‘Poor Mr Pardoe,’ she said solicitously. ‘How long is it since he died?’
‘Fell off his roof with his heart attack, you mean? About a year, I suppose. Mind,’ she lowered her voice and switched off the dryer, ‘there’s other things he could have died of, only I think he’d given that up.’
‘Such as?’ Sarah ventured. The blow-drying started again.
‘Falling off a big woman!’ Sylvie yelled, breaking into raucous laughter, then subsiding into the confidentiality of a stage whisper audible from a hundred yards. ‘He did a lot of that in his time. All right, Mrs Jones? You waiting for me? Please yourself.’ She coughed impatiently.
‘That Mrs Pardoe was wise, though,’ she continued shouting. ‘Never complained. She just pretended she didn’t notice, waited for him to stop his nonsense. They all come back in the end, don’t they?’
Sarah nodded, slightly unsure of what kind of worldly wisdom it was she was endorsing. It never seemed to her worthwhile to wait for anyone to come back. Her head was hot, her hair floating away from the brush.
‘Lovely colour,’ Sylvie yelled. ‘Natural, I can tell. Used to have a customer with hair exactly like this. What was her name, now? Oh, hallo. Look what the cat’s brought in.’
The door of the shop had opened, the bell clattering. On the threshold stood a large young man, twenty-one or so, Sarah guessed. For all his astounding good looks, he had an air of shy uncertainty. Next to him, standing proudly in his shadow, was a boy the colour of sand. Sarah, her back to the door, screened by Sylvie, watched them through the mirror.
‘What do you want, Rick?’ said Sylvie, snapping as if scolding, but patently pleased to see them both.
‘Boy needs a hair cut. He got chewing-gum in it.’
‘Get your arse out of here, the two of you, and send him back in half an hour, all right? Can’t you see I’m busy? You want spray?’ Sylvie bellowed to Sarah all in one breath.
Sarah Fortune, with her cloud of clean hair and her small sum of knowledge, walked out beyond the town, away from the people and away from the sea. En route, she bought provisions for the cottage the Pardoes would provide and left them in the car, except for the flowers, which she took with her. This last action made her define the real purpose of being early, not merely to explore – something else far more important. She had craved the sea for the last few days but once in view, found herself afflicted with a strange reluctance to look at the creeks, the channels and the quay which existed at the bottom of the street and ducked into the town instead. She was suddenly an alien, far from the metropolis which was home, and if not afraid, at least wary.
Tomorrow she would crave the sea again: the mere thought of it made her excited. So often she had dreamed her ignorant dream of living in an unpretentious place like this, inside a cottage with roses round the door. The dream had become a habit of familiar escape. Similar visions of privacy and non-accountability prevailed as her greatest ambition, the tawdry golden thread of her adult life. Somehow she had come to imagine Elisabeth Tysall might have felt the same.
On the edge of the village-cum-town stood the church. According to the Ordnance Survey map, the only church, bearing bravely the signs of neglect as evidence of the dwindling faithful who needed no more than the burgeoning graveyard and the occasional blessing of a half-remembered God. Elisabeth Tysall, twice-buried, once beneath a sand bank and, later, here, had needed both. It was her consecrated grave which was the purpose of Sarah’s pilgrimage. The newer graves spilled into a field, less attractive than the mossy stones surrounding the church at crooked angles, like drunken friends on the way home, the names obscured, the grass growing between. The interments of the last two years were less cheerful for being still remembered, harassed in equal terms by grief and dead flowers. Some had already begun to sink into the unkempt; others bore vestiges of fresh planting. A temporary wooden marker bore the legend of Elisabeth’s name. No-one had requisitioned a stone, but then Charles had died, had he not, so soon after she was identified. The grass grew round it freely. On either side, the close-packed graves bore bright, white stones, the soil packed with pansies to the left, a bunch of tired flowers in a plastic container to the right.
Elisabeth, who had chosen the wrong one to love. Sarah wanted to weep for her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she was saying. ‘I’m so sorry. I should have come sooner. Maybe you know how it is. I should have come to your funeral, but I didn’t know the full story. Still don’t. Did anyone come to your funeral?’
