She half expected to find the police at their door when they finally reached home, seven hours after setting off. It was impossible that they could be, impossible that any link had been established between the ruined corpse and Annie Doyle, but still she squinted anxiously up the road towards their house as Vince made the turn into the wide, leafy avenue. All she could see were the usual cars, the usual trees, the usual well-maintained front gardens and glossy dark green privet hedges. Vince, recognising his surroundings, was evidently pleased to be very far from Padstow. He was silent, but he continued to behave in a civilised manner and helped Annie and Andrew carry the suitcases into the house. Michael only carried his violin in its rigid black case, and so well-established were the family’s habits that no one expected him to do otherwise.
Inside, the house smelled of temporary neglect: stuffy, and vaguely vegetal. Vince dropped the case he was holding and bolted upstairs, his long legs taking two steps at a time, heading for the lavatory.
‘Hope he remembers to come out,’ Michael said. He was a tall, thin boy, with a face that would be handsome if he were happier, and if his acne would abate. He’d allowed his black hair to grow down past the collar of his shirt and Annie thought no music school would look twice at him because of this. His contempt for her opinion was infinite.
‘He seems quite good though, doesn’t he?’ Annie said. ‘Nearly normal.’
Michael made a sceptical grimace. ‘I suppose we must enjoy it while it lasts,’ he said. He talked, these days, with an affected drawl, as if he was speaking through a perpetual yawn.
‘Okay, Mum, that’s everything.’
This was Andrew, backing in with the last of the bags and kicking the front door shut behind him. Michael winced at the noise. He sat on the bottom stair and untied his shoes. ‘You’re not just leaving the bags there, are you?’ he said.
‘I’m leaving yours,’ Andrew said flatly.
‘Oh now, don’t start,’ Annie said. ‘Anyway, I’ll empty them downstairs. Most of it needs washing.’
‘What an upheaval,’ Michael said.
‘Yes, well, never again,’ Annie said.
‘Four days of sheer hell,’ Michael said.
Andrew said, ‘Pity you didn’t stay behind,’ and then, before Michael could respond, he turned to Annie. ‘I got you something,’ he said. He delved into his canvas rucksack and produced a flat, square paper bag, striped pink and white, and handed it to his mother.
‘Oh!’ she said, immeasurably touched, even before she looked inside.
‘It’s a bit boring,’ Andrew said. ‘But the colours are nice.’
It was a crisp cotton tea towel printed in gaudy seaside colours with a recipe on it for Cornish pasties. ‘I saw it last night on my walk,’ Andrew said. He shrugged apologetically. ‘It’s not much but …’
‘Thank you, pet,’ Annie said. She was thrilled with her gift and the thought behind it but she was also aware of Michael, glowering at the foot of the stairs, so she played down her gratitude; tried not to draw a comparison by her thanks between the son who gave and the son who only took. Still though, Michael’s expression had darkened and he stared at Andrew with naked dislike.
‘You’re such an arse licker,’ he said with a curl of his top lip.
‘Michael!’ Annie said. Andrew just returned Michael’s stare but didn’t speak and Michael stood, turned, and padded up the stairs in his stockinged feet. Andrew and Annie looked at each other.
‘Are you sure he’s yours?’ Andrew said. ‘Are you sure we’re actually related to him?’
Annie gave a tight smile then swung away and climbed the stairs. For a while Andrew stared at the space she’d left behind, then he picked up his own and Michael’s suitcases and carried them through to the washing machine in the back kitchen, to save his mother the trouble.
31
So they left Formby sands and walked back to Dora’s house where Finn and the terriers gobbled bowls of biscuits then slumped in their baskets, utterly spent. Annie had the jitters. She waited in the hall for Alf to come downstairs with his overnight bag and was only able to make short, one-word replies to his sister’s attempts at conversation, so that Dora grew discouraged and got on instead with rinsing out the tea cups. And then, with the hallway between them, she began to throw words of advice from the kitchen, as if the difficult matter of leaving Finn could more easily be raised when neither woman could see the other.
‘I know this is hard,’ Dora called, ‘but if I were you I’d go without saying goodbye.’
