Desire Line, page 9
And then, Do not cry! It doesn’t matter. Or shouldn’t. Or not very much. She could almost believe that (or she could in a while, once she returned with something stronger in the glass). Even if Meg had been left on show as Josh’s spiteful joke, it mustn’t matter. Because the vodka’s smooth hand caressed her brow and would soon enter the chambers of her heart. And because all of the remaining images were Eurwen.
The series began in the backyard of Josh’s mother’s house; Nora Meredith clasped the hand of a white-frocked fairy, though a wicked fairy blowing bubbles straight into her grandmother’s benign face. Funfair settings followed, the Ferris Wheel and the well-remembered shot (what would she be, nine, ten, possibly less?) of Eurwen’s dangerously oblique silhouette as she leaned out… unfamiliar beach scenes… an aquarium visit. In the final frame Eurwen was attending some sort of outdoor event and still blissfully happy. Craning forward, trying to read her daughter’s expression gave no further clues. Eurwen remained a willow-limbed, wild-haired enigma beneath the tattered bunting, as did the figure in a droopy-eared dog suit that postured at her side. For backdrop, a group of beer-swilling males. But coming straight towards the observer with one arm outstretched… yes. The shoddy jacket and the brittle thatch meant only one person: Kim.
Eurwen in alien company induced… bafflement? Anxiety, for sure. But jealousy was the most potent effect, stronger even than Meg could inspire and beyond control. The bed felt both her fists. She had never been so rebuffed by any other subject: Eurwen, undocumented, uncategorised, slipping away out of the present and leaving her literally clueless. What she did know was her daughter should not be portioned out to these strangers, eaten away at, transformed into someone she couldn’t touch.
She closed the laptop and attempted to reposition it. From her bag next door another big splash of vodka joined the juice. But while she considered further moves she was drawn back up to her perch, Josh’s bed, the only place in the house from which the river was visible… a mouthful from the glass, held stinging deliciously on the palate then let surge down, refreshed her numerous dry channels while her attention wandered over the view. That Eurwen thought gorgeous… slowly some optical illusion softened its divisions and caused the murky Clwyd to appear as though about level with Josh’s larch-lap fence. Impossible, of course: it was just the tide at full, covering up the mud and at slack water by the looks of it. Call Josh? How might that progress? You didn’t trust me. I took it as carte blanche to snoop through your private world and found… we’re married, after all, separated but married in everyone’s eyes except our own. A couple who had made a daughter… the words recalled a lecture from Fleur. A couple joined in a quest to retrieve that daughter, couldn’t afford petty disputes, couldn’t behave like tin-pot, nineteenth century kingdoms, bankrupting themselves on parades and bullets.
Long-focused on the water during this debate, her individual ideas circled like swallows until they lit upon a bright yellow item in the water, bobbing off the far bank. She watched its regular roll action, suggestive less of an object about to float free than of something contained and trying to get out. And she thought Genie. Its prison a plastic drum of industrial detergent instead of a lamp, consider finding it… and the release! Golden skin swelling with spite, the pigtail slick with the dregs, spitting bubbles bigger than a little girl could blow, it bats aside branches, squelches ashore, threatening and malevolent. Silt has dried to putty on its muscular calves with the heat of frustration… she took a long wanton gulp at the glass… but she was its mistress.
Three wishes. The first was no problem. ‘I want my daughter Eurwen to be found by her father Joshua Meredith absolutely safe and well this second.’
Weasel words in the small print, though, were instantly apparent. Josh could, this second, come across a safe and well Eurwen only to have her disappear, worse, have her dash into the traffic before his eyes. Her own doing, a stupid waste of a wish… Get the first one wrong, nothing else could put it back together. Get the first right and there would be nothing else to wish for.
