by Emlyn Rees
When Jimmy spoke next, he tried not to make the words sound rehearsed, although they were. Instead, he tried to make them sound as if they’d come from his heart, which they had. ‘The view of the sunset’s much better from over by the cliffs,’ he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the sky, like he wasn’t really talking to her at all, like he was simply telling it how it was. ‘There aren’t any buildings in the way there. Not like here or down in the town. In the last few seconds before the sun goes down, you can look out to sea and watch the darkness sweep towards you across the bay.’
He still couldn’t bring himself to look at her. He couldn’t bear the thought of carrying her expression around with him for the rest of his life if she were to turn him down on the offer he was about to make. He picked up his gym bag and threaded his arms through its straps, so that it hung squarely on his back. ‘I could show you,’ he finally plucked up the courage to say, ‘if you like …’
His whole body stilled.
‘Why not?’ she said.
Jimmy could have kissed her then, as he turned towards her. But then he could have kissed her always.
Verity was kneeling on Ryan’s old black leather jacket and Jimmy was lying flat on his stomach on the thick spongy turf at her side. It didn’t bother him, the dampness of the ground or the chill of his skin beneath his Placebo sweatshirt. He was glad he’d been able to do something for her, the same as he was glad that she’d teased him about being a lot more gallant in real life than when he’d been dressed up as Leon Jacobson and acting the villain earlier on.
This is our cinema moment, Jimmy was thinking now, happy to run with the idea that this was their first date, rather than what he most feared: that it could equally be their last.
Here they were, the two of them, side by side, staring at the greatest widescreen of them all. They were mere feet from the edge of the cliff and they were overlooking a view that had never failed to affect him. This is how kings must have once felt, looking down from their castle walls over their kingdoms. That’s what Jimmy had always thought whenever he’d been up here before. Only today the thought didn’t stop there. Because today, he had a queen with him and that made him a king.
He breathed in deep, as if by so doing he could capture the very essence of the moment and make it all a permanent part of himself. But the salty air hit heavy against the back of his throat like a rebuke. And so he settled instead for enjoying the moment as it was now.
He let his eyes wander the bay below. Over in the steep stone-walled harbour, the tide was on its way in but had yet to reach the fishing boats and sailing school dinghies, which remained slumped on their sides with their keels and hulls exposed to the air, glistening like sharks.
‘Watch now,’ Jimmy said as, unseen behind them, the sunlight melted away on the western horizon and darkness spread slowly towards them across the sea from the east.
Verity opened her mouth, but no words came out. The darkness continued to sweep forwards, snuffing out the silver light on the crest of each wave as it went. It was like watching a giant blackout blind being drawn across the bay. Jimmy watched as Verity’s own features grew pale like a statue. She turned her head to track the darkness as it reached them and flowed inland, like a great grey wave, slowly draining the colour from everything it touched.
He loved her for her reaction. He loved her for her awed expression, because it meant that she felt the magic of this place, too. He loved sharing this with her, second by second, because it allowed their heartbeats to synchronise and allowed them, for a fleeting moment, to become one.
‘It gets so cold so quick,’ Verity said a few minutes later, placing the back of her hand against Jimmy’s neck as proof.
She was shivering in the fading twilight and he realised he was, too.
They both stared up at the lilac moon and watched as the first of the night’s stars became visible. Jimmy looked at Verity’s face, the way it was tilted upwards as if in prayer. He felt something so intimate between them that he almost leant forward to kiss her. But he held back. ‘Come on,’ he said, standing and picking up his gym bag, pulling out a torch and clicking its wide beam on, ‘there’s somewhere else I think you might like.’
He’d been half dreading her to say that she should be heading back home, or that it was too dark now to be this close to the cliffs, but she didn’t.
Instead, she got up and brushed off his jacket before handing it back to him. ‘Which way?’ she asked, looking around.
‘Are you sure?’ he checked, not wanting her to feel he’d pressured her into this.
She raised her arms above her head and let out a low groan, waggling her fingers in a half-hearted spectral fashion. ‘Well, I’m not afraid of the ghost of Leon Jacobson, if that’s what you mean,’ she said with a laugh.
