by F. G. Cottam
‘You’re prepared to discard me, just like that.’
Thankfully, so far, he had kept his voice down. He must be aware, she thought, of the people passing behind him on the street. And Jack might be indifferent a floor above, but he was not deaf. ‘I explained on the phone. I cannot jeopardise my family for the sake of a fling. Find someone more suitable. Seek out someone your own age. God knows, Robert, you are eligible enough. They’ll be queuing around the block.’
‘I want you.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘It didn’t used to be.’
‘Robert!’ She whispered his name fiercely. ‘You sound like a child. Stop it. Please go away.’
‘It’s too late. You’re an addiction, Lillian. I crave you like a drug. I can’t stop now and if you are honest with yourself, you will admit that you feel the same way and have since the very start. We answer a compulsion in one another. Together, we fulfil a need. It’s fate. You and I were meant.’
‘Stop it.’
Jack listened to this exchange from the turn on the landing of the stairs. His skin had pricked with shock at what he was hearing. There was a buzz in his ears through which the whispered words carried like radio interference. His skin had covered in coarse goose flesh. His mouth had gone completely dry. He rubbed his arms, shivering. His mum was going to bed with the man in the bike leathers. He thought that he might be in shock. This was much worse than the way he had felt when he had been bashed up and robbed on the bus. It was much worse than how he had felt, coming around in the hospital. At least then Dad had been at his side.
‘Mum,’ he said to himself. He shaped the word with his lips but no sound came out. There were tears in his eyes, running down his cheeks. In a moment he would have to sniff and they would hear him. He began to climb the stairs, to creep away, aware of which steps would betray him with a creak if he stood on a particular point in their width. He did not need to listen to any more of the conversation at the door. He had learned all he wanted to know. He had learned much more than he wanted to and the knowledge was awful.
He thought that he knew the man from somewhere. He was called Robert. Jack sat on his bed with his head in his hands. He sniffed up the snot that had blocked his nose when the tears had come. He felt such an overwhelming sadness at the thing he had just discovered lost that he did not know what to do. His mum was not the person he had thought she was and his dad had been deceived. He frowned and reached for a book from the shelf above the bed where he put them once they were read. He took a volume from four stacked side by side, all with the same motif printed on their spines.
He looked at the author’s picture on the back of the book and there was the man in the bike leathers carrying the flowers he had a few minutes earlier opened the door to.
He had looked familiar because he was. He was Robert O’Brien. He had written the Casey Shoals series. Jack had read them all the previous autumn, five books in a fortnight about the boy given a secret formula by his scientist father that ruthless aliens were pursuing him to steal.
The formula was for the Strength Serum. Instead of meekly handing it over, Casey secretly concocted and drank the stuff and so gained the power to defy his alien enemies. Jack had enjoyed the Casey Shoals books. They had spoken to him in a voice he knew. Truth be told, he had devoured them. He would have gone so far as to say that O’Brien was one of his favourite authors.
He groaned. Their family had been about to begin a new life. His dad was away looking at a fantastic place at the seaside they had thought about moving to. They had been about to embark on the family adventure of a completely new life on the coast with all sorts of new sights to explore and activities to enjoy. He had been about to escape that desperate shit-hole of a school. What would happen to them now? He threw the book at the wall and lay down on the bed and put his pillow over his head half wanting the world to end, half thinking that it already had.
At the front door, Robert put down the bouquet. His motorcycle was behind him on the short path of their railed front garden. His helmet hung by its chin piece from one handlebar. The machine ticked, the big engine cooling, the whole of it gleaming with a showroom finish. He stood in his leathers, the jacket halfway unzipped, a St Christopher medal hanging from a thin silver chain against his tanned upper chest, his long hair luxuriantly splayed across his shoulders and the look of a puppy beaten and neglected by a cold mistress in his eyes.
