The newspaper, bought with stolen money, since stealing was always easy, told him he was dead. It amused him that some stranger had apparently died in his place; increased the feeling of power to do whatever he liked. It was as if he had been able to commandeer that other man’s death. Any investigations into his own life would presumably die with the same speed. It had suddenly seemed an excellent idea to remain dead. He could do what he had to do undisturbed, then reveal himself and resume his place, like a phoenix from the ashes, horrify them all. The man had told Edward he was on holiday, but time slipped and slithered in this limbo world, while he tried to get a fix on time, circling round the coast and hinterland, slipping from village to town, sleeping through the better part of a winter. Each day seemed like a minute. In the spring, Merton called. He had been idle: there was work to do. Memories had altered focus too, all except one.
Who buried her? Who touched, who buried her? And there, in the light coming out of Miss Gloomer’s door, was the enemy. A fond enemy, speaking softly with evident affection for the occupant inside, but still the enemy; while in his own pockets, out of the surgery desk, was the proof.
After an hour, he removed himself with the casualness of an invited guest who has suddenly remembered the time, slipped out into the high street, back down an alley and into the yard behind the arcade. The back door yielded easily: there was no attraction in a patch of mossy stone, warm rooms containing silent machines which stood like sentinels. He felt sick, burped in the darkness. He dreamed of himself, being hunted across the dunes and out into the sea; the sea closing over his head and no boat coming. He dreamed of the pack being led out to hunt him by the boy with the dog which had followed him, stayed with him, eaten some of his precious food with the surreptitious speed with which he ate himself. A red dog; the outrage had sprung into his fingertips, round the animal’s neck, holding her whimpering and trying to kiss while he slit the throat with a piece of broken bottle off the beach, untying the collar first because it stopped him getting a hold. How foolish to exercise his own strength in this way, but he had needed the reminder for himself, in case the strength should slip away. Like a woman with red hair, slithering out of his grasp and onto the ground, still breathing. He thought of gravestones, coloured red, chestnut trees spreading tentacles beneath a buried body, wished all these colours would emigrate from his mind, but he never once doubted his reason.
‘. . . all and each
Would draw from her the same approving speech,
Or blush at least. She thanked men – good! but thanked
Somehow . . . I know not how . . . as if she ranked
My gift of a nine hundred years old name
With anybody’s gift.’
His Porphyria, Browning’s last duchess, they all became confused.
The air was fresh and warm; Sarah was beginning to learn the sound when the tide was changing, the musical clanging of the halyards of boats in distant channels, the night-time mewing of gulls, the fact that there was no such thing as total silence, only the subdued noises of intense life. She was growing used to walking, choosing not to use her car, but in what seemed a year rather than a day, she had still not seen the uncontained sea Only these mysterious inroads, lying quiet but running deep in the quay, gurgling in secret, incoming streams across the land, intriguing, pretty, mysterious yet inadequate to suffice the craving for some vast blue sky, a wilderness edged with powerful water.
The Norfolk coast was full of such according to her map. Tomorrow, the Pardoes could wait, if they had not already told her to go; for tonight, she was faintly exhilarated. The tide was out but coming back; she could feel it. She could breathe, she was fully herself. Behind her, a boy was thoroughly asleep; sweet dreams, young man, and more to follow.
Here it was safe in the dead of night. Outside her cottage, where the roses trailed round the door a trifle sadly, bitten by the wind from the sea which she had not yet felt in the heatwave, Sarah looked at the isolated terrace as she might a home. That crazy sheep stood ready to greet her, making her laugh, butting her in the side as she opened the door and felt for the switch. Another thing she knew by now: there was no such thing as total darkness.
The electric light was brutal. On the floor of the kitchenette there were a dozen large worms, oozing flesh, lying inert on a double sheet of newspaper. They were lazily twined with one another, like the head of a Medusa. One moved, very slightly; the rest were patently alive, confused into inertia or dying.
