Desire Line, page 19
‘Na. You know where the bed is— if you’ve about had it, which I know I have. What’s the time?’ Raising his chin’s an extreme effort. He’s made of lead. ‘God! It’s only ten. Seems more like midnight— but go up if you like. Take it— with you.’
The brass poker gleamed, the letter commending bravery wasn’t readable in the shadows and Josh lowered himself into a chair with an oldie’s urh-h!
What a release to leave the lot.
Opposite Josh’s bedroom the L-shaped guestroom was fitted tight into the eaves with a narrow skylight for a window and a single divan positioned under it. One cupboard only provided, always cracked open to prevent mustiness. Accessed from the landing, an old-style shower stall, lavatory and basin took up the perfect square cut out of this space. I emptied my overdue bladder and got a cold wash without disturbing Josh’s possessions with my WeberKit that holds razor, toothbrush, clippers, scissors and my supply of all in a box the size of wallet. It’s a complicated design puzzle and I’m the sort of person who couldn’t help stop and admire – even at a totally wrong time – as I toyed with an extra pill before replacing all the contents. If people were this easy to put back together then Big success, Yori! Instead of no-use Yori, who went and lay down naked under the skylight, the visible few stars a reminder of Tess. Despite everything I still expected to sleep. Japanese can sleep anywhere, hence their trains according to Tomiko used for bedroom extensions. But each time I drifted off I was aboard Stena Coole Park again,plunging to the bottom of the Irish Sea with it. The pink meat sandwiches were not that well stowed and the thought of my return trip to Holyhead grew unbearable, the way trivia does if you add in plenty of other troubles. Being a murderer. Sara coming back. Josh. And having to contact Eurwen— and Tomiko. Josh. In a sweat I jolted awake yet again, staring at the same constellation till I gave up and I set myself a task. How do you mould the recent hours into any sort of shape? Obviously Sara’s death had been a body blow to the one downstairs but was he really in mourning? Did he have any right to be?
Sara’s story always used to end with me killing her by getting conceived.
Unless—?
Only another murderer could understand how involved this got me. OK— so Josh was doing Man in Love now even though he’d left this particular love well before he became a widower and anyway no other couple was ever that badly suited. Eurwen and Tomiko only managed a close second even though they once— but couples aren’t that simple. Love finds out your crazes and cracks as I know, Kailash. How about this then? My grandparents’ attraction fermented to top strength during the years she was alone in Oxford while he withdrew to Rhyl. And here’s a stunner to them both, it burst out of the bottle when Sara arrived on the Avonside doorstep. They had stayed inlove. For the first time ever Tomiko had got it completely right— Forget who you love? Easier remember who you haven’t met! So they couldn’t just play house waiting for Eurwen, couldn’t just eat and sleep and bathe and keep the place tidy, could they?
Until he—
And then she—?
And then he—?
Geoffrey’s speculations were pretty dark. His own wife hadn’t joined him in them, judging by the collection of photographs given to Josh. A gift like that goes to the innocent not the guilty, not if I knew Fleur. She never believed he’d hurt Sara. Josh did though. Look at the state of him— I recognised it because I’d been cast in the part of Killer all my life and I’m an ICON DELETED. But with Josh everything was complicated. He was tough as corundum and I’d felled him by asking, ‘You couldn’t sort it between you, you and her?’
If the reversehas a reverse side what was on Josh’s? What had he done?
Tomiko used to tell the story ‘Burning Girl’*. It was a very sad one. And unique in always finishing with an unexpected twist, as though a box of endings were stored in his head. So the hero might be choja (undeserving-lucky) and he and the girl of the title survive, just, and their son grows up a good man. Othertimes they both died. Sometimes only he died and she married a daimyo (a lord). And this last was Tomiko’sfavourite.
Maybe Josh’s too if he ever heard all the options.
