‘Oh really!’ Beatrice said.
In the confusion, Di picked up her suitcase and crept away.
She had been utterly wrong. She had been quite mad to imagine that the genes they had inherited from their father would somehow emerge. They were not his children; they were Christina’s. And Christina had wanted him dead.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Diana Porteous sat in a small park near the station, sitting on the pedestal of a sundial, which bore the inscription 1809, and even in extremis, she noticed that. She felt cold to her bones, stripped bare. Thomas’s children had keys to his flat and they could not wait to desecrate. They would break up his things and put her in prison, even though she had nursed their father and he had loved her and she had been stupid enough to think that would make a difference.
Abuser, paedophile. Christina told them that was what I was, and they believed it. They were six and nine when she took them away. She gave them their memories, their fantasies and their sense of entitlement. She kept coming back to haunt me. I never wanted them to know how mad she was and I still don’t. They aren’t my daughters, Di, not any more.
Thomas had told her that.
They would not come and see him. They lied: they informed: they wanted their father’s wife to be mad. She hated them; she hated them with fierce intensity. They would have torn her to pieces if Patrick had not warned her. She could not stay here.
There was only a numb desire to get home to a dark house and the sound of the sea. She had not been ready for this: she had not been prepared for the reality of greedy hatred. Thomas’s children were what they were, and Edward was worse than either of them. Not nature, nurture. Raymond Forrest was right; she was wilfully naïve, clinging to naïve belief.
The mid-afternoon train was the slow one that stopped at every station and marked the real distance between here and there. Thomas had wanted her to be at home in London. He wanted her to feel at one with the slender Europeans of Bond Street, demanding priority at Sothebys and Armani and Ralph Lauren. He wanted her to have the chance to be someone else entirely if she wanted it. She smiled at the thought of that. The smile was fixed.
Was it so strange that no one, not Monica, or even Raymond Forrest, nor Thomas’s daughters or anyone she had encountered in the days since his death, had ever considered that she might actually be grieving? That she might actually be afflicted by his death? As well as rendered incoherently miserable and angry. They were right; they were capable of driving her mad. And Saul: Saul had been with them, but then she knew that, didn’t she? It was part of a plan, but it still hurt.
She also knew that she had not exactly helped herself. She had been abrupt in response to enquiries, economical with information, saying yes, thank you, the notice will be in the paper, simply because she was incapable of functioning otherwise. Except with Raymond, to whom she had lied a little, the articulacy she had learned from years of talking to Thomas turned into half-formed syllables. She might well have driven away the truly sympathetic, had they arrived. No flowers, no offers of food, no disingenuous gestures. No one saying, are you lost? No one beginning to entertain any other assumption that a young woman saddled with an old, sick man was merely waiting for the opportunity to dance on his grave.
She was reconciled to not being known, to being misunderstood, to being treated with indifference, but actual, vivid hatred from his children was another matter. Hatred was a different beast from mere contempt; accusations were different to mere innuendos. Abuser, pervert; the words were obscenities. Sitting on a half-empty train going home to an empty house and all the vast responsibilities and instructions he had left, she had never felt lonelier.
Saul had a plan. Had a plan. On whose side was he? Where was he?
She pressed the tears back into her eyes because once she started, they might never stop. Then she opened her eyes wide and blew her nose. Halfway home. You carry the flame, Di. Have pity, but not self pity. She got out the map, and looked at the view as well as the other faces, distracted herself by imagining them painted in oil.
Voices impinged, one plaintive, one resigned.
‘Look, love, this ain’t the right ticket. It’s just any old ticket you’ve picked out of a bin. Or you’ve nicked it. It’s only valid for a senior citizen. So have you got a valid ticket or not?’
Di turned and saw the girl cringing in her upholstered seat.
‘It’s the ticket I got.’
‘You ain’t got a valid ticket and you’ve been locked in the lav since London. You can buy a ticket. Show us your money.’
‘Haven’t got any money.’
‘Right then. Off, next stop. Let’s have your name and address.’
‘Haven’t got an address, go on, give us a break.’
The girl was blustering, the bluster wearing thin, bravado giving way to desperation. She was what? Sixteen or so, with a bruise on her forehead, half covered with a thin fringe.
‘You can’t put me off the shitting train in the middle of nowhere,’ she said. ‘You can’t.’
‘Yes, I can.’
Di looked at the darkening afternoon sky, checked on her route map for the next stop. The middle of nowhere.
‘Rules, love, Can’t pay, can’t travel. The police’ll be waiting for you.’
The girl stood up, panicking, ready for flight, realising there was nowhere to go. The few other passengers hid behind books and newspapers. Di saw a small, plump girl, with thick hair, pierced ears, black sweatshirt and leggings not warm enough for the outdoors and too tight for her frame. Scuffed shoes and a plastic bag round one wrist, acting as handbag. Kohl-blacked eyes, smudged with disappointment. A brave stud in her red nose. She was clutching a dirty tissue and making a keening noise, put her hand across her mouth to stop it. The sky outside grew darker and the train slowed. The girl looked like jailbait, she had that terror: she had been in prison, Di knew it. Di stood up with her thin, spiked hair and leather trousers, looking hard and aggressive.
