by Emlyn Rees
All of which couldn’t have been further from the truth, as Ned was actually here in Shoresby because of the largest commission he and the company he owned had ever taken on.
STAR (Spencer & Thomas Architectural Rejuvenation) had been up and running for the best part of a decade now, renovating and restoring architectural oddities from Martello towers to Regency follies, as well as performing interior design make-overs on Belgravia terraced houses and other more common period properties.
But none of these projects had come close in either scale, difficulty or sheer remuneration to the restoration of Appleforth House, which Ned was currently supervising.
The owner of the Appleforth Estate, and the man Ned had flown out to Salem, Massachusetts two years ago to see, was a Mr Jonathan Arthur. He was a fast-food baron in his late sixties, who’d decided to take an interest in his ancestral home, buying back the site and the surrounding land piece by piece, with a view to having the manor house and grounds rebuilt and restored in a faithful historical manner. Jonathan Arthur wanted to retire here to England, a country he’d never lived in, but had every intention of dying in – and he wanted Ned Spencer to make it possible.
Ned couldn’t relate to Jonathan Arthur’s desire to relocate in this way. He found it sentimental, ridiculous even. But from an architectural point of view, the further Mr Arthur had gone into the problems that would need to be surmounted before the move was possible, the more intrigued Ned had become. Quite simply, Ned had soon suspected, this could prove to be the greatest professional challenge of his life.
Appleforth House, Mr Arthur had explained, had been burnt down in 1871 by his great-uncle, a wealthy tea trader named Alexander Walpole, who’d intentionally incinerated himself in the process.
Overwhelming grief, Jonathan Arthur had put this cataclysmic event down to: earlier in that year, Walpole’s daughter, Caroline, had committed suicide by hurling herself off a cliff at the edge of the estate’s grounds.
The manor house had been left to ruin over the last century, then, as Ned had discovered on his first visit to the site a few weeks later. Following the fire, what had been left of the property had been boarded up and left to nature. Ivy had snaked through its brickwork and colonised its windows and doorways. Its interior had degenerated into a dank, labyrinthine garden of collapsed staircases and rotted beams, and its gardens had reverted to wilderness. Whole segments of the house’s walls had been appropriated by local farmers for use in their outbuildings, and entire garden follies – well documented in the paperwork Jonathan Arthur had provided Ned with – had disappeared altogether.
Ned had been dismissive of the Walpoles’ story, left cold by the human drama that had been responsible for Appleforth House’s demise. Chances were, in his opinion, it had been a Tourist Board invention anyway, or at the very best an exaggeration of a far less romantic and intriguing truth. But he’d fallen in love with the remains of the Georgian building the moment he’d seen them.
Armed with the house’s original plans, as well as a number of artist’s sketches collected by Jonathan Arthur, Ned had visualised Appleforth House as it could be, not how it had become. He’d pictured its Ionic columns restored to their original grandeur, its façade reverted to its white neoclassical glory. He’d imagined its porticoes standing proud once more, its double-pitched roof newly tiled and its wrought-iron verandah slick with fresh paint.
He’d seen all this and so much more, and he’d determined there and then to convert this vision into reality. He’d make it his labour of love and through it he’d carve his mark indelibly upon the landscape. With every ounce of care, skill and determination at his disposal, he’d vowed to restore this Appleforth House to life.
And that’s exactly what he’d gone on to do. He’d spent the last eighteen months researching, restoring and rebuilding. He’d buried his head in the past, hunting out skilled labour and master craftsmen, tracking down materials, sifting through architectural salvage and reclamation yards, as well as commissioning reproduction materials wherever the original couldn’t be found. He’d loved every second of it.
And now that he’d successfully reconstructed the building’s skeleton, he was in the process of reproducing its innards and making the house a fit home for his absurdly wealthy client to retire to.
Licking his lips, Ned chucked the teacup and paper napkin into the bin, then turned up the collar of his brown corduroy jacket – the same article of clothing with leather patches on the elbows which Debs invariably referred to as his English teacher jacket, and which Wobbles liked to think of as an inanimate yet strangely attractive member of his own species.
