‘I mean where is she? I need to see her. I want to give her this.’ He waved the statue about. ‘She can keep it by her bed, as an indication of my feelings, that is until I want it back. It’s quite the star of my collection.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘So? Is she staying nearby? I called on your bungalow, but there was no one in. At least it appeared that way, although I was sure I heard some scuffling going on when I looked through the letterbox. If I didn’t know any better I might have thought there was someone there trying to avoid me.’
‘That’ll be Em’s rabbit,’ I said. ‘Henry Moore. We have him instead of a dog. He hops about from room to room, sounding like someone’s in. With all our expensive artwork lying around, it pays to be security conscious. As for Hilary. I’m not sure where she is to tell you the truth. She’s a very free spirit. She upped sticks this morning, without a word.’
‘You drove her away more like, with your ogling.’
‘You’re going to have to get used to it, Adam. Nudity is second nature to a woman like Mrs Durand-Deacon. It’s what we artists thrive on, the naked form. We can’t do without it in fact. For an artist not to cop an eyeful on a regular basis is like having the bristles on his brushes snipped off. Rather than telling her to keep her clothes on you should learn to take yours off, wander about the house in nothing else but a pair of socks, feed Mother Teresa in the all together.’ He nearly dropped the statue.
‘Have you gone mad? She doesn’t even like it when fish of the other gender swim past her. I had been wondering if they shouldn’t wear something to cover themselves up, though I don’t think you can buy swimwear for fish. But me with nothing on? The sight would probably kill her.’
‘Yes, well, you may have a point there, but otherwise, as far as Hilary is concerned, nudity is the key. Also, I don’t want dampen your ardour Adam, but have you considered that she might be spoken for. Mrs Durand-Deacon? Mrs?’ He shook his head, smiling.
‘Good God, Al. For a man of the world you can be surprisingly naïve sometimes. It’s obvious isn’t it? She didn’t come all this way over here to be sculpted by you. Even I can see that as a sculptor, you’re pretty much in the talentless enthusiast category. No, she was here because of your fish, to be near them. You said as much yourself. If her husband kept fish she wouldn’t have to come to you would she? So obviously, he doesn’t. So obviously he is a no hoper who I can easily knock off his perch, or should I say, knock into my pond.’
He laughed, one of them mad-scientist laughs, then straightened up as his phone bleeped a message. It took him a while to work out how to read it, going backwards and forwards over the keypad. Then he turned his back on me, rang in. I could tell by the way his shoulders hunched up, it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
‘Damn and blast the woman,’ he said, snapping the phone shut. ‘It’s Audrey. She’s been sighted.’
Bloody hell. And I told her to keep the blinds down.
‘Don’t tell me. She broke in as soon as my back was turned. Christ I’ve only been gone an hour.’
‘Not your place. Out on the cliff. We just got a phone call. Did we know that Al Greenwood’s wife was pacing up and down on top of the Beacon, wringing her hands, looking suicidal? There’s men up there now. Perhaps you should come along too. If anyone could talk are down…’
‘But she hates me.’ He tapped the side of his head.
‘Psychology Al. Psychology. You tell her to jump and hurry up about it, and then, because she hates you, she won’t. She’ll do the exact opposite and give herself up. It’s a well-known negotiating ploy when dealing with the unstable. Telly Savalas often used it with that lollipop of his.’
I followed Rump in my car. So Audrey couldn’t take it anymore. Four years in jail she could handle. Two days in our bungalow and she goes stir crazy. Perhaps it was the curry, making her all fizzy and restless inside. That what Mr Singh’s curries were famous for. And the way she packed it away last night? She’d have been busting like a bottle of fizz with the stopper tapped down tight. Perhaps she thought that taking a flying leap into nowhere was the only way she was going to get out of this. Be ironic really, if, after trying to push her over the cliff edge all those years back, I should now be saving her from doing the same thing voluntarily.