Personally I preferred a punchline I could anticipate like ‘Good luck comes too – he catches fish! – and one day the village matchmaker finds him a pretty bride—’ except bride probably wasn’t in Tomiko’s vocabulary. Girl, then. Woman. Wife. I flipped onto my back for about the tenth time, instantly uncomfortable again in Josh’s spare bed that had been ready made up though only I slept in it as far as I knew. Never Eurwen. I’d questioned Josh, Why didn’t Eurwen want her mother’s watch or her mother’s necklace? More tears were the result. Should’ve persisted though. By tomorrow the armour would be back in place and I’d missed my chance with this stranger that made animal-type cries of pain. We’d always struggled, even when Tomiko left and it should’ve been easier for him—
A knock and, ‘You awake?’ and he was in the doorway, fully-dressed, sleeves rolled to the elbows. He must have woken in his chair and needed to come and check I was actually in the house and not a nightmare. Now he stood there swaying.
‘What?’ I said.
‘She—’ Josh looked ready to overbalance in more ways than one. ‘She came for Eurwen, that’s all she did.’
‘I think I knew, yes.’
‘It was only normal and right and I didn’t give her credit. I treated her like— ah, fuck me, fuck fucking me! Everything was messed-up. Eurwen was acting out— she’d gone off, yeah? You’ll have heard all this, yeah? I was onto her, though! I was all bloody over it. I’d have rooted her out. She was with her mates, girls always are. I knew that. Boys’ll live on the streets but with girls it’s a mate. But oh, no-o! Sara had to come and find her. Can’t trust me!’ (I thought of the enquiry agents and had to agree). ‘But any mother would do the same. They would! You’re not meant to die for it.’
‘No.’
‘She shouldn’t have died. It was wicked, you understand?’
‘Of course.’
‘No you don’t. My fault.’
‘OK.’ I expected him to carry on, get it off his chest at long last. Starting with Eurwen. She ran away first. Everybody glossed over that fact afterwards. The humiliation alone must’ve stung for a father and a policeman and it’s from his house she went! Then all the things he’ll have tried straight away don’t work. Sara is suddenly there! – He was wheezing horribly. Go on,I willed him. But by staying dumb he gave me time to do some tipping of my own. Against. The wheeze just invited me to worry— was self-neglect. He still had enough oxygen to say she’d killed herself if she had or provide an alternative if not. Go on! But we’re not a talking family. Lack of encouragement from me let a moment like a pinchpoint slink off and then it was gone. He seemed to shrink into his own outline before pulling the door shut so hard it jumped in the frame, wouldn’t have been a surprise to hear the handle clunk onto the floor, Avonside all over again. And that was it, a teaser, a ninety-second trailer for a movie not yet out.
I cringe at my unconcern. I’d apologise to Josh if he could let me. Back then the choice I made was to flick the light on and instead of going after him, tug Sara’s case out. Both plastic bags got emptied onto the bedcover. Had Eurwen not wanted her mother’s necklace— or watch? A proper examination of said watch held directly under the bulb showed the gold to be very yellow, meaning pure. Spidery Arabic numerals were embossed on an oval mother-of-pearl dial and for inscription there was just a maker’s name, Girard-Perregaux. It was splendid and very much hers, something I could just see on her small wrist and when I wound the miniature wheel, the tick in my ear was like a reward. Next up was Sara’s necklace, a silver chain meant to be hung with seven milky stones, not opals and now six. (OK, not splendid— I’d been right— but pretty-ish.) Luckily number seven’s keeper remained attached and open just enough to make a repair simple. Position the elements, close the ring— why hadn’t anyone done it? I set to. But my fingers weren’t strong enough. I realised it first attempt and still can’t give up, changing my grip, getting puncture wounds in the process from neighbouring leaf shapes that were sharper than they looked. Every time I started to apply pressure the ring wriggled out of my grip. First I laughed at myself – so much for loving things, Yori, so much easier than people. Then swearing, each attack more ham-fisted than the last, it took a while before admitting defeat. I dropped it in favour of the rest of the stuff and rummaged not caring what else got damaged and who they’d been precious to, pictures, writings, novels— and I pulled out the diary. Actually it was an organiser as well (Fleur had kept one) big and heavy as a vintage softback. Inside, instead of Sara’s own details, she’d written Please return to Professor G.W. &Dr F. Severing, Pryorsfield, Boars Hill, Oxford with a postcode and phone numbers for both as though they were still there.