‘If you restore her I’ll give up the others. I don’t need to be happy or have my husband love me again. I won’t ask for the big one only a genie can give, to be able to drink as normal people do, sharing a glass of wine with neighbours. Or alone. If I’ve seen the swans flying north to Godstow across the face of a Hunter’s Moon and I hear Eurwen, she’s above me… awful music… but she calls down over it Coming now! and a brandy is all that’s needed to reacquaint me with gladness, I won’t ask for that.’ But her head throbbed as the thoughts bounced around: Evensong at St Peter’s with Fleur… the altar is the white, green and gold of myrtle, solidago and Shasta daisy and Eurwen helped…! back to Pryorsfield… ‘Ah, Sara Althea and how has the week treated you?’ Geoffrey murmurs… ‘there’s a sherry ready-poured through there…’
I won’t ask that.
Two wishes returned completely unused, so Give her back,she begged.
Around three the phone rang. He had her! ‘Josh?’
‘No. It’s Meg Upton.’ In the background the rattle of a horse bridle just dropped, bit and buckles impacting on concrete. ‘I wanted to catch you on your own. I know Josh is doing everything he can but… look I’ve been thinking.’
Don’t antagonise the genie whatever else you do. ‘Oh yes? What?’
‘There’s a group around here Eurwen’s met. I’m not saying nothing against them but—’
‘My God, what do you mean a group? Are you talking about some sort of cult, is that it?’
‘No. The opposite really.’
‘The opposite of a cult?’
‘These are the sort of people won’t speak to Josh. But just you and me, say. They might talk to us. You’re her mum, that’s gotta count hasn’t it? They’ve all got mums.’
‘Where do I begin?’
‘That’s why I’m ringing. They’re having a— there’ll be something tomorrow night.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘Jay and Neil, they’re going. Josh mentioned them, probably?’ She waited a moment before deciding to add. ‘It’s on our land, actually. Dad let’s them have it now and then— in return for, you know.’
‘For what?’
‘Work, what else?’
‘So, will it be all right? For us to turn up at this event, uninvited?’
Meg laughed. ‘Yes. It’ll be all right. Come over here, ‘bout ten.’
‘I’m not sure what to tell Josh. It’s a Saturday, I’ve just realised. So… but going out at that time—’
‘Up to you, isn’t it?’
September 28th
She would not have found it, even during the day. She would not have found it sober. By the time Josh gave in, they were huddled and chilled, needing the street lamp next to his car to see each other for a final round of sniping… then Josh’s deliberately slow movements to climb in beside her switched over to manic once the engine caught.
The pavements were already filled with the half-drunk and half-dressed. A thick knot of young men unwound onto the road feeling safe in their numbers though a glance at Josh’s expression would have disabused them. He swerved but came within inches, not braking, hand on the horn. They yelled and cat-called in the car’s wake, gestured impotently.
‘Josh!’
‘It’s just a couple of miles. Have you got your phone? I’m thinking now—’ he did take his foot off the pedal for an instant to let a female party cross their T, ‘that maybe I’ll park up in Green Fields. If Clive’s about I’ll have an hour with him, then ring you to see.’
‘To see what?’
‘What I can come and do. Or if you’re ready to pack it in… as a no-hoper, which it will be.’
‘Your friend said she will bring me home. There isn’t any point in your staying.’
‘Not your call is it?’
The dashboard clock said 10:19. By 10:30 they were into a dark lane with only the distant bypass lights to show tall hedges. A pair of five-barred gates opened up suddenly to the left and the headlights sent a pale bird fluttering panic-stricken into their path. For what felt like only the second time since leaving Avonside they braked. Josh manoeuvred the big saloon onto a square of concrete and cut the engine. ‘Come on then.’
She pulled the borrowed coat across her body as armour before getting out.
Security lights flicked on to reveal a courtyard enclosed by low structures in the manner of a villa rustica. But the occupants were shifting silhouettes, their shadows giant knights from the chessboard and an iron stamp the only sound. The spiciness of horse was a perfume that overpowered salt this far inland. Sara was about to speak when a blast of sound hit her from only a foot away, so terrifying she was back behind the car without having made a decision to move. The klaxon continued and then, bizarrely, seemed to draw breath before finishing with a strangled moan. Josh laughed.
