The day was conspiring to take him to the sea. He backed his car out of the alley, crossed the Selsey Road and drove the few hundred yards down to the beach to see what Mrs Toan could tell him.
It was a lot colder on the promenade than it had been in the town and there was a brisk south-easterly blowing. The tide was a very long way out and, under the shifting cloud, the sea was streaked with springtime colour; glass-green and duck-egg blue ruffled with creamy foam. A joy to the eye. But the long expanse of dun-coloured sand looked wintry, damp and chill and corrugated with long dark ridges like skin contracted with cold. The promenade was unkempt, spattered with pebbles, blobbed by thick cow-pats of tar and littered with flotsam, rusty tins, frayed lengths of orange rope tangled in seaweed, plastic bottles, most of them with German labels, old shoes, rags and rotten wood, the remains of an antique orange box smeared with something dark and sticky.
There were very few people about. Two or three elderly couples, bundled shapeless by coats and scarves, attempted an afternoon totter along the promenade. A man wearing earmuffs and a vacant expression scanned the shingle with a metal detector. A pack of mongrels sniffed among the rubbish and jumped, barking, from pebble to pebble. But there was no sign of a woman and two children, and not a glimpse of a red bobble hat.
Nothing daunted, Morgan crunched down the mounded shingle and set off along the sand eastward towards the black silhouette of the pier. If he could find Mrs Toan, all well and good; if he couldn’t, he would take a good long walk along the beach to clear his brains before the drive back to Guildford. Already the taste of salty air and the rhythmic tumbling of the distant waves were lifting his spirits.
There was a group of kids playing among the struts of the pier. He could see skinny legs darting about and a huddle of dark shapes bending over a pool, and there was an empty double buggy standing beside one of the groynes. That’s a tatty old thing, he thought, as he passed it. Then he realised that the damp-looking object draped over one of the handles was a red bobble hat. So they must be somewhere near. Probably under the pier. Now that he was closer to it, he could make out a dash of red among the group round the pool and as he watched four of the figures detached themselves and went running off towards the sea. The clearance allowed him to see that the three who were left behind were two small children with big eyes and red cheeks and a young woman in long brown boots, blue jeans and a multicoloured anorak.
He walked towards her, mentally taking notes, thinking what an unlikely partner she was for a rich entrepreneur, how young she looked, and how ordinary, with her long dark hair swinging in a pony tail behind her, and how suitably coloured she was in that odd patched coat, sea green, sky blue, sand, stone, rose pink, as if she was part of the scenery.
As he watched, she side-stepped round the edge of the rock pool, glancing from right to left at her children. Her movements were so soft and fluid she looked as though she was swimming. She reminded him, suddenly, of the little mermaid in the fairy story that had haunted him so powerfully (and secretly) when he was a little boy. The details of the story opened out in his mind, how she lived under a spell, shorn of her fish’s tail, rejected by her callous lover, doomed to dance on feet that cut like knives. At that point Morgan’s thoughts were so confused that he lost his usual professional confidence and couldn’t think how to open the conversation. Should he admit to knowing her name and tell her that he’d come to meet her husband? Or pretend that this was just a chance encounter? Or should he smile at her and hope she’d talk to him?
But he didn’t have to make a decision, for just at that moment the larger of the two children jumped on to the flat rock that edged the pool, slipped on the seaweed as he landed and toppled face downwards into the water.
‘Jon! You idiot!’ the woman yelled. But both she and Morgan were beside the pool in two strides. Four hands reached out, instinctively and in harmony, and the boy was lifted up between them.
‘No harm done,’ Morgan comforted in his Welsh sing-song, as the kid blinked water and sand out of his eyes.
Alison wasn’t paying attention to anyone except her son. ‘You’re soaked!’ she said, crouching so that she was on a level with the child’s streaming face. ‘Look at you.’ She tried to brush the moisture away from the front of his coat, flicking at it with the tips of her fingers.
‘I couldn’t help it,’ Jon said, as water dripped from his anorak and ran down his boots to puddle on the sand. ‘It was the seaweed. I didn’t jump. It’s not my fault.’ His face was quite cross.