‘I’ll pay,’ Di said, looking the inspector in the eye. ‘Wherever she wants to go.’
‘No,’ the girl said. ‘No I don’t want that.’
‘I’ll said I’ll pay,’ Di said.
They sat opposite one another for the rest of the journey, the girl looking down at the ticket on the table between them, screwing up the tissue between her fingers. Maybe older than sixteen, Di thought. Unprepossessing, Saul would have said. Di got out her google map of her own town, last stop on the line. They were both getting out at the same place, but it seemed as if the girl was guessing her destination, a name conjured up out of her head. Perhaps the name of the destination on the ticket she had pinched was the only guide to where she was going. Di watched herself being watched.
‘I didn’t nick it,’ the girl said. ‘Only I had to get out of there, anyway. I was hanging round the station, and this old guy dropped it. Should have guessed it wouldn’t be right. I wouldn’t have dipped an old guy.’
‘But you might a young one,’ Di said. ‘And you’ve been caught.’
The girl nodded.
Di turned the map round so that the girl could see it. She squinted at the page, trying to focus, finally getting it. Her brow cleared. ‘I like maps,’ she said.
‘This is the station where we get out,’ Di said, marking it with her pencil. ‘And this is where I live,’ she said, drawing another cross. ‘I know where I’m going. What about you?’
The girl was silent, panic seeping into her expression. Di took out her purse, peeled off a couple of twenties and a ten and placed them on the table.
‘Take it,’ she said, ‘There’s a good B&B where they don’t ask questions. It’s here,’ again she pointed at the map, before folding it and handing it over. ‘And remember where I live. If you forget, someone’ll tell you.’
‘Why?’ the girl said, bewildered, unfolding the map, staring at the money. ‘Why would you?’
Because someone hit you. Because you have such lovely thick hair. Because you�
��ve been inside. Because I can save someone from a few hours in a cell.
‘Because somebody has to, Peg,’ Di said.
The girl pulled her hair down further over the bruise and gasped. ‘How did you know my name?’
‘You’ve got it on the necklace round your neck.’
The train pulled into the station. Peg was out of there and running over the bridge to the exit, as if she was being chased or as if Di was going to take back the map and the money. In the middle of the bridge, facing the car park and the lights of the town, she turned and waved. Di waved back. She had not wanted thanks; she preferred straightforward rudeness. It was she who should be grateful for the added distraction, for the tiny little endorsement of self that came from an act like that: even though it was never enough. That girl’s like me – I was once her. I’ve got to be hard, but I’ve got to remember who I am. And one of these days, Thomas, I might even be able to laugh at myself again.
Di walked back through the town and turned right at the front, away from the pier and down the road, following Raymond Forrest’s footsteps, seeing it through the eyes of a stranger. How did he see it? Scrubby little dump, with an ugly pier, lit with deceptive jollity, but coming up in the world. Houses, stage left, seaside stage right, the bigger houses taking over from the small, keeping themselves apart from one another. She passed the defunct paddling pool and the decorative public lavatories, the makings of a mini golf course, a stretch of green with the old Bandstand in the middle. Memories ran deep in town, greater tragedies than hers.
Memories to the right, the sea to the left, hissing away on the steep-backed shingle, promising continuity. Hiss, shhhhush, shush, crash, take a deep breath and start again, speaking to her. I go on and on, unlike you. I don’t hate you, but I may destroy you. It’s all the same to me. Hiss, hiss, crash, shush, shush, shush. Anytime, I can come over this bank and take out your great big house. I could flood your cellar in a minute.
Di turned away from the concrete path and walked out over the shingle. Her footsteps were noisy and she only went as far as the first slope, spied the first waves, grasping at the bank and drawing back as if they did not like it, trying again and again, not greedy tonight. Not driven by the wind to gnaw at the foundations, infiltrate cellars, flood basements, tell the grand house owner that they really owned nothing. Live by the sea at your own risk. In summer, Di swam here and let the tide take her. Thomas also. He swam every day that he could. She had dragged him back, twice. That was the way he had wanted to die and she had not let him.
Tonight, she could see the temptation and the luxury of drowning; of just not going on. The wind teased, rather than tore, reminded rather than hectored. She crunched back over the shingle and went via the back road into her house, went upstairs, looking for him, the way she had always done, wanting to tell him about the day. If he was out, he would leave a note, a drawing, a sketch, a clue and if he was not immediately visible or audible, she would call for him, take one room after the next, until she found him. And, latterly, if the place was empty, she went back out to the sea. Started again.
She did the same this time. Scoured the house, looking for him, and almost set out for the sea again, before she remembered he was not there and there was no need to look. Still, she went through all but the attic rooms before she realised and then she was back in the kitchen quarters, sitting in his chair in front of an unlit fire, eating an apple, thinking of the picture of the Lady in Pink, thinking of the girl, Peg, Peggy, hoping that she had found somewhere safe. She could read a map: she had promise.
Phone messages, some simpering. Mr so-and-so will call you back tomorrow. Email messages, you expressed interest in … Where was that treacherous Saul? Where was anyone who loved Thomas?
