Ashes In the Wind (33 page)

‘There are worse places.’

‘Aye,’ says Jack Pearson, and is silent for the rest of the round.

He shows little interest in James’s life, only in his golf, suggesting a couple of improvements in his technique off the tee that James gratefully adopts. Their reticence is matched, as is their game.

On their second day James asks Jack Pearson about Anna.

‘Sports therapist. That was her by the first tee last Friday. Worked in Newcastle till lately for the Falcons Rugby Club. Came here to get away from her boyfriend. Ever been married?’

‘Over twenty years, one daughter. On my own now.’

‘There are worse places.’

A few days later their golf comes to an abrupt end. James, who rarely out-drives Jack Pearson, puts in a little extra off the tee and feels a sharp twinge up his right side. He tries to play on, but they have to give up and walk back to the clubhouse; by this time James’s back has locked solid.

‘Anna will fix you,’ says Jack Pearson. ‘She’s on my home number. Give her a call.’

‘It’ll be all right in the morning,’ says James.

It isn’t all right. The next morning he hobbles down the stairs, rings Jack Pearson from the call box and arranges to meet Anna at the clubhouse in an hour.

Up at the clubhouse Anna has set up a folding massage table in a small room next to her father’s office. The gas fire is going, the curtains drawn, and the room is comfortably warm. There is a dark blue towel on the table, and an oval hole at its top with another towel twisted around the rim. James looks at Anna uncertainly.

‘Take your clothes off, hang them on the back of the door and let’s see what’s wrong.’

James takes off everything except his boxer shorts.

‘Don’t worry, I’ve seen twenty naked men in the Falcons’ changing room every week during the rugby season.’

‘Not many of them were over fifty,’ mutters James, but does as he is told.

‘Face the window,’ says Anna, and puts her hands on James’s shoulders. She clenches her fist and runs it down his back.

‘Ouch,’ he says.

‘Relax, and stop holding your stomach in. Your right-hand side is the problem, it’s still in spasm – but you’re not in bad shape. On the table, face down.’

Anna rubs oil on her hands and sets about James’s back. From time to time she uses her elbow to dig deeply into the large muscle at the base of his spine, following down his thigh to his calf. The pressure is strong, and now and again extracts a groan from James and an apology from Anna.

Through the towelled hole on which his face rests he can see only Anna’s legs and feet. She has strong athlete’s calves and neat ankles. James tries hard to think of something else.

‘That’ll do for now,’ says Anna after an hour of treatment. ‘Tomorrow, same time? It will take four or five sessions to get you right. You’ll be quite sore after today. Is thirty pounds OK? That’s my Newcastle rate.’

Thirty pounds was fine. James walks down the hill with Anna and turns off to his room.

‘I heard you were George’s new tenant,’ says Anna.

‘It’s a great room. I came down the hill a lot easier than I went up, thanks to you. See you tomorrow.’

The next morning he walks up the hill to the clubhouse, looking forward to the session with more than just the desire to be healed. Lying face down on the table, James asks Anna about her life.

‘I was crazy about sport and the theatre. County hockey, tennis, swam a lot. I studied sports medicine at Newcastle for three years. Acted on the side; there was a good theatre scene at the uni then. Tried my hand at am dram, got a few auditions, played Beatrice in a semi-pro
Much Ado
at the Northern Stage. I did some freelance therapy work around the theatre, but I wasn’t going to make it as an actress unless I went to Central or RADA, and I wasn’t good enough for that. Can you turn over, please?’

James turns over, closes his eyes, says, ‘And then?’

‘Then I got a job as sports therapist to the Falcons just as they went professional. Which for five years was terrific. It was a good course at Newcastle. By the time I graduated I knew all about the structure of the body, muscle injuries, osteopathy, Pilates, homoeopathic medicine, and I was good at my job.’

‘Isn’t most of that homoeopathy stuff faith-healing nonsense?’

James is rewarded by a particularly painful sweep of Anna’s elbow down his calf.

Anna laughs. ‘Criticism’s risky with my elbow digging into you.’

‘Fair enough. So what brings you back here?’

