Perfectly Pure and Good

by Frances Fyfield

  The kitchen shuddered with giggles and delicious, hysterical comfort. Julian poured more wine. They did not think of Sarah Fortune, united in the forgetfulness of all outsiders, although each of them, with separable and secretive degrees of worry, thought about Edward.

  ‘I expect he’s gone fishing,’ said Joanna, apropos of nothing, in a gap between laughter.

  Mouse looked at the space on the table where the scones had been, and knew how easily laughter sat with grief, how the madness was not always feigned.

  The silence had grown longer. Sarah remembered the smell of worms.

  ‘Will they know?’ Edward was asking. ‘I mean Jo, Julian, anyone else for that matter, about me knowing this man Charles? The ghost?’

  ‘Yes, if your mother tells them so. She could tell them you’ve let Charles into the house before, and into the cottage next door. If the boy Stonewall recovers and remembers, he’ll say if he saw you elsewhere.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘Not that they’ll know what you discussed,’ she said distantly. ‘You could have been sorry for him. You could have been passing the time of day with a fascinating stranger.’ She spoke with a touch of bitterness.

  ‘And what will you tell them?’

  ‘Nothing to contradict what you say yourself. I’m a lawyer: we only repeat what we should. I’m wellschooled in that.’ Ernest Matthewson came to mind, like a malevolent spectre.

  ‘There’s a price. Help find Charles. Help save your family, and yourself.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Enough, not even much. You encouraged Charles. You conspired to rid the world of your mother and brother, even if it was a malicious day-dream. Didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ The voice was dry.

  ‘Well,’ she said with a finality not quite approaching either threat or promise, ‘I think it would be best all round if no-one ever knew about that.’

  ‘I think I’d like to go away,’ said Edward shrewdly. ‘Try living somewhere else.’

  ‘What a good idea,’ she said with a quiet approval of such intensity he could almost believe he had thought up the idea himself. ‘And I suppose for now, you’d better go home.’

  ‘Do you want to come over with me? I mean, should you stay here by yourself? For your own safety?’ The onset of genuine concern upset him with a sensation as pleasant as a warm swallow of tea. She seemed to consider for a moment.

  ‘No. Thank you. Taking refuge isn’t the best way to deal with fear. In case it becomes a habit.’

  ‘Perhaps I should stay with you, then? For the same reason?’

  She seemed to consider it, shook her head.

  ‘No.’

  ‘As a guarantee of good behaviour in the future?’

  ‘To stiffen the sinews?’ she suggested ironically.

  ‘Something like that.’

  The wind had risen with the tide, pushing the water, encouraging the movement. Not the howling gales of winter whipping the waves on the open sea, a nudging wind, swollen with rain, eclipsing the shore line as the sea rode gently forward, filling the quay, lapping over the edge, covering the car park, wavering at the edge of the road, creeping towards the front doors of the amusement arcade and the gift shops, shifting the litter of the evening and finally dragging it back, prudence dictating a pragmatic retreat on the eve of destruction. Stuck behind the hull of a forgotten boat, the bloated corpse of a dead animal was dislodged and floated away to another part of the coast. Two Dutch boys from a tramp vessel borrowed the dinghy and rowed for shore in search of bright lights.

  On the beach, the sea nibbled at land, obeying the wind without enthusiasm. Those in the adjacent caravans stirred in the night, the ground beneath them somehow softer, the weight of their shelters settling more solidly after the rain. The sea crept right to the edge of the dunes, way beyond the high-tide level of the afternoon outlined by the sluggish boundary of variegated weed which led the unwary to presume it could invade no further. As the faintest of punishments for man’s arrogance, the creeping water brushed the legs of the two furthest beach huts, eroded by similar attacks. The one requisitioned by the ghost collapsed to one side with a sighing groan, settled to sleep like a drunk on crutches as the retreating water sucked from the upended floor Charles Tysall’s stolen blanket and other souvenirs.

  A yacht suffered for the pride of its owners who ignored guidance and sailed into a sand bank where they stuck and keeled sideways. In the early hours of the morning, the lifeboat siren made its own unearthly call, wailing and weeping in anger for the nuisance.

