Desire Line, page 26
‘Later. Tonight.’
‘Good.’
‘Good?’ A long pause. ‘Why is it good, Sara? What could be good about being here? You and me, together.’ For these few sentences he continued to polish away but something went awry, a lace-hole or boot-tongue catching at the bristles… he began to curse under his breath, annoyance rippling through him and into her like current. He was onto his knees, his feet; she watched him kick first one boot then its twin across the paving and away… Suddenly he was looming over her. ‘Just stand up! I can’t talk to you down there.’
So not the figure cleaning shoes in Tackley Close after all: the change was more radical than a thickened neck, a network of crinkled flesh below the ears, and what had emerged? Some man he was destined to be. At last. The years in Oxford were not for him; they had been hers and then Eurwen’s, with Fleur and Geoffrey sharing in the compound interest. Further out again were the friends and acquaintances, neighbours, dropping in from next door, the well-used jokes, A pleasant journey, Hugo?You were able to park, Nan? Drinks carried up to the perfect blue-green sitting room with the perfect daughter already asleep above it: all benefits evenly distributed. Except to Josh. Now his true self had emerged, his proper setting. The pain of her futile, indigestible love seemed fair replevin.
She grasped his forearms to drag herself upright, mentally groping for the framework of what she wanted to say. Last night Eurwen had seemed very close. She was just there, or around the corner after next. And though Sara hadn’t found her, it could have ended well… But she had had to drink. What better way was there to encourage Rhyl to open up?
‘It’s awful. I know that. Eurwen—’ but a slight shake of his head caused a veering off. ‘It’s worse for you, I suppose. Having me here, on top of everything else.’ Her mood felt sludge-like and Josh’s lack of rebuttal a stroke of the stirrer. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You were hammered.’
‘No. No. A couple of drinks, that’s all because when you are meeting people and trying to talk…’
A satirical plosive Huh!
‘—you need to have them on your side, obviously.’
‘I thought you were just going with Fortune now. Yeah? Wasn’t that the latest? You promise the cards via that Kim Tighe – a Class A fruitloop by the way – to give up boozing. Eurwen walks back in as reward. Isn’t that it? God, Sara, you’re a kid yourself. You think I don’t know? Master plan! But like I told you, Kim Tighe nuked what passed for brains years ago. And you’re going the same way. Can’t get through a week without—’
‘That’s unfair! Until last night it was eight—’
‘Six days. I counted.’
They argued it out back and forth, tempers rising. And gradually something began to clear… off to one side but definitely there, daring her to look at it, a beckoning ally. The sparkling simplicity of drink.
Chapter 25
Scanning would make it more precise, if it was still available to scan. By rough estimate I started with 40,000 of Sara’s words which isn’t that many. A First At Oxford has 341 pages in my hardback edition and runs with notes, index, bibliography, acknowledgments etc to 101,854. All about Thomasina Swift.
And mine is two people’s story.
I am not ‘a drunk’, she wrote on the morning after Josh had dragged her dripping from four feet of water. And she is alive to report this new day, starting with a dream of Thomasina. Truthfully, until my arrival here I was never less than controlled in a public place or an embarrassment to my daughter, ex-husband, parents nor even the few friends that are left. Much of what is reported on the subject of alcoholism is generic hostility by the fetishistically sober, observations that may be near the mark for some and for them only some of the time.
Alcohol and history: both confront the present moment. The former by a cushioning effect to life’s hurt, though it is self-serving to choose this quality in particular: a commonplace to claim it as an anaesthetic. Also a calumny upon drink. By it we omit drink’s positive force, that strong updraft on the spirit otherwise only available, by repute, to practitioners of mystical rites. Of course, in addition it eases embarrassment, instils optimism, smoothes a family’s passage through all differences and resentments. It banks down envy, denatures fear, makes boredom bearable and, on your behalf, spits in the face of ageing and death. The second or third brandy of an evening: flames in the grate usurp the dying sun and your own hair gleams at the edge of vision, a robin warbles its possession of the garden… someone you love is about to enter this house. Approbation from your father’s lips can arrive in the mind, word for precious word, unbidden, and yet your guilt still contrives to lie easy. A peace so sweet and expansive takes you that it threatens to overflow the skin.
