Falls the Shadow

The farmer found him the following morning, lying in his own dried blood, sprawled out like a starfish on the floor; they had to break one of his arms to get him through the narrow door. They were all shocked, naturally, and assumed he hadn't had enough strength to make it to the farmhouse. His body was taken back to his parents' home town and his funeral took place on a windy, forgetful Thursday, his ashes later scattered to the four bitter winds that scoured the Corporation crematorium. Eleanor was there, and she cried, although she also thought that he had been dead to her for a long, long time.

  The police pieced together the evidence of the boat and the trails of blood and a verdict of accidental death was given. No loose ends remained, he was tidied up and concluded, and everybody who had ever known him shrugged and carried on.

  He had been aware of that, fighting for coherence on the cold stone floor, shivering and sweating and continually passing out, riding waves of pain and fever. He had realised in those last kaleidoscopic moments of colour and shade that he merely reflected the age, was an expression of it, a child of it. He knew there had been no escape and no answers - only a running from shadows into shadows. During moments of consciousness and clarity he saw the ambulance jolting over the farm tracks, the farmer excited and surprised and happy to be proven right, standing in his wellingtons and farting. He knew they had all expected him back one way or another, that none of them had been convinced by his gesture of rejection and regression. The prisoner inevitably recaptured, the compromise eternally struck, the defeat as unavoidable as ever. He reached no conclusion other than his own death.