Desire Line, page 31
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t you? You must be walking around in a dream then. Anyway after all that there’s Henri, painting away like mad.’ She dropped onto one of the sofas and folded her legs up as part of the same graceful action. ‘Yori, stop perching and sit down!’
I joined her about to say, I know about the floor. It was Neil Rix, the artist, Tomiko’s friend. I must’ve seen it when I was baby! Before— but as always, she was too quick. ‘Where are you going to sleep?’
Fair question. I was here at my own request— Could I come and see you, talk to you? ‘On this.’
‘Too short. Not you! The sofa.’
‘In Gramps Geoffrey’s chair then.’
‘Are you hungry?’
‘Uh-uh.’ My last food had been a slimy hummus baguette, eaten somewhere south of Leamington Spa. I was starving my stomach said but I wanted to stay like this, me turned to her, Eurwen not— just right for studying her profile, the high forehead and the very fine upper nasal arch and then that slight scoop toward the nosetip. The shading beneath a cheekbone. And when her hand went up to cup the point of her chin, I surprised us both by taking hold. Tomiko’s jade ring was loose and mobile beyond the index knuckle and none from Henri. I smoothed her fingers out on my palm as you would a sheet of paper. All the nails were clean but untended and a purple brand at the heel of her thumb could’ve been a bitemark. I took a deep breath and said, ‘Sara being found was a shock. But you seem to’ve taken it pretty calmly. I’m only going by Josh who—’
But she mimed No! and then choked and this time she did cry, going from perfectly normal to caved in— the speed of change was a stunner in itself. Suddenly the fingers were trembling but she pulled them away, a signal she wasn’t wanting anything from me. Then a shock wave ran through her and her voice when it came back was hoarse. I always— knew that she’d gone— that we’d never— ever— see her again— that everything was going to be different from now on— Dad couldn’t make his mind up— and Gramps Geoffrey— and Fleur— wore themselves— out with worry— at it— but— but not me— because— Deep breath— I knew. I’d killed her. The look was somebody running on their sword.
I haven’t done her justice. I’ve fallen into Sara’s trap, describing things she says and does, the Western way, as if it made her. A betrayal— Sara realised that. Eurwen’s like nobody. She’s not my mother or only technically, not my sister, certainly not my friend and we have nothing in common. But I’m the ugly little boy who lived for the goddess and I worship her. Sometimes it’s a feeling makes you think you’ve swallowed a hot coal but there it is. Remember though, we hadn’t talked for five years and we still probably couldn’t be alone together for long – because what can you do when a tiger’s sharing the cave? and wearing stripes doesn’t work and begging to know what uniform she wants you in gets no answer? She wasn’t Japanese— but she’d still managed to beat my father into a two-dimensional on-screen extra. She had power. She would never kill herself. Actually, seeing her like this, I couldn’t believe she’d ever die. Sitting in her don’t-care room I had a vision of myself grown old and keeling over one day still at work and they’d bury my ashes under a building I hope I wasn’t too ashamed of— and there unchanged Eurwen would be, telling whoever turned up, Just to-oomorbid! Under his own creation? I’m glad I don’t have to live here. She said, ‘The number of times I must have heard “famous Oxford historian’s last day in Rhyl!” It’s the only thing I’m an expert on. Your grandmother walked out around ten in the morning, she took the clothes she wore and no money apart from any coins there may have been in her pockets and no keys. But one book by somebody she’d been at college with – she took a bloody useless history book but no money – what does that suggest? Oh and Dad’s coat. She wore Dad’s oldest, grubby coat. You don’t need to be a genius, do you, to decode it— what she was telling us? So I should be able to stay calm by now.’ She rubbed her dry cheeks in a way that was meant to say Over it, you see? ‘Not as if—’ she shrugged.
‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘No?’ The switch to hostile was instant. I had radar set for this mood. ‘Well, let’s take it as read shall we?’ A long pause though. She didn’t take it as read. ‘If Dad has become a wreck, and we have spoken by the way, that only shows he kept hoping. And I never did. Not possible, you see. We were linked, her and me. When I was small she’d describe knowing when I was ill, odd incidents like that. And then, on the day, my birthday, I was in Jay’s kitchen, late afternoon. I can describe it exactly—’ was that a tremor? – ‘Jay’s scraping carrots to make a cake, there I am crouched on the floor, trying to feed a bird with an eyedropper, and suddenly I thought, My mother has died. It was as clear and evident as Jay at the sink and Tomiko across the room sketching— and the starling in my hands with its heart going crazy.’
‘But how?’ Before she could explain, if she could, I followed through with, ‘and who did you tell?’
‘Nobody. Nobody! I carried on trying to get the bird’s beak to stay apart without hurting it, to get the sugar water down. You have to use a fingernail in the corner, very gently.’ She sighed. Maybe it hadn’t worked. ‘Then I stood up and put the starling back in the cage. I said to Tomiko, I’ll write to my father and you’ll have to take it.’
I can recite what you wrote, I wanted to boast.
‘But then there was composing the thing! We had a lot of tries, between us. Not that he was much help. The afternoon dragged on and then he said No writing! Not needed.’ She smiled at her own impression of him. “I will go to your mother and father.” That’s what he thought.’
‘You didn’t let Tomiko in on this?’ (Who would probably have believed you though I’m having trouble. With Sara there was always the drink to fall back on, but Eurwen? Though I’d reassess her story later, for the moment it changed her and I resented the slightest change. I liked my mother inside her sharp black outline.)
‘We had a huge row which was a relief— a distraction, at least. Then we made up and Tomiko said things would get better, now I’d decided. We could write down— well, whatever was necessary in the morning. Jay gave me something to take, Jay always had something, and we slept on it. But things were blunted, next day. And I started having doubts.’
‘You knew Sara was in Rhyl?’
‘We did.’ She shook the red hair and swept it back from her face till the skin stretched. ‘It’s a long story. Tomiko actually saw her. As did Jay and then Neil but with Tomiko it made everything worse afterwards. So— I could have texted, I could have phoned but for some stupid reason, I stayed fixated on writing— and the next day there was Mum’s picture on the news. Missing. Dad had got it up straight away, policeman you know. And so I’d put things in the letter Tomiko took that were already lies by then. Pretending. Because, honestly, I’d felt her die.’
Anyone would pity Eurwen for what was to come next. Constant reruns of ‘Oxford historian’s last, etc’ activated even Renate Desmond, her old headteacher, among the other sympathisers. But for the daughter of a dead mother it was already a case of the words crossed out, the calls not made. That text. She’d calculated less than ten characters could’ve turned Sara aside from her walk. Then six. Am OK – E
‘I never managed fewer.’
‘But nobody saw what happened! She could’ve been alive all this time. There’s not a single recorded sighting of her on November 17th —’
Like Josh, even stricken she was alert. ‘Where did you get that from?’
‘I’ve been reading up.’
She pursed her lips, dismissive, as always, of every POV not her own. ‘Then don’t. They told themselves she’ll be back, it will mend.’ She expanded on the damaging consequences of Josh never quite getting going again with Meg– keeping Sara’s spot open? Gramps Geoffrey hanging on to Tackley Close like a limpet, finally letting only to single women. No children, no pets. ‘It had to stay pristine!’ Fleur’s way of mourning had been to search the faces in Sara’s Oxford on a regular march that started at the Taylorian Institute, skirted the Radcliffe Camera, kissed the pavement outside All Souls, then took a sharp left and over Magdalen Bridge and so down to St Clement’s College. Where she’d eat her sandwich under the Thomasina Mulberry Tree. I knew it well. I must’ve gone with her dozens of times, unaware we were on a mission. And it was Fleur’s grief brought Eurwen to a stop.
I said, ‘You mustn’t feel guilty because—’ Convincing her was my feeble aim. But she was disagreeing before I could finish. My intentions may be exactly as my name promised— Proper, Dutiful, Well-Motivated or whatever— but the strategy? Impractical. I didn’t have the materials and they weren’t making any more.