Who would need to live forever?
To me, drink is endlessly beneficent. I have it, that unspoiledevening,the gift of dead stranger, one Hieronymus Brunschwig. Who remembers him now? Where are the statues put up in his honour? Where are the Brunschwig Crescents and Squares? A great man burdened by nationality (he was a Strasburger) and the times (1450-1512) with an unspellable name, even by its possessor, he gave the world a lasting legacy, ‘Liber de arte destillandi’. We know it as the Little Book of Distillation. By its use, Jean Martell would make cognac.
Then there is that other, higher realm of explicable completeness, The Past. You can take and tease its endless configurations, chose and reject, recalibrating what remains until you have a map for others to navigate by. Our exemplar is Thomasina Swift. Her enigmatic self unravels as a perfect parable for the age, for female power, for the flexibility of Georgian society or for the sexual vulnerability of males. Or any quartet of others… as you will. I pulled the thread that connected her with a highly gifted ‘natural’ father, a titled, besotted lover and her putative Oxford tutor, the legendary Dr George Buller. Though the scourge of many lesser minds, was he duped by plain Tom Swift out of Heystrete, a second ‘marvellous boy’?
Yes. Duped and seduced, I decided: I am a poor but plausible historian so no one suspects I can be false.
All rubbish, to quote my daughter. Confess: how likely is it that Emeritus Professor Geoffrey Severing has no idea his daughter is privately inebriated at every opportunity? Did I mention Fleur in the list of non-combatants? I am inclined to revise the assertion with her also. Too many times I have fielded a look: just wondering. Though I was hardly drunk, no and with nothing vulgar as a slurred sibilant to offend, she is a penetrating woman, my step-mother. A year ago we were two Oxford ladies who lunch though technically employed, I with my next book, she an occasional lecturer at the Taylorian Institute… Small matter, I thought, that her glass remained full, mine empty again. Having gently tested ideas for Eurwen’s birthday on me, she moved suavely to The Proposition, the real reason for dragging me out to eat in the middle of the day. Now, with pudding’s arrival, Fleur inserted into the conversation the name of someone she had been at school with. Then this woman’s protégée… had she ever mentioned she produced radio features and was hoping to pitch The Legacy of Thomasina Swift to a commissioning editor. Would I take part?
Absolutely!
A second drop of cream is dribbled unthinkingly over the poached pear. ‘But surely you would wish to talk to her yourself? If only to get a feel for what’s being mooted?’
She gave me a chance. Dearest Fleur I see sitting at our window table in La Croix; her attention is strictly focused on the stream of bodies obstructing our view. Every few seconds they became petrified as, inches away, the pavements of The High simmered and seethed to gridlock .
No-o. If it’s a young friend of Bea’s… of course I remember Bea! Tell her I’m on board.
Fleur literally shied at this. Alarm had taken over her dependable horse’s face. Rash, it said. The beginnings of an avalanche— and how ruinous the result? Because the pebbles are shifting. I’ve seen it before.
…in my mother, Fleur’s alter-ego at St Hugh’s. ‘Beauty and the beast, darling, though she would never have allowed it in her hearing. I’ll wager there was many a pretty Teddy Hall boy called us that.’
Our family legend told how before Fleur loved Daddy, she loved Mummy, her precious friend, the first wife who died suddenly (I was an infant) from ‘a reaction to prescription medicine.’ Fleur had known all and concealed the details. She, rather than my father, had played gatekeeper to my past. This is where the dead come into their own, with their dates, their solid pair of brackets for the intolerable mess of a life. They can surprise you (the odd outrageous fact is bowled in, adding spice) but still you have them. You have them. Too early to be a part of that particular social upheaval provoked by the Case of X and too late, naturally, to have encountered the notorious Y, they are caught for eternity in the grip of those arms.
Since she had survived her dip, Josh explained he must work later, the inference, which amused or she pretended it did, being that only her demise would have necessitated taking twenty-four hours’ leave. An evening surveillance, he clarified, could prove lengthy. Pointless to wait up. His having to desert her was a comfort in a way: smooth it out or let it fester, it must at least stop. About to leave the room, he changed his mind and leaned back in his chair again, the leather under him complaining. ‘Tell you what, come out for a breath of air. I’ll be cooped up after. Come on. Do us good.’