The sound filled Jimmy with happiness. He felt suddenly light, as though the merest of breezes could lift him up into the sky like a kite. ‘Well, OK, then,’ he said, ‘let’s go.’
They walked a hundred and fifty yards south along the cliff-side path, to the clearing in the gorse at the end of the tractor lane where they’d re-enacted Caroline Walpole’s suicide.
Jimmy didn’t want to stop here again. He’d found it tough enough that afternoon, watching Verity walking across the clearing to where it terminated at Lost Soul’s Point, the same place Ryan had driven the stolen Mazda convertible over the edge. The place weakened Jimmy. He could feel it draining his energy, as if an aspect of him belonged here.
‘This is where it happened, isn’t it?’ he heard Verity asking.
Jimmy pressed on, upping his pace.
‘Ryan,’ she continued, as he failed to reply, ‘this is where he did it, isn’t it?’
It was only once Jimmy had turned a corner in the path and knew that Lost Soul’s Point was out of sight that he finally slowed. ‘Yeah,’ he told her, ‘that’s where he died.’
He swept the surrounding land with the torch. It grew wilder here, with walls of bracken taller than them both rearing upwards on either side. Using the hardened sleeve of his leather jacket, he drew back several strands of bramble, which hung across the path like a barbed curtain. His and Verity’s eyes met for a second as she passed him, but he didn’t speak. There was no more to say. Not about Ryan. He hadn’t brought her here because of Ryan. He’d bought her here because of life – because of how happy she made him when she was near – not because of death, which was what she made him forget.
‘Keep going,’ Jimmy said, walking behind her now as the path became thinner, shining the torch ahead of them both. ‘We’re nearly there.’
But Verity wasn’t taking a hint. ‘What do you think about the memorial concert on Saturday?’ she asked.
‘What’s there to think about?’ he replied. ‘It’s got nothing to do with me.’
‘But it has with Ryan.’ Her voice was earnest and for some reason he was glad he couldn’t see her face. ‘Them deciding to hold it on the anniversary of his death,’ she said. ‘In a way it’s for him, isn’t it?’
‘Is that what you think?’ he asked.
‘That’s what Clive told us all at rehearsal the other night.’
Jimmy grunted noncommittally. He’d come to the conclusion that people trying to bring something positive out of Ryan’s death wasn’t so bad. And Clive was all right. He’d lent Jimmy the Youth Centre’s camcorder again only that morning.
‘Ryan wouldn’t give a shit, ’he said. ‘But it’s all right by me.’
‘Are you going to come and watch?’ Verity asked.
They’d reached a fork in the path and Verity stopped.
Do you want me to? he wanted to ask her. Are you asking me because you care? ‘I’ll be there helping Scott,’ he answered instead. ‘But even if I wasn’t,’ he admitted, stepping past her and taking the path to the left, ‘I’d come and watch you anyway.’
Jimmy wondered what Ryan would think about Verity singing to commemorate his death. Would he really, he wondered, not give a shit? Jimmy hoped he�
��d like it. He couldn’t picture Ryan’s ghost as being sad or mean or vindictive. And if Ryan’s ghost did exist, Jimmy hoped the sound of Verity’s voice would rise up here on the wind, and each and every note she sang would touch him and soothe him and bring him closer to peace.
Leaving the tourist trail beneath them now, they climbed a second path, which sloped upwards and curved inwards from the cliff. The undergrowth on either side of them grew as thick as a jungle, forcing them once more to walk in single file.
But then they reached another clearing and Jimmy stepped aside and shone the torch there in a broad sweep so that Verity could see.
‘Wow.’
She stared at the Wreck. It was still beautiful, shimmering in the torchlight and moonlight as though it were a mirage.
‘I must have walked that other path a thousand times,’ Verity said, ‘and I never even knew this place existed.’ She gazed around, baffled, as if trying to get her bearings. ‘It must be the gorse, I suppose,’ she deduced.