The dog was sitting at Ned’s feet, tied to a lamp-post, and was cocking his head suggestively across the road at the steps that led down to the beach, and swishing his tail across Ned’s scuffed steel-toe-capped Doc Martens work boots.
‘Keep that up for an hour,’ Ned told the dog, ‘and you might even get a shine out of them.’
Wobbles let out a whimper of anticipation at the attention, his eyes flicking beachwards and back, in case Ned still hadn’t got the message.
‘All right, all right,’ Ned told him.
Ned waited for a car to pass before allowing Wobbles to drag him across the road. The dog knew where they were going just as well as Ned and, as they approached the top of the steps to the beach, Ned leant down and unhooked the leash from his collar. ‘Off you go,’ he said.
But instead of darting for the steps, as he did every morning, the collie took a single step forward, before stopping dead in his tracks and starting to growl.
‘What’s up?’ Ned asked, but the dog’s only response was to shift his growl down into an even more menacing key.
In search of an explanation, Ned’s eyes followed the line of sight that ran between Wobbles’s quivering tail and his outstretched snout: eastwards along the High Street. But there was no one there.
Or, hang on – Ned squinted through his glasses – no, there was somebody, maybe forty yards away, just coming out of the Grand Hotel. And there was no doubt about it: it was definitely this person who’d caught Wobbles’s one good eye.
Ned couldn’t understand it. OK, so Wobbles liked to bark at people. He liked to chase the odd car. But at heart he was a coward. He only ever barked from behind the safety of a glass window. He only chased cars which were already driving away from him. Apart from his pathological penchant for ripping out the fluffy guts of furry toys, he was about as vicious as a gerbil.
Edging towards the animal, with the intention of slipping his leash back on, Ned watched as the figure on the High Street walked towards him, coming increasingly into focus with each step. It was a man, Ned decided. No, he corrected himself, it was a woman … a tall woman … with short blonde hair … a tall woman, with short blonde hair … dressed in a …
‘Oh, shit,’ Ned gulped. But even though he’d guessed what Wobbles was about to do a split second before Wobbles actually did it, he still didn’t have enough time to prevent it from happening.
As Ned’s hand swiped at thin air, Wobbles bolted clear across the road, narrowly avoiding being mown down by a motorbike in the process.
‘Come back!’ Ned yelled, giving chase. ‘Now!’
But it was no use. Wobbles had the woman in his sights. Or, more specifically, the woman’s fur coat: for Ned was in no doubt that was what the dog was after. Fur … be it part of a toy rabbit, or an article of clothing … it made no difference to Wobbles. Fur was there for one reason only: to be chewed. And nothing, it seemed, was going to keep Wobbles from his mission. Gone was the cute domestic pet of only seconds before. He’d now transformed into a hunter-gatherer of most singular determination.
Ned looked on with a mixture of growing horror and proprietary admiration as the collie closed on the woman with the speed of a prizewinning greyhound, before hurling himself at her with a final bark of primeval intent, and knocking her back with a thud against the Lloyds Bank cash-dispensing machine.
> By the time Ned reached them, Wobbles had sunk his teeth into the hem of the woman’s coat and was standing on his hind legs, flick-flacking from side to side like a great hairy fish on the end of a line.
Ned didn’t have time to take in the woman’s face. A flash of white teeth, a swish of blonde hair, and then his attention was back on the dog. ‘Let go!’ he commanded. He dropped to his knees at the woman’s feet and made a desperate lunge for Wobbles’s collar.
‘Get him off!’ the woman shouted.
But Wobbles wasn’t listening to either his master’s voice or hers. Wobbles was a dog obsessed, concerned only with keeping his teeth embedded in the woman’s fur coat and snarling for all he was worth.
‘Get him off me now!’ the woman was shouting down at Ned. ‘Or I’ll –’
But Ned never did get to hear the woman complete her threat, because she decided to carry it out instead. Clawing her fingers into Ned’s hair for support, she kicked out at the dog … and promptly missed, overbalancing and bringing both Ned and Wobbles crashing down on top of her.