Josh and Eurwen both found indoors uncongenial: roofs, walls, safety and comfort, none of it seemed to count with either. Eurwen, a Quaker of a baby, become a toddler lurching from room to room, never able to give an explanation for her movement even when speech became adequate. (She was slow to annunciate, a tormenting time for the Severings). This burning-headed Dervish, bouncing off tables and chairs and child-gates and the legs of adults, was in training for the day she would bolt.
Sara fought the urge to sink further into the cushions, to plead benefit of blistered feet. ‘All right.’ Her stomach performed a new trick; already a cave, the vacancy expanded into her loins, thighs, and raced down into the floor. For a vertiginous moment, she was a half-creature, floating free. ‘Give me a moment.’
Sallow but tidy, she returned and he nodded encouragement. He was in jeans and a fresh olive sweatshirt. Almost they matched. She slipped on sunglasses: Don’t want to frighten the horses! But he refused to participate, instead grasping her elbow as they stepped out into brightness… and a background bustle reminding her for the umpteenth time of the BBC Radio Drama studios, the eager technician offering his take on Oxford in the seventeen-somethings. An infant yelled. The May Quay’s doors stood open and excitement at joining those inside spread to the group heading in its direction. Males talked too loudly, their women shrieked with laughter, merry already, stepping off the pavement to be hooted at by cars, From amongst the caravans they passed, snatches of vintage ditties, The Beatles and Frank Sinatra were being enjoyed by elderly owners… and in odd company, were the church bells which today drifted toward Sara from inland. Only to be outdone as she and Josh crossed the river, by Rhyl’s own muezzin, the bingo caller—
—her beautiful night-time mirage had been wiped away, drink being a requirement for generosity towards Rhyl. Very much the Lady Anthropologist this clear noon, cool, disparaging, her metaphorical notebook was at the ready. Take a baby to a pub on a sunny day? Gamble the hours through till dusk in a dark, plasticy den? These people. She was answered once they took the first set of steps down to the sand, a vast emptiness in comparison to the town, by a breeze at ankle-level whipping grit across her blistered insteps: extraordinarily unpleasant. Josh chose the route, steering her first out to a shingle bank for the better footing, back in when it petered away to crushed shell. Like Eurwen’s, Josh’s stride ate up the distance, was uncomfortable to match. Coming up was The Sky Tower and Sara paused to indicate the gondola’s slow, nausea-inducing ascent. ‘Have you been in it?’ she asked.
‘Of course. I took Eurwen. First time she came here. Y’know Eurwen— see it, got to try it.’
‘Why say that?’
He jerked her onward. But his anger had worn away and a couple more minutes had him offering her, ‘Because it’s true. Not because it’s a bad thing. I think it’s a good way to… live.’
‘Do you?’
‘Can be. Who knows?’ He squinted against a stray reflection, a head flick denying her eye contact. ‘See you Sara! Daddy’s little girl. Little Miss School Swot, working hard to make top of the class. All your life. Where has it got you?’
She should have been immune to an attack so familiar. Around the time of Josh’s final defection it was an open subject for one of those vicious half hours a couple can fit in, usually between a school pick-up and an evening with in-laws. Every response is short and neat and careless of the other’s feelings as a stage line. If a phrase strikes too deeply, too unforgettably, at the curtain they can take a bow, go back to their real selves, surely? So she should have known better, did know better. ‘It got me a good first. And a book from what could have been just a run-of-the-mill dissertation. A television cheque you seemed pleased with once. Eventually a film, which against all the odds, is excellent. Have you even seen it, by the way?’
‘Yes. I’ve seen it!’
‘Oh.’ She had lost track of where they were. An unrecognisable roof loomed over the landward concrete wall with an unwalked part of the beach ahead so velvet smooth it could have been swept. ‘Oh, what does it matter?’
Suddenly a striped beach ball came spinning towards her at chest height. The pint-sized players after it froze as Josh punched it back. ‘I’m the same,’ he said. ‘The force had me jumping for jellybeans since I was twenty. For what? I’ve got D.I. stamped through me like a stick of rock. Came back here on a promise, yeah? You never asked, did you?’