‘No. All right. I know it’s not,’ Alison soothed, producing a tissue from her pocket to wipe his wet face. ‘We’ll have to go straight home now and get you out of those wet clothes.’
‘Not go home,’ Emma complained, ‘’tay on a beach.’ And she took off at once and began to run along the sand, following the other children in their gallop towards the sea.
Alison stood up, ready to give chase. ‘Stay there,’ she said to her son. ‘I won’t be a minute.’
‘I’ll look after him,’ Morgan offered.
Caught between the demands of her two children, she was glad of the offer. ‘Thanks!’ she said. ‘That’s kind of you.’
‘Have you got far to go?’ Morgan asked, when she came running back with the little girl straddling her hip. ‘I’ve got a car on the promenade. I could give you a lift, if you like.’
Alison had no intention of taking a lift from a stranger, however kind. ‘No thank you,’ she said, polite but firm. ‘We can manage. It’s not far.’
She was looking at him for the first time and her eyes were the colour of the spring sea. Fish-shaped eyes, lively and shining, beautifully curved, finned with black lashes. ‘It’s no trouble,’ he repeated with a little shrug.
The baby wriggled on Alison’s hip. ‘Don’ wanna go home. Mummy! Don’ wanna go home.’
She’ll never manage two kids and a buggy up all those pebbles, Morgan thought. ‘I’ll give you a hand up to the promenade then,’ he said, picking up the buggy.
She could accept that. ‘Thanks,’ she said, reaching out for Jon’s cold hand.
They crunched up the shingle together and, because he was being so kind, she decided to make conversation.
‘Are you here on holiday?’ she said.
‘No,’ he told her. And then after a pause, ‘I’m working.’
‘Really?’ she said. ‘No, don’t tell me. Let me guess. Frost’s or Butlin’s.’
‘Neither.’
‘Then you’re not local,’ she laughed.
‘Is that all the choice there is – if you’re local?’
‘More or less,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing else much. If you live in Hampton, you either make fridges or clean chalets.’
‘My Daddy works in a shop,’ Jon said importantly. ‘He’s got a big shop. In Chichester. A great big shop. That big.’ Spreading his arms as far as they would go.
Morgan smiled at the little boy.
‘Mummy an’ me,’ Jon confided, ‘we work in Butlin’s.’
‘Is that right?’
‘You go to play-group,’ Alison corrected, as they reached the promenade. ‘Mummy works in Butlin’s.’ She took the buggy from Morgan and opened it with her free hand. ‘Hop in.’
‘Don’t go falling in any more pools.’ Morgan said to the little boy.
And they went their separate ways.
Afterwards, as he drove towards Guildford and the report he would have to write, Morgan realised that there were questions he ought to have asked Mrs Alison Toan, but he’d been enjoying himself so much by the sea and he’d been so easy in her company that he hadn’t wanted to pry. Not that it mattered. He knew all he needed to know about Mr Rigby Toan.
Chapter Four
Margaret Toan paid the taxi driver with a five pound note and the airy instruction that he was to keep the change. After a day in London, she felt her shoes pinching and her back ached as if someone was kneeling on it, but she smiled brightly – just in case any of h
er neighbours were looking – and, ostentatiously clutching her Harrods carrier bags, she let herself into the house.
Silence washed heavily towards her from its emptiness. There wasn’t a single sound of life; no kettle boiling, no radio, no TV, nothing. The love birds huddled together in their tall cage in the bay window, miserably mute. Even the clock had stopped and there were no cards on the mat.
‘What is the point?’ Margaret said to herself. ‘What is the point? If your one and only son can’t even send you a card on your birthday you might as well give up.’ It was always the same when her birthday came round, always this dragging fear that she would be forgotten. Even an exhausting trip to London, an expensive lunch and an even more expensive shopping spree hadn’t blotted it from her mind for an instant.
Frantic for a G and T, she let her prestigious shopping fall to the carpet and teetered towards the cocktail cabinet. Glass in hand, she set about filling the house with necessary sound, switching on the TV, clumsily winding the clock, shouting at the love birds. On her way back to replenish the glass she caught sight of her frowning reflection in the mirror over the fireplace. ‘Life can be very cruel sometimes,’ she told it. ‘I’m sixty three, for God’s sake, and my own son can’t even be bothered to send me a card.’