Wobbles – probably, Ned guessed, because he had more legs to work with – was the first to extricate himself from the scrabbling, growling, swearing tangle of limbs that followed. He signalled his departure from the fray with a growl and a rip.
And it was than that Ned found himself staring into the woman’s shining hazel eyes, bewitched. The moment was dreamlike, calm. Ned felt as though his heart had stopped beating, as though – so long as he didn’t move or breathe – the moment could and would last for ever.
Then the woman’s eyes flickered fractionally and his did the same, taking in her other features: her small, slightly upturned nose, with her nostrils flaring as she continued to get her breath back; her smooth skin, burning with exertion; and her lips, half-parted…
‘I’m so s—’ Ned started to say, but even such a tiny instance of movement as opening his mouth to speak had caused them to touch, his nose brushing against hers.
‘You’re sorry?’ she cut in. ‘Good. Now would you mind getting the hell off me?’
He stared at her in confusion.
‘Do it!’ she snapped.
It was only then that Ned became aware of her body beneath his and realised that they were still lying on the floor. He scrabbled quickly to his feet.
‘Here,’ he said, reaching down to help her. ‘Let me.’
She ignored him. Slowly – and with a considerable amount of elegance, Ned thought, considering the circumstances – she stood. Then she glared down the High Street at Wobbles, who was prancing in delight outside the Postcards From the Edge gift shop, tossing a ripped piece of fur coat triumphantly into the air.
‘He’s not normally like that,’ Ned started to explain, noticing that the woman was as tall as him and that the cut of her blonde hair added a severity to her face that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
‘That creature should be in a muzzle,’ she said.
‘He was only playing,’ Ned apologised.
The woman stared at him, stupefied. ‘He practically skinned me alive.’
‘Oh, come on. It’s not like he bit you or anything.’
‘No?’ She tugged at her coat, holding the torn hem out before her like an exhibit in a murder trial. ‘What’s that, then?’
‘It’s only a coat,’ Ned gently protested. ‘It’s not you. It’s not the same thing at all. Listen, why don’t we –’ He’d been about to suggest that they go for a coffee to talk this over like rational human beings, since for some reason drinking coffee with her suddenly seemed like the thing to do.
But the woman had other ideas. ‘Only a coat.’ She repeated his words slowly, as if she were giving him time to take them back or correct her if she’d misquoted him. ‘This isn’t only a coat, you imbecile,’ she then went on. ‘This is a Donna bloody Karan. Which happens to have cost me over a month’s salary. A sum which, I might add, I’m holding you entirely responsible for!’
Ned wasn’t good at being shouted at. Like his daughter and his dog, he had a problem with authority. But if there was one thing he liked even less than being shouted at, it was being shouted at in public.
He glared back at the woman. What the hell had he been thinking of, nearly asking her out for a coffee? What temporary madness had gripped him there? So she was a looker … so what? And as for finding her bewitching? Well, he’d got the witch bit right. ‘The only reason’, he stated, ‘that your Donna bloody Karan’s bloody ripped at all is because you bloody well fell over when you tried to kick my bloody dog.’
‘Don’t you try and turn this round on me,’ she warned. ‘It’s your animal that did it and you’re to blame.’
‘Well, what do you expect?’ he snapped back at her. ‘Going around dressed up like that in some dead animal’s skin? Act like Cruella de Ville and you should expect to be treated like her.’
‘It’s fake, actually,’ she informed him, before pulling a notepad and pen from her pocket. ‘Name?’ she demanded.
‘What?’ he jeered. ‘So that you can report me to the police and have Wobbles put down? Forget it.’
She didn’t even blink. ‘You owe me the cost of this coat,’ she said.
‘So sue me,’ he replied, turning his back on her and marching away.
She yelled something after him, but whatever it was, the wind destroyed its sense. Big deal, Ned thought, as he reached Wobbles and slipped him back on to his leash, wrestling the piece of fake fur from the dog’s mouth and stuffing it into his coat pocket. She could shout at him as much as she damn well liked, because as far as he was concerned, there was nothing she had to say that he wanted to hear.