‘Why mustn’t I? She killed herself thanks to me. People always say, oh it was years ago— you were somebody else then. Henri says that. I wasn’t, not in the essentials. I feel the same person I am now, went away with Tomiko because he’d do anything for me. And I was wanting— such a lot. Instead of wanting others. It’s no more complicated than that. Dad tried. Talk to your mother, he said. I can’t do it but she loves you. She’ll come round. Then home you go and back to school for her sake if not your own. Give it another year. As if! He couldn’t cope. I couldn’t have coped in his position. I was so—’ another lost ending. ‘Then he started saying we would have to invite her up and sort things out. But I told him if she comes here I’ll run— again. He was furious.’
Yet he hadn’t invited her. She’d arrived. By which time Eurwen was pregnant and fled with my father. ‘Did Josh ever hit you?’
‘What? Of course not! Where did that come from?’
‘No idea. Sorry.’
‘I remember his telling me it was time to grow up. And I did— just too late. I loved her back, though.’ She searched inwards, shaking her head. ‘She was— I see now she was as good as she was able to be. No one knew what was going wrong for her. But it was bad and it started before Dad left and it wasn’t getting better. No one could help. You think they didn’t try? And yet she was a sort of celebrity.’
‘She still is.’
‘Yes. But you had to experience it in real time. Do you know, even Henri and her sister, they were followers? If Mum had questioned them herself instead of sending Fleur I— mm-m, they’d have given me up. And as for all the rest—’ More past movies were playing behind her eyes. ‘Usually they’d be older than me, undergrads. They’d make their first approach, awestruck, in the Marks and Spencer’s queue or Blackwell’s. Once I remember I’d been to her talk at her old college and we went afterwards and ate cherries in Headington Hill Park, throwing cherries to the squirrels. And this man came and just sat down by us. Almost touching, you know? There was vacant bench too, but no, which made it— disturbing. His manner was off-key, she could see I didn’t like it. Very casually she got up and gave me a tug and the instant we were out of earshot she said— you’ll have heard this, ‘I do not love thee Doctor Fell/ Why I don’t I cannot tell.’ It was brilliant. Spot on! Then we got the giggles just as three girls, really pretty girls, recognised Sara Meredith. Oh, they were majorly into the book, into Thomasina, into her. She listened to them and then, ‘Thank-you for that,’ she said. ‘And your timing. My daughter and I were just sharing a joke at male expense.’ She could always say the right thing to the Thomasina groupies. Even when a nuisance.’
‘She didn’t like being respected for her book?’
Eurwen gave the question more thought than it seemed to merit. ‘It’s odd but now if you press me I’d say she didn’t care for it— totally not. And she became more uncomfortable as time went on. ’
‘Why? Why would she?’
‘I don’t know! She hadn’t written anything else for years by then. Maybe that was—’ but the wasted attempt was soon over. ‘I don’t know. We never talked about history. She was very guarded – I realise now – and she gave less and less away. Of course she had to be quiteclever about the drinking so only Gramps and Dad and I suspected.’
‘And Fleur.’
That made her pause. ‘And Fleur told you?’ Not exactly. ‘That’s a surprise— you see, Sara Meredith was special. It was as if you had to use other standards for her— another reason why my running off wouldn’t matter, I thought. I couldn’t take the books and Oxford and history and reading and the people next door popping round to tell us about more bloody books they’d been reading. Hated the lot. And poor Fleur— ‘Darling, when you’re older you’ll appreciate all this.’ Wasn’t happening for me Fleur! And still it’s not. I’m more Dad. And there’s more terrible luck. He and she, they fell in love, literally. They had to let themselves go— for each other.’
‘I think so.’
‘When I was small she used to describe how they’d met, how it happened because I liked hearing. But it was a sick joke played on them. Love? They hardly spoke the same language. Nature never meant them to be together. Then there was the drink! Don’t ask me about that. No one seemed know why, not Geoffrey, not even that therapist he came up with to treat her ‘depression’. Dad jumped ship— to Rhyl. She was never going there.’ (Saying But she did! would put me on the wrong side.) ‘AndI was odious— if I really wanted to hurt her I’d let fly at Thomasina. How nobody could be that wonderful. Always seemed to work, my telling Mum her precious Thomasina was a fairy story, that I’d like to dig the Peerless Girl up and give her a kicking. Henri reminds me of it now and then, if required.’ No wavering— she was steely again which was something to be grateful for.
