Hillside

By Michael Singleton

It's Cornwall in the early 1960s, a freezing cold night, and the police find an old man huddled in a field. No one knows who he is or how he came to be there, and for years the old man, who spends his days at the nursing home in Greybridge, says nothing.

Enter Dr Simon, who has moved from London to this small Cornish town to work alongside Dr Fraser who has served the community for decades.  After taking responsibility for the weekly rounds of the nursing home, he becomes increasingly interested in one particular patient - the old man who years earlier had been found huddled in a field.  First he is greeted with silence, but then suddenly his patient speaks. It is then that he starts to reveal an incredible story – a story that spans continents and the universe itself, and will change the lives of those around him forever.

Hillside is a novel about enduring love, hope, despair and the agony of loss.

Approx. 270 pages.

 

 

What the first readers of Hillside are saying:

 

'It was lovely to be so entranced by a book again…sad and mind expanding and a damn good read.' Jacinta McEwen

 

'I loved this novel…I couldn't put it down. Heart wrenching…evocative landscapes…a beautiful story of profound love and loss.' Gail Barnes

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Singleton
• Release date: Jun 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393912637

Michael Singleton

Michael Singleton is an Australian writer. He spent his early years in England, but now lives with his partner near Byron Bay in northern New South Wales on five acres of forested land near the ocean.  He has always been fascinated by archaeology, and has spent much of his life studying and exploring ancient sites.  Most recently, he has published articles relating to archaeology in international academic journals, and spends a considerable amount of his time travelling to far flung destinations in search of obscure ruined cities.  Hillside is his first novel.  Email:  [e-mail]

Book preview

Part One

Chapter One

Cornwall, 1962

It was going to be one of those nights.  It was all too familiar.  The sound of the rain, gusts of wind bending the trees, the rush of fallen leaves swirling across the wet road, barely lit by a single street lamp.

Here they were, eleven o’clock at night, sitting in the Ford Anglia, going nowhere, engine on so as to keep the entirely inadequate heater going, wipers on full blast and the windscreen misting up. 

He yawned.  It was the first night of the new roster for the fortnight and it always took a bit of getting used to.  Unnatural it was.  Particularly on freezing cold nights like this, what with the wind and the rain.  Already he was longing for the long summer nights even if there were more people about and more chance of trouble.  At least you could see what you were doing and you weren’t huddled up in the car for hours on end with nothing, literally nothing, happening.

He looked across to where Sergeant Bert Cummings was slumped in the passenger seat, head back, mouth open and quietly snoring.  On his lap was a clip board that they used to record anything that came across on the radio that they needed to attend to.  Domestics, drunken brawls, the occasional traffic accident.  Not like on TV where the job looked interesting.  No, nothing like that.  Most of it seemed to be about waiting for something to happen.  And when something did actually happen, well, nine times out of ten you got there after it had happened.

He hated the drunks worst.  They were a pain in the arse.  They usually stank and, if you had to take them in, half of them would vomit in the car.  And you could never get rid of the smell of alcohol and spew, not for weeks sometimes, and you had to drive around with the windows open no matter what the weather.  Bloody awful.  No, nothing romantic about this job, nothing at all.

Right on cue the radio splutters into life.  It’s George back at the station.  It’s enough to jolt Bert back into life who momentarily looks panicky and wide-eyed before remembering where he was.  He motions towards the handset that sits clipped unconvincingly on to the dashboard of the patrol car, waving his hand in his colleague’s general direction, pulling rank.  Dave reaches for the handset, clearing his throat ready to sound like he’s been out there, out there keeping the peace.

They didn’t bother with the protocols, George and him.  After all, 961 was the only patrol car they had in this area and none of the other three officers had radios.  Cornwall was hardly a hotbed of crime, especially around here.  Greybridge was quite small really.  Even sleepy if you wanted to be particularly unkind.  Just over nine thousand people perhaps, although it often seemed less.  Not much work to be had beyond being a shop assistant or working on a farm.  But then again, there was the primary school and the high school, the library and the weekly markets.  And the old people’s home, at the old manor house, on the edge of town where it had been marooned as the town had developed south along the river.  That employed quite a few people when it opened, mostly from the area.

The radio.  George sounds half asleep.  Must be a bit slow back at the station.  Dave thinks that he can hear the TV in the background but if it is it must be its last gasps before closing down for the night.

‘Hey Dave,’ says George.  ‘What’s happening?’

