Permissible Limits

by Hurley, Graham

  I peered seawards, shading my eyes from the sun. At first I saw nothing. Then came a flicker of movement, a tiny blob of colour, yellow and mauve, a child’s version of a sail, daubed on the gleaming silver sea. Even at a distance, the sail was moving fast, left to right, lifting from time to time, then slamming down again.

  I followed the footprints towards the water’s edge. It must have been a couple of hundred yards at least. My mouth had gone dry. Adam had been here, I kept telling myself. I had rights, obligations even.

  The sea was less rough than I’d expected, a boisterous little chop that broke in spumy bubbles at my feet. The windsurfer was closer now, a figure in a wetsuit clearly visible. The wetsuit, like the sail, was yellow and mauve, and her body was hanging out over the water, her back inches from the racing waves. The way she controlled the board, freeing it one moment, reining it in the next, reminded me of Smoko, my horse at Gander Creek, and the longer I watched her, the more obvious the parallels became. She and the board were indivisible, a single entity, just the way that Smoko and I had been, and as I followed her wild progress from wave top to wave top it became all too obvious what Adam must have seen in her. The same eagerness. The same athletic abandon. Except that she was younger, and sleeker, and altogether more ruthless.

  I must have waited at the water’s edge for the best part of half an hour. I knew she’d seen me because she began to stitch a course closer and closer to the beach, taking little glances as she hauled the board round at the end of each run. Eventually she cruised to a halt in the shallows and hopped off. I recognised the hair, the way it lay over her shoulders, long, dark curls. And I recognised the expression, playful, anticipatory, curious. Close to, she had lovely skin, smooth, olive, a hint of foreign blood.

  ‘Hi? Come down for a booking?’ She bent to the board and fiddled with something. The mast and sail came away in her hand.

  ‘My name’s Ellie Bruce,’ I said tonelessly. ‘Adam was my husband.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Adam.’

  Standing upright again, she wiped the wet sand from her hands. The name had taken the smile off her face.

  ‘Shit,’ she said quietly.

  We stood there looking at each other for what seemed an age. Finally, she picked up the board and held it out.

  ‘Do me a favour?’

  The question threw me completely. I wanted to hit her. I wanted to throw myself at her and wrestle her into the water and push her face way down into the sand until she stopped struggling and quietly died. Instead, she showed me how to carry the board, one hand hooked into a footstrap.

  ‘I’ll take the rig,’ she said. ‘The wind gets in the sail. It can be tricky.’

  The board was lighter than I’d thought. We walked together up the beach, the situation more surreal by the second. Little Ellie Bruce. Sherpa to her husband’s lover. Where the sand began to dry out, I stopped.

  ‘Here’s far enough,’ I said.

  Michelle kept walking. From where I was standing, the attraction was obvious. The long legs. The lovely body. How fit she must be. How supple. I caught her up, empty-handed, and hauled her to a stop. She was holding the rig by the mast and the boom. The wind began to fill the sail. She laid it carefully on the sand.

  ‘We don’t need to do this,’ she said.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t.’ She sniffed, then sealed one nostril with her forefinger and blew hard. The gesture caught me by surprise. So male. So aggressive.

  ‘So how long was it going on?’ I’d stepped around the sail, blocking her path up the beach. No escape, I wanted to say. Time to straighten one or two things out.

  ‘How long was what going on?’ She sounded careless, almost bored, as if she’d dealt with the same question a million times.

  ‘You and Adam. You and my husband.’

  She shook the water from her hair and then unzipped the top of her wetsuit. It was a wholly ambiguous gesture, at once natural and provocative.

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ she said. ‘I don’t have to answer that.’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m here. Because he was my husband. Because I want to know.’

  Her fingers were still on the big plastic zipper. She was playing with it, sliding it up and down, studying my face with an expression I couldn’t quite place. Curiosity? Pity? Apprehension? I didn’t know.