She found she was raising her voice to the level of one commonsensical woman talking to a friend on equal terms, a person who was businesslike, ashamed of sentiment, but always prone to it. Sarah parted the grass to lay down the flowers, wishing she had bought something grander; there was no impulse of which she was ashamed, except meanness. Buried beneath was a suicidal woman of youth and beauty, unmourned, unnoticed, and that was an abomination. Sarah began to tidy, until her fingers struck razor points and she withdrew sharply. Blood appeared on her knuckles; she sucked her fist, squatting back on her haunches to look again. Covered by grass, there were thistles lurking, dead, massed into a bunch beneath another bouquet of fat, desiccated roses, purple with indeterminate age, which crumbled at her touch. Sarah parted more grass and laid her own daisies, level with the feet, not the heart. The silence of the place was extraordinary.
There was a posse of black crows congregating at the bottom of the field. Two years before, Elisabeth Tysall, wife of Charles Tysall, had walked out at low tide across the creeks. She had been presumed the victim of an accident. Sarah could hear the cultivated voice of Charles telling her of the need for punishment and knew the version was not true. His Porphyria had lain down amongst the lavender and waited for the sea to take her. She may have covered her own elegant limbs with sand, the better to remain buried for a whole year before the tide broke the bank and released her.
‘Why?’ Sarah asked her. ‘You let him win. I do wish I’d known you.’ A redhead you were, like me. A beauty, since Charles would have wedded nothing less. You should have been mourned, whatever you were. Not only by Charles, who loved you in his own, perverted way, followed you into the sea to find your resting place, drowned in the same, aberrant flood.
Sarah looked again at the grave, the dead roses and the scornful thistles. Who loved you? Who cared for you then? Where did you go? You and I, we could have been friends. Instead, you were merely the catalyst in a story and another source of my endless guilt.
The silence struck again, like a blow to the ears, making her long for a voice in return. The intensity of it, the dearth of birdsong, made her look round, notice for the first time the mist of the now late afternoon, obscuring the sun, hiding the wicket-gate to the church. She stood and looked down at the daisies.
A headstone for Elisabeth Tysall, something to mark her life, someone must. Something grand and beautiful for a woman who had wanted to live as much as the woman who stared at the flowers now.
Sarah walked back to the landward side of the village where she had left her car and took a wrong turn out of the town, looking for the coast road. The red car with the dented wing crawled through the lanes, following instructions, driving like the locals in second gear. To call this a town was a misnomer: it was a village. She imagined the populace from the hinterland trucking in on Saturday nights, like cowboys from the desert, in search of liquor ’n’ entertainment. A fish-and-chip frontage and a Victorian behind, was how Ernest had described it; a sort of harbour flanked with an amusement arcade and signs saying don’t park the car on the front, or the tide may take it. Drive along the quay, Ernest had said, ignore a bend. Go straight on, he had said, off the main road, keep the sea on your left until the track runs out. The house is there, half a mile at most. You can’t miss it.
She did miss it, because she detoured round the town out of curiosity and found herself stuck in a narrow lane against a wall lined with hollyhocks and someone waiting patiently behind. She went back to the
quay, found it swathed in mist and wondered what Ernest meant about keeping the ocean on the left when she could not see a glimmer of water. The receding tide moved in a dirty little channel out beyond brown banks towards the invisible sea. The garish lights of an amusement arcade hit her back and the din was raucous. People sat on a wall which separated quay from road, eating fish and chips; the air smelt of salt, vinegar, petrol. It was all so messy and so normal, shabby holiday life, nothing sinister in the pedestrian litter. The mist was puzzling rather than frightening; it spread round her like a warm blanket, bringing with it a premature darkness and making her realize at long last that she was very, very late for the Pardoes.
There was a cake on the kitchen table, a lopsided travesty of a confection which looked more like Plasticine. Two slabs of solid matter, wedged together with a gluey icing made with flour in mistake for sugar. One of Mother’s better efforts at occupational therapy, Julian thought. The kitchen looked like a bomb site after her efforts. At the best of times it was a good enough kitchen, despite Edward’s fishing mess; the oldest part of a patchwork house. There was a big pine table, large, heavy chairs which did not match and an old-fashioned Raeburn stove which Joanna loved for all the trouble of tending it and all the unreliability of the oven. A heavy kettle stood on top, simmering endlessly. The room was always warm. The pantry beyond the ancient fridge was cool by contrast, a large, walk-in store with stone-flagged floor, netted windows and pale shelves crammed with stores. On the floor in there, at all times, were two or three bundles of Edward’s always superfluous fishing bait, worms, inelegantly wrapped in newspaper, an unlikely source of protein for the inmates of the house. The cake, Mother announced in one of her very rare comprehensible sentences, was for the guest. Joanna looked at it in horror. If only Mother wouldn’t.