Lillian did not think that she was cruel. She thought that she had been stupid and deceitful and dreaded the price she increasingly suspected she would be forced to pay for that deceit. It wasn’t just her, of course. They would all pay a price; the three innocents whose happiness she had jeopardised, the three people she loved most in the world, would pay it just as painfully as she would. But it would be exacted from them undeservedly.
‘Go away, Robert,’ she said. ‘Just go away.’
He turned. He started to walk towards his bike. Then quietly, but audibly, he said, ‘It isn’t over.’
‘Yes, it fucking well is.’
‘Never,’ he said. ‘Not as long as I live and breathe.’
At Richard’s graciously made invitation, James Greer dined that evening at the Penmarrick house. It occupied a forest clearing above and slightly to the north-west of the village itself. It was about a quarter of a mile from the one road leading to and from Brodmaw; secluded, Tudor in architectural style and with a view through its south-facing leaded windows of woodland descending to the crashing surf of the coastline and beyond, under a vast sky, the boundless sea.
Outside those windows was a roughly flagged area much too large and venerable to have been described as a patio. And it was there that James stood, at a quarter to seven, with a large single malt whisky in his hand, swirling his drink, chinking the half-melted cubes of ice chilling it, pondering on whether every visitor to Brodmaw was treated with the same distinction he was enjoying. It seemed highly unlikely.
He had been introduced to Richard’s wife a few minutes earlier, on his arrival. She was in the kitchen now. Elizabeth Penmarrick was tall and dark and slender and very beautiful in a long-haired, Liberty-print-dress kind of way that made James think of female film stars and pop singers from the 1970s. There was a dreamy grace about her that made her seem slightly from another time. It could not be the drink that gave him this impression, he knew, since the whisky he sipped at was his first. It was elusive but there, like the vague quality of rock star dishevelment her husband possessed.
Perhaps they were in for a joss-stick-scented night of dipping over the fondue pot to a soundtrack on the stereo provided by the Seekers and Joni Mitchell. Then as midnight approached, Richard would put on Hendrix or the Doors and reach for his bongos as Elizabeth put the jewelled cocaine box on the coffee table. So much, he mused, for the sacred values of Little England.
Smiling to himself, he turned to address Richard, who was staring out over the empty sea. He said, ‘I was crass enough to comment on the view from the picture window of the Leeward. Charlie Abraham was diplomatic about it. But words fail a vista like that miserably. And yours is even more spectacularly beautiful.’
‘One never tires of it,’ Richard said. ‘The familiarity never dulls the impact.’
‘Your family have always lived here?’
‘Primogeniture, James. It’s the feudal rule or custom by means of which the oldest male heir inherits. I have a somewhat disgruntled younger brother. But this house has always been in the ownership of my family, yes.’
‘When was it built?’
‘Henry the serial monogamist was on the throne of England. Thankfully he never came here. He might have liked the house and he tended to appropriate that which he took a shine to.’
James said, ‘Like he did Hampton Court.’
‘You’re a history enthusiast?’
‘Research has made me one. I’ve been working for years on the prototype of a computer game set in medieval Europe.’
‘What�
�s the point of the game?’
‘Survival is the objective, essentially. You have to survive religious pogroms, plague, martial conflict, court intrigue, all the usual stuff.’
‘No witchcraft?’
‘I’ve kind of avoided witchcraft. Once you get into torture and drowning and burning at the stake, you’re into graphic horror. I want to encompass the teen market, where the game will provide a learning experience.’
‘Teaching by stealth?’
‘I just think games are better if they increase the knowledge and promote the curiosity of the player.’
‘Spoken like a true father.’
‘Well, I am one. So guilty as charged.’
Richard turned to face him. ‘You must wonder why I invited you here, knowing nothing about you.’
‘I had wondered that, yes.’
‘I’m a father too. Our daughter, Megan, is away on a school trip this week. She is eleven and artistically inclined. She is a huge fan of Lillian Greer’s illustrative work. Lillian Greer is your wife.’