‘There you are, we’re done. Perhaps I’ll tell you tomorrow.’

The next morning he is again face down as she works on his back.

‘Seems easier today. Your faith and my hands between them are doing some good.’

‘Your hands,’ says James.

Anna’s jeans are cut off above the knee. Her calves are bare, her feet in sandals. She has tanned legs, high insteps, rough skin around the bottom of her heels, fading red polish on her neat toes. James’s eyes are only twenty-four inches away from her legs as she massages his shoulders with a steady, near-painful pressure. He watches her calf muscles flex as she leans forward over him, and then shuts his eyes.

‘What brought you to Allenmouth?’ he asks again.

‘It’s a long story, but I guess you’re not going anywhere for an hour. I had an affair with one of the Falcons. A Western Samoan, inside centre, good player. He signed up after the World Sevens – Newcastle was quite a change from the Pacific Islands. Anyhow, I fixed his hamstring, showed him around Northumberland and we lived together in my cottage just outside the city at Blaydon. Three years we were together. And then we broke up. Zach was a funny mixture, a born-again Christian, looked up and pointed to heaven whenever he scored a try. He was the fastest man on the team, six foot three, sixteen solid stone. I loved watching him play, and he loved the game. Elusive runner, flattening tackler. That got him a yellow card sometimes when he used his shoulder and forgot to use his hands.’

‘Did you love him?’

There is a long pause.

‘Yes, I
loved him. But he wanted me to become a Christian. And he hated my job. Me treating his mates made him jealous, and I guess there were some locker-room jokes. Behind my back, but not behind his. I told him there was nothing to be jealous about, and there wasn’t, there absolutely wasn’t. He wanted me to give up my job. I said no. And then...’

‘And then?’

‘He knocked me about after a club dance. We were celebrating our promotion, and he had no head for alcohol. He accused me of fancying one of his team-mates. I told him he was a fool, and when we got home he slapped me. Being slapped by a sixteen-stone Samoan is no joke, believe me. He gave me a black eye, a broken nose and a fractured cheekbone. He didn’t mean to do that much damage, I know, but he did. I had to drive myself to Newcastle General, I wouldn’t let him come, he was crying by then. The police wanted me to press charges. I couldn’t do that, or go back to him, or the cottage, or the team. So I came here to Dad. He likes playing with you, by the way – says you don’t talk too much.’

‘I’m sorry,’ says James.

‘That’s OK. I’ve never told anyone else. I haven’t really told you, have I, only your back. That’s it, we’re done.’

‘Tomorrow?’ says James.

‘Tomorrow,’ says Anna.

That afternoon James walks along the beach below the golf course. Steady driving rain from the sea whips the tops of the incoming waves into white foam. Small crabs sidestep out of his way on hurried journeys. Soaked by the rain, he walks along the wet sand, his shoes making deep prints. Looking back, he sees the tide wiping out the evidence that he has been there.

He wants to think about his writing. Instead he remembers Anna’s calves, her hands on his back, the way she bundles up her hair into a tight knot, showing the little hollow at the back of her neck. His forearms still carry the smell of the oil she uses. He does not want his back to get better soon.

When he is on the table the next day it is Anna’s turn to ask questions.

‘There are some lively theories about why you’re in Allenmouth. George thinks you’re a closet queen, and you’ve picked somewhere quiet to come out. Says anyone who likes campaign furniture as much as you do can’t be straight.’

‘I didn’t know there was that much interest in me.’

‘That isn’t the half of it. Sally in the pub thinks it’s sex. Perhaps you’ve murdered your wife; it’s always the quiet ones, she says. She takes the
Daily Mail
, so she’ll know when the story breaks. Jack behind the bar says it’s white-collar crime. You did arrive with a briefcase.’

‘And your dad?’

‘He thinks you’ve come for the golf and forgotten your clubs.’

James tells her the real story. Seeing Allenmouth and the enfolding arm of the harbour wall, climbing down from the train, the need to break out of his life that started with his mirror. He talks about living in Ireland, the army, Oxford, golf. Anna likes the story of his Blue.