  ‘Who chased who?’ I said. ‘Tell me that.’

  ‘No one chased anyone. There wasn’t any chasing. This is pathetic.’

  ‘Was it the money, then?’

  ‘What money?’

  ‘The seventy thousand pounds.’ I gestured towards the Porta- kabins, up beyond the sea wall. ‘I don’t suppose he knew about your father. All that ready cash.’

  This time there was no mistaking her expression. She was outraged.

  ‘What are you talking about? Father?’

  I told her what I knew about Bernard La Page. He was immensely rich. He’d staked the windsurfing school. So in the end, Adam hadn’t needed our chequebook.

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘About my father? Paying for all this?’ She kicked the mast of the rig. She was pale with anger.

  I stared at her, beginning - for the first time - to doubt myself. Had Dennis got it wrong? Had she raised the money some other way?

  ‘Your father’s rolling in it,’ I insisted. ‘Are you telling me he didn’t help you?’

  ‘Help me? He kicked me out, disinherited me. Not that I care.’

  ‘Why? Why would he do that?’

  Like Steve Liddell, Michelle obviously wasn’t in the business of giving me straight answers. I began to rephrase the question but she stepped towards me and came very close, her voice almost a whisper.

  I’m adopted,’ she said. ‘Did your accountant tell you that?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted.

  ‘OK, so that’s number one. Bernard adopted me at birth - and you’re quite right, I had a big fat legacy coming. But number two, I blew it by going to live with Steve. Not only did I live with the guy, I had his child. On this island, believe it or not, class matters. And the one thing that buys you class is money. OK, my father has lots of money. Lots of money buys him lots of class. Steve was skint. Steve was the bottom of the heap. My father thought he was dirt. Told me so.’

  I nodded. Her passion was unfeigned. I believed her.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘He cut me off.’

  ‘And the child? Minette?’

  ‘Her, too, when she arrived.’ She sniffed again and then tossed back her hair. ‘There’s a trust fund or something for when she’s older. But that’s not much use, is it? Not when you can’t scrape together the price of a packet of nappies?’

  I was looking down at the sail.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘If he’s cut you off, and you’re not living with Steve… who paid for the school?’

  She laughed, a short, mirthless snort that told me to mind my own business.

  ‘Does that matter?’ she said.

  ‘Of course it matters.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it might have been my husband.’

  She shook her head, more in sorrow than anger, and bent to retrieve the sail. The board lay where I’d left it, twenty metres down the beach. She walked down with the sail, reseated the mast in the board, then began to haul the whole thing up towards the sea wall. The way she did it was dismissive. Tired of my questions, this sudden intrusion into her private life, she’d decided that enough was enough.

  I caught her by the sea wall. Blocking the steps to the car park, I stopped her.

  ‘If you want to fight about it,’ she said simply, ‘nothing would please me more.’

  ‘You haven’t told me,’ I insisted. ‘Told you what?’

  ‘What happened between you and my husband. You and Adam.’

  ‘I never took a penny off
him.’

  I nodded. I’d seen Steve’s cheque. Unless there were other holes in our accounts, she was probably telling the truth.

  ‘Forget the money,’ I said. ‘What about the rest of it?’

  ‘What rest of it?’

  ‘The photo you sent him, gave him, whatever you did.’ ‘Photo?’ She looked totally blank.

  ‘It was taken here,’ I said, nodding past her at the beach. ‘You were wearing a wetsuit. It was obviously last summer.’ I quoted the inscription back at her, word for word.

  ‘And you’ve seen it? This photo?’

  ‘Seen it? I’ve got it.’

  She hesitated a moment, made to say something, then shook her head.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ she said wearily.

  She pushed past me. I didn’t stop her.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me?’ I shouted. ‘Why don’t you just admit it?’

  She ignored the question, mounting the steps, upright, graceful, shadowed by the flapping sail. Only when she was back beside the Portakabins, screwing a length of hose to a standpipe, did we bring the conversation to an end.