We parked up by the car park kiosk, and walked up. I hadn’t been there for years, not since Em and me got together. It wasn’t good. Every step closer to that mound took me closer to my past, what I’d done, what I’d got away with. It could see it looming up at me, like I was climbing up towards my final reckoning, where everyone would be waiting for me, fingers pointing; Robin, Carol, Robin’s mum, Alice Blackstock too, with a blood-caked bandage on her head. Robin’s little Scrabble set would be dug up, the message plain for all to see, my letter to Em there too, stuck to Audrey’s hand like a wanted poster; everyone who mattered there, like it was me they were waiting for, not Audrey at all. I mean I only had Rump’s word for it, and what’s a policeman’s word worth these days? What’s a policeman’s word worth any day?
When we got to the top there was a line of six of them fanned out round the base. They looked like skittles, ready to be knocked down. Rump signalled me to stop, went up and had a chin-wag. Then he came back.
‘She’s standing by the edge,’ he said. ‘They’ve asked her to come quietly, but apparently she’s been quite rude, told them to eff off, amongst other things.’ He shook his head. ‘This is what us policeman have to put up with on a daily basis Al, unnecessary verbal abuse.’
As opposed to the necessary variety.
I walked through the line and round the base of the Pimple. She was standing looking out to sea, in a yellow oilskin on, for fuck’s sake. I’d seen with her back to me once before, but this time, even with that oilskin on, her legs looked even better. I realised then, this isn’t how wanted it to end. I’d been thinking about it, yes, how I could double cross her, get my own back, but I didn’t want that anymore. I wanted to wave a wand, whisk her away. If I couldn’t do that, maybe I should run up and grab her hand and take that leap with her, the two of us locked in death like we had been in life. ‘Course that's what we had been Audrey and me, locked in tight, no doubt about it, ever since we started out. I mean take her dad’s business. Yes, I joined him and did as I was told and yes I started knocking off his daughter and married her, and yes, after a lifetime of playing second fiddle he took poorly and I took up the reins, but wait, he got better didn’t he, wanted it all back, be the big boss-man again, hop back up on his perch after all the work I’d put in, drumming up extra custom, spending my own money tarting up the Vanden Plas, and him with a twitch on the side of his face and his left eye a bit droopy. I mean he shouldn’t have been allowed back on the road again full stop, but oh no, fuck that, he wanted it all back, blurted it all out one morning on his way to get his breakfast. He was like me that way, liked his bread rolls fresh from the oven, liked going down there having a chat with Harry the baker, no matter that his missus told him not to, that it wasn’t wise to go all the way down there with those big stone steps to climb back up, not in his condition, that I’d be glad pick them up for him, wouldn’t I? Oh, I should say so. But no, he wouldn’t take advice like that would he? Why? ‘Cause he was a stubborn old bastard who clung to everything in his life like he was the only limpet on the rock. And there he was, coming out of his puke-green bungalow that morning, his face going all sour when he saw me, walking ahead like I wasn’t there. He was a short little man with a short little temper. He had long arms and bow legs and a face that needed punching. He set off down the road at a pace. We hadn’t got ten yards when out it came.
‘You’ve been messing with my engine,’ he said.
‘You speaking to me Gil?’ I said. ‘Only I’m behind you.’
‘You’ve re-tuned it, like it was a fucking racing car. And those bloody new- fangled tires. Who do you think you are? Bloody Fangio.’
‘It wasn’t firing like it should. I was just trying…’
‘…to step into my shoes and put me out to grass. Well I got news for you sonny Jim. Just because you’re shacked up with my daughter who’s got no more sense between her ears than she has between her legs, just because you’ve taken over her life, doesn’t mean you going to take over mine. You’re lippy with the customers too, I’ve heard. Yes, that’s right. Just because I haven’t been here for a while, doesn’t mean I haven’t heard things. It’s what a place like this does Al. Yak-yak-yaks. And the general consensus is, the Vanden Plas has shown you up for what you really are—a man with lot less than meets the eye.’
He’d reached the top of the stone steps and was looking back at me, his face all sharp and grinning. He had liked saying that, liked the way it had rolled round in his mouth.