But then the voice of her vanity rose through the gathering fumes of alcohol to comfort her. ‘You might be sixty three, but you don’t look it. You’re a beautiful woman.’
She drank some more G and T, touched her careful blonde hair, adjusted her pearls and rearranged the silk scarf at her neck. ‘Yes,’ she said, gazing at the charming image that was beginning to assemble itself in the mirror. ‘I am. I always have been and I still am.’ Softened by admiration, her blue eyes gazed back at her face. Even after a long day in London her set was still holding. Skilful make-up disguised the sharpness of her nose and her teeth were very, very good. You would have to look closely to know that they were capped.
The gin was working. As she filled her glass for the third time, her movements grew languid. Gold charms dangled from her wrist, clinking musically. The clock ticked, the TV chattered and applauded. She threw her hat and coat into a chair and spread herself elegantly on the chaise longue, glass in hand. ‘Madame Récamier,’ she said, ‘has nothing on me.’
But she wasn’t Madame Récamier. She was Mrs Margaret Toan – widow of Henry, mother of Rigby – and in a small irritable corner of her mind she knew that these days she wasn’t even allowed the glory of her full and proper name. Behind her back, most of her neighbours and acquaintances called her Maggie. Such a nasty, vulgar nickname. Totally inappropriate for someone like herself and downright insulting when it was applied to the Prime Minister. To see those awful demonstrators on the television waving their silly placards and shouting ‘Maggie-Maggie-Maggie! Out-out-out!’ was almost as bad as being burgled. It was so disrespectful. No way to treat a great lady.
Mrs Margaret Toan put her empty glass on the coffee table and began to cry. Tears oozed from under her closed eyelids and trickled down over her upturned cheeks. She was so absorbed in her self-pity that it was some time before she became aware that the door bell was ringing.
She eased herself out of the chair and crept over to the window. There was a dark shape on the doorstep. ‘Rigby!’ she cried. ‘Oh Rigby, my dear boy!’ He hadn’t forgotten. The dear, dear boy. He’d come to see her after all.
He was bearing his customary bunch of red roses and looking so handsome she simply had to kiss him.
‘Sweets to the sweet,’ he said, thrusting the roses at her. ‘Happy birthday Mater.’
‘For me?’ she said, feigning surprise, the way she always did. ‘Oh you shouldn’t have.’
‘Can’t have my lovely Mater sitting in a room without flowers on her birthday,’ Rigg said. As he always did.
The ritual continued as they walked through her cluttered hall into the living room. ‘Do you still love your old mother?’
He brushed her cheek with his moustache. ‘Passionately,’ he said. ‘You know I do.’
‘And you’ve come all this way to see me, just because it’s my birthday. On your busiest day too. So tell me, how’s trade?’
She poured him a nice large brandy and they sat opposite one another in the two armchairs so that he could tell her what she wanted to hear – that trade was booming, that he was doing well, that the recession was bouncing off him.
Margaret Toan was too good a business woman not to know that the possession of two lock-up shops and a fisherman’s cottage was hardly a business empire, even in recession-hit times. But she pushed the knowledge to the back of her mind. It was important for her to view her son as a potential success. If he were to fail, it would be absolutely intolerable. Failure was so demeaning and she hadn’t spent all that money on a private education to have her only son branded a failure.
‘Flair, that’s all it takes,’ Rigg was saying, waving his glass, in the sort of expansive gesture that went down so well in Ernie’s Wine Bar. ‘You’ve either got it or you haven’t.’ The trouble was the words didn’t sound right in his mother’s over-furnished parlour. They required the sort of instant response he always elicited in the wine bar. He chewed the end of his moustache, waiting for his mother to pick up her cue.
She agreed with him, whole-heartedly. That damp moustache was too touching. ‘You’ve got it, my darling,’ she said over the clink of ice. ‘You’ll soon have your first million. I can see that. I’ll bet you’re not far off it now, are you?’
It was balm to be believed. Rigg smiled modestly. ‘Well, let’s say I’m on my way.’