She was right: all around the flat, rocky clearing, which stretched from the front of the chapel to the cliff’s edge, thick brambles, bracken and dense colonies of gorse and heather shut out the rest of the world, keeping this place secret from anyone who didn’t already know it was here.
‘Some of the branches,’ Jimmy confessed, pointing the torch beam over to the edge of the clearing at the cliff-side, where the bracken appeared thickest of all. ‘Me and Ryan dragged them there to stop other people coming in. Come on,’ he hurried on. ‘I’ll show you inside.’
He started off round the splintered and hollow grey stump of a cedar of Lebanon tree that had been felled by lightning two years ago. Its giant trunk stretched away to the south, half rotted now into the ground. It reminded Jimmy of an archaeological dig he’d once visited on a school trip, where a Viking chief had been buried inside his boat.
‘This is where we always used to hang out,’ Jimmy explained, as he struggled to get the key into the padlock, ‘me and Ryan and Tara.’ His hands were shaking, on edge again. ‘Ned Spencer says we’ve got to clear out, though,’ he went on, finally slotting the key home and twisting it round so the lock popped. ‘He’s sending the builders in on Monday.’
Jimmy pushed open the door of the Wreck and stepped inside. Slipping the padlock and key into his jeans pocket, he walked over to the old ship’s battery, which Ryan had hooked up and Jimmy had charged up on the quayside last night.
Four bare bulbs lit up in series around the chapel walls, illuminating the posters of Howard Marks, Britney and Che Guevara like modern-day saints.
That morning, Jimmy had swept the flagstone floor for the first time in years, creating a sandstorm of dust in the process. It had all settled now, though, he was relieved to see. Verity’s silence lent a serenity to the room, a peacefulness that had never existed during the times Jimmy had spent here with Ryan.
As Verity joined him in the centre of the room, she turned, pirouetting in slow motion, as she took everything in: the old leather armchair and the mattress on the floor; the sticker-covered ghetto blaster at the foot of the small marble altar; the posters; and finally the pile of junk and other items in the corner, ranging from punctured footballs to –
Verity froze, her eyes locking on something there. Apprehension swelled in Jimmy as she hurried over to the corner and bent down to examine whatever it was that had caught her attention.
‘It’s you …’ she said quietly. When she turned back to face Jimmy, she was holding the luminous green kite. ‘I always wanted to know who it was.’ She glanced at the ceiling. ‘I’ve seen it flying out there, up against the stars at night,’ she said, caressing the silky material of the kite’s wings between her fingers and thumbs. ‘It always looked so beautiful. I nearly came up here a few weeks ago to see. And if I had done, I would have found you.’
She was looking at him as though up until this very instant he’d been wearing a mask, and it was only now that she was beginning to recognise him for who he really was.
‘Take a seat,’ he requested, indicating the armchair with a wave of his hand.
‘What?’
‘Please …’
Still holding on to the kite, Verity walked past him and sat down.
Jimmy shuffled his gym bag off his back and stood behind her.
‘Don’t turn round,’ he said, seeing that she was starting to crane her neck, ‘or you’ll ruin the surprise.’
He crouched down and unzipped his bag, removing the camcorder he’d borrowed from Clive. He pressed the eject button and waited for the mechanism to kick in and give him access to the tape inside. Then, with the tape in his hand, he walked to the table and lifted off the black bin liner he’d covered the film projector with that morning.
‘OK,’ Jimmy said, ‘close your eyes.’ He gave her a couple of seconds, before checking, ‘Are they closed?’
‘Yes.’
The light bulbs dimmed as Jimmy adjusted the ship’s battery connections the way Scott had shown him at lunchtime when he’d helped Jimmy rig all this up. Jimmy then switched on the projector that Scott had helped him hire and put the tape in. A rectangle of pale light appeared on the opposite wall of the chapel, approximately six feet by three. Jimmy made a minute adjustment to the projector’s focus until the rectangle’s edges became sharp. Finally, he disconnected the ship’s battery from the Wreck’s lighting system and the rectangle burnt brighter and brighter as each of the four light bulbs faltered and died.
Jimmy swallowed. Doubt. He wondered what Verity would think. He wondered whether he was crazy or not. And, right now, he didn’t know either way.