It sounded a warning though. The Henri-and-Me chat might be overdue and whatever I’d come down here for it wasn’t that. As an adult I could see how Henri Fortun had cultivated a part of Eurwen’s character, her one strip of weakness based on guilt, for her own gain. Of course my existence isn’t appreciated. Not just because the first Sunday she was invited to tea on Pryorsfield’s terrace, I kicked a football straight at her head and our relationship has gone downhill since. ‘You’re alike, you and Sara,’ I said quickly. ‘Though you’re actually more—’ I never got to tell her what.
‘I looked too much like my mother!’ she almost spat. ‘That was our problem. She kept seeing herself as everyone did and it was so far from the truth. The Rhyl me was much closer.’
I couldn’t win this. ‘And when did you find out about—?’ I tapped my own chest.
‘Mm-m. Well, I met Tomiko at the start of the summer. We’d go to Jay and Neil’s and one night we stayed on. My decision. That would’ve been a few days before she arrived. Everyone assumed I must have known I was pregnant by then because it made a great alibi. Tragic but understandable— yes? Even Tomiko! He wanted to be completely responsible.’
‘So— you weren’t?’
She laughed as if it was nothing. ‘No! You’re as bad as he is. I mean look at his art—’ she made it sound like a vice, ‘—mania more like. For years, nothing but pictures of the water. Because of her. Sato Tomiko has to take it all on himself!’
Thinking of anything but what I was saying, I told her, ‘He’s given that name away. It’s somebody else now. So I’m not sure what we’re meant to call him.’*
‘Oh-h for God’s sake!’
Mama Rotti had finally shut up. I was aware of the crackle from inside the woodburner and some appliance humming in the next room. Eurwen seemed to have run down as well— she’d put all the available information she thought she had out for me. And unless you bring it up, I realised, she won’t add anything. Less tired, Yori,
less in thrall to the goddess, you’d have picked her up on the one new thing you’d learned tonight. Instead— Time for you to clear the air and do her some good, I decided.
—so Sara came to find her daughter or wait for her return. But Josh’s house proved too much. She cooked food for him to come home to— she mentions that, though never any cleaning. Meantime, he almost convinced her you were safe and they’d get you back. In her imagination— when she drank— she could see a new life stretched out. When she didn’t, it disappeared again. Meanwhile they went for walks like the old days. They talked. Not allowed when only one of you thinks they love. He might’ve murdered her by giving her hope and then seeming to take it away. But she was in the wrong too. If he’s what she wanted she should have tried harder. There’s never nothing to do— instead of going out to kill yourself, I mean. Can’t we agree on that? I’ve come to get her story straight and let us both off. Josh too—
‘Do you still have the scarf?’ I asked. I’m reporting my idiotic change of subject because it turned out Smart Bet. I had been about to make another mistake.
She was into her own thoughts, like me. ‘Mm? What? What scarf?’
‘Blue-green, a big silk square. With a decoration at the edges. You used to wear it when I was small.’
She frowned. ‘Dad must have bought it for me, I think? That was years ago.’ Irritation now. ‘No, not any more. It’s long gone. Yori, you really should come back to Oxford.’ But the mood had lightened. ‘All that past blowing in the streets!’
Being mocked was a thrill when it hinged on her knowledge of me— and I might still have told her I was putting together ‘Sara in Rhyl.’ But she hadn’t read the journals, or the scarf would mean something. Of course shehadn’t read them, dolt! Josh, having sense and being a father, would see them as not suitable for a teenage girl struggling with sex, loss, birth. For Eurwen all the courses of adult life had come along on one platter. And by she was old enough and due some re-education— I thought of the bitter morning on the beach, the chrysanthemums successfully launched but the electricity still discharging over my head— Eurwen was about to take off. She and Josh had had less contact than Tomiko and me ever since. ‘Rhyl’s got a past,’ I defended it.