‘You’re so like your father,’ Margaret said, extending their fantasy. ‘He was so handsome and he had such pazzaz. I can see you going just the same way. Just exactly the same way. Oh my dear, you’re going to be so rich and so successful. They’ll be beating a path to your door. And mine too I shouldn’t wonder.’
Perhaps this was the right moment to throw out a hint. ‘Actually Mater,’ Rigg said casually. ‘I’m thinking of opening another outlet.’
She looked away from him, her expression vague. Then she got up and walked over to the cocktail cabinet to fix them both another-teeny-drink. ‘Good idea,’ she said, with her back to him. ‘Why don’t you?’
‘Slight cash-flow problem, just at the moment,’ he admitted, hoping she would rise to the bait.
She didn’t. Spine still straight, she busied herself with the ice bucket. ‘You’ll soon solve that,’ she said.
‘It would be easier if I were thirty five,’ he hinted, needled by the unfairness of his father’s will. Everybody else got the goodies when they were twenty one. ‘If I were thirty five…’
She turned and laughed at him with a gently mocking sound. ‘Don’t wish your life away, my dear,’ she warned, handing the glass over. ‘You’ll be old soon enough, heaven knows.’ Unconsciously she adjusted her silk scarf, fitting it more tightly round her neck. ‘You don’t want wrinkles before your time.’
‘But if…’ Rigg began. He had to press on. If only she didn’t block him so.
‘Let me tell you about my birthday,’ Margaret said brightly. ‘I’ve been to London today. Birthday treat. They’ve got some lovely things in Harrods this year. I bought myself a trouser suit. Would you like to see it? I could model it for you.’
Rigg smoothed his moustache with his forefinger, masking the disappointed droop of his mouth. It was so difficult to find the right note when he was talking to his mother. Too serious and she scolded him, too light and he was ignored. This time, his hint had been too subtle for her to notice. That was the problem. But he had to be subtle. He couldn’t ask her outright. That would be demeaning. He’d feel too much like a kept boy if he did that. A mother’s boy.
Meantime there was a fantasy to play out, compliments to pay, images to project. Sometimes he wished they could drop their guard, just once in a while, and tell one another the truth.
‘Yes,’ he said, summoning the warmest smi
le he could manage. ‘Go on then. Show me how beautiful you are.’
Acquiescence always roused Margaret’s affection. She touched his cheek with her fingertips. ‘You are my boy,’ she said.
‘That’s me,’ he agreed. ‘That’s who I am.’
In the kitchen in her semi-detached house in Apple Orchard Close, Alison’s mother, Elsie Wareham – widow of Bob, mother of Mark, Greg, Alison and Andy – was wiping her hands on a damp J-cloth.
‘Oh go on then, sweetheart,’ she said to her eldest granddaughter who had been begging permission to lick the bowl. The trifle was made, the cream had been piled on top and there was only a scraping left. ‘You can if you like. You’ve earned it. You’ve been a real help to me this afternoon. Only be sharp about it or the others’ll come back and you won’t get a look in.’
At thirteen years old, Katy Wareham was already showing the promise of the pretty young woman she would soon become but she was still shy and, as Elsie knew, she tended to get pushed to one side by her younger brother William.
Fortunately Mark and Jenny had taken that young gentleman with them when they went to collect Alison and the children, and the others hadn’t arrived yet, so she and Katy had time, and the kitchen, to themselves.
Katy wriggled into a comfortable position on the kitchen stool and used her forefinger to scrape the whipped cream from the sides of the mixing bowl – scrape, lick, scrape, lick.
‘Gran,’ she said, thoughtfully. ‘D’you think Uncle Rigg’ll come to tea this time?’
Elsie was diplomatic. ‘I think he’s still in Spain,’ she said. ‘If he’s back in time he will, I expect. Ali said he might come back today because it’s his mother’s birthday.’
‘I don’t think he will,’ Katy said. ‘And if he does he won’t come to tea. He never comes to tea these days.’
‘I’m sure he would if he could,’ Elsie said. Whatever her private opinion of Rigg’s absence from her family gatherings, she was loyal to him in front of the child. ‘He works ever so hard.’
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