Stronger Than Skin

by Stephen May

  About lunchtime I would phone Anne, check that everything was okay, that it was all right to go back round there. That the investigating authorities had bought our story. Once upon a time the beautiful Lady Anne had argued with a drunken and a violently intimidating Dr Sheldon, that – upset and scared – she had left to clear her head and had returned an hour or so later to find that he had gassed himself in the car, that he had left an untidy note saying everything had got too much, that he had never meant to cause so much pain to those he loved, that he was too cowardly to bear it. That he was sorry, so sorry.

  Like she had told me once, it wasn’t the professor’s best work, nothing the Nobel judges would take seriously. But definitely his writing, his own words. It would do. It was good enough.

  After about ten minutes it began to rain, and I cursed myself for not bringing an umbrella. Apparently, that can happen. Turns out a man can be killed just yards away from you, that he can be turned into so much meat, while you dab at wine stains with tonic water and salt. Just a few minutes later, you can be worried about a spot of rain. A touch of drizzle.

  Somewhere not far away an owl cried out. Along the roadside the neat trees shook like fists. The breeze whispered curses. I knew then that I was in the wrong place. While the rain slicked my hair with its cold dead hand, it came to me with absolute clarity that I needed to be somewhere else. There was someone I needed to see, and I was amazed that I had only just realised it.

  I needed to find the girl who was haunted in her dreams by murdered children. I needed to find her and never leave her. Katy had been showing me the promise of something ever since we’d met and I’d been too blind to even see it, never mind recognise its value.

  The owl called again. That too-human screech.

  I hailed the next cab that came swishing down the glistening road.

  I pulled open the door. ‘London,’ I said, as I climbed in. ‘Heathrow Airport.’

  The taxi driver was determinedly unsurprised. ‘Sixty quid,’ he said.

  ‘That’s okay.’

  It wasn’t like it was even my money really. It was money won from the hopeless pool players. The poor saps who had the misfortune not to be brought up in pubs. I put my hand in my back pocket. Felt the solid rectangle of my passport.

  The cabbie didn’t ask, but I felt the urge to tell him anyway. I was going to Italy. That I was leaving the country for the first time. I was going to Rome. To tell a girl I loved her. That I couldn’t live without her. That I didn’t care what trouble it caused. And, as I said it, I knew it was true.

  ‘Like Romeo and Juliet,’ the cabbie said. ‘Beautiful.’

  49

  Brutally lit, severely white, as wipe-clean sterile as a butcher’s or a path lab. It’s just another shop from the outside, but once you get in, the Orwell gallery is a classic contemporary art space. Light without warmth. Light without life.

  But then our weekend family trips to well-reviewed exhibitions have taught me that much contemporary art seems to be about the treatment of wounds, psychic or otherwise, so it’s no surprise that galleries look like little clinics. No surprise too that so many visitors to these galleries look as lost and as helpless as visitors to hospices – unsure of how to behave. Should they frown or smile? Are they allowed to laugh? Should they feel guilty that their minds drift away from the work on the walls to what they’ll have for tea?

  The private view is almost over when we get there, just half a dozen baffled white-haired types clutching glasses of wine, like they were lifebelts in freezing seas. No sign of any good-looking people flirting.

  I recognise Bim at once. He hasn’t changed. Bit heavier maybe, but then he was never exactly svelte before. He’s wearing the same kind of dark suit, same bouncer’s haircut. He is nodding and smiling at a sharp-faced older lady in front of a large canvas of a deep purple sheep in a scarlet field. All the work around the walls is like the painting in the window. Painstakingly realistic scenes rendered surreal by the simple use of inappropriate colours. They’re all right actually. I mean, you wouldn’t want one in your living room or anything, but still, they are very well done.

  When Bim sees us, he waves us over, utterly unfazed by my presence here. It’s like we’d last met just a week or two before.

  ‘I was waiting for you to get here,’ he says. He clocks my expression. ‘Amber, my charming tenant,’ he explains. ‘Mother of the delightful Jezebel. Never gives my whereabouts away, always lets me know if people come looking. Very useful.’