  Julian heard it from the depths of a sleep in which he dreamed of murder most foul, his family, the inadequacies of medicine in the area and the body of Sarah Fortune. Heard it like a requiem for the dead, put his hands over his ears, shutting out any message which did not sing of hope.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Rick was running. Running with clumsy grace towards the lifeboat station, the village glistening behind him. The inlet was half full, the banks of the sea defences exposed in muddy splendour. Waddling, wheeling birds he had never bothered to identify, caught his vacant eye, birds which sprang, trotted, screeched in some kind of defiance, part of his landscape and he never even noticed them. Stonewall got down on his knees to talk to birds in the days when he was learning to love the creeks and Rick had laughed at him then; a boy, talking to birds, there’s practice for you. How long did it really take to get to know someone?

  He ran, one step after another, beginning to pant, wanting the excuse to stop, kept running.

  One mile to the lifeboat station, where the inlet met the broader beach, so much further on foot than by transport. Stoney knew all that at half Rick’s size, knew all about the birds if not the bees. Rick ran, seeing it all anew, the curlews, the footprints in the mud of the banks, the things which Stonewall saw.

  He ran for oblivion, so that the screaming of muscle accustomed to different use would clear his mind from recent conversations of ghosts and retribution, talks with his uncle police officer, the lack of good news, and the tearful insistence of Jo, Don’t go with them, Rick, please. If love was a question of conflicting demands, he could only obey the strongest which was not yet hers. So he ran the full mile to the beach, avoiding the woods, passing the lifeboat station, leaping straight down the bank onto the sand. There he jogged slower, the sand soft, his feet wet from patches of shallow mud, the breeze noisy in his ears, a brisk day with a fitful sun, the promise of wind and only the few real diehards out to play. A good day for hunting.

  He jogged past the beach huts on his left, saw how two had collapsed but did not know if it was recent, noted it in his mind as just another fact, broke into a proper run on a smooth patch of sand and then began to tire. Perspiration trickled into his eyes; he rubbed them absently and uselessly with the back of his hand, blinked, stumbled, blinked again.

  There was a dog running towards him, for a moment he thought it was Stonewall’s Sal, the sight so shocking and the expectation of seeing Stoney himself so acute, it made him stop, stagger and choke.

  The dog skidded to a halt and then ran round him, barking, ready for a game. Despite his pounding heart and the hairball in his throat, Rick felt the slow beginnings of a smile. Of course this was not Stoney’s russet-coloured mutt, but a floppy red spaniel, with nothing in common but the kind of silly, fussy, excitable temperament Stoney would like. It gave Rick an idea, the first positive thought in all the confusing negatives. Buy the boy a new dog: that would make him better.

  A man was following the dog, running in the same direction with the sun behind him, moving with the experienced grace which Rick had never mastered, admired for being so different from his own awkward arms and legs swinging everywhere, wasting energy and breath. The man’s style of movement was an economical, effortless sprinting, so that when he shimmied to a halt, it was almost a relief to see that he shone with sweat.

  ‘Morning.’ A pleasant voice. ‘Don’t let her bother you. She just likes everyone.’
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  The hairball in Rick’s throat would not go away. He had never quite understood the boy’s passion for his dog; now he did as he stroked this one’s soft ears and felt against his bare, damp legs those delighted vibrations of infinite trust.

  ‘So did Stonewall’s dog,’ he blurted. ‘Like people. Too much.’

  The dog leant against his trembling knees. Having started, Rick had to go on, otherwise this odd piece of information, delivered so randomly to a stranger, would seem even odder. He made his voice harsh, as if his first words had some retrospective purpose instead of weakness.

  ‘You want to be more careful of your dog,’ he admonished. ‘There’s a maniac on the loose round here. Eats dogs for breakfast and tries to kill boys.’

  ‘You’re joking.’ The man called his dog, which trotted to heel. Rick was stung.

  ‘No, I’m not. The police are organizing a search party along this stretch. We called him the ghost, but he isn’t a ghost. So you just watch yourself, running along here alone. Even running as fast as you do.’

  He was envious and gabbling. He needed to gabble, talking to a stranger was easier than trying to make sense to himself. The man suddenly stuck out a hand. Rick looked at it as if it was a turd.

  ‘Malcolm,’ the man said, with a smile which brooked no refusal.