  ‘Tell me about Adam,’ I demanded. ‘Tell me why you did it.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘But why not? Tell me why not.’

  She looked at me anew, as if I’d only just appeared, then she shook her head again, a gesture of resignation.

  ‘I’m sorry about your husband,’ she said quietly, ‘but I’m the last person you should blame.’

  Chapter nine

  There was a long fax waiting for me back at Mapledurcombe. It was from Harald. I sat in Adam’s study, exhausted after a night without sleep, reading it.

  Harald was back in Florida. He’d made a six-week hole in his schedule and he wanted, he said, to use it to my advantage. A proper conversion course on the Mustang needed concentrated flying. The odd hour over the Isle of Wight, weather permitting, offered no real basis for anything, Far better to have him buy me a ticket to the States and put me through the real thing. The late spring would be perfect. He had access to a dual Mustang. Minimum, we’d be talking thirty-five hours in the air. After maybe ten, I’d be going solo. After another ten, I’d be first-stage aerobatic. There might even be scope for some formation work.

  In a brisk postscript, he added that he’d been talking to Ralph Pierson. The old man’s archival researches had impressed him. Ditto his affection for me. Here was a guy whose judgement he could respect. And in Ralph’s view Old Glory would truly thrive with a female pilot at the controls.

  I sat back, revolving Adam’s chair from side to side, the fax in my lap. Theoffer was hugely tempting. My encounters with Steve Liddell and Michelle in Jersey had, once again, knocked the bottom out of my world. I felt bewildered and betrayed, the ugliest possible combination, and the longer I thought about it, the more claustrophobic my sense of despair became.

  As Dennis had pointed out when I’d arrived on his doorstep, tearful and frustrated, there was no hard evidence, nothing solid to corroborate my inner conviction that Adam had indeed been having an affair. But that wasn’t the point. I’d been there. I’d talked to Steve and Michelle, looked them in the eye, and the fact that neither of them had denied my allegations was all the proof I needed. Two days ago, I’d said goodbye to the man I loved. Standing in the churchyard, watching the Mustang bank away to the south, I’d assumed sole ownership. Now, regardless of what Dennis said, I knew that I’d been nothing but a shareholder, entitled - at best - to only part of him.

  Harald’s fax and phone number were on the top of the first sheet. It was all I could do not to lift the telephone, and dial his number, and simply say yes. Dennis, I sensed, didn’t quite approve of Harald, but all his talk of arms dealing and merchants of death seemed to me to be irrelevant. Not once had Harald let me down. Not once had he been anything but steadfast. He could be pretty pushy sometimes, and he certainly wasn’t one for shared decisions, but that - I now suspected - came with the territory, a price worth paying for the knowledge that he’d always be there.

  I could hear Andrea cruising up and down the hall with the Hoover. In all fairness, the decision to go would be as much hers as mine. Leaving her on her own to cope with the first couple of weeks of our American guests, especially when she’d never done it before, was a big imposition.

  I caught her at the end of the hall, respooling the flex. I sensed at once that she’d already read the fax.

  ‘I thought it was a booking,’ she admitted. ‘Sorry.’

  I let it pass. Andrea had always been nosy about my private life.

  ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘Go,’ she said at once. ‘It sounds marvellous.’

  ‘I know, but what about the first lot of guests?’

  She flicked her hair back and shrugged, a typical piece of theatrical indifference. That she could cope, I didn’t doubt. But did she want to take it on single-handed?

  ‘No problem,’ she said. ‘Six weeks isn’t forever. And anyway, I’m sure you’ll be back for your birthday.’

  My birthday falls on 10 June. Back home, my parents had always made the point of celebrating family occasions with some style, and knowing that Adam had continued the tradition, Andrea was equally keen to do her bit. Only a couple of days ago, she’d told me that she’d been laying plans. I’d had a bloody awful time of it. A slap-up birthday would put me back on the rails. This gesture, wholly unexpected, had touched me deeply and now I reached up and gave her a peck on the cheek.