  His voice is still that startling descant. He puts a big hand on my shoulder, lets it lie there. ‘You look good. Maybe not quite the young Apollo of the old days, a bit squidgy round the edges perhaps, but not completely gone to seed.’

  I find that, despite everything, I’m happy to see him. I force myself to think coolly. Anne’s friend. Not yours, Mark. Anne’s. Her rock.

  ‘I was never that good-looking,’ I say.

  ‘Oh but you so were, dear chap. Completely ravishing. Clean-limbed and golden-eyed, like someone from myth, definitely.’

  Lulu chimes in, ‘I’d have liked to have seen that.’

  ‘Oh, he was really something, my dear.’

  I introduce them. ‘Lulu’s a photographer.’

  ‘Really? Any good?’

  ‘I’m not bad.’

  ‘My dear, not bad is the worst thing to be. Not bad is horrid. Bad art is fine, there’s a place for bad art like there is for good art. But not-bad art? That’s just landfill. There should be a charity dedicated to the incineration of not-bad art. They’d have my standing order in a jiffy.’

  ‘Well, then. My photos are flipping amazing.’

  ‘Much better.’ He claps his hands. ‘Send me some of your work. Any friend of Mark’s is etcetera. Let me get rid of this rabble and we’ll go back to our gaff and have soup and a glass of something lovely.’

  As we walk through the town Bim tells us about his love for Felixstowe.

  ‘This is where the real England is Mark – not in the cities and not in the rolling hills. Neither London nor the Cotswolds. Neither satanic mill nor brooding moor. Not Cambridge either. England is in the coastal market towns. England will finally die when its market town high streets do, when the sea rises enough to drown the amusement arcades. Ah, here we are.’

  Here is a honey-coloured bungalow with a neat square of lawn between it and the road. Bim fiddles with keys.

  ‘How’s the gorgeous Katy?’

  ‘Good. She’s good.’

  ‘Excellent. Now you’ll have to excuse the mess.’

  The bungalow is as warm and as cluttered as the gallery was chilly and antiseptic. It smells of roasting vegetables. There’s a coal-effect gas fire, a densely patterned three-piece suite that’s just a bit too large for the room. Knick-knacks everywhere. The paintings on the wall are seascapes, landscapes, watercolours. The kind of unthreatening not bad art you see everywhere.

  There are holiday photos on every surface. Bim on crowded beaches, Bim in front of ruined castles, Bim shaking hands with Mickey Mouse at Disneyland. In nearly every photo he is accompanied by a chubby, balding man with soft, smudged features. In most of them there is also a skinny, smiling blonde kid. Turns out this is Grace, their adopted daughter.

  ‘She’s at Max’s mum’s for a week.’

  ‘Max?’ I say.

  ‘That’s me.’ It’s the man from the photos. Plumper in the flesh than in the pictures, his eyes flicker and dance as they take me in. He is smiling, but he looks wary. He nods towards the photos. ‘She’s a handful. Could start a fight in a phone box, but we love her. We wouldn’t have her any other way. You have children?’

  I just nod. I can’t speak, there’s a lump in my throat as solid as a golf ball. But it reminds me what I’m there for. Max fills the gap in conversation with polite questions to Lulu. What did she think of the exhibition? Has she been to Felixstowe before? And I get that this is sensitivity rather than curiosity. He has spotted that the talk of child
ren has upset me. He wants to give me time to recover.

  I look at the photos again. We have never taken our children to Disneyland, and we’ve always sort of sneered when our friends went – but if I ever get the chance then I am going to make sure we go. I’ll buy a TV, the biggest they sell, and I’ll get an Xbox, a Nintendo, a PS4. The highest spec tablet. And, yeah, from now on, given the chance, the Chadwicks may spend whole mornings in their PJs. Whole weekends in front of the screen. We’re going to slob out big time. The new kid babysat by Nickelodeon.

  Of course it might be too late for all of that.

  Max is back in the kitchen making soup and in the living room Bim tells us how he saved his life. ‘Max made me see that life didn’t have to be an adventure all the time. You didn’t have to boldly go, seeking out new worlds or whatever. You could just stand and stare, it was okay to do that.’