Chapter V
THE WILLIAM BENTLEY Hospice in which Jimmy’s gran was dying was on the other side of Shoresby from her flat in Carlton Court, and Jimmy biked straight there after his History lesson on Wednesday afternoon.
It was an ugly granite slab of a building, overgrown with ivy and facing out across North Beach, looking like nothing more than what it truly was: a mausoleum, a place people entered when the living world was done with them.
Either side of it, stretching over the brow of the hill, were row upon row of pensioners’ bungalows. Jimmy had got stoned here one night with Ryan and they’d counted the squat rectangular buildings in the dark. Jimmy remembered how sad he’d ended up feeling that the ghoulish blue light of a TV set had been flickering on and off in every single one. Depressing, that’s how it had struck him, all those people choosing to sit in on their own at night, surrounded by neighbours doing exactly the same thing, none of them wanting to talk.
Ryan, though, he’d just reckoned it made sense to put all the worn-out city folk next to the hospice where, chances were, they’d end up anyhow. ‘Saves on ambulance petrol, doesn’t it?’ he’d pointed out.
Jimmy left his bike out in the car park, beside the frost-pocked flower beds, not bothering to padlock it, knowing that this was no Cuckoo’s Nest and that no manic Jack Nicholson would be breaking out of here on the lookout for transport today or any other day. There was no hope here. You entered in a wheelchair and you exited in a box.
Jimmy headed inside, signed in at the desk, passing the time of day with the duty nurse, before setting off on autopilot through the familiar maze of spartan corridors and shining, polished stairs to his gran’s room.
Cancer, Jimmy thought as he walked, always cancer. It ran in the family, in the town. Sometimes he wondered if it was something in the water, some heavy metal leak from the nuclear power station down the coast. Mum in 1986, not even a memory for him there, just some old photos and a letter she’d written him the week she’d passed away, telling him she’d always love him and would always be watching over him. Like an angel, she’d said.
Next, of course, had come his gran. Jimmy had been there when Dr Kennedy had explained to her that she had leukaemia. She’d still been in the flat at the time, on familiar ground, but this new thing, this disease that had invaded her blood, it had only
confused her. It hadn’t even been something she’d been able to pronounce, let alone comprehend.
Jimmy didn’t bother knocking on the door, just went inside instead. His gran – snared in a bad dream – was breathing heavily and sounded like she was running for her life. That’s how he remembered her: always in motion, never still. Until she’d got sick, he couldn’t recall a single morning when she’d slept in past seven, or an evening that she’d spent vegetating in front of the TV.
The unkempt plumes of white hair on her scalp looked exactly the same as on his last visit, as if in all that time she hadn’t moved an inch. Only the flowers on her bedside table were different: chrysanthemums, splashes of yellow and purple against the otherwise white canvas of the room. Rachel had picked them up from the garage the day before, but still they failed to hide the reek of chemicals.
Jimmy kissed his gran on the cheek, before settling himself down on the chair next to the bed and taking her hand in his. She twitched in her sleep at the contact and momentarily opened her rheumy eyes, staring past him at the ceiling, before returning to her dreams. Her breathing became more peaceful and Jimmy hoped she’d seen him and that a snapshot of him now drifted through the fog of her mind, bringing her comfort.
Her skin was drawn tightly now across her cheeks, and the healthy flush vanquished from her once well-rounded face. Her eyes were sunken, no longer sharp. But even these changes couldn’t hide the essential kindness of her features.
Jimmy found it so easy to see past her as she was this instant and remember her as she used to be. A late summer afternoon stuck out now, when Jimmy had been eight and his gran had just turned seventy. They’d spent it walking across North Beach together, looking for pretty shells to put in the clear glass jars she’d kept on the bathroom shelf. Then they’d kicked off their shoes and walked into the shallows to skim stones.
Her clothes had always been clean and tidy. She’d been dressed in a blue short-sleeved shirt and pleated lilac trousers. Her hair still had streaks of black in it then, mixed in with the grey, and she’d worn it in a bob. They’d stood there side by side, throwing stone after stone, her with her trousers rolled up and him in shorts, with their sandals and trainers respectively lined up behind them.