‘She’s late, this rotten old bitch of a lawyer, thank God she’s late, the cow, nothing’s ready.’ Joanna’s temper was running high; Julian’s likewise.
‘Don’t flap. It doesn’t suit you. What do you want me to do? Worry about impressing her? I doubt if she’s a cow or a bitch, it’s physically impossible to be both, she’s only a sort of hired help.’
‘We should have a lot in common then,’ Joanna hissed. ‘Only I’m not paid.’
‘No, but it’s patently obvious you’re well fed,’ said Julian. This marked the end of the shouting. The row had caused the delay and rendered a light cheese sauce inedible. Joanna had started again, which was why she was not going to cry now. The poached halibut required no extra salt.
Impatiently, Julian stacked two fishing rods against the wall. Edward’s fishing tackle seemed to penetrate every room in the house except his own. Wherever he went, he seemed to fall over Edward’s deliberate attempts to impress as well as dominate. Fishing and Edward did not really go together. He only did it to be manly, like his father.
‘Did you check her room?’ Joanna snapped. ‘You know, the cottage? I suppose you managed that?’ It was a poor attempt at sarcasm, her voice too shrill for impact.
‘Yes, but I don’t see why you didn’t ask Ed first, he’s far more time than me. It’s fine. Could have done with some flowers, though.’
‘She’s only the hired help,’ Joanna hissed, pleased with herself. The pleasure faded quickly. No-one should have mentioned flowers, or even thought about them. Mother could sense a word from a mile away, also a row and the way to make it worse. She had the uncanny instinct of appearing on cue, in the wrong role and always the wrong costume like now as she stood in the kitchen doorway, holding an enormous bunch of dandelions in one hand, a clutch of nasturtiums in the other. She had a full bottle of wine poking out of the pocket of her coat. An evening gown swayed round her ankles beneath a mackintosh and there were three ostrich feathers in her hair. Julian took away the wine and placed it on the table in a swift manoeuvre, well practised if devoid of humanity. Mother’s eyes filled with tears. She had always been so infuriatingly defenceless, he thought. Earned her nickname of Mouse for always weeping like her daughter, neither able to stand their own ground.
‘Why did you do that, darling? Oh, I’m hungry.’ She moved unsteadily towards a small pile of grated cheese on the chopping board.
‘No you don’t,’ Joanna said. ‘Leave it alone, will you? What do you want?’
‘Something to eat, I think. Just a little something. Don’t you like my cake?’ She stood centre stage, smiling at them both through bright, watery eyes.
‘Are you going to change for dinner?’ Julian asked ironically.
‘Should I? It’s only a bitch or a cow, you were saying. I was just going to put flowers in its room—’
‘No!’ Joanna shouted. ‘No you won’t. Not after I’ve swept, hoovered, put out towels, no you don’t.’
Mother’s upper lip trembled. She looked at both her hands, the one holding garden weeds, the other, pissenlit.
‘Yes, I will,’ she murmured. ‘I’m sure the cow will like them.’
She scuttled sideways, swifter than a crab, towards the front door, just as the bell rang. With the row and all, no-one had heard the sound of an engine, usually discernible from a hundred yards. Each knew the sound of their various old cars, parked outside like a row of sentinels. Edward was feigning deafness in his watch-tower, pretending to paint his rubbishy daubs and reading poetry, defying the necessity to earn a living, while his sister suspended life through cooking and pretending that was enough. Julian surveyed them all with despair. Mother was agile. She reached the door first, could not work out a way to open it with her hands full, stood back, grinning like a cat. Edward bounded downstairs, straightening a big floppy cravat; Joanna stood back and Julian hesitated. They were not used to guests.
Another knock. None of them could answer the door. She would have to open it herself.
A figure stepped into the gloom of the hall. Mother staggered forward, still grinning, dropping the flowers at Sarah Fortune’s feet.