Working on his bad side, she takes his arm out at right angles, holds his wrist and hand between her thighs, and probes the knots in his shoulder. Being clasped in this way is intensely erotic, dampened only a little by the pain in his shoulder. He looks hard at the whorled knots in the pine floor below him, feels himself stiffening and has to adjust his erection.

‘Is that better?’ says Anna.

‘A bit,’ James says; keen to stop thinking about Anna’s thighs, he tells her the story of his Treasury career, the air-traffic control system scandal, his early retirement. Anna is surprised at the outcome of the ATCS row.

‘You did well,’ Anna says. ‘Good for you. But why didn’t you talk to the press?’

‘Because it wouldn’t have had any effect. Half the newspapers love British exports, any exports, guns as much as butter. And the smoking gun, the commission paid to the prime minister’s nephew, had no fingerprints.’

‘Pity.’ Anna pats him on the shoulder. ‘That’s it. You’re a lot looser today, and I don’t mean the confessional. Last session tomorrow?’

‘Last session.’

James dresses, keeping his back turned. They walk down the hill together, neither talking.

J
AMES
HAD
JOINED
the Civil Service not through any great feeling of vocation, but because that was what clever Wykehamists did. It gave him security, a feeling that he was part of an elite, and he liked the sound of ‘I’m in the Treasury’ more than ‘I’m a merchant banker’, or ‘I’m in advertising’.

Gradually it began to mean more to him than security and status. His analytical mind and ability to write clearly marked him out, and he enjoyed the role of the guardian of the taxpayer’s purse against what he had come to see as the hungry, feckless, spending departments. He walked to work every morning via St James’s Park, often pausing at the head of the lake just below Buckingham Palace. A large weeping willow on the right and chestnuts, ash and crab apple on the first island framed a view down the lake to a fountain in the middle distance. Beyond the gilded cupola above the Admiralty, the turrets, domes and spires of Whitehall looked as though they were the roofscape of a chateau on the Loire.

He remembered the walk on the morning the ATCS project first landed on his desk; it was a bright spring day, the leaves of the trees freshly green, the piles of mown grass smelling rich, about to decay. It was the only time in his Civil Service career that he kept a diary.

17 April

The air-traffic control system project seemed simple at the beginning – a joint submission by the Department of Overseas Aid and the DTI, blessed by the Foreign Office (Tanzania is the best of our former colonies – how good is that, I wonder? – and deserves our support, they said), and my Permanent Secretary seems keen to give it the Treasury blessing.

1 May

The technical appraisal of the ATCS has finally arrived – not in the original bundle, as DOA had asked for a review. No wonder – the appraisal, by a panel of three aviation experts, makes it clear that the system is Not Fit for Purpose. Their capitals. What we are supplying is a system designed for controlling and directing military aircraft, at three times the cost of an appropriate civil aircraft solution. Which we don’t have.

11 May

Perm Sec asked me to review my minute on the ATCS and queried my conclusion. Which was that this was a clear waste of government money, not a good use of DOA funds, etc., etc. He said I appeared over-reliant on the technical appraisal, warned me against trusting experts, and said how important exports and jobs were in current economic conditions. He wants me to say it’s OK. It’s not OK.

17 May

I’ve looked at everything again and come to the same conclusion. Why the enthusiasm for such an obviously bad idea?

18 May

Tripartite meeting – three Perm Secs, three Assistant Secs (one of them me) to talk about how to help the Tanzanians take off and land their aeroplanes. I say the proposal is nonsense, the rest say things like, ‘The best is the enemy of the good’. Meaningless, especially in this context. Later the Perm Sec comes to my office, says something like, ‘You should know this project is very close to the prime minister’s heart,’ and leaves my minute on the desk. He’s scrawled across it, ‘Take another look’.

21 May

I’ve at last discovered what is going on. Via
Private Eye
. The PM’s layabout nephew is a ‘consultant’ to the government of Tanzania on ATCS and other projects, and will trouser two and a half million pounds in commission if the deal goes ahead.
WHICH IT SHOULD NOT
.

11 June

Final tripartite meeting, