting my attendance at an imprecise location, at an obscure time, and on a day which is yet to be agreed. All he tells me is that it’s next week, sometime, and after dark. His message assumes that I’ll drop everything and head out there in the middle of a pandemic; this is 2021 and a time when new variants of the Covid virus are springing up almost daily all over the world. He’s also assuming I’ll do it all on his say-so alone. He even assumes I’ll be curious enough to walk the promenade every evening until he deigns to turn up.

  Which, of course, I will. Throw a hint of intrigue my way and add that last line—the Dog Star has risen—and I’m a fish on a hook.

  I study the message closely. There’s no doubt this is from Isaac. No-one else could be so intriguingly obscure or so infuriatingly arrogant. I’m surprised to receive it and momentarily elated. But there’s something else about it; something less pleasant.

  Trust no-one.

  Isaac never indulged in hyperbole. His was the gentle art of understatement. From anyone else, it would sound like something copied from a spy movie. Not from Isaac. From Isaac these words have the ring of cataclysm.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  That’s Wendy. She returns from settling Noah in his cot. It’s our evening routine. Twenty minutes sharing stories and rhymes and cuddling until he grows drowsy enough to sleep. We take it in turns.

  ‘You look flushed,’ she says. She drops on a chair beside me. ‘Have you got a temperature?’

  I turn the computer screen towards her.

  ‘Remember how I told you about Tillerman? Isaac Thurber. The guy I was at school with. My friend.’

  She reads the message and then reads it again, and frown lines gather on her forehead.

  ‘Intriguing. Will you go?’

  She stands up and walks over to se
ttle more comfortably between the cushioned arms of a reclining armchair.

  It’s a good question.

  ‘What do you think he wants from you?’ she asks.

  That’s another good question.

  ‘Maybe the reputation I’ve built over the last few years has reached him. Maybe he thinks the hype about the fearless reporter who faces untold dangers in order to bring the truth to a grateful and awestruck public is actually true. If he does, he’s in for a bitter disappointment. My favourite adventures involve nothing more challenging that taking Noah to feed the ducks in our local park, and facing nothing more dangerous than keeping him from joining them in the pond. I don’t know what he wants. Something in the journalistic line, I guess.’

  ‘Dangerous. Do you think?’ Wendy tries to mask a tremor in her voice. ‘It’s a strange communication.’

  ‘Maybe.’ There’s no point lying to Wendy. She has a direct line to my soul, and to whatever secret truth hides there. We’re silent for a moment before she raises another question.

  ‘What does the last bit mean? The Dog Star has risen.’

  What should I say? That Isaac knows the words will have a special meaning to me, which will set me thinking? Worrying, even?

  ‘I don’t know,’ I begin. ‘I’m not sure…’

  ‘But?’

  Like I say, direct line to the truth.

  ‘It might be nothing, but Dog or Dog Star was a nickname we gave someone at school. A guy called Eric Redmayne. For a while, back in early secondary, he followed Isaac around like a trained puppy. A Dog Star to Isaac’s Moon. The name stuck, although I always thought it was harsh on the canine or astronomical world.’

  ‘You didn’t like him?’

  ‘He was okay sometimes, but he mostly made my flesh creep. Think of Uriah Heep bathing in a pan of crushed slugs.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Super clever, though. The only person who could give Isaac a run for his money. He followed the sciences route, thankfully, while Isaac pursued history and modern languages and I went for literature. It defused the competition, gave him a clear run at success. Last I heard, he was a rising star at Cambridge. But that was about fifteen years ago.’