  ‘You’ll go?’

  ‘I’ll certainly think about it.’ I looked at the fax again. ‘He wants an answer within twenty-four hours.’

  I tussled with the decision for the rest of the evening. In some respects, so soon after the memorial service and all the other traumas, it felt hopelessly premature, even irresponsible, yet another part of me ached to get on a big fat jet and wake up in another continent. Distance solves nothing, of course, but learning to fly a Mustang was something else entirely, and by next morning I’d made up my mind to go. When I phoned Harald, it must have been in the middle of the Florida night. For once, he sounded groggy.

  ‘Thanks for the fax,’ I said. ‘I’d love to come.’

  ‘Great.’

  He told me he’d look into booking some flights. Tomorrow he was off to Bogota. It might be a while before he’d be back in touch.

  ‘But it’s still on? The Mustang?’

  I must have sounded more anxious than I’d intended, because he laughed.

  ‘It’s a definite go, Ellie. No turning back.’

  The decision galvanised me. Suddenly there was a huge list of things to do, loose ends to tie up, pilots to contract for the first month’s excursions in the Harvard and the Mustang. I worked through the morning in Adam’s study, trying not to day-dream too much about Florida, and by lunchtime - to my delight - I’d managed to produce a first rough flight schedule.

  Andrea had been going through Jamie’s plans for the terraces at the back of the house and all three of us shared a salad in the kitchen before I slipped away with my calculator and my aviation files to make a start on the maintenance logs.

  It was a glorious afternoon, our first spell of warm weather, and I settled myself in the gazebo at the foot of the garden, checking through a list of spares that Dave Jeffries wanted to order for the Harvard. Strictly speaking, the bill was now Harald’s responsibility, but the total was less than £500 and given his generosity over the Florida trip I was loath to keep knocking on his door for yet more cash. With his £160,000, plus the windfall cheque from Steve Liddell, Old Glory was very definitely off the casualty list and Dennis Wetherall’s news that Steve himself was beginning to trade his way out of trouble was even more cheering. Adam’s reckless loan guarantee wouldn’t, after all, be called in by the bank, an enormous weight off my mind, and when I totted up the pile of cash in hand, I realised that financially we were in rude health. The building work we’d commissioned at the end of last year had gone a co
uple of thousand over budget, but even so we had a big fat buffer against whatever turbulence lay ahead.

  I scribbled a note authorising Dave to go ahead with the order for the spares and then sat back, enjoying the sunshine. It was lovely and warm in the gazebo and the sun’s heat was releasing all the rich, sharp, resiny smells that had been locked away by the winter. I must have gone to sleep because the next thing I remember was a shadow drifting across my face.

  I opened one eye. It took me a moment or two to recognise the silhouette standing over me.

  ‘Jamie,’ I said.

  I obviously sounded startled, because he put a hand on my arm.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think you’d be asleep.’

  ‘Neither did I. Thank God you woke me up.’ I hooked an old cane chair towards me with my foot. ‘Sit down.’

  Jamie hesitated and then shrugged. He was in shorts and an old rugby shirt, green and pink hoops and the beginnings of a rip under one armpit. The way he moved reminded me a little of Adam. He had the same grace, the same easy athleticism. Nothing ever seemed to bother him. Like Adam, he obviously had very low blood pressure.

  ‘The boss wants some azaleas,’ he grinned. ‘Apparently you know the place to go.’

  He’d taken to calling Andrea the boss over the last couple of weeks. He was working for us nearly full time now and I suspected that this was his way of keeping my sister at arm’s length. Andrea hasn’t got a lot of finesse when it comes to getting something she wants badly, though she kids herself all the time that she’s being subtle and immensely sophisticated. Jamie, to my amusement, could read her like a book.