Annie blinked and looked at her shoes. They were rimed with sand and there were sandy prints on the tiles: her own, Dora’s, Alf ’s and a peppering of paw prints.
‘Honestly, trust me,’ Dora shouted. ‘Dogs don’t understand goodbye and he’ll be right as rain here with me. You’ll only upset yourself.’
But Annie knew better: knew Finn would look for her after she’d gone: knew he’d pad to the front door where her particular smell would still be in the air and on the floor, and he’d wait and wonder and fret when she didn’t come back. She wouldn’t dream of leaving him without a goodbye. It was just that she didn’t know how to accomplish it without releasing the well of tears that she knew was waiting to spill and flow.
A creak on the stairs told her Alf was descending. When she looked up at him he smiled with careful kindness.
‘All set?’ he said. She nodded, but said, quietly, ‘Dora thinks we should just leave, but I …’
‘No, you want to tell him you’re off,’ he said, and she nodded again.
‘Pop in there now then and tell him you’ll see him soon.’
‘Will I, though?’
Alf said, ‘Sure as eggs is eggs.’ He smiled again. ‘Go on,’ he said gently, and because there really was no point procrastinating, Annie turned and pushed open the door to the big, light back room where the dogs were curled on their beds. The terriers regarded her with blank indifference but Finn sat up at once when Annie entered the room and his tail thudded a rhythmical greeting. She eased herself down onto her knees so they were eye to eye and he smiled.
‘Finn,’ she said. He moved his nose fractionally forwards as if to say, ‘Yes?’
‘Finn, you’re the best dog in the world and I love you.’
No, she thought; this was the wrong tack. Her face was wet with tears already, because she was speaking of love: speaking with her heart, not her head. But after all, what else could she do? She did love Finn. He was her friend, her ally, her comfort.
‘I have to leave you here with Dora,’ she said, and her voice was unsteady. ‘You’ll be better off here, and you’ll have all the freedom you need. But I’ll come back and visit you, I promise.’
His tail pounded the base of his basket and he ducked a little so she could lay the side of her face against the warm, flat pane of his head. He sighed contentedly and she let her tears run freely into his golden fur. On the other side of the door Alf coughed discreetly.
‘Goodbye,’ Annie whispered. ‘Be happy.’
‘Annie?’
Alf was in the room now; she could hear him crossing the wooden floor.
‘Annie?’
He reached down and touched her shoulder and she lifted her face and sat back on her heels. She was ashamed of the tears; she didn’t know where to look. But Alf only said, ‘That’s the hardest part done with,’ and he reached out a hand to help her up.
‘I feel a fool,’ she said, standing stiffly, sniffing violently and patting her empty pockets, looking for a hankie. He produced one himself, washed, ironed, clean as a whistle, and she blew her nose heartily and gave a shuddering sigh.
‘There’s nowt foolish about being sad,’ he said.
Finn rested his head on his front paws but kept his eyes on Annie.
‘Be a good lad,’ Alf told him, but still Finn only held Annie in his steady gaze. Annie looked at him and her heart filled with love and the awful necessity of turning her back and leaving, and in the end she on
ly managed to move at all because Alf took her arm and moved her gently to the door.
‘He’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘He’ll be more than fine.’
‘Mmm,’ she said uncertainly, not trusting herself to speak. On the very point of leaving the room she looked back and saw that Finn was settling comfortably onto his bed, laying his head on his paws, closing his eyes. He’d be out on the sands again later, and that was how it would be from now on – a walk in the morning, a walk in the evening: two long, wild seashore gallops, every day of the week, because here at Dora’s, every day was a Dog Day.
Two hours later Alf and Annie faced each other across a large brown teapot and a plate of Eccles cakes in a Blackpool tearoom. The elderly waitress had an indifferent manner and a mouth like a glum goldfish but the tea was hot and the cakes looked tempting. Being a tearoom, it shouldn’t have smelled of hot fat, and yet it did. Annie said, ‘Do you suppose there’s anywhere in Blackpool that doesn’t sell fried food?’ and then she regretted her remark, because it made her sound a snob. ‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘If you say sorry one more time …’ Alf said, with an unspecified warning in his voice and a smile on his face. It was true, she’d been apologising ever since they left Formby. She was sorry to drag him away so soon from Dora, sorry to put him to the expense of a B&B, sorry to be such a sad sack, silent and brooding in the passenger seat, no company for him at all.