Every page after this was covered, not just the diary part where printed dates from January 1st 2008 (Bank Holiday, England & Wales) had been crossed through and overwritten, but the coloured section dividers as well and the blank A to Z of names, all readable as in her letter to Fleur if you were willing to skip bits.
September 23rd
Please understand, darling, that when we are together again, I mean to be completely honest. That has been part of our problem, my keeping too much to myself. How last night went, for instance: it would be easy to feign that the following never happened, to convince myself, and then you, I behaved differently, but I do not intend to.
It was nearly midnight when your father rang and told me, gently as he could I have to say. I shouted cruel things back at him which I regret very much now. He said, ‘That’s it’, as though I could turn myself off at command. But I’m so hurt and scared for you and the stupid wrist that I broke is aching and I am on my own in the kitchen with the floor tilting under me. I remember sliding down the wall and just staring around. In here for a reason, Josh’s second sentence, the one after ‘Sara, it’s me’, had wiped the tape. Back up in the sitting room an empty vodka bottle on its side solved the enigma. I had been looking for its twin. Then I woke on the sofa still and the news he had delivered was debatable for only a moment.My daughter has run away, again. I was someone with two hundred miles to drive. I must pull myself together and get going.
The first accident was victimless. I misjudged a left turn whilst still in Oxford, just trying to join the Banbury Road. The VW bucked and the bumper scraped on a post or something. Oddly the incident put heart into me or the adrenaline surge woke me up at last. With vigilance, I made it safely to the motorway and at one stage my confidence grew to the extent that I was able to negotiate the whole business of services and buying petrol. Then came a second accident, on real roads again when somewhere in Cheshire I met an agricultural machine. The noise of our contact was horrendous but stopping did not occur to me. Only when I had to pull up at a filthy public lavatory, I thought to check the damage since I was out. There were several lacerations and paint missing in a new deep gully across both front and back doors. The car seemed to have escaped the clutches of some giant beast.
Because Rhyl is approached through suburbs the sole warning of coastline is via increased luminosity ahead. Suddenly I am on the Promenade. One side it is all tall houses, on the other cast iron railings painted a vile orange and acres of sand; the sea is almost an afterthought out on the horizon. What I ought do is stop, attempt to get my bearings but the urge to cruise, scanning the crowd, proved irresistible. Teenage girls were everywhere, redheads, even, cavorting, laughing, bodies miming their inner lives. None were you. Victorian terraces gave way to shabby hotels… outside one of which a family waited, two young women, an older woman, twin toddlers and an obese man on crutches… all so dishevelled, exhausted. They stared at the slowed car and then a child was hoisted onto a hip as the matriarch stepped towards the kerb, her hand reaching out. I felt bathed in their disappointment as I accelerated away in the direction of the arcades. The crude monsters painted across their length seemed fitting to my mood. A pair of plaster caryatids held their own severed heads. You understand? I could feel for no one save myself… then the zone became single-storey burger-bars and rock sellers, before soaring up to a giant pub plastered with inducements: Double Vodka and Red Bull Buy One Get One Free! I ought to be seeing Ocean Park now, a Ferris wheel and a Big Dipper, both of which you had mentioned. There was a photograph: your hair is a red blur as you’re caught rocking in a jazzy cradle. But instead of a fairground, I find an artist’s impression of a block of flats on a giant billboard.
I parked and for the first time since leaving Tackley Close, checked my watch. Where had nearly eight hours gone? And where was the rest of this town? Ahead the road turned into a steel bridge over a wide inlet edged with trees that seemed to say, ‘This is it, this is as far as it goes.’ I turned the car on a piece of wasteland with a wonderful sea view… and prepared to do it all again. Rhyl had failed. I should have been discouraged but the reverse was true: messy, hectic, it was also small. If you arrive on a mission and that mission is to find somebody, then small is good.