  I find myself struggling to respond. My conversational skills have atrophied over the last week. I feel all wrong, feel that my arms and legs are sticking out at awkward angles. I run my tongue over my teeth. My mouth feels furred.

  Lulu says, ‘You have Grace and that’s an adventure surely? That’s boldly going.’

  ‘She is. It is. But I hope to goodness she doesn’t ever see it like that that. I hope she sees growing up with two dads as the most unadventurous thing there is. If, when she’s fifteen, she throws things, stamps her foot and shouts that we are the most boring parents in the world and that we have ruined her life with our petit bourgeoisie conservative stick-in-the-mud values, if she does that, well, I’ll be a very happy man.’

  I smile at this. I know where Bim is coming from and I say so. This is something I can talk about. I begin to sketch out my own beautifully placid family life. After a minute or two, I stop. He’s not exactly yawning but he might as well be.

  ‘Dreams, farts and families,’ says Lulu.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘Your own are endlessly fascinating, other peoples… well, not so much.’

  ‘I was listening,’ says Bim. ‘I was rapt.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Course you were.’ They both smile.

  Max pops his head back into the room. ‘I need to nip out. A cumin seed crisis. I’ve turned everything off. Don’t touch anything.’

  Lulu is standing looking out at the streets.

  ‘There’s absolutely no traffic,’ she says. ‘None.’

  ‘Another good thing about living here. And it’s not too quiet. Not usually. Felixstowe hasn’t quite escaped the endemic sadness shared by all the former resort towns of England, but the presence of an active deep-water port and its proximity to bigger places like Ipswich and Colchester means it isn’t entirely desolate. The town still has some sort of purpose. A dock town, a dormitory town and a retirement town. Three pretty good uses for a town in the modern era. Rents are inexpensive, there are decent schools and people here are surprisingly up for buying art.’

  Lulu turns from the window and sits in the armchair opposite. Bim looks at me expectantly, gives me the signal that it’s time for business.

  ‘Bim. Do you know where Anne lives?’ I say.

  ‘I do.’ There is a long pause. ‘But to be honest Mark, I’m reluctant to give her address to you.’

  ‘I need it, Bim.’

  ‘Well, yes, if you’re to escape justice, then you probably do. But thing is – Anne has at least faced up to her responsibility.’

  ‘It’s not about me, Bim. It’s about being able to watch my kids grow up. About being a part of their lives.’

  ‘I would say that’s still about you, Mark. The kids will manage.’

  I can hear Katy’s voice telling me the same thing, that everyone will be fine without me.

  Now Bim sits silent, his back resting against the wall, his eyes closed as if he is listening to far off music.

  ‘You can really hear the sea from here,’ says Lulu.

  Bim raises his head, sits forward, rests his fleshy face on his lumberjack hands. He drinks his wine, puts big arms on his big, square rugby players’ knees. ‘Philip wasn’t a good man, I know that,’ Bim says. ‘Unkind, unreliable, utterly self-absorbed, all that. But neither was he especially monstrous. Didn’t deserve what happened to him.’

  ‘I know. I know. I’m sorry. It shouldn’t have happened.’

  There might not be traffic but there’s still the sea, and above that eternal murmur I can hear teenagers shrieking. Could be theatrical laughter or it could be an assault. Hard to tell.

  Bim sighs now. ‘For what it’s worth I tried to talk Anne out of confessing. Couldn’t see the point.’

  I seize on this. ‘That night. It was – it was disgusting. Horrible. I’m not denying my part in it but I was just…’

  I stop.

  ‘You were just what? An innocent bystander?’

  I want to say yes, yes I was. It would be almost true. But I know it would be the wrong thing to say.

  ‘I’m not saying that. But I was trying to help Anne. I kept quiet – I helped her keep it quiet – for her, for Dorcas, like you would have.’ Bim’s face is impassive. ‘What bloody good does it do anyone for us to go to prison now?’

  There’s a long silence. Bim looks down at those massive hands. Turns them over. There seems to be something he can read there. ‘Anne thinks it’ll do her some good.’ A pause. ‘You know she’s dying? No, of course you don’t.’