‘No, I know, I’m sorry,’ she said, and they both laughed. She blew across her tea and sipped it. There was chatter all around them, so it hardly mattered that she couldn’t think of much to say. Blackpool was so busy! She’d thought seaside resorts were summer places, but the Promenade was thronging with people, and even though it was only five o’clock, there was an air of drunken abandonment, as if she and Alf had stumbled into a giant party. She thought about Finn – as she had every five minutes since leaving him – and then, because she didn’t want to be maudlin, she forced him from her mind and gazed out of the steamy window at the carnival atmosphere on the pavement outside.
‘Is it always like this?’ she asked.
Alf nodded. ‘Pretty much.’
‘You’d think, being November …’
‘Turkey and tinsel,’ he said.
She looked at him.
‘Turkey and tinsel,’ Alf said again. ‘It’s for folk who can’t wait for Christmas. They come to Blackpool and get the whole works a month early, for next to nowt.’
‘Well I’ll be blowed,’ Annie said. ‘Do they really?’ She laughed at the thought. ‘Trees and fairy lights?’
‘The lot.’
‘It’s bad enough doing it once,’ she said. She thought of herself and Michael and a rolled and boned turkey crown. No crackers; they hadn’t had them for years because Michael said they were infantile, so who would bother, after such discouragement? Finn had always loved a bit of turkey, but this year … well it might just not be worth the bother at all. Annie toyed with her Eccles cake and teetered on the brink of melancholy.
‘Eat up, lass,’ Alf said, sensing a bout of the blues and heading them off. She broke the cake in half and took a bite. It was densely packed with currants, sweetly delicious.
‘I can’t believe you’ve never been to Blackpool,’ Alf said.
She swallowed. ‘It’s true. I went to Padstow once, and that was it.’
‘That was what?’
‘That was me finished with the seaside.’
‘Blimey, what happened in Padstow?’
She considered her reply, considered what she could say, then only said, ‘It rained.’
Alf laughed. ‘Well, if that’s your criteria for a failed holiday, there can’t be anywhere in Britain that’s safe.’
‘It wasn’t just the rain,’ she said. ‘It was all sorts of things. Vince was poorly by then and the boys didn’t get on, but also I didn’t like being on the edge of things. Do you know what I mean?’
He didn’t, really.
‘What I mean is, standing where the ground meets the sea. It made me feel dizzy, and a bit lonely, don’t ask me why. It happened again today at Formby Point.’
Alf studied her. His eyes were so blue they seemed strange on an old man; shouldn’t the colour have faded, like his hair? ‘My Alice used to cry when she watched the sun set,’ he said.
‘Did she?’
He nodded. ‘Aye, I’d forgotten that until now. She thought it were sad, like, seeing it drop below the horizon.’
‘Well, it always comes back up the other side,’ Annie said.
‘It does. Are you done?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Wi’ that Eccles cake? If you’ve finished we can move on to stage two of Alf and Annie’s Big Adventure.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ She popped the last piece of sugared pastry into her mouth and dabbed at the crumbs on her plate.
‘That’s for me to know and you to find out,’ he said and he winked at her across the table, which made her blush.
‘Pleasant Beach?’ Annie said, repeating what she thought she’d heard. She glanced to their right at the flat, dark expanse of sand and the long, long arm of the South Pier. The noise, lights and competing smells were disorientating; they made her head spin.
‘No, Pleasure Beach, Annie.’
‘Pleasure?’ There was alarm and mystification in her voice, as if pleasure was an unheard-of concept, or he’d just made an indecent proposal. He chuckled.
‘Your face,’ he said. ‘You might have just landed from Mars. Blackpool Pleasure Beach is a funfair.’
‘Oh I see,’ she said, only relieved that they were going nowhere near that glassy, distant sea, and then, as the fact filtered through, she stopped short and said, ‘What do you mean, funfair?’ He nodded. He had a twinkle about him, an air of mischief. She felt a wave of irritation.