‘It’s Crook,’ he said. ‘Best burglar alarm ever invented.’ The donkey’s cartoon ears took shape as her senses recovered. Its muzzle split horizontally, the top hinged up showing a set of teeth. Josh reached out to rub the outsized, woolly head.
‘He can break into anywhere there’s food— and don’t believe in work, do you? Chucked every kid off when he was on the beach. This way.’ As he disappeared into the dark beneath the arch, a horse snickered its welcome.
The Uptons’ house was unsightly and extensive. Numerous lit rectangles let into the weather-boarded front produced glare sufficient to make concrete containers on either side of the steps into marble funerary vessels. Curtains inside the hall were flung open and Meg could be seen struggling with the door lock.
‘You got here.’ In jeans again, the thick sweater obscured any tendency to embonpoint Sara’s imagination furnished. ‘At least it’s dry.’ Meg may have been speaking to Sara but her eyes were on Josh. Each expecting the other to reply, they following her silently into a room which, despite its barn-like proportions, was overly hot. A scaled-up version of Josh’s home was how it struck Sara: showroom-type furniture filled some of the carpeted floor space but the walls were bare, the exception being provided by the most enormous television she had ever seen hanging above an empty fireplace and watched by Clive Upton… she guessed. Caught lounging across three sofa seats, he killed the sound, slid bare feet into a pair of moccasins and got awkwardly upright. A thin brown arm shot out in an offer to shake.
‘Mrs Meredith. How’s it going?’ He was no taller than his daughter and certainly weighed less, with a ribcage that jutted through the tight denim shirt: a neat old/young man whose darting glance came from a leathery face. The hand was leathery too. ‘Josh. Meg said you might tag along— No news, eh?’ His voice, though primed for it by Josh, still came as a reminder of home to Sara. The Pangbourne Valley was in every rolling syllable. Josh had described ‘a jump-jockey not too shabby in his day but going nowhere— met a Welsh girl at Bangor Races and stayed. He’smade more up here than he ever would of as head lad. Owns half of Rhyl, now, I sometimes think. Into everything.’
Clive Upton subsided again, rubbing his hip. ‘’Scuse me, won’t you? It’s true what they say. It’s not the falling off what does it, it’s the hitting the ground.’
‘Yes. I rode as a child.’ For some reason she added, ‘Elderly spinsters ran the Pony Club in those days…’ but when Clive Upton countered with a comment about how very good a rider Eurwen was, she felt a fool. ‘Yes. Yes she is. Thank-you.’
‘She’ll turn up.’ This was completely disinterested in tone, though considered. ‘She’s been round here a bit this summer. Got a good head on her shoulders. Kids these days, they know it all, huh, Meg?’
Emotionless, mantis-like: seated beside his own too-solid daughter yet he ignored her as he spoke her name. These people… Sara felt an inner pressure building, felt it tighten deep in her chest. Any moment her impatience could become too powerful and unruly. In the blink of an eye she seemed to stand outside the person trapped in a superheated room ranged against a trio of enemies, and wondered which one of them she would go for first. Josh because he deserved it, Meg because she desired to, the father because there was least to lose by it? Those unused wishes were about to come in handy. And then one was granted without her having to ask: Clive Upton struggling unexpectedly to his feet and limping over to an almost vacant set of shelves, pouring a generous measure from a decanter into four glasses. His small hands gathered them in like the reins of a double bridle, expertly, without looking. ‘This’ll keep the cold away.’ He passed them around.
‘Josh isn’t coming with us,’ Meg said.
‘They think I’ll cramp their style.’
‘Well have one anyway,’ Clive Upton said.
‘I’m driving.’
‘Your loss.’ He put the extra drink onto one of the small tables coupled to each sofa end. Sara accepted hers and sat beside it chatting to Clive but watching Josh and Meg act a pair of acquaintances in a play by Rattigan, measured space between them. On the TV screen a woman’s desperate features were captured in close-up.
‘It’s an oldie,’ Clive motioned. They all turned giving Sara opportunity for a mouthful of Scotch. ‘Have you seen it, The Fly, Sara? No? This scientist turns into a fly. Starts loving the smell of raw flesh. Stupid, eh? You think you’re not going to bother, you know, load of balls? But when you lot’re gone, I’ll probably stick with.’