‘Once you’d left…’
‘’Course. Why would you? So I’m back here. Trouble was the promise came from somebody about to get shown the door.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘You probably think I may as well’ve stayed.’
(An hour ago I thought finally I have seen the real Josh, the one that was meant to come about, the personality he could not have attained, burdened with me… a bead of sweat is running down from that well-known hairline to your eyebrow as you polish shoes, a mind already out there at the black comedy of your work. This Josh knows he’ll never have to say OK Sara, who have I upset/shocked/disappointed now… is that it? Just tell me, Sara! Look at the state of you! Why? What in Christ’s name’s wrong? )
‘Yes. You may as well have stayed.’ Or come home: find Eurwen and come home, there’s still time. But one more word and she would weep.
‘No.’ His self-pity was being shaken off. ‘Na. That’s the Dad in me talking. I don’t mean it… except if I’d stayed in Oxford we wouldn’t be here now and Eurwen wouldn’t be God knows where. That’s all. Ifs, ands and buts don’t count. We are and she is. Jesus Fucking Almighty I could wring her bloody little neck!’
‘You mustn’t say that.’
‘Wherever she is, she’s all right. Believe it. You know, my own Mam left home at fifteen? Ran off the farm, got to the coast, got a job as a waitress in a posh hotel. Just up there!’ His gesture was in the general area they had left but at nowhere particular. ‘That was when we had posh hotels. I remember her telling Eurwen about the smart little uniform they gave her, black and white, how it was the best clothes she’d ever had up till then. She and the other girls’d sit outside on the steps of a summer evening watching the ladies go by in their frocks. She thought she’d died and gone to heaven and this is a teenager working a twelve-hour day for a few bob a week! You should’ve seen Eurwen’s face. And Mam stayed for the season. Turned up home for Christmas and didn’t let on where she’d been. Eurwen’s safe’ He pulled her closer, ran his arm across her back, hugged her to him as they walked.
‘Yet when I said that… I knew, I thought I knew she was here somewhere—’
‘I was a shit. OK? Come on.’
Gradually they edged outward until the town became nothing. Some strength was left in the sun even as it dipped. With the attractions far behind, more and more beach-users appeared, sea-watchers, dog-walkers and then the static retired, hanging onto the day’s dregs behind their striped windbreaks. A waxen old woman, so old her cheeks seemed to be in the process of defecting onto her chest, offered a beautific smile.
‘A lovely afternoon,’ it drew from Sara.
‘Right enough, chuck.’
The vista ahead was unsullied, seeming to stretch on and on under finespun silver cloud. ‘That’s Prestatyn you can just see on the skyline. There’s only the golf links really keep it separate. If you don’t like Rhyl, don’t go to Prestatyn,’ he said.
‘I don’t dislike Rhyl.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Oh, then it is the Cap Ferret of North Wales.’ But with laughter dizziness threatened to lift the top off her skull. White horses out at sea, the soft umber of sand and ebony of wet posts and their long grey shadows, they were all of them shouting to be noticed… Without any warning the beach came up under both feet and all sense of self began its rise out of her… she was toppling backwards onto the wooden groyn just stepped over.
‘You all right?’ Josh’s grip was fierce to the point of pain.
‘Yes. Better— now.’ But she hung on while the colours continued to sing. ‘Actually, my headache’s better. Eased.’ She could walk forward and did, like a little girl showing off. ‘So where does the town end? If more or less at Avonside and the bridge one way, where at this—?’
‘Splash Point. At Beacon Point- not the bridge!- to the west and Splash Point to the east.’ And then, almost seeming to arrest her, ‘Come on. We’ve got time.’
Despite Josh’s downplaying it as justmore of the same, this new area struck her as… she struggled for it, innocent. Even the small villas and bungalows that he pointed out across on Marine Drive had charm. He tried to orientate her. ‘You probably drove this way in?’ but she shrugged. She had no recollection of their tiled roofs fairy-talered and sharp and turned instead to Rhyl’s Golden Sands, a soft, buttery plain: toothsome. ‘Did Eurwen come here?’ Poor Josh, you’ve no idea what’s going on, have you? Of course Eurwen was here… comes here… will come here. I can see it though you can’t. Through Eurwen’s eyes… Poor Josh.