  Okay. Finally, I get it now. ‘She wants to put her house in order?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Don’t tell me she’s got religion?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s possible.’

  Shit. It’s hard to fight faith. Eve was the only real believer I’ve ever known well. And look how that ended.

  Eve had always thought there was something bigger than this world. She was convinced of it. Once, at ten, helping Mum prepare a Sunday roast, she had held out the green brain of a cabbage and said simply ‘Look at this. How can anyone say there’s no God?’ It was true when you looked at something closely, saw it in all its intricacy – and when you heard the belief in Eve’s voice – then it did seem hard not to think there was some divine intelligence behind it all. You stepped back into the real world in all its randomness and the idea of a divine plan seemed ridiculous again.

  ‘Just let me talk to her, Bim.’

  ‘That’s all you’re going to do? Talk?’

  I can feel sour heat rising in me. ‘Yes, of course that’s all I’ll do.’

  But I know that I will do more if I have to. I’ll talk to her, yes, but if necessary I’ll also beg her. Beseech her. What else can I do? What does Bim think I’ll do? Bim’s expression is calm. Steady.

  ‘I won’t hurt her,’ I say.

  Still Bim says nothing. Keeps his eyes on me. What else does he want? I can’t say anything more. If he doesn’t believe me, he doesn’t believe me. Anyway, is it true? What if Anne is determined to refuse my talking, my begging, my beseeching? What will I do? I don’t know exactly, but I know I can’t trust myself to stay rational. Bim might be right to be hesitant.

  Lulu says, ‘I won’t let Mark do anything bad.’

  ‘You think you could stop him? He can be quite determined can our Mark.’

  ‘Not as determined as me.’

  Bim looks at her for a long minute. He looks back at me. ‘But Anne – she’s still in my gang too, you know. Like you are, Mark. I want her to prosper.’

  He seems to come to a sudden decision. He sighs again, passes his big bouncers’ hands over his eyes, and he gives an address. It’s an impossible one.

  ‘Cambridge, eh?’ says Lulu. ‘You know I’ve never been there.’

  It’s like a fist to the gut. I feel rage building, a physical force inside me, the first stirrings of a hurricane. I force it down. Swallow, breathe, count to ten slowly in my head. I get to three.

  ‘Bim. Why are you doing this to me? She’s not still in Cambridge. She sold that house years ago.’

  Bim shrugs. ‘
That’s where she is. She did try to sell the house but it was 1990, the year boom became bust if you remember. Sale fell through. She went abroad for a few years, like you did funnily enough, rented the house out. Then she came back.’

  ‘But I checked. I googled her.’ I can hear the whine in my voice.

  ‘Oh well, if you googled her…’ says Lulu.

  ‘But you probably didn’t use her married name, did you?’ says Bim. ‘Anne Sheldon is Anne Thibaud now. Monsieur Thibaud was some kind of French advertising executive I believe, but anyway he hasn’t been on the scene for years.’

  Now we hear the sound of someone at the door. Max is back. He goes straight down the hall towards the kitchen. He is singing something vaguely operatic but which I don’t recognise.

  ‘What have you told Max about me?’ I say.

  Bim smiles. ‘Oh just that you’re a friend from Cambridge days down on your luck, needing money to take your hot new girlfriend on holiday somewhere nice. You’re worried she’ll chuck you otherwise, being, you know, so much younger and prettier than you are.’

  ‘I like this story,’ says Lulu. ‘But you should know, how realistic is it, really? I’m way out of Mark’s league. He’d never get a bird like me.’

  Bim smiles. ‘No, princess, it’s possible. Love makes blind fucking idiots out of everyone.’

  Lulu frowns. Bim is handing me something. The key to Anne’s house.

  ‘In case she won’t open up voluntarily,’ he says. ‘Which is definitely a possibility. Hung onto it twenty-odd years. God knows why.’

  I don’t say anything, just slip it into my pocket. There is a brief moment of heavy silence before Max is back in the room.

  ‘Grub’s up,’ he says.

  50