They were meant to make her scream, but they brought into her throat the bile which prevented her scream, made her choke instead, and then the sheep saved her. Hettie blundered through the narrow entrance behind her, blocked her retreat, sniffed at the wet mass of corrugated, underground flesh with every sign of complete indifference and belched loudly. Sarah’s heartbeat, remaining abnormally loud in her own ears, became slower and slower. Her skin was hot; life flowed back, and with it, the remembrance of the wellbeing which had walked home with her and a faint sense of the ludicrous. She had not come so far or lived so long to be frightened by worms. She had wanted country life and now she had it.
Eyes averted, teeth clenched to prevent the nausea, she found a plastic bucket, picked up the corners of the damp paper, put the whole collection inside. Holding the pail in one hand she stepped out and over the road, flung the whole container as far as she could. There was a bouncing thump and splash; she was absurdly pleased. Then she doused the kitchen floor with bleach. Only then did she find room for anger.
There was a light on over at the house, across the other side of the lawn. One light at the front door, directly opposite hers, another glowing from the back. There were two cars: Jo was home then, so she should have been at two in the morning. The anger drove Sarah over the wet grass; the sensation against her bare legs, dragging at her skirt, oddly inhibiting, slowing her steps. By the time she reached the back kitchen window, she was hesitant and stealthy.
They were a household which went to bed and stayed inside with their cars parked like guardians. Not all of them. Through the kitchen window, Sarah saw Mouse Pardoe sitting at the table. Without ballgown, pissenlit, jewellery or anything else but a dressing-gown and a pair of glasses, looking like the Queen Mother without hat and the same soul of concentrated sanity. She was eating a delicate sandwich which she had clearly made herself, reading the Guardian with easy concentration. There was none of the theatricality, the divine display, the endless smiling.
Mrs Pardoe turned a page and refolded the paper with effortless co-ordination and long practice, sipped a glass of wine with decorum. She turned to put the big heavy kettle on the Raeburn, rubbed her hands, went on reading.
As a woman, Sarah did not understand caution. As Ms Fortune the lawyer, she did. She went back to her cottage.
CHAPTER SIX
Joanna was as jumpy as a cricket. She swooped by Edward’s seat at the kitchen table without pecking his cheek, moved on.
‘You were late last night,’ he said with surly accusation.
‘Was I? Not particularly. Oh isn’t it nice it’s Saturday?’
‘What’s good about Saturday?’
‘The clouds lift, Caroline says, but that’s because she’s got a job. Maybe I should get a job. Caroline says she could get me a job. Takes your mind off things, she says. Anyway, I’ve left your sandwiches in case you were going to go fishing or something. Only I’m going shopping, all day . . .’ She turned away, breath running out.
‘I thought you might come with me. Look, I’m sorry if I laughed at your grand clothes yesterday.’
‘S’all right. Perfectly all right. Got to go, I’m busy.’
Something of this new, unprecedented independence, its blustering bravery, words spoken with bold resolution, breakneck speed and underlying nervousness in case he should mind, touched him like the breath of an icy wind.
‘Ed,’ she was saying, ‘what were you eating in here last night? There’s nothing left.’
‘Worms,’ h
e said grimly. He hated being called Ed.
‘Grilled or fried?’
The worms were bothering him, bothered him more as he sat in the kitchen and watched the sun stream through the door. Taking the bait from the pantry floor on a malicious impulse was something he slightly regretted like one drink too many. Everything, including sleep, conspired against him and the only thing which was right was Stonewall Jones delivering more lugworms first thing this morning. Edward wanted to grumble out loud. He had detested his mother and Julian for as long as he remembered, was accustomed to receiving dislike ever since he had played his first childish trick, not dissimilar to the one played on the guest, but he did not feel easy. The man with the white hair should not have taken Miss Gloomer’s stick; Jo should not put herself first; Julian should not have laid a hand on his arm and said he was sorry. Any minute now, Mother would float downstairs and blow him a kiss and the whole fabric of comfortable hatred would begin to fray.
‘Here,’ said Jo, thrusting a bag on to his lap. ‘Do us a favour, will you? Take these back to Sarah, I mean Miss Fortune, don’t look so vacant. Tell her thanks a million, and let me know if she wants to eat with us tonight, will you?’