‘Oh,’ said the guest without a hint of discomposure. ‘How lovely. You shouldn’t.’ She stopped to pick dandelions from the floor, carefully and swiftly, like a person used to gathering weeds with great respect. They watched, fascinated. She had straightened up with the flowers in a neat bunch by the time Julian switched on the cruel hall light. Dressed in khaki, she was, a princess in her brown freckled skin with her red hair kinking over her shoulders and a tan belt round her waist and small hips, clothed in nothing which was not utterly neutral while remaining a mass of colours all the same. A humorous face, a square jaw and a smile which embraced the giver of the dandelions. Not beautiful, but stunning.
Mother picked up the last, ceremoniously. Sarah bowed and stuck it down the front of her dress. Mother beamed.
‘Would you mind coming straight on in? Supper’s ready. No time for washing and all that stuff.’ Joanna spoke roughly.
Sarah nodded. ‘Of course. I’m really sorry I’m so late. I wouldn’t have been but I’m such a silly cow, I got lost.’
‘Cow!’ Mother collapsed in giggles. Sarah took her extended hand.
‘What fabulous feathers,’ she said. ‘I wish I was allowed to wear those.’
CHAPTER THREE
They all stared aghast. It was love at first sight. Before grace, before dinner. Before the second batch of burnt cheese sauce and before anyone heard the sound of the distant, ghostly tinkling of the ice-cream-van bell. There was a full second of silence until the sound died. Mother clapped her hands.
‘What the hell’s he doing here?’ Edward snarled. Sarah turned her gaze on him. He wilted.
‘I’m afraid that’s my fault. I stopped at a, what do you call them, amusement arcade, to ask directions, and this man volunteered to lead me here. I thought it was charming. I’ve never had such an escort.’ Joanna was brick red. She no longer cared if dinner was edible. Instant love turned to instant hate and then to love again as she fled to the kitchen. Edward looked amused. This was only a woman, not the gimlet-eyed professional he had slightly dreaded; she was too
attractive to be a threat. Julian led her inside. His manner was barely less than brusque; he was shaking slightly and he did not seem able to take his eyes off her hair.
Outside, Hettie the sheep bleated. Mother had placed a bow round her neck. Only a youth called Rick noticed and remembered fondly as he drove back to work.
Stonewall hung about the amusement arcade as long as he could and as late as he dared, sick with anxiety and knowing that, sooner or later, he’d be shooed away. There had been twenty minutes of sheer bliss, when he’d been left in charge when Rick came in from a quick stroll on the quay, talking to someone, said he’d be off for five, would he, Stonewall, take charge? The arcade belonged to Rick’s dad, who was a sort of uncle, like everyone round here, but not Stonewall’s favourite by any manner of means. Especially not when he came in drunk and found Stonewall in charge of the till. There’d be trouble when Rick got back, which was why Stonewall hung around, because someone had to protect Rick from his dad.
It was no good. Even with his new, short haircut, to which his fingers flew all the time with nervous pride, Stonewall didn’t have the power and it made him want to shout. Hit me instead, he wanted to say to Rick’s dad, as if Rick would ever have let it happen. Instead, that surly man went out for another drink or two, came back and took Stonewall by his newly exposed ear and pushed him in the direction of home. Rick didn’t prevent him.
‘Go on with you,’ he said gently. ‘See you tomorrow.’ Stonewall felt the urge to kick shins and scream. Rick’s dad didn’t like witnesses.
‘Go away,’ Julian muttered in his sleep. ‘Physician, heal thyself.’
He was dreaming of a girl with red hair who had run on the beach. The background of the dream was the strident, fairground sound which emerged from the arcade, as if such sound could travel the half mile to where Julian Pardoe attempted to sleep and cursed himself for his own insomnia. There was no excuse, no cause for alarm. The meal had been easier than anticipated, the guest, whose expertise could lighten his own burdens, had been the soul of charm to disguise, rather than hide, those over-intelligent eyes and that blatant talent for perception he somehow knew she possessed. Julian felt she could read his soul and all the shame printed on it, dismissed his imaginings as the kind of nonsense induced by red wine and over-ambitious food. Besides, he had no soul to reveal. By day he was an automaton about his business, by night a heap of restless limbs, made fanciful only because he had embarrassed himself staring at her so much, read too much into those blue eyes, felt again that sickening guilt and despair. Take your time, he had told Miss Fortune, formal beyond the point of rudeness, wondering even then how soon he could phone Ernest Matthewson and get this paragon recalled to the safety of her own city.
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