‘If you think I’m going anywhere near those rides …’ she said.
‘Oh come on, live life, why not?’
She was horrified that her hunch was right. ‘I’m seventy-three!’
‘And I’m nearly eighty,’ he said placidly, as if the only thing under discussion was their respective ages.
‘It’s just not … not … fitting,’ she said and he exploded into laughter, pressing a big white hankie into his eyes.
‘Ah dear,’ he said, ‘they don’t make ’em like you anymore. You’re a one off, Annie Doyle.’
‘No I’m not,’ she said, tartly. ‘I’m perfectly ordinary and sensible. Those rides are for youngsters.’
‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘We’ll see.’
She was huffy with him, although he appeared not to notice and just sauntered along the Promenade towards the noise of the Pleasure Beach; she stuck with him, too uncertain of herself to do otherwise, and at the entrance he bought wristbands at a kiosk without further consultation, then took her arm and attached a yellow neon strip, as tenderly as if he was helping her on with a piece of jewellery.
‘I’d as soon go back,’ she said. It was the first time she’d spoken in five minutes.
‘You’ll like it,’ he said authoritatively.
‘I shan’t.’
‘You’ll never know if you never have a go,’ he said. There was something compelling about his confidence and his smile but Annie was still in rebellion against the tawdry, raucous spirit of the place: the lights, the cloying mingled smells of hot dogs, honeyed peanuts, candy floss. A bass thrum of pop music seemed to enter her body through her feet and shake her bones. A pearly king on the Kentucky Derby whipped up business in a booming comedy Cockney voice, cajoling, coaxing, bullying to fill up his seats. Screams of self-inflicted fear, howls of laughter, a menacing back note of drunken cursing. Annie felt she’d walked into a gathering of nightmares, assaulting her senses and her standards of propriety and caution. Alf hooked an arm through hers and had to shout to be heard.
‘Y’see, the thing is, everybody should ride one roller coaster in their lifetime.’ He was perky and sure of hims
elf, steering her over to a ride, pointing out its 1930s integrity, blinding and befuddling her with facts, as if she could possibly care when it was built or by whom. It was all a ruse, she thought, to bundle her forwards onto the roller coaster; she could see right through him.
‘Twin track,’ he was saying. ‘Best wooden coaster in the world, classic Art Deco fairground architecture, a proper period piece.’ Annie, following his sweeping hand, saw monstrous wooden scaffolding carving dangerous heights and depths out of the Blackpool sky. She recoiled, but anyway he guided her into the crowded approach to the ride and she let him, because she didn’t quite know what else to do, and besides he was so firm, so assured, that some small part of her had begun to trust his judgement.
‘It’s called the Grand National,’ he was shouting, ‘like the steeplechase at Aintree. You’re in a race with the other train.’
They were moving inexorably forwards and there was no way out unless a crane happened along to winch her up and away from the crush of people. She could hear the trains rattling above and beyond, and a cacophony of screaming. Was the structure actually shaking? Whose idea of fun was this? Annie felt a wild impulse to raise herself up on the bodies of the people near her, to squirm victoriously out of the line and over the barrier, back to freedom and sanity. Alf was smiling encouragingly but firmly, like a parent ushering a child into the dentist’s chair, and then the two trains lurched into the station and disgorged their riders so that the tight queue that held Annie and Alf surged forwards and in short order she found herself installed on a wooden seat, in a wooden carriage, pinned into place by a wooden bar across her lap. Too much wood, she thought; didn’t it famously splinter under pressure? Alf laughed at nothing and clapped his hands and Annie turned to him to say how very much she’d like to get off, but then the train lunged forwards and she did too, slamming her midriff against the safety bar then flinging immediately backwards so that her neck seemed to crack. Everyone was laughing, and on the inside seats of each train, people were stretching out their arms, trying to hold hands. Annie kept her own tightly gripped on the safety bar and concentrated on being still and safe. Alf leaned over to speak in her ear.
This Much is True: How far will a mother go to protect her shocking secret? Page 28