Dave looks over at Bert who starts to point as his crotch and motions that he’s going outside for a piss. 

‘What d’you think?’ says Dave sarcastically as he watches Bert make a run for it to the nearest tree for a bit of shelter.

‘I’ve got something here,’ says George, and Dave can hear him rustling notes in the background.  ‘Someone rang in about an hour ago.  Said they thought they saw someone stumbling around up near Laverty’s place.  Said it looked suspicious.’

Dave stopped himself asking the obvious question as to why George was only calling this in now and not directly after he received the call.  He knew why.  It was because it was most likely a drunk who had lost his way and was fumbling around in the dark, maybe looking for a bit of shelter given the weather; and George was probably just doing them a favour by waiting a bit before he called, hoping that whoever it was had moved on, gone home, found shelter in a barn or whatever.  Anything to avoid having to deal with it really.

‘We’ll take a look, George.  Laverty’s place you said?’  Dave was trying to sound interested.

‘Near the lake.  Up near the primary.’  Like most people in town, George still called the relatively new aged care place ‘the primary’, out of habit probably.  No-one could remember its name, so ‘the primary’ covered it.  Because the manor house, large, rambling and vacant at one point for almost fifteen years, had eventually served as a primary school for a while after some bright spark thought that it could be converted into a school despite being on the edge of town and surrounded by small holdings.  Then, after another fifteen years, it changed again, this time into an aged care centre, not just for Greybridge, but for the whole district.

‘We’ll take a look,’ said Dave, trying to sound convincing.  In this weather! he murmured to himself.

Meanwhile, Bert was launching himself back into the passenger seat, escaping yet another heavy downpour.  Dave grabbed the handkerchief that they stored on top of the dashboard and started to clean the fog off the inside of the windscreen. 

‘We’ve got a job,’ he said to Bert as he folded the handkerchief neatly in half and reached over to wipe the passenger side windscreen.  ‘Up near the primary.  Someone wandering around.  And in this weather too.’

His companion said nothing and just settled himself into his seat, signalling his acquiescence.  Bert didn’t mind the idea of a bit of a drive.  Anything but sitting here in the rain.  And it might mean the heater could step up a bit.  It was decidedly chilly in the Anglia, even if the engine was running and the heater was on full blast.

Dave pulled out on to the street, the lights from the patrol car barely making it past the first few feet of rain.  He took it slowly as he navigated the narrow streets through the new town; past the bakery where he could see a dim light somewhere out the back; past the church dark and gloomy; over the bridge and now winding along the river towards Laverty’s farm next to the old manor, near the lake.

There was not one person to be seen on the journey.  It was 11:30pm and on a night like this no doubt folks were warm and snug in their beds already or, perhaps, reading a novel as they sat in a chair by the warmth of a fireplace.  Anything would be better than this, thought Dave, as they approached the gate to Laverty’s.

He stopped the car, peering into the night, thinking he might catch a glimpse of someone out there in the cold and wet.  He was going to have to get out, no two ways about it.  Bert had folded his arms and was looking straight ahead, uninterested and resisting any suggestion that he was going to take a look.

‘Go on then,’ Bert said eventually without moving.  ‘Leave the engine on.  It’s fucking freezing.’

So Dave reached back to where his hat and torch sat on the rear seat and, after just a moment of hesitation, heaved himself out the Anglia.

The rain was general rain.  It showed no intention of letting up and came down steadily and at an angle, pushed by a gusty north westerly.  Outside of the patrol car, and now standing in mud, Dave fumbled with the torch.  It wasn’t going to be much use in this weather but it was better than nothing.

He walked in front of the car using the headlights to see ahead.  He could make out a farm gate and the tracks made by tractors and other machinery going in and out.  Beyond the gate, he thought he could make out a pile of stones and some kind of feed trough.  He got a fright when his torch picked out three or four cows huddled together under a small tree about six yards from where he stood near the gate.  Their eyes caught the light of his torch and momentarily shone like tiny moons.

Then he thought he heard a sound.  It was coming from somewhere to his right.  At first he thought it was another cow, but the sound wasn’t like that.  It was more of a moan, almost of despair and, he realized, almost certainly human.

Dave shone his torch in the direction of the sound.  He couldn’t make out anything what with the rain and the dark.  But there it was again, an almost mournful sound, or sobbing perhaps.  He opened the gate and closed it carefully behind him like the good farmer’s son he was.  Now ankle deep in mud and, no doubt, cow shit, he slowly moved towards where he thought the sound was coming from.