‘Julian made it quite clear not,’ he said sternly.
‘I like Sarah and I live here too.’
It was something, if a slightly uncomfortable thing, to do. Crossing the lawn, Edward hoped Miss Fortune had already packed her bags and gone, since if that was the result of his handiwork, he wouldn’t feel again this strange compulsion to apologize.
Halfway across the lawn, he could see her car was missing. He persisted, looked through the windows of the cottage which someone seemed to have cleaned. The room inside looked different. There was a bunch of flowers in the sink; beyond the kitchen areas, he could see a shawl thrown over the nasty settee. Hettie the sheep was guarding the door, bleating loudly. Edward kicked her, felt his foot sink in the woolly fleece as she sprang away, adept at such manoeuvres and used to his casual attempts at brutality. He left the parcel of clothes balanced against the door and hoped the daft brute would eat it.
He could go fishing all day with the sandwiches he so often left in bins. Should he go and see the man on the beach this morning, progress the plan to rid himself of all his family restrictions? Make him a present? No, too late already. Let him wait. By tomorrow or the day after, the bitch from the cottage would be gone and everything would be clearer.
Sarah was looking at a display of cakes. There were buns and flapjacks, scones, enormous sponge slabs stiff with butter and all with the lopsided look of the honestly homemade. The cakes were under glass in the high street café where a plump girl struggled with solid wedges of white bread sandwiches for a dozen customers and their equally lumpy dogs. Over the road was a shop window full of knitting wool, a wry reminder of what an honest woman might expect to do with her long, winter evenings.
Sarah was not an honest woman by any but her own standards, had rarely baked a cake and knew she was a freak. Baking had never been part of her obligations with any of the men she had ever known and the thought filled her with wry amusement.
‘Have some more,’ a woman was urging a man. ‘It’s good for you.’ Sarah ducked her head, light-framed and light-hearted. Would Julian sack her for lack of tact, and did she mind? Yes, she did. She had been examining with care the exhaustive list of the Pardoes’ assets. They owned this café, a boat or two, the freehold of a pub, the hairdresser’s, the amusement arcade, half the shops, over a dozen houses. They owned, in fact, the lifeblood of the town. They could strangle this mini seaside empire, set like a semi-precious stone among the dun-coloured, waterlogged land.
Sarah sat and considered dreams, thought in the same loop about Ernest eating cake laced with worms and hoped it choked him. Thought of Malcolm refusing to eat cake and missed him with a poignancy she had so far managed to avoid; pictured him here with his lack of prejudice, the dog sniffing in gutters with selective enthusiasm, a thoroughly streamlined beast, that dog, compared to these. Last night, in the conversation which had preceded his second pint, Rick had told her about Stonewall and his dog. And about how Stonewall earned pocket money, digging up lugworms for other men’s bait. She had been glad of that knowledge, later – it had defused the effect of the worms on the floor.
The coffee arrived, weak and insipid, served with triumph, not the stuff of dreams, but Sarah’s sense of taste was blunted by indifference and she had no dreams left, save the lingering vision of innocent and self-sufficient country life. With her eyes still on the impressive list, she felt a hot, non-apologetic stab of envy when she considered the dilemma of the Pardoe family and their unquiet expectation of riches. No-one should be allowed to inherit so much and then spend their lives sulking. Once upon a time, Sarah had regarded wealth as an end in itself, the means to change things and forge a link with freedom. She sat back in her uncomfortable bentwood chair, watching the eating of sandwiches and wishing she was hungry. Dreams were food, like riches, to be vicariously consumed by simply looking at the other consumers. If she herself could no longer define her own ambitions, let alone fulfil them, had neither the stamina to earn millions nor the compulsion to steal, she could still advise others on the subject of wealth. How to use it, enjoy it, or, if that was the best thing to do, give it away.
A man in the corner roared with laughter. He wore cheap clothes, fed his red face on ice-cream in a state of uproarious contentment. He was not rich. The Pardoe children should be happier than him, looking at the world as a cake for nibbling, not moping about with their private disorders, listless, lovelorn, bitter. Their money was a privilege, their behaviour an abuse and some time during the day, the brothers would foregather and tell her to leave.
