Timetables have been checked. The tide will be out, so the hearse will, apart from where it has to skirt the groynes, be able to travel over firm, damp sand as opposed to the shingle which, the undertaker worries, might play havoc with the tyres.
After about a mile, when it reaches the Tea Hut and the Sailors’ Reading Room it will have to stop because there’s no way for a car to get up there. Then will come the even harder, even stranger bit. Six men—Alex, Mick, John Empson, Geoff Farr, Kenneth Peach and Jack Abrahams, with Jim Dawson and (possibly, though yet to be confirmed) Vic Munro standing by as reserves—will carry the coffin up the steps and onto East Cliff and back along the High Street, cutting across Bartholomew’s Green to the church.
Most of the town will be waiting, either in the church or outside it in the graveyard. It’s lucky that St Margaret’s—the finest medieval seaside church in England, the guidebooks call it—is so vast. Everyone can squeeze in. And just about everyone, it’s thought, will want to.
Alex says this strange journey was Con’s idea. That he wanted to give his mum a last look around the town. A way of giving it back to her, he says.
Rosa approves of the idea.
I want to go too, she says.
Darling, I tell her, you can’t.
Anyway, it’s not straightforward. There are problems. The weight of the coffin for one thing. Alex never gave a thought to this when he made it—unused as he was to making coffins—but oak weighs far more than pine. Will six men be able to get it all the way up the steps to East Cliff without a struggle? Those steps, cut into the side of the cliff, are famously steep, and hard to negotiate at the best of times. An accident—with Lennie and the coffin crashing all the way down onto the prom—would be unthinkable.
There’s the handrail on the left, Mick says, but nothing on the other side. And if you can’t hold on, you need at least to be able to look up.
And those guys are all so old, I point out. Well John and Ken anyway and Maggie says that Geoff sometimes gets the shakes.
It might frankly be easier, Mick says, to carry the bloody church to the coffin.
The only way round all of this, Alex decides, is to practise. At nine one night the six pall-bearers meet in The Anchor and then go on to his studio where, in a kind of weird parody of a wedding rehearsal, they shoulder the empty coffin and carry it all the way down to the beach and then up and down those same steps. In the moonlit dark. Several times.
Will we see her? Jordan meanwhile wants to know. Will you be able to look at her when she comes in the church?
No, darling, I tell him, she’ll be in the coffin—you know, the one that Alex has made? No one will see her, but we’ll all know that she’s there.
She’s not there any more, Rosa quickly points out. Her soul is gone, you know. When you’re dead your soul floats up and leaves your body—
Jordan is silent, holding himself tense and thoughtful.
I miss her, he says softly. I wish we still went round there.
But we do, I say. We do still go round there.
No, he says. I mean when she was there and used to give us tea and things.
I hug him close to me and kiss the hot top of his head.
He means she made things normal, Rosa says. That’s what he means, don’t you, Jordan?
Alex says that at first Max and Con were upset when they heard that the funeral was happening. They cried because they were getting their mum back and also because they knew they were losing her all over again.
Early on, at Lacey’s suggestion, he took them to a posttraumatic stress clinic in Norwich. They went once and then gave up.
It was useless, Max said. They made us play with dolls and look at books. They ought to at least have Nintendo if they want kids to go to those places.
Mick and I laughed.
The three of them ended up drinking hot chocolate in Starbucks and then going shopping to HMV and Virgin instead which, as even Lacey agreed, was probably more therapeutic in the end.
We work things out in our own way, Alex told the counsellor. I’ve got people to talk to and so have the boys.
Now, to Alex’s annoyance, the woman has sent him pamphlets entitled How to Grieve and Letting Go and Saying Goodbye. Alex puts them straight in the bin.
When asked what he and the boys are planning to do with themselves the night before the funeral, he says they’re going to hire a video and get a takeaway.
Work drags along. I haven’t a clue whether I’m really helping patients or not. I almost haven’t the heart to charge Edna Richards for her treatment, so unsure am I that I really picked up anything or had any real effect on her body.
After I close, I go slowly up the High Street with Liv in the buggy and get the evening paper from Curdell’s. The place is busy for a Monday afternoon. At the counter, near the racks of postcards and boxes of Bic lighters, Jan seems to have a crowd of people, all standing around and chatting. I realise they’re talking about Darren Sims.
It was on him, someone says. He had it on him.
Down in a ditch towards Blackshore, says another voice.
They don’t think it’s connected, says Caroline Antrich.
But they haven’t arrested him, have they? Jan asks.
No one seems to know the answer to that.
Darren’s only seventeen, someone points out.
Eighteen. Eighteen in December.
Seventeen, then.
That’s a juvenile—is that a juvenile? asks Jean Almond.
I don’t care what anyone says—a pain in the arse and all that but—not capable of violence, no way—
Stupid place to hide it, though.
Or not—
Some kids found it—playing around the ditches.
How’d they know it was Darren’s then?
No idea. Fingerprints or something I expect.