‘You can open them now,’ he told Verity and, as he did so, reached out and pressed ‘Play’ on the projector.
Verity said nothing as the silent colour images flickered across the wall. First came her face in close-up. She was smiling, trying not to laugh. Light played on her eyes like sunlight on the surface of a brook. A single shining curl of hair quivered against her forehead in the breeze and her lips rolled momentarily inwards as she fought to remain composed. Then the image pulled back to a long shot and the reason for her amusement became clear: Ellen was there, holding up a mirror to Verity’s face after she’d applied her make-up. They were standing next to Ellen’s Land-Rover at the end of the track by Lost Soul’s Point and Verity was laughing now, pulling her costume hat down on her head.
The film stopped abruptly and the rectangle switched back to white.
Jimmy said nothing.
Verity stood and faced him. Her features were bright in the projector’s light and her shadow magnified against the wall. She shielded her eyes. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. She stared at him with hopeless concern.
‘You told me last week how nervous you were about seeing yourself on screen,’ he said.
‘Oh.’ Verity turned towards the rectangle of uniform light, as if some further explanation for Jimmy’s actions might be hidden there.
‘And I wanted you to know how beautiful you are,’ he said. ‘I wanted you to see yourself the way I see you.’
In the silence that followed, it felt to Jimmy like the room’s temperature had plummeted. He felt crushed. She didn’t understand. She’d just said so herself. He suddenly knew with absolute certainty that this had been a terrible mistake.
‘But we don’t know each other Jimmy …’ she said, her eyes fixed on the wall, ‘… not properly …’
‘I know enough to want to know more,’ he said.
All Jimmy could think of was the smell of her perfume. It suddenly seemed like the room was full of spring flowers. The heady smell seemed to flow through him, hitting him like a drug, leaving him woozy and numb.
‘But you know I’m seeing Denny,’ she told him.
He swallowed hard and it hurt. His throat felt dry and cracked. ‘I know,’ he said, praying that Marianna and he hadn’t together got this wrong. ‘But I also know that you kissed me because you wanted to.’
‘It’s not
that simple. It’s –’ she began, her eyes still focused on the screen.
But Jimmy had changed these last few weeks. He wasn’t the same person who’d slunk off after giving Verity that CD. If she didn’t understand then he’d explain. He’d spent too much time with her and too much had happened between them for him to give up now. Jimmy had spent his whole life missing the boat, doubting himself and not telling people what he felt. But not today and never again with her. ‘No,’ he said, so firmly that she finally looked back at him. ‘Either deny it or admit it, Verity. Because I’ve got to know.’
Chapter XX
NED SPENCER WAS sitting on one of the tables outside the – mercifully ‘Shut Till Xmas’ – funfair on the Esplanade. It was late on Friday afternoon and he was feeling like a complete idiot.
It wasn’t his proximity to the concrete and reinforced-glass bunker crammed full of robotic rides and one-armed bandits that was making him feel this way – although, truthfully, he did hate funfairs, finding them neither fun nor fair, but instead unfailingly dull and a rip-off to boot. No, the immediate reason behind Ned’s discomfort was, in fact, what was immediately behind his behind: namely the seat he was sitting on, which was positioned inside a plastic moulded elephant and was designed for a child of no more than ten years old and five feet in height. That, of course, and the fact that a child matching that exact description had just that very second cycled past him shouting, ‘Oi, mate! You look like a right tit!’
‘Piss off!’ Ned shouted back now as the kid disappeared into the driving rain, which had forced Ned into taking refuge inside this plastic pachyderm in the first place.
The wind continued to howl and Ned growled, actually growled. He could kill Debs right now. Because it was her fault that he was sitting here in the first place. And he didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be in the Hope and Anchor pub two hundred yards further along the road. Which is where he’d been heading when his phone had rung and he’d foolishly pulled it from his trouser pocket and answered it. He wanted to be finishing off his first pint while watching his second being poured. Which is what he’d have been doing this very second – in there by the fire, as dry as a bone – if he hadn’t agreed to Debs’s request of meeting up.