Really desperate for sleep, climbing into bed again I dropped the journal and somehow the necklace and wristwatch went flying across the boards, much heavier sounding than they ought to be and more of them. But next door Josh wasn’t asleep anyway. Drawers are opened and rammed shut. Through the fibrewood wall that cuts the bathroom out I hear him enter— and throw up repeatedly. Then there’s the sort of groan that forces you to see him sinking down, shattered.
I kill the light. The wrong time ticks by on Sara’s watch somewhere.
So she drank. For me with an attitude that’s part draw and part disgust (basically like many Japanese I can’t do alcohol) this stood out. Why did she? Why would someone like her need to—? No one had mentioned it and, Rhyl-schooled, I could think of a lot more charming faults – Sara drank. And she’s here, somehow. (In the dark I could be instantly home). Good weather will mean the attractions are open. The arcades rattle and blare at her. Inside the Seaquarium the water’s clear as a tropical lagoon. It’s one of those where fish swim over and around the paying customers and the flick of the sharks keeps catching the eye. But this being Rhyl, across the road on the main Promenade will be a burnt-out building in a crumbling terrace. Props bridge the gap so the survivors can lean on each other’s shoulders—
— I’d expect to dream about Sara, or those closer to me. Not this familiar sight that’s been popping up since I was dragged away aged eight. Here’s the town. But from above, as a map of blue sea, yellow sand and the built up quadrant showing as crisscross streets. Melting tarmac and grey slate roofs in white heat. Non-existent shadows mean midday and height of the season— what Rhyl’s made for. I take it in, identify familiar landmarks, the attractions, the church, the pubs— but here’s the difference, black specks are swarming past my shoes like ants, thousands of them. Except they’re human holiday makers in the sort of numbers we used to get once and all buzzing round with the dynamics I bet I could calculate down to the last footfall. And I’m a giant! Do what you want, Yori. Stride over the river and sort out the Foryd. Sweep Quay Street with one swipe. Only I’m a statue, have to be. A small movement will crush hoards and though I could grab SkyTower and reposition it like a tent peg or drain Marine Lake with my cupped hands, I’m trapped. And out at sea the rumble of thunder is heading my way—
Notes
* I’ve moved it. Probably a mistake. Probably a bigger mistake not to take it out altogether. It’s a story that makes Tomiko look bad.
Chapter 18
Up and active before me Josh, with a face extra raw from a bad shave, was in clean clothes and clunking plates in the kitchen. While I’d skipped my stretches and lunges altogether. He acknowledged my (ironic) salute by nodding, no hint of a man about to unburden himself as he butchered the soda bread. I thought I detected changes in the way he held himself though, the last twenty-four hours showing like new ailments piled on. Then he nudged a jar along the tabletop to slide and stop directly level with me, a familiar trick and one he hadn’t done since I grew up.
‘D’you want something frying?’
I took the toasted oval from the flat of his outstretched hand. ‘This is enough.’
‘You still don’t have butter.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘Just jam without bits. Dig in!’
He always used me as cover for his own sweet tooth. Come on Yori, don’t cry. (His eyes were particularly bloodshot this morning, I noticed). Your mam doesn’t mean it! We’ll get ice-cream. With a Flake in? Megs doesn’t want one so we can have hers.
‘How’s Meg?’ Naming Sara’s replacement was something I instantly regretted.
But, ‘She’s fine,’ he said. ‘The driving ponies are all the thing now. Keeping her busy. She was here— Christmas, yeah, she dropped in.’ He cuts more bread, letting the thin slices peel from the loaf, before stacking them much as I’d tidied papers last night. Crumbs get swept up and thrown through the open door. But he hasn’t properly looked at me once. Back when we were grandfather and grandson we reached a sort of accommodation, despite everything being wrong and difficult and abnormal. Eurwen wouldn’t act the daughter or the mother. Tomiko went home leaving the gap to be filled by Josh— whose own wife had vanished into Rhyl thin air. Most of the time he must have wished all our roles switched around with child-again Eurwen, wife Sara, Yori, un-created, but he hid that as he shined my shoes, walked the tideline looking for anything interesting to a small boy, made toast and jam when my mother forgot. Domestic Grandfather is a lot more pitiable than stricken Arsonist Grandfather.