  It was such an incongruously formal thing to do, shake hands and announce names in the middle of a beach, that Rick did it, although it made him want to laugh, relaxed him more than a little. Maybe it was the running did that. They fell into step, walking back the way Rick had come. To where the search party formed on the spit by the lifeboat, a motley, serious crew, anxious to do duty.

  ‘Perhaps I can help,’ Malcolm said.

  ‘Reckon you can. Just look at ’em. What a geriatric crew. Anyone’s welcome. Even with a daft dog like yours.’

  There was no-one young in the group. Rick looked at them sourly. This bloke Malcolm was the youngest apart from himself, better take him on. The rest looked like a congregation from church.

  They were old enough, though, to work without complaint, with the thoroughness otherwise devoted to their gardens; perhaps Uncle Curl knew what he did when he chose, but even with effort, they did not find the white-haired man by the end of a long day. Not Rick, the London stranger who proved such an asset, three dozen others walking through the woods. In and out of the caravans, taking apart the beach huts, one by empty one, wading across the flats, looking inside boats. Moving into the village, ignoring the populous quay where no-one could possibly hide, sweeping forward from the coast to look inside empty holiday homes, further inland through the council estate, the church, into the barns of the hinterland. The two of them who walked through the graveyard tut-tutted at a mess of scattered flowers until they saw the stonemason erecting a headstone of fine white marble, stopped briefly to admire. Looking for a man with a stick and white hair, a form without needs or substance, otherwise held few rewards and less glory. They began to consider he was indeed a ghost, who had fled or gone back from where he came, into the embrace of the sea.

  Rick and his ally Malcolm sat in the bar of the Crown on the Green, Merton’s only hotel and a place where Rick had set foot twice, ever. It was Malcolm’s invitation, said he was staying there. Posh. Let Dad cope with the arcade.

  Stonewall Jones dreamt of the sea, the amusement arcade, his dog, and remembered someone loved him, best.

  Night fell over land, without a whimper. Sarah Fortune was packing her bags, sensing her own impending redundancy without bitterness, preoccupied. She knew, from walking the town, sitting again in front of that unedifying display of cakes, what went on around her and did not want to know more. They would find him, she supposed; that desperation of his would make him careless. But she did not want him found. Except perhaps by herself, as the fulfilment of a whole year’s dreaming nightmares, in which she discovered him bound and helpless and made him feel what he had done to her, what it was like to be so diminished. Finding him thus would pacify that burning which ate her from within, that yearning to watch him crawl, to scratch his face with long, polished nails and watch him beg. Naked, as she had been, screaming and whimpering as she had been in an empty house, suffering as she wanted him to suffer, with the knowledge of that helpless loss of pride.

  There was a pain in her stomach; she diagnosed it as the result of all her self-restraint, the application of charm and manners to her daily life instead of howling for the carefree person she had been. A pain which came with the incipient grief for Elisabeth Tysall and for herself which would not go away. An ache which was the effort of her own agnostic prayer and the residue of all her violent and foul thoughts towards him. If home was where the heart resided, there was no such thing as home. She packed listlessly, half of her waiting, all of her ignored.

  Mouse Pardoe crept away from the bosom of her family, ostensibly upstairs to bed and then out of the front door, bandaged hands lighting her way in the darkness. The deference of the children over a day, their affection, their overwhelming concern brought forth an unnatural sensation of guilt, a kind of emotional indigestion which alarmed her. Guilt of any kind was not second nature to Mouse: it made her tiptoe across the lawn, already resentful of the necessity of Sarah Fortune, who knew too much about them all and was now, for the lack of anyone else to tell, about to know more. Hettie the sheep followed after, but Mouse was not afraid and it was only the reasons why she was not afraid, not of the ghost at least, which made her faintly ashamed.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she cried, facing the cottage living room as the door opened without hesitation. ‘I came to see if you were all right,’ she added with less conviction. Both of them knew it was not the truth. Sarah had fulfilled her purpose. Mouse had plenty of reason to be grateful to Sarah, and that was enough to stop anyone caring. The shawl which had covered the ugly sofa was gone, the table lamp back in place, the room bereft of the flowers which had made it homely, the whole thing back to the anonymity of just another place to rent.