He hadn’t gone more than fifteen or twenty feet when he thought he could make out what at first looked like a sack of potatoes.  He moved closer, and he realized that it was a man sitting on the sodden ground, slumped forward with his head in his hands.

‘You there!’  he called out, shining his torch on the figure who, it was becoming clear, was weeping.  ‘You there!’ he called out again.  ‘It’s the police!’

Then he was beside him, squatting down.  ‘What are you doing out here on a night like this?’ he asked.  It seemed to him that here was a man in his seventies and probably a drunk, he thought.  Just what he needed.

Meanwhile, the man had stopped making any noise whatsoever.  Dave could see that his eyes were open but now he stared dispassionately at the ground in front of him.  Then, without warning, he turned his head and looked at the police constable, opened his mouth as if to speak, but said nothing.

Chapter Two

Cornwall, 1966

He heard the light before he saw it.  It was a thousand birds waking, calling to each other from the enfolding leaves of their soft night.  They had perched amongst the leaves, softly teased by an early breeze, until the silence of the predawn, holding the world in its gentle embrace, released them back into a new day.

He found himself sitting on the edge of the bed.  It had not been a conscious decision to move from lying on his back, his arm shielding his eyes from the intensifying light from the large bay window that looked out into a garden which sloped down to a lake in the distance.  Next to the window stood a small timber desk, testimony to the past.  It had a hole in the top right corner, an inkwell without the long lost cup to hold the ink.  The stains of blue and black radiated from it like a star.

He sat.  In pyjamas, no less. In blue-striped, piss-stained, overly large pyjamas with a suspiciously yellowing but still vaguely white cord to hold them up around his diminutive waist.  He sat, slumped, defeated, already surrendered to a day which, if thought about too much, if focused upon too intently, would aspire only to be like every other day.  These days followed him, a wake from his slow ship, losing their form as they stretched behind him until he lost them, so many of them, to the blinding horizon as he sailed on this, this strange boat on this strange sea towards an undiscovered coast that even he, the great dreamer, the great adventurer, had never seen or imagined.

Would she be there?  Would she be there with her eyes that burned like fire?  Would her arms be outstretched in an embrace that would say 'Welcome home, everything will be well here, here at the still point of the turning world?’  Would she take him and hold him close again?

Suddenly he was aware of his breathing, slow, shallow, a breeze that barely rattled the bars of his chest, now sunken, concave, a terrain of ancient sand dunes, an archaeology of structures only hinted at under the sallow, almost yellow of his skin.  As he waited.

He sat for a while, hunched on the edge of the bed, looking out towards the waking world beyond the window.  He could see the dark shapes of the trees and the hint of the grassy track that led down to the lake.  He sat, now coughing gently but persistently.  It was a cough that simply wouldn’t go away.  It punctuated the day, regular as clockwork, dismissing any train of thoughts he might have had and requiring him to focus upon its relentless, wrenching cycle as it rushed towards him and then ebbed away with no regard to what it might have interrupted.  But in truth, there was little to disturb.  His days were largely uneventful, filled with monotony, punctuated by unremarkable, predictable events.

He felt that he was fundamentally alone amongst many, no doubt, who were also alone.  Alone together, lost in a world of monotony and repetition, bed baths and toileting, bland meals and medication.  And then there was him, of course.  The curly dark-haired one who came and went.  He was always coming and going, asking a question or two.

Eventually, after the inevitable clunking and clanking, after the impossible early morning laughter, after the squeaky wheels, subservient to talons of stainless steel, that could never be silenced; even here in this, this place of rattling memories, it came.  It was the cart, the medicines, pushed by a smiling nurse who doled out seemingly vast varieties and quantities of pills.

The morning ritual.  The false dawn of a day that was already darkening for, in truth, the day is inevitably ending at the very moment it has begun.  It promises nothing. But if it was to murmur a promise, if the morning was to murmur a promise between its parched lips, it would be that death will take us all, that she will come in all her terrible beauty, her compassion and her mercilessness, that she would come, not dancing, but....

Dr Escobar.  Here it was, the name they had arbitrarily given him in the absence of no name.  Something to fill the silence.  It had no logic:  no-one knew anything of his history, his education or even bothered with guessing his ethnicity.  Not that you needed to.  They could all see he was West Country for sure.  The Dr bit was to inject some humour into days that came and went without anything much to note, although no one could really remember the joke.  But the name had stuck anyway.

