There isn’t a house in Kiddington that isn’t cracked. They are all on the move. Often you can just fill in the gaps and forget about them until they reappear, usually a tad wider. After a while, however, a more radical solution becomes essential.
Then you have to apply to the Coal Board who will send round surveyors to have a look at your movements. If they accept that it’s all down to subsidence and, crucially, that it was caused by the presence of workings nearby, they’ll underpin the walls and redecorate the place. At least that’s what they used to do. They would also accept claims from miners and miner’s families if anyone could prove they suffered health problems caused by the dust that was thrown up by that mechanical era. The new machines, you see, used to cut at speed. There were two sorts of blade, the transverse that presented a worm to the seam and ripped the coal loose. And then there was the radial, a spinning disc similar in principle to the cutters that brain surgeons use to lop off the top of someone’s skull. They were worse for dust, because it spewed out in every direction. If you worked those machines, you inhaled dust, no matter how many masks you wore. And anyone who claimed COPD and the other ailments of the industry could apply for compensation, which was usually won, with half of it going to the solicitor you engaged to pursue your interests. Hang the miners who died from dust in the blasting era, of course. No-one mentioned them.
But now all that is gone. They did their blitz a few years ago and now, if you have a problem these days, you can go and sing. And it’s worse if you’re an owner-occupier. If, like Suzie and I, you had bought your own house, thus making you middle class overnight and the proud owner of an asset that no-one in their right mind would ever want to buy, then you were rendered almost without rights if the problem only came to light in the last few years. It happened to us.
By the time we left our beloved, improved and extended semi, we had cracks wide enough to admit a hand. We’d had the place brought back to scratch once, but there had been some new seismic movements around the neighbourhood. Those people who were still under the council reported their problems to the maintenance people, but the owner-occupiers suddenly needed new capital to do repairs. At sixty-four, I wasn’t going to get a mortgage even if I wanted one, which I most certainly didn’t. So the solution that would cost the least in heartache was the one we chose, which was Rosie and a Sundance to a new life in the sun. As Suzie will tell you, there comes a point when papering over cracks yet again is merely self-deception. Only a radical rethink can help. And now, having been in our new lives for more than a year, what started as a novel, pristine edifice is now showing its own cracks, and some of them are serious.
Thirty Nine
Suzie would have described it... - Donald makes a number of trips on his quad bike. He follows Johnny home, but never arrives. He wanders around the same area in search of clues, but finds something else and remains clueless. He realises who is driving a car and follows them home, only to be told it’s not them. He does a check via an old friend in Kiddington and learns something about hire purchase.
Suzie would have described it as being third time lucky. It was the rented car that did it. I wouldn’t have succeeded without the anonymity that the spluttering Raptor could never have offered. I only wish I’d thought of it earlier, before I’d already wasted two chances to learn much more than the mere suspicions that my previous forays had aroused. I remain convinced that there is material to uncover, knowledge that ought to be mine but is still denied me. There must be another way.
I decided I’d dithered for too long. Procrastination may be one thing, but merely wasting precious time is unforgivable, and that’s what I’ve done for too long. And who knows how much time we have left? Suzie’s project could come to an end any day. Borrowed time is a phrase my mother used to use constantly, but I never fully understood its significance until now.
I did a course many years ago that covered the relation between motivation and physical well-being. X231 was an interdisciplinary unit called Manichaeism, Ontology, Theosophy In Vulnerability Experiments. It looked at the way people with illnesses, debilitating conditions, disabilities, birth defects or broken hearts could find solace in highly concentrated, often repetitious, but absorbing activities. The theory was that these somehow generated strong motivation that fostered sufficient self-belief to mask all feelings of inadequacy. I will never forget the gardener who figured in one of the case studies. He’d already had about four mild strokes, not major ones, but sufficient to leave him partially immobile. They were generally smaller affairs whose combined affect showed up gradually. After suffering more new traumas various aspects of his person shut down. First it was speech, then hearing and so it went on. He responded to no treatment. This went on throughout the three deteriorating years of his illness and then, one day, he decided to do his own thing. He was mobile enough to get into the garden he loved and sufficiently aware to select a long hoe from the shed. He would spend his days come rain or shine, cold or heat-wave, quietly hoeing over his flowerbeds while sitting on a chair placed by his wife, often repeating each small section many times a day. That is all he did apart from take light meals and sleep, plus other minor activities, of course, and he lasted five years before the next one finished him off. He was in the garden at the time.
And then there was the strange case of the obsessive arithmetician. He spent his whole time totalling and re-totalling columns of figures. He lived in India or somewhere like that where there were no calculators. People from all over used to bring their figures to him so he could add them up, which he did with perfect accuracy and in double-quick time. He never spoke and only paused to drink sweet tea and eat cake. One day he died suddenly while engaged with a thousands column. The town mourned, but there had to be a post-mortem in case someone who had contracted an error in a mis-aligned hundreds column had returned to lace his chai with strychnine. The case astounded the medical profession, because they discovered he had almost no brain. There was a central cortex and stem, but almost no other cephalic tissue. That’s why he hardly ever spoke or moved, but he could add up perfectly.