A shadow fell over her table, the girl with the coffee, twittering. Rick stood towering, bruises fading, grinning widely.
‘Not stopping,’ he said. ‘Only I wanted to show Stonewall here that you weren’t a ghost.’
‘I have no illusions about that,’ she said primly, the dimples of a big smile forming in her face.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Neither do I,’ and his laugh hit the roof. ‘Is it a ghost, Stoney?’
‘Nope,’ said the boy. ‘And nor’s that other one, either.’
‘Oh,’ she breathed. ‘Two ghosts?’
Stonewall squirmed, torn between silence, a sense of loss and a desire to do whatever Rick suggested. He could feel an undercurrent here, adding to his normal anxiety and the constant challenge to make Rick believe him and never send him away again.
‘What would you like?’ she asked. Rick shouted with laughter again.
‘Don’t ask a lady that, she might tell you.’
‘Ice-cream?’ Stonewall said mournfully.
‘Two,’ she said cheerfully.
Rick got up to order, none of this sitting around politely when he knew he could jump the queue as long as he grinned. He swaggered a little.
Stonewall looked at Sarah and Sarah looked at Stonewall. She was all right, he thought desperately, must be all right, Rick likes her and she isn’t no woman I ever saw before. She, on the other hand, simply considered him beautiful.
‘It’s a ghost,’ said Stonewall, when his ice-cream arrived in a big glass dish stuck with wafers like a ship in full sail. ‘Went into Miss Gloomer’s.’
‘I’d told you to go home and stay there,’ said Rick sternly. The boy ignored the interruption. What else was a window for, but to afford an escape?
‘I seen him go in. I seen him last night and I seen him down the beach when I was getting bait. Ed Pardoe knows him, this ghost.’
Rick looked worried.
‘Tell me about me,’ Sarah teased, not quite lightly. ‘Me, before I was the ordinary mortal I am now. Whose ghost was I? What did I do?’ Cold ice-cream in too large a mouthful made Stonewall swallow with a gasp. Everyone listening: he could make them wait.
‘You used to go in the doctor’s a lot. You were married. To that other ghost, I think.
The one who sits and talks with Edward Pardoe. You got run over by a bus. You went off walking into the sea, didn’t come back. I saw you, but it wasn’t you, it was someone else.’
Stonewall could guess what Rick was going to say. He’d say, You shouldn’t eat all that ice-cream so fast, makes your brain go soft; but the woman with the hair listened intently, her skin suddenly paler, so that the red hair looked redder than ever. All Rick could do was grumble, even though he was outrageously happy.
‘Why didn’t you do something when you saw the ghost go in Miss Gloomer’s, you twerp?’
Stonewall ducked his head. ‘Cos my mum would know I was halfway out the window, wouldn’t she? Don’t be daft.’ He looked hopefully at the empty plate, the last icy morsel trailing down his throat.
Anything else would require a bigger fee from a stranger. Despair filled his eyes. Everyone was more important than him.
After they had gone, Sarah rubbed her arms beyond the confines of the full, elbow-length sleeves of her shirt, her fingers feeling instinctively for the tiny scars which adorned the fleshy part of her upper arms. They’ll grow smaller in time, the surgeon had told her with manic cheerfulness; no-one will notice.
Enough. Saturday afternoon, holiday time: families, ghosts, moral obligations and bleaker memories had no place. She wanted to shrug off the whole human race, their unhappiness, their miseries, above all, their presence, sink them into the sea with her own inadequacies. Wanted, as she walked back to the top of the crowded street, to cleanse herself and all her fears in the vastness of the ocean she had been craving. Once inside her car, the sun beating down on the roof to make the sense of confinement worse, she looked briefly at the Ordnance Survey map, propped it against the wheel, drove back through the town and miles beyond. Such a flat, deserted coast. She wanted what she knew she could find: a place where others did not go. A desert with water, the emptiness she had been searching for to heal her own sickness.
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