Dr Escobar.  He heard the words before he felt the gentle hand on his shoulder, and saw the carefully coiffed hair perfectly disciplined under the white starched headpiece, the tilt of the head, an attempt to make eye contact with the uncontactable.  His eyes had long sunk deep into the storm swept ocean of his face, disappearing wrecks, peering up towards the tumultuous surface as they sank, further and further deeper, staring skyward as if he himself was drowning.

Your medication. 

His medication was rarely reviewed.  When it was, by that other doctor, the older one, who was both serious and jolly, strangely optimistic in a place where every patient was essentially dying, he was rarely addressed.  The doctor spoke almost exclusively to the matron, Mrs Planford, whilst flicking through his notes.  If he did address his patient directly, it was in another voice that appeared to be more suitable for children except for its increased volume.  He would basically shout at his patient, looking up from his notes only briefly in order to deliver stock questions for which he did not require, or expect, an answer.  These questions were always delivered towards the end of the review since asking them earlier might risk a conversation that should be avoided at all costs.

‘How are we today, Mr Escobar?’  he would ask, as he always did, looking over his reading glasses with a smile that revealed a hint of gold capped teeth.  Of course, he would call him Mr Escobar, not doctor, just in case there was the slightest truth to the joke. Because how could a true doctor, a real medical doctor, ever become like this, dying in a home for the elderly?  Surely there was an unspoken agreement amongst the profession that doctors in physical and mental decline should be secreted away, isolated from the general patient population so that their condition could not be witnessed.  It was as if an ill doctor or, worse, a dying doctor, was somehow a travesty, a slap in the face of doctors everywhere who spent their lives doing noble battle against the enemy of disease.  For one of their number to fall or, more precisely, to be seen to fall by the very people who they were obligated to protect, was unthinkable.  No, they must be taken from the battlefield to hidden locations where they might suffer and die, but at least not in plain sight. 

So it was Mr. Escobar.  Just in case. Just to avoid any confusion. Even though, if the visitor had actually read the notes, he would have remembered that his patient had no discernible, no evidential link with medicine.  Still, better to be clear.

‘How are you?’ he repeated.  Escobar looked at him, not with disdain, but with curiosity.  It seemed strange, almost absurd, to be asked a question from someone who had absolutely no interest in the answer.  In any case, the visitor was already distracted, straightening the medical notes before passing them to the matron in her blue and white uniform, looking away then quickly back to see if any response was about to emerge from his sometime patient.

Escobar said nothing.  It seemed pointless, these visits, these tinkerings with medications, these niceties, or lack of them.  In any case he was gone, moving to the next room, the next patient, trying to get it all over with before lunchtime.

The curly haired one was different though.  He had come later.  Was it Stephen? Simon? One of those anyway.  He came for long periods, usually once a week for at least an hour, and didn’t ask a lot of questions.  He just sat there most of the time, nodding, or taking notes.  He was very polite, formal, not off hand like the other one.  Was he from Jamaica?  Somewhere in Africa, perhaps?  India?  From some dissolving British colony, no doubt, that might be sliding into a post-colonial, uncertain future.  Simon, that was it.  A psychologist of some sort, maybe?  A professional listener, a gatherer of information that might be categorized, pathologised, dissected or, more likely, simply recorded for no apparent purpose?  No, that couldn’t be it.  He had a stethoscope hanging around his neck.  No, he was a doctor too, like the old one. 

Asking questions of the dying seemed absurd.  Why listen to the old, the infirm, those about to leave?  It seemed almost unfair to encourage the retelling of stories, of events that had long been buried and forgotten, and for patients to have to relive the trauma and pain of childhoods that cannot be healed, the sorrow of bereavement, the loss of a partner or child in the worst of circumstances.  It seemed cruel, almost inhumane, to encourage, almost force, these retellings as if conjuring ghosts from graves and asking them to dance one last terrible dance.  Yet, it appeared to Escobar, that this was how this Simon saw his role.  A medical doctor certainly.  But also an inquisitor – quiet, unassuming, possibly even introverted – but an inquisitor nonetheless. 