‘How did you know that?’
‘When Charlie Abraham described the guest looking to buy a residential property in the locality, I recognised the name and description from that piece published last autumn in the Telegraph magazine.’
James remembered the piece. Essentially it had been a profile of Lillian. It had coincided with the launch on DVD of an animated series that had done well broadcast on the BBC. They had debated whether it was ethical to include their children in the article. But it had not been much of a debate; it would have been odd for Lillian to have discussed her family life, while deliberately neglecting to mention 50 per cent of the family that life concerned.
The kids had anyway been thrilled to read about themselves and see themselves in the family portrait the photographer from the Telegraph took. They thought their mum was famous. To a modest extent, James had to admit that they were right. He was as proud of her achievements as they were. Her public profile, the fact of it, was an inevitable consequence of her success. But he thought Richard Penmarrick the possessor of a very good memory to have made the connection.
‘Great,’ he said ruefully. ‘I’m invited to dinner by the lord of the manor because I’m married to Lillian Greer.’
Richard took a step forward and reached out and squeezed his shoulder. ‘Not at all,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘We’re delighted to have your company and should our little community fit the bill, we’ll be delighted to welcome the Greer family in its entirety.’
‘Because you can always use fresh blood,’ James said.
‘You’re learning,’ said his host. ‘Shall we go in?’
The fondue set was conspicuous by its absence at the dinner table. The Penmarricks dined somewhat formally. There was no 1970s-type running buffet to complement Elizabeth’s personal style. There was a long oak table with candelabra and heaped bowls of decorative fruit and silver cutlery set on starched white cloth. They ate lobster tart for an appetiser and the main course was venison served with vegetables they had grown in their own plot. The vegetables were rather fibrous and lacked sweetness and James fancied he could taste in their wilted quality the damage done the soil here by the salt. But the venison was excellent, strong and succulent and served with a garnish of pine nuts and liquorice sauce.
There was music and it was from the 1970s. It was the English folk-rock band Fairport Convention, their late singer Sandy Denny interpreting laments and sea shanties in her uncannily perfect voice. The volume was turned low and between tracks, in pauses in the conversation, James could hear the crash of the surf on the rocks far below, carried on the southerly wind. His last exposure to the singer’s voice had been that brief snatch of song on the study radio in Bermondsey and had seemed eerily wrong. Here, it seemed entirely fitting.
He would have put Elizabeth Penmarrick at about thirty-five. That would have made her a toddler at the time of Sandy Denny’s death. Perhaps the music was her husband’s choice, though he thought Richard could be at most only a decade older than his wife. They were very relaxed company, despite the splendour of their table and the austere grandeur of their house.
Richard said, ‘Have you seen any properties you like?’
James had not, in truth, been greatly spoiled for choice. He had not been able to liaise with an estate agent prior to arrival because none had represented properties in the area. He had seen two unoccupied houses he had liked. At least, he had liked them from the outside. He had been able to establish with Charlie Abraham that they were available to buy. But both were owned by the same local trust. He had arranged to meet a representative of the trust the following morning to see the interiors of the properties and ascertain their price. Again, this had been done using Charlie Abraham as an intermediary. He explained all this to his hosts.
‘I’ll show you around those two properties myself,’ Richard said. ‘I think you will like the house on Topper’s Reach. It has commanding views of the bay.’
‘You’re a part of this trust?’
Elizabeth laughed.
‘I’m the principal trustee,’ Richard said.
‘I’d kind of assumed it was the National Trust,’ James said.
Richard said, ‘It is entirely local. My grandfather established it in the 1930s. During that low decade a modernist architect came here, demolished a short terrace of cottages and built a granite and glass monstrosity. My father saw it as his seigniorial duty to stop anything like that being possible again. He set aside a fund to purchase any private properties coming on to the market. And he set up the trust.’