I never thought, those years ago, that the course would relate so directly to my own life. I could write a paper on the subject now, and base it on the personal experience of my beloved wife. Poncho Suzie’s Ribthwaite Castle has quite literally become her life and perhaps has also prolonged that life. Now I have shared that life for decades and I need no more oncology consultant’s opinion to tell me that without the focus The Castle provides, she would have nothing left. Its continued success has become her obsession. It’s what is keeping her going. It gets her up in a morning and keeps her awake at night. It frustrates her, motivates her, angers her, literally - and in every sense of the word - enlivens her. And yet I still have that photographed letter from Paradise that threatens The Castle´s closure. And it’s a document that was to be circulated amongst partners, the identities of whom I am not quite ignorant and who now hold in their grasp the difference between Suzie doing and not doing the thing she loves. And, given her increasingly precarious hold on the mundane, it’s a difference I must fight to preserve.
I couldn’t let things ride. But then neither could I come out into the open. I thought of publishing the letter verbatim on my blog, but then it would have been freely available and even Suzie would have seen it. Obviously this would have been self-defeating, since someone in her position will be undermined by mere intention. The full weight of event does not even have to be applied.
I could have sought out someone in the know and asked questions, but where would I start? Do I know who might be trusted? Olga was the obvious choice, but she has disappeared off the scene. A momentary glance of her behind the wheel of Pedro’s BMW along Calle Lepanto is hardly hard evidence, especially when I’d just come from a liquid lunch at The Castle. I can’t even be sure, in retrospect, that it was her and I’ve never been a betting man, so I’m not going to speculate, except when I’v
e no choice. In any case, it has to be acknowledged that Olga had become progressively less approachable in the period that preceded her departure, so I might have found no more than a cul-de-sac had I travelled her route.
And then there’s Mick, but my last experience with him was more counselling than fact-finding. He needs a doctor before an interrogator these days, two, in fact, one for his body and another for his mind. And what’s patently obvious is that Mick is no more than some other player’s pawn, a mere lackey. And that’s probably what he always was. He probably knows less about what’s going on than I do. And what I can’t weigh up about him is his reaction to Olga’s disappearance. That evening in Paradise he was suicidal. Now I can understand that. But there was also something missing from the reaction. His prime concern seemed to be her safety, rather than a lamentation on his own loss. Now that is strange, especially in Mick’s case. There’s one rule that always applies when human beings consider their lot. Selfishness is always paramount in matters of human interest. But with Mick that evening I felt he was more concerned about Olga’s decision, Olga’s safety, perhaps, than his own loss. The more I’ve thought about his reaction, the less I’ve felt able to interpret it. He seemed more like a father who had lost a daughter than an old man denied his bit of skirt. There was no blame in his anguish.
And what’s also for sure is that he’s hardly leaving home these days. I’ve been up there to Montesinos and hung around at the end of the cul-de-sac at the bottom of the hill. The road up to Mick’s place goes past the end of the street, so I can park there and watch what passes by. The road across the end is the only way in and out of the hilltop and there’s only three houses up there. The Porsche four-wheel keeps going in and out, but I can never see who is inside because the air conditioning is always on and so the windows are closed.
But I’ve followed at a safe distance on a couple of occasions. When it leaves in the morning Phil Matthews has usually been the driver and generally it’s gone to Paradise or The Castle, but Mick has not been on board for some weeks. On one occasion I thought I caught a glimpse of Olga going into Paradise, but I was too far behind to be sure. If I was right about that, then it’s possible that the whole story about her disappearance might have been dreamt up just to stop me from trying to pursue her. The only reason for that would be that she is in possession of information that they wanted to keep from me, perhaps something that she actually wants to share with me, meaning that they have to imprison her to keep it quiet. I did go inside Paradise that day to see if she was there, but I saw nothing. The office was closed, and there were people upstairs. But the place was altogether too populated for me to risk picking a lock to get up there to check things out. When I knocked on the office door and opened it, I found none other than Johnny Squibb at the desk poring over the books. The look he gave me was not hostile, more like homicidal. After all, he wouldn’t be the type to let emotion get between him and a job that needed doing. I can sense when the insertion of my nose is not appreciated.
What really surprised me was that on a few occasions it was Maureen who was in the Porsche with Phil and Karen. They were clearly on their way to work at The Castle. The mornings in question were those when Maureen did cleaning for Suzie. It looked like a regular arrangement, but each time she was starting out from Mick´s house. Now I find that just a little unexpected, unless she had been working there earlier in the morning. Of course, I already knew that Maureen did cleaning for Mick. After all I’d met her in the cave of my dreams, down at the bottom of the house. But I never realised she started work so early. Mind you, I could be wrong, just like I turned out to be about the Land Rover, and I was completely up the wrong tree on that one! But more about that later...