––––––––

The freezing mist was thinning and he could almost see the sign now. Hillside.  A Home for the Elderly.  And he could see the path as it wound down the hill to the lake, still shrouded in a white cloud that clung to the withered sedge that lined its far banks.  He fancied he could see ripples on the glass surface, perhaps the red bobbing float of an angler who had come early, certainly before dawn, to catch roach, perch or tench.  But no, it must have been a fish rising, just breaking the perfectly still surface, before diving down again into the muddy depths.

He could see the weeping willows, and he wondered at the nomenclature, how someone, somewhere, had forever etched melancholy into the English countryside.  Wherever there were lakes and ponds, streams and ponderous rivers, the willows would be there to remind you of your sadness. 

––––––––

‘How are you this afternoon?’  The voice was disembodied, male, almost robotic in its confection of compassion.  ‘Dr Escobar?’

He had been staring out of the window at the darkening day.  The mist was almost gone now, but dark clouds were threatening a damp late afternoon that would slip away into a dusk that would end another uneventful day here at Hillside.  He could still see the lake in the distance, in turn revealed or shrouded as the mist came and went.  He again imagined the dead calm of its mirrored surface, or the ripples of fish, the bubbling of tench as they fed along the muddy bottom sending streams of tiny bubbles to burst into gentle mist.  And beyond the lake, he remembered, or imagined, green hills with trees and shrubs, promising the regeneration of sagging farmlands, victims of sheep or cattle denuding and scarring the pastures.

He felt a cold shiver move from the base of his spine up to his neck.  He sat in his seemingly infinitely adjustable nursing home chair with its plastic upholstery, all the better to deal with little, or larger, accidents.  And then the voice again.  ‘Dr Escobar?’

It was him.  Again.  In his early-thirties perhaps, with unruly black curly hair and large pores cratering his face.  Escobar could almost remember his name again, but it was just out of reach, like a glittering jewel.  Like the other thing.  Just out of reach.

‘Simon.  It’s Dr Simon.’  He must have been trying to form the name as he strove to remember it.  Of course, Simon. 

‘Simon.  Yes, Simon’, he heard himself say as much to the falling mist, as much to the darkening day as anything or anyone.  But eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, Escobar shifted in his chair and half faced his visitor who sat with his legs crossed, his stethoscope now coiled neatly on a side table, smiling, looking interested though, thought Escobar, a little tired.

The full lips on the cratered face moved.  ‘How are you, Dr Escobar?’  And then he smiled again revealing less than perfect teeth.

He thought for a moment.  How am I?  I am...abandoned.  That’s what he wanted to say, and almost did, but then he heard himself say ‘Not too bad.’  Hardly original, this.  He had heard others respond a thousand times with exactly these words.  It was part of a wider lexicon, a language that the frail and dying both learnt and developed in the evening of their lives so as to deflect the confected concern of their carers.  It was a language to which both patients and carers subscribed, an unacknowledged contract, an agreement of insincerity that nevertheless brought comfort and familiarity.  This lexicon formed a bridge between the cared for and the carers, a familiar conceit from which only the foolhardy or very brave would look down into the chasm below and risk falling and being swept away.  Yes, it was safer this way, the way of conceit.

Yet he found himself saying more.  ‘I can never explain adequately what happened at that moment....’  His voice trailed off, as if caught by a gust of wind beyond the window and delivered to the mist as it clung to the surface of the lake.

If Simon had heard him he didn’t react.  The truth was that he had heard it before and it was like an unsurpassable roadblock to whatever lay beyond, a great unexpressed landscape that seemed to hold the key to the explanation for his patient’s suffering.  For Dr Simon was sure that Escobar suffered.  That this frail old man who sat hunched in his dressing gown in front of the bay window that looked out on to the hillside that sloped gently down to the lake, suffered because...well, that remained to be discovered.

‘What happened?’  Simon asked a perfectly reasonable question, an expected question, yet one that caused Escobar to momentarily flinch as if he had been stung by a cattle prod.

He was watching a bee as it collected pollen from a late flower just beyond the window.  ‘They built hexagonal structures’, he said.  ‘Perfectly formed hexagonal structures.’

Simon leant forward as if to hear better.  But Escobar had fallen into silence, as if he had revealed too much or, more likely, Simon thought, the effort of remembering had exhausted him.  Or was too painful, perhaps?  Hexagonal structures.  Something to consider later.  Or not.

Bees.  Simon had written the word down in the margin of his notebook.  There wasn’t much room anywhere else on today’s page, at least.  And that was