  ‘Packing up my travelling bordello,’ said Sarah with a smile. She made it so easy, Mouse thought bitterly, to like her. This was no woman who would kiss and tell, she was as tight as a drum, but somehow, horribly relaxing, all sorts of ideas in her eyes and her mind, but none of them including the slightest critical judgement.

  ‘Packing? Whatever for? We need you, dear.’

  ‘No you don’t. I’ve finished.’ She waved a hand towards a neat pile of papers on the floor. ‘Valuations. Edward helped last night, that’s why I kept him here so long.’ Their glances met and slid away in recognition of a lie mutually accepted. Mouse seized a bottle by the kitchen sink, two glasses from the draining board, poured without invitation. She assumed the claret was for her: she was slightly drunk already, aimed to get worse. Such was conscience. Why should she care? If a trespasser ate the food and burned her hands he deserved to deal with his own digestion.

  ‘You Pardoes’, said Sarah without any hint of complaint as they sat, ‘tend to be heavy on the rations. Anyway, if you can read the hand-written notes . . . I have very clear handwriting, nothing ambiguous about it, what I’ve done is suggest the properties you can get rid of soonest. Selling them, at absolutely knock-down prices on ludicrously easy terms, to the people who currently own them. Those are the businesses, beginning with the pub and the amusement arcade, then the shops. Give back the lifeblood of the town. Right?’

  Mouse nodded, gargling the wine, lovely stuff.

  ‘You don’t want to be destitute,’ Sarah continued. ‘The business end of all this, as well as further education for Edward and Jo, a modest nest egg for all three and fine wines and parties for yourself, will be financed out of the holiday cottages you have. Selling them at very low prices, to be bought by local people to raise families, still leaves plenty, properly invested, for your own old age. Whenever that occurs.’

  Mouse liked that touch. She proffered her glass for refilling.

  ‘We won’t need Ernest Matthew
son to sort it all?’

  ‘You don’t need him, no. He won’t like it, but you don’t. A local accountant, an honest estate agent . . . yours isn’t, by the way.’

  ‘Awful in bed, Ernest,’ said Mouse reflectively. ‘Such a hurry.’

  Sarah sipped without comment. Mouse sighed with satisfaction.

  ‘Such a relief,’ she said brightly. ‘I mean really. We’ve all talked about it today, and they all want the same thing. They live here, they want to belong. Such well-brought-up children. All the right attitudes. They all agree that none of them wants more than strictly enough. Enough is always enough, don’t you think?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Sarah with the right amount of fervour to make Mouse continue. The pain in her own abdomen was becoming intense, beyond the reach of wine, a hunting pain, which sought other places to attack.

  ‘After all,’ Mouse went on, accepting more alcohol as if she were a favoured guest, ‘wouldn’t it be awful if I’d had to tell them in order to get them to agree? Frightful!’

  She was back in her hotel receptionist mould which Sarah realized had not been entirely mad.

  ‘Awful,’ she agreed warmly.

  ‘I mean, if they hadn’t listened? I didn’t think they’d ever listen when I got Mr Pardoe to make that will. When he had those little heart flutters, you know? We were getting on so well, I knew he didn’t notice how the thing was phrased. All my children . . .’

  Oh, yes he did, Sarah thought. He might have seen Stonewall Jones in the drive, delivering bait and known. That boy was going to grow big and tall, like his real dad, with eyes like Julian Pardoe, all his colours and all his stockiness to become in the future the mirror image of his much older brother. When you lay with a man, you knew the colour of his eyes, knew when you had seen them before in another face, along with particular gestures and a way of eating and drinking. You knew.

  ‘I would have told them,’ said Mouse. ‘I would certainly have done, if they hadn’t agreed we should give it all back, all this property stuff, as soon as we could.’ She sighed. ‘I mean I played the scene a thousand times in my head before I decided to act mad. There we would be, none of them listening, sitting round a table with Ernest Matthewson sitting at the top. Reading out that bit from the will. How does it go? I should know, I constructed it. “To my wife, and then to all MY children . . .” Meaning, his children. Not his and mine, HIS. Those wearing his jeans, sorry genes.’ She spelt it out as if Sarah could not see the pun, hiccoughed, recovered her poise, continued.