Di went slowly towards bed. She tidied the kitchen parlour with almost obsessive attention to every detail, packed food bought in the station supermarket. The searchers had left enough equipment for cooking. Hygiene was paramount when Thomas was ill and artificially fed; she doubted she would ever break the habit and anyway, she had been raised with standards of aggressive cleanliness. The blood was always cleared off the walls in the Quigly home by a gentle mother who loved to read. Di rearranged the shelf above the sink that housed a row of little birds, fashioned from various metals, a silver robin, a starling, a wren, a blackbird made of iron and a sparrow made of tin. More loved objects, almost as loved as the real birds in the back yard which came every day to feed in winter and the birds in the bay. She left the room reluctantly and made her way down the corridor and up the fine flight of stairs, turning lights on and off as she went, looking once more into the gallery room, lit like a stage.
Thomas, darling Thomas, did you ever hurt anyone on purpose? Was it by accident that you earned such hatred? What did you do to her that made her want to destroy you? I know your version of events, but is it true? Is someone trying to make me question you? Well, I won’t. I know who you are.
The master bedroom, a bateau bed, like a boat with a polished prow, a place of simple comfort, next to an old-fashioned bathroom where she washed away the taint of the day in the enormous bath with claw feet. The same bath with the shower where she had washed his long hair. Then at last she slid naked into bed, wanting to sleep, craving it, the first real sleep in a long time, surely she would sleep when now, at least, she had seen the nature of the enemy. Some of the enemies, and there were more. There was her father. She wanted the oblivion of sleep to free her from fear and fury and let the fury win. She would sleep and dream of finding allies in the morning, because that was what she needed. It would take more than solid Raymond Forrest to win this war and save the memory of Thomas Porteous from being dragged into slime and that mattered most of all. Thomas being revered for what he was and what he wanted to do.
She fell into sleep abruptly, halfway through the making of a list, thoughts veering to the Lady in Pink, the map, the girl called Peg who was on the brink of something, thinking also of the fortifying of the house, lulled by the familiar sounds of it settling for the night. She was aching for the most familiar sound of all. She had been staring at the picture on the opposite wall, a crowd of daffodils. The sound she had missed most was the sound of deep sleep and quiet breathing.
She could hear it now, imagined she could, only it was unquiet breathing.
Someone else was breathing in this house. It was more than the sound of the sea.
The noise came from overhead. Then it turned into the creak of a floorboard, a groan, and then, sobbing.
She lay still, pulled the blanket over her head, denied it and willed it away until she could no longer believe it was not Thomas, still breathing, somewhere close.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A restful room, with moss green walls and no pictures. Night time. There were mismatched tables and chairs, a blue window seat with a view of the sea.
‘I shouldn’t have done it, you know,’ Monica said. ‘Her hair came out all wrong and she was all the wrong colours, already, but I was that annoyed with her for not talking, my hand slipped. Although I have to say, it went with the leather trousers and all that. She doesn’t suit red, never did.’
‘Dressed to kill,’ Jones said.
‘Well, she wasn’t in mourning, that’s for sure. I mean, really, she looked like an anorexic barmaid with attitude. As if she meant to look brazen. There were half of us in the shop wanting to hug her, the rest wanting to know what’d gone on, and she doesn’t say a word. Black leather trousers. Off to London, with that silly old suitcase. I mean she looked like a footballer’s wife down on her luck. She doesn’t help herself, really she doesn’t – doesn’t exactly reach out, does she?’
‘There’s not been too many people reaching in,’ Jones said.
He sipped his whisky. Monica and he were sitting in the snug on the second floor of the Bell, right on the seafront, near the pier with a view of it made gloomy by the salt-and dirt-encrusted windows. The sea mist had risen and gone away. It was after closing time and the
y had been there long enough for the outside world to become uninviting.
‘If only she’d said.’
‘Said what?’
‘Said how it is. How she feels,’ Monica said.
‘She doesn’t do that. Never bloody did. Close as a clam.It’s me should have asked more.’
Monica pulled at an earring, looked at her watch and decided on one more drink. The late night arrangement in the Bell consisted of the landlord rolling to bed and leaving the out-of-hours customers to fend for themselves. Jones and Monica were the only ones remaining, smoking like chimneys in public premises that for all intents and purposes looked shut. Only a short walk home; if it happened that they should coincide later, at his or hers, no one would notice, although neither of them cared who knew about such an occasional, private arrangement. The town was full of such. Only Monica wasn’t going to invite him in tonight and she hadn’t for a while. She was hiding something and listening too closely. He should have noticed that sooner, shouldn’t he? Monica came back fairly steadily and resumed her seat with a degree of dignity. Two middle-aged old soaks, a long way from being fully soaked, yet, close, but becoming adept at keeping secrets and avoiding hidden subjects in a way they never had before. Now they lied by evasion and told the truth with equal ease, always avoiding that other agenda of Di’s dad.
‘C’mon,’ she nudged. ‘Tell me what’s going to happen next?’
He considered the question.
‘I’m going to the lav.’
She punched his broad shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean here and now, I mean with Di. Will they come and take her away again?’
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