I push Livvy up Lorne Road and onto Gun Hill. From up here by the cannons, I can look down on the beach, the sky, the sea. It’s very windy, it nearly always is up here—a real, ferocious, flattening kind of wind. A few kids are trying hard to play cricket, but they’d be much better off flying a kite. Jordan would so love to bring his Demon Racer up here right now. Last time we tried there was barely any wind and he was so disappointed.
I haven’t been a good mother lately. I know this. That day, when there was no wind, Jordan cried bitterly. It took an hour to get him out of his sulk. I can’t remember what it felt like, now, to live in a time when we still worried about the weather and when a sudden lack of wind could feel like a tragedy.
I sit down on a bench and watch the rough aliveness of the sea, brownish and edged with a ruff of foam. Liv’s awake, smiling. A tooth has finally come through. I still can’t get used to that small serrated stump poking up from where before there was only wet pink.
I wipe my tears on my coat sleeve. It’s so old, this coat, that it’s barely worth paying the money to get it cleaned.
Jordan swears that all he did was tell Nat that Darren had found something in the ditch.
He made me, he says and his face is sullen and pinched. He forced me to tell. He said he’d hold me down and spit in my face if I didn’t.
And did he go to look? In the ditch? I ask him.
Jordan says nothing.
Did you tell him where? Did he go there?
How should I know? he says. He’s always going off and doing things without me.
Of course Nat isn’t in his room. The curtains are still half closed, trapped between the radiator and the bed which is not only unmade but has its covers falling off, onto the floor. I drag the duvet right off and leave it on the floor. Kick a pair of trainers across the room. Things he will barely notice.
There’s a smell of varnish or paint. Plates covered in crumbs are stacked next to PlayStation games and glasses containing the dregs of orange juice gone sticky and dark. All his clothes, clean or dirty—school uniform, socks, pants, tracksuit bottoms, endless T-shirts with logos—are trailed across t
he rug which is rucked up and thick with fluff and dog hair. Fletcher isn’t allowed upstairs, but somehow he has perfected the knack of getting himself up those stairs and into Nat’s room and slinking on his belly under the computer table and lying there, half hoping to be invisible, half waiting, guiltily, to be found.
It ought to be simple, just to go down there to the kitchen and ask Mick whether he knows where his son is. He glances up from where he’s sorting the dirty washing into whites and coloureds.
I saw him with his coat on earlier, he says.
So he’s out?
I don’t know.
You’re his father.
I know that.
Well, don’t you care enough to know?
I go over to the sink where the tap’s dripping and turn it off. Push down the lid of the bin which is jammed full and starting to smell.
What’s happening to this place? I ask him.
What do you mean?
Everything—stinks.
You could empty the bin for once, he says. Where’ve you been anyway?
I took Livvy for a walk after work, OK?
Mick shrugs.
Fine by me, he says. And I know what he means—that it would have been, it used to be.
I sit at the table and put my hand on Fletcher’s soft head.
He’s almost thirteen, Tess, Mick says. I don’t ask where he’s going all the time.
Thirteen is nothing, I say. Thirteen is still a child.
That’s not what you would have said—before.
Before?
Before all this.
I sigh.
Look, Mick says more gently, he’s perfectly safe.
You’ve no idea, I tell him, whether this place is safe any more.
Don’t be so on edge.
I’m not on edge, I tell him but my hands are trembling.
He looks at me.
I’m not, I say again.
Nat says he was just in the playground.
What, playing football?
No, he says, not playing. Just hanging out. And I never touched the knife, I never even saw it. I just went and told Darren he should tell someone, that’s all.
How did you know it was a knife?
Nat looks at me.
Well, duh-brain, I asked him of course.
You went and asked Darren what he’d found in the ditch?
Nat rolls his eyes.
Yes of course. Why not? What’s wrong with that? Was I committing a crime or something? He was dying to tell someone, you know.
Nothing’s wrong with it, I say, but—well, why didn’t you come and tell us?
He gives me a look as if to say that should be obvious.
Because you’d just have prevented me, that’s all, he says.
Prevented you from what?
Dunno. From everything.
Nat, we wouldn’t.
Oh yeah, you would. You do it all the time.
I look at him and feel a kind of hunger—for what? For the days when if I tried to hug him he didn’t spring away from me? For the days when he didn’t use to lock the bathroom door? For the days when he still smelled of his own sweet baby self, instead of the different, contaminated smell of the outside world?
He meets my eyes and his own are fierce, challenging.
What? he says.
Nothing. I didn’t say anything.
I didn’t mean him to get into trouble, Nat says quietly. I didn’t know they’d think it was his.
I touch his skinny, nerved-up shoulder.
It’s OK, I say. I can tell them, you see, that I know he found it. He won’t get into trouble, not if I talk to Mawhinney, he won’t.
Four times, Rosa tells me when I ask if they’ve really seen Lennie. We’ve seen her roughly four times.
Roughly? Rosa, for heaven’s sake, what does that mean?
She screws up her eyes so tight that her freckles blur together.
I mean I’m not exactly sure of how many times. Sometimes I see her in my sleep. I don’t count those.
And who’s we?
Jordan and me. Let me see—she counts on her fingers—once on the beach near The Polecat, once at the end of the road where school is, and twice here.
What? Here in the cemetery?
Yup. Jordan and me were swinging on the big tyre and we looked up and saw her sitting just over there. She was there for ages, just staring at us the whole time we were swinging. I’m not lying, I swear we did. Ask Jordan. He saw her too.
I look at Rosa and she widens her eyes.
Even if you don’t believe me, she says, it doesn’t matter. It makes no difference. She’ll still keep coming and I’ll still see her.
I don’t mean a ghost, she’s saying to me as the wind blows and the church clock dongs the hour, I’m not stupid, you know. I know that ghosts don’t exist, they aren’t real.
Well, I ask her, what, then?
It was just Lennie. It wasn’t scary or anything. She looked really normal.
What was she wearing?
Rosa narrows her eyes.
Um—jeans. I can’t remember what on top. And trainers, the ones with the silver bits on them I think.
I take her small hand in mine.
Darling, I say, Rosa, listen. This doesn’t mean I think you’re making it up, I promise, but, well, do you think what you saw was in your head?
As if expecting this, she smiles and shakes her head at me in a benign and patient way.
In your imagination, I mean.
If she was in my head, then she wouldn’t have been real.
People see things, I say, but she smiles again. She’s not falling for that one.
Well then, I ask her, trying something else, why do you think you saw her? It’s not normal is it?
It’s not normal, no.
So—why? What do you think she’s doing?
Rosa thinks about this.
Just being sad. I think she’s sad.
Do you?
Yes. She looked like she wanted to be with us. And like she was missing us and—seeing her made me want to cry.
Because you miss her?
I do miss her, yes, but that’s not why I wanted to cry.
Why then?
I don’t know, Rosa says slowly. Maybe it’s that I don’t want to think of her being all alone.
Our lives are all around us. That’s what I know now. The beginnings and the ends of them, some wrapped tight, pulsing, unknowable—others floating free.
Time is a made-up thing. Everything happens at once. I know that now. It’s all the same—life, death and life again. Children know this. That’s why they complain if you make them wait for anything. Waiting is dead time, nothing time, they know that. Waiting is a punishment, finally over when the moment comes.
Even after Lennie, life goes on. You think it shouldn’t, but it does. Smoke topples out of chimneys, babies startle, kids shriek, cars draw up and stop and go away again, men get tired of things, the sea crashes snarling onto the shingle and then retreats, sparrows jump up and down off branches and out of trees, dogs sleep.
So why won’t she let go?
Maybe she wants her heart back, Rosa says. Maybe that’s what it is. I know if I was her that’s what I’d want.
We sit on the low flinty wall that separates the cemetery from the playground.
So, I ask Rosa, if you can see her, why can’t I?
Don’t know, she says, her eyes far away as she chases a ladybird up a stalk of grass with her thumb. Maybe you could. But I doubt it.
Why?
She’s silent, concentrating on the insect. I can see every single light-blonde hair all the way up the nape of her neck, the faint beginning of colour where her cheeks curve, the swirl of baby hair that turns into a cowlick at her temple and is charming now but will probably annoy her when she’s older and vainer.
You don’t want to see her, Rosa says.
It’s not a question. She has the insect on her thumb, watching as it crawl
s over her grubby thumbnail. Tilting her head, careful not to lose sight of it.
I do, I tell her, but I hear my voice—adult, tired, without conviction.
No, Mummy, she says. Let’s face it. You don’t.
I smile.
You’ve got your mind on other things, she says. All the time. You’re always looking out for something else.
She takes her eyes off the ladybird for one single second to look at me with narrowed eyes.
Am I? I ask her, surprised.
Mmm, she says.
Something?
My heart bumps.
Or someone, she says and she turns and smiles at me with eyes I don’t recognise.
The ladybird flies off—a black frizz and whirr of wings. Rosa tuts.
Oh look, she says. Look what you made me do.
Mawhinney says I needn’t worry about Darren. He says the knife has been ruled out anyway by forensics. It’s not connected with the murder, he says. It’s just a knife. A coincidence. So that’s that.
I try to make him understand that I’m not worrying, that I just want him to know that it wasn’t even Darren’s knife to start with. How I know he found it—how Jordan and I ran into him just after he’d found something, that day when we were walking Fletcher at Blackshore.
What I mean, I tell Mawhinney carefully, is Darren wouldn’t even own a knife.
Mawhinney looks at me and laughs.
Rosa and I walk down Fieldstile Road, turn right onto North Parade and then head down onto the beach.
No one’s there, not a single person, not even a dog. I sit hunched on the windy shingle while Rosa mooches up and down at the water’s edge, head down, looking at pebbles.
Every now and then she squats—legs bending easily beneath her—and picks up a stone, turning it over, but mostly leaving it. Or else stands and hurls it so it skims the dark water, bouncing along the way Nat must have taught her. When that happens she glances back to see if I’ve seen. I raise my hand and wave to show her that I have.
The sun moves in and out of the clouds, drawing long black shadows across the beach, throwing light at everything, then snatching it all back up again.
Rosa comes crunching up the shingle, holding something up to the light.
Something Might Happen Page 16