‘You’ve been rehearsing that one,’ I said, ‘I can tell. It was very nice, very well delivered, nice rounded vowels, good stance, bow legs notwithstanding of course. Is there any more, or can I go and cry into a croissant?’
‘There’s more. Quite a bit more in fact.’ He crossed his hands over his unmentionables. He had a big bulge down there. Unnatural for a man of his vertical dimensions. ‘I’m thinking I should dispense with you altogether,’ he said, that smirk of his growing bigger by the second. ‘See how well you last on your own.’
That wasn’t a nice thing to say. It was tough out there. Besides, the Vanden Plas was my car now. I loved the way it floated along, like it ran on clouds, loved the way I sank into it, and yet, sat tall, like I was in a saddle, like I was on a horse looking out over the plains. You could go anywhere in a car like that. Be anyone too.
‘What about Audrey?’ I said, as meek and mild as a man can be. ‘Chuck me out on the street and there’s her to consider. She’s in this too.’
‘Audrey’s your problem. And you’re hers. I’m done with the pair of you. And if I were you. I’d try another line of work. You’re not a much of a driver as it is.’ He pointed to my jacket. ‘Take those silly gloves of yours.’
I touched my side. They were there, sticking out. I carried them everywhere in them days. Light pig-skin they were, holes over the knuckles and a little button clasp on the inside wrist. Slipped over your fingers like a freshly filled condom.
‘What’s wrong with them?’
‘They try and give the impression of something you’re not – sophisticated, stylish, the man about town.’ He laughed. ‘Christ, you don’t even take corners the right way, don’t know how to change down properly. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have taken you on in the first place. I could have taught a monkey better than you.’
And he turned round to go down, and so, down he went, bumpety bumpety, all the way to the bottom. Lucky I was there to call the ambulance fifteen minutes later, not that it did any good. The Vanden Plas followed the hearse all the way to the church, me in front, with the pig-skin gloves on, mirror askew so I could take a good look at Audrey sitting on the back seat with her mum, looking as pleased as Punch, like she’d laid an egg. I’d spent half the night, polishing that car up special, putting on the new whitewall tires, buffing up them spokes. It looked lovely, everyone said, a proper mark of respect. The point is, she never questioned it, Audrey, how it had happened, just held my hand all through the service, squeezing it hard every time how he met his end was mentioned. She’d never liked him much and him liking me even less was what got us going in the first place. That’s why she liked it doing it behind his back. He was the attraction, not me. That night, after the wake, she was the same, like she was imagining him looking down on us, her funeral dress hoiked up around her belly, her eyes staring up at me, like searchlights into my soul. Yeah, locked in we were, right from the beginning. That’s how it was always going to be, I could see that now.
I took a step nearer. The sea below was slapping against the rocks like two bodies on heat. I could feel the sweat of them on sticking to the back of my neck.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’
She turned round.
It wasn’t Audrey at all. It was Em. Al Greenwood’s wife my painted arse.
‘Em! What the fuck are you doing?’ She pointed to the flatfoots ranged up behind me.
‘What are they doing, more like? I was just up here, thinking things through, when all of a sudden I’m surrounded. What’s going on? I’m allowed here aren’t I?’
‘Course you are. It’s just…’ I laughed. ‘Some village busybody saw you up here, thought you were about to chuck yourself off, told the police you were my wife.’
‘Well I’m not.’
‘I know you’re not. You can if you want to be.’
Did I say that? She was surprised too.
‘What do you mean?’
‘If you want to be. We can do it on the next cruise if you like.’
‘I can’t believe I‘m hearing this? On the Lady Di?’
‘Why not? Make it our last.’
‘Because,’ she looked in the direction of the police, ‘of everything that’s going on. I think you got your taste for other things back. I don’t think I’m really needed any more.’
‘Course you are. It’s that’s why you left without saying a word, because of that fucking curry? If it means anything, I’ll never have another one as long as I live Em. I mean it. I don’t care about curry. I don’t care about Audrey either. I care more about that painting you took a knife to.’
‘You saw that?’
‘Course I saw that. Hard to miss. It meant a lot to me that painting.’ She bit her lip.
‘I shouldn’t have done it.’