She drained her glass and placed it down softly as if made of eggshell. ‘I don’t watch much television.’
‘But you wrote for the tele, didn’t you?’
‘I wrote a book and the BBC dramatised it and then it became a film.’
‘Yeah, I thought Meg said you did.’
‘Someone else was responsible for the script. It’s quite a specialised art, adapting a book. My book in this case but any book really—’
His expression was one of mock horror. ‘Can they do that? Take your story like that?’
Still holding his gaze, her hand reached back and found Josh’s drink. ‘They don’t take it. You sell them limited rights.’
‘That’s OK then. It’s like renting? I do a bit of that. That I can get. Or breeding? It’s like you own the stallion and you make the other side pay to have the mare covered. Yeah, Josh? No foal, no bloody fee. Yeah?’
Meg Upton said, ‘I think we should get going if you’re ready Sara. We’ll be off now Dad.’ And to Josh, ‘I’ll bring Sara home.’
Josh said, ‘Sara?’
‘Mm… what?’
‘Am I coming with you?’
She shook her head. ‘Meg said not,’ she added with a hypocrite’s relish.
‘Fine. See you Clive.’ Josh was through the door before even Meg could make a move. ‘Thanks for the drink.’
‘What bloody drink?’ Clive Upton laughed at his retreating back and then must have noticed two empty glasses.
Chapter 9
‘I’m sorry about Dad,’ Meg said. The screech of Josh’s departure was dying on the crisp air as they walked along the rear of her father’s property and away from the road. Ahead of them appeared to be featureless even under a risen moon. Only the smudged rim of the treeline gave Sara’s brain something to focus on. It was noticeably cold after the Upton’s hothouse and without the Scotch, she would have been at the teeth chattering stage already. She had no idea of direction but a noticeable breeze, straight off the sea in Avonside, was now chilling her left shoulder. Suddenly she smelled smoke.
‘You have nothing to apologise for.’
‘Since we lost Mum he can be a bit sharp. And the hips don’t help. He needs ‘least one replacing but he won’t—’
‘Where exactly are we going?’
‘It’s after you get through the windbreak. Straight ahead of us now. I’ll get my torch out. You’re all right. It’s good underfoot.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘It’s a field, that’s all it is. There’s a back entrance into the lane Dad let’s them use. He won’t have people he doesn’t know in the yard. He’s racing, see. They’re security-mad in racing.’
With her night sight returned Sara saw before them an open grassy area crossed by a built-up causeway the width of a vehicle and standing a foot above the level of the turf. The spice-scent of horse was stronger than ever and she was aware of kicking nuggets of dung over the side or squashing them flat as though walking on ripe fruit. Easy progress… but she found a reluctance to get any closer to the trees ahead and her flesh inside Josh’s padded jacket began to prickle. She wanted desperately to be on the other side of the copse and to learn whatever she could from whoever was there, yet going on was another matter. Was it in the trees… or beyond, the thing she feared? She stopped. After a moment Meg noticed and came back.
‘Is there a better way?’
‘To find out Eurwen, you mean?’
‘No… no. Is there a way that maybe doesn’t go through there.’
‘Well—’
‘I’ve always disliked woods at night.’ This was untrue. She had grown up in a house surrounded by woodland and never had a problem until this moment and here. So not the dark and not trees— so why did her throat threaten seizure and dampness start in her clothes… her hair?
‘Um-m—’ if exasperated, Meg did a good job of hiding it, ‘It’ll be OK really. It’s not a proper wood. It’s just a shelter belt for the grazing. The path goes straight in and out again. No need to be scared.’
‘I understand.’ She was faced with blankness solid as a wall and as they had closed with it, a terrible void beckoned. Her mind labelled it deeper than black. Which was impossible. Blinking rapidly introduced a shower of brilliant speckles, hallucinatory, of course, yet this nothing suddenly housed wraiths, throwing off bright droplets as a fur pelt throws off water.