Anyway I concluded I was misguided. There was no sign of Mick and no sign of Olga up on Montesinos. I could have let myself in the house again for a nose around, but I sensed I had pushed the limits of my breaking and entering, that it had been noticed and recorded, that people were already putting two and two together and that they didn’t like the look of a result of four. I had to change tack. But, as I soon found out, I was still an amateur trying to case professionals. Out of my depth again... Grade D at best on the first TMA for P112, Spanish Costa Aggressive Residents Environment Discovery. And the first mistake, my first opportunity bungled, was probably my biggest faux pas. It was from that day that things started to turn really sour, and not only for me.
I’d been at the bar again, the one opposite Paradise, on the service lane next to the industrial units along the main road. At the time I had no conscious project to follow anyone, but a subliminal recollection of Johnny’s presence in the office opposite must have implanted itself in my mind. I was confused, because a number of things that had been assumed as given since we had arrived in Spain had quite suddenly changed. I felt newly insecure, unable to trust anyone or anything. Things I’d taken for granted were dissolving to nothing. I now inhabited a landscape that felt newly foreign. I needed to find some new permanence. And for me Paradise had been a location of discovery, a place that had presented new experience and placed many other things into context. Now that context had changed, I had a feeling that Paradise again could be a key to unlock the next level of understanding. Something just might turn up. And it did, unfortunately. It was the black Porsche Cayenne again, late that afternoon.
It parked on the other side of the road, directly opposite the bar and Phil and Karen got out, just them, no Mick and no Olga. They went inside and then, just a couple of minutes later, Johnny emerged from inside, got into the car and pulled away, alone. Now when you work down the pit, you develop a sense that tells you it’s time for a shift change.
It was nearly six o’clock. At three I’d seen Suzie off to her duties at The Castle from La Manca. She had left in the passenger seat of that same black Cayenne. And who was driving it? It was no less than Phil Matthews. After they left I took the Raptor for an afternoon run up the mountains with my No Molesta stencils and spray cans, but for some reason I was overcome by a sense of depression and completely lost my motivation. I had set off with the intention of doing a dozen or so paintings, but when I arrived at my chosen site, I turned back at the bottom of the road up the slope. Somehow the future no longer seemed worth the campaign. I had planned a trip to a remote place, an area only accessible by walkers and bikers. The quad could just manage it, but nothing bigger could even approach. I had been fired up by my task, but then I suddenly lost the plot. What was the point of a campaign whose message no-one would ever see? I turned round. As I rode back through Altea, I decided I would stop for a beer. It’s a concept that always seems to generate its own purpose, ever an exercise in self-justification. I still persuade myself that it was pure chance I chose the bar opposite Paradise.
But here was something new, as far as my limited experience could discern. Johnny had clearly been on the day shift at Paradise. He was currently the one cooking the books and doing the admin now that Mick had fallen from favour. And, with no Olga around, I suppose they were also short on talent. I happen to know that once Phil dropped off Suzie in town, he and Karen would clock off from their work in that upstairs studio of theirs. Karen was now only doing fill-in work behind the bar to cover for absence, and when Suzie left she specifically said how nice it was to go to work knowing that she had a full quota of staff. So today Karen would not have been asked to do overtime. I was sure of that.
So that meant that Phil had dropped off Suzie, and then parked the car. He would have gone upstairs to finish his day’s jobs, whatever they might be, before leaving at around five with Karen. They would have driven straight to Paradise where, presumably, they were going to do the evening shift during the club’s peak hours. Now that was a new one. They were clearly going nowhere fast, I thought, because now they had no transport. Johnny had just taken the car. So much for late night photography work in The Castle...
As Johnny reversed the Porsche and pulled aw
ay, I decided to follow him. Now that’s one advantage of a Raptor. You can do things quickly. I left the beer - unusual for me! - got on the quad and did a very quick u-turn onto the main road, thus avoiding the obligatory run up the service road on the other side, the route that Johnny had to follow. So even though he was a long way ahead of me, by the time he had negotiated the slow service road and waited at the traffic lights at the end of the strip to join the main road, I was just two car lengths behind. It was probably too close. One disadvantage of the Raptor is that you can’t hide. You stick up in the air like a sore thumb and everyone can hear you.
There was one particular moment when I saw him look for longer than necessary in his driving mirror. Had it been an attractive young lady that I was following, I would have concluded that she had caught sight of the hunky bloke on the bike following her and had elected to take a longer look to pursue a momentary driving mirror flirt with the piece of desirable poking her derrière. Since it was Johnny ahead, however, I merely concluded twelve inches, something’s afoot. He was standing in a queue at one of the traffic lights through Altea town. Immediately ahead of me was a small invalid car whose low profile meant that I could stare directly at the back of the Porsche from my elevated perch on the quad. Now with tinted windows it’s not easy to see anything, but I got the distinct impression that his large head with its bushy quaff of wavy hair angled up to the right and stayed there so he could scrutinise the image in his rear view. He could see me. He had recognised me. By the time we stopped at the next lights I was another car length adrift, since the little car ahead of me had paused to turn left and had let two others in from the side road. But still I was sure I saw Johnny reach across to the passenger seat to retrieve his phone. The angle of the arm, as far as I could see, suggested he was making a call. I assumed he was not asking Mil to put the kettle on.
A Search for Donald Cottee Page 46