James wondered again what the source of the Penmarrick fortune might have been. He said, ‘I’ve seen no modernist monstrosity.’
‘It was fire-damaged beyond repair and had to be demolished,’ Richard said, ‘about a year after its construction was completed.’
‘I presume with the offending architect inside?’
‘Sadly, no, he was up in London at the time, involved in some professional act of civic desecration.’
Ancestral portraits decorated the dining room walls. And there were the heads of deer with splendid spreads of antlers mounted on shield-shaped slabs of wood. James assumed those predatory subjects of the portraits on the walls had been responsible for turning these unfortunate beasts into trophies. After a chase across Bodmin Moor, perhaps, their shrill horns orchestrating the hunters’ bloodlust as they galloped after their prey through a Cornish mist.
Sandy Denny was singing ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes?’. It was her own composition, probably her sad and wistful masterpiece. Elizabeth was listening to the song seated on the other side of the table from where James sat, the light going now as the sun descended through the windows of the room looking out over the sea, her hair a russet halo in the last of it.
As if aware of his scrutiny she glanced up at him and smiled. ‘Do you like folk music, James?’ It was the first time she had addressed him by his name.
‘I do,’ he said truthfully. ‘I like the older stuff like this and June Tabor. I also like the newer singers such as Kate Rusby and Kathryn Tickell and Cara Dillon.’
‘All women, I can’t help noticing,’ Richard said.
In his breast pocket, James’s mobile, set on silent, began to vibrate. He looked at the number calling. It was Jack’s. ‘Please excuse me,’ he said.
‘Of course,’ the Penmarricks said in unison.
In the high vaulted vestibule beyond the dining room, the west-facing windows were decorated by stained glass. In the orange strength of the descending sun, mirrored against the polished wood of the walls, the effect was kaleidoscopic and spectacular. In his anxiety over his son, James barely noticed it.
‘Jack? What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ Jack said. He sniffed. ‘I love you, Dad. That’s all. I love you.’
‘What’s happened? Is it the injury? Christ, you’re not bleeding?’
‘No.’
Jack was crying. James was tor
n between relief that the patchy reception here had allowed the call to come through at all and worry at the substance of it.
‘Is your mum there?’
‘She’s downstairs.’
‘If something is wrong, Jack, speak to your mum. Please. If anything is wrong, just tell her.’
‘Nothing is wrong, Dad. I just want you to know that I love you.’ Something hitched in his throat. To his father, it sounded like grief.
‘I love you too, son. Promise me nothing is wrong?’
There was a silence. Then, ‘I promise.’
When James re-entered the Penmarricks’ dining room, coffee had been served and the Fairports had been replaced by Julie Fowlis. James recognised the song as one from her first album, Mar a Tha Mo Chridhe. The title in translation was As My Heart Is. Probably because the singer was from the Western Isles and sang in Gaelic, he was reminded of the standing stones on the plateau above them that he had gone to look at the previous day. Seriously concerned about his own son, he was reminded of the girl he had seen up there alone. She could not have been more than ten years old.
‘Do you like this album, James?’ The question came from Elizabeth Penmarrick. The ice seemed to have been broken between them by the unexpected warmth of a shared and fairly esoteric taste in music.
‘It reminds me that I visited your circle of standing stones yesterday. I saw a little girl up there, in school uniform in school time, quite alone.’
Richard had just poured coffee for James. He paused for a beat with the pot still poised in his hands. ‘Are you sure? We only have two schools in Brodmaw and both are vigilantly supervised. How old would you say this girl was?’
‘I’d guess between eight and ten.’
‘Not possible,’ Elizabeth said emphatically, ‘not alone. All the children know their way around the village environs. This is a small locality. But she would not have been permitted to be there alone.’
‘I didn’t imagine her,’ James said. ‘She was wearing a grey pleated pinafore and straw hat. It had a hatband the same purple as the short jacket and ankle-length socks she had on.’