‘Yes you should. It was how you felt. In fact I think you should cut them all out, all the other ones we got stacked away in the garage. Not Tonto every time obviously, because that would become like a cliché, but maybe some of his near relatives and neighbours. You’d be making a statement, about life and living together, men and women.’
‘Was that what I was doing? I thought I was just angry.’
‘Course it was. You know that as well as I do. Let everyone get to see it. Tell you what. I’ll buy you a brand new Stanley knife. You can start slashing as soon as you come back. You are coming back I take it.’
‘I’m not sure. Things are different now, what with…’ The name hung in the air again.
‘Em. I don’t have a choice in this, thanks to that letter. Now if you’d thrown it away like I thought you had…’
‘Nothing would have changed. She’d still be there, and I’d still be here. She won’t use the letter on you, same as you won’t turn her in. It’s a game between you two, what you do to each other, that’s all.’ She waved her hand in the direction of the plods. ‘Call them off Al. I’m going back to mum and dad for a bit. Don’t worry I won’t tell. Just sort it out, one way or the other.’
I did as I was told. Rump was on his mobile.
‘Very poorly,’ he was saying. ‘I’d like you come out this evening, take a look at her gills. There’s something rather unpleasant seeping out of them.’ He saw me, put the call on hold.
‘You can call off the hounds,’ I told him. ‘It isn’t Audrey.’
‘Are you sure?’ He sounded put out.
‘Reasonably. Looks more like Miss Prosser to me, you know, the woman I’ve lived with for the past three years. Take a look for yourself if you don’t believe me. She was up here for a quiet think, until you lot butted in. She’s been a little over wrought lately. It’s the fish. She gets a trifle jealous.’
He nodded.
‘Some of them can’t stand it, you know, the female sex, a little piscatorial competition. Lucky my Hilary’s not like that. Tell me, do you think she’d like one of my koi named after her?’
‘What higher honour could a woman ever hope for?’
‘That’s what I thought. I’ll go and single one out now, maybe take a picture of her, so I can show her when I propose.’
‘That would clinch it, no doubt. Better than a ring.’
‘And cheaper. Don’t forget now, as s
oon as she gets in contact, let me know. I want to invite her over, taste what life will be like Chez Rump. We could drain the pond together, something to make her feel really at home.’
He got back on the phone and he was gone.
I walked Em over the caravan, where she’d parked her car. Her little travelling bag was lying on the back seat, her sketch pad too. I took the car keys out and dangled the key in front of her.
‘You don’t know what this is, do you,’ I said. She shook her head.
‘It’s the key to this place,’ I said. ‘I own it.’
‘You never told me.’
‘Well, we don’t go up here do we? Danger. Unexploded Mines and all that. Here’
I put the key in the door, then realised I didn’t need it. Audrey had forced the lock back. I stepped in. A dirty little dishcloth lay all screwed up on the kitchenette drainer that Audrey must have used the three days she was here. Well, that made a change. Em followed me in, bumped her head on the row of mugs, as she sidled past me, into the seating area. She stretched her arms out.
‘It’s bigger than you think. Lighter too.’
‘Isn’t it? I used to come here a lot in the old days,’ I said, ‘trying to get away from it all. There’s the grass and the view of the sea, everything laid out nice and peaceful, like just for you. At night Alan Sparrow’s sheep used to come round, scratch their backsides. Felt like a high tide had come and floated us off.’
‘Us?’
‘The caravan and me. Look, don’t go back to your mum. Stay here. Fresh milk in the morning from the farm. Eggs too. I’ll bring some gas up, make the sure the heater and cooker work. You could paint lovely up here.’
‘I thought you wanted me slashing down in the bungalow.’
‘That too. I put it up in the gallery, you know, the one you already done. Some old fart nearly parted with a thousand pounds.’
‘Al!’
‘I know. Clever wasn’t it. I reckon we get them all out, spend an afternoon with a nice bottle of vino mutilating them all. Have a whole gallery of them. We could make a fortune.’
Ship Ahoy! (A Cliffhanger Novel Book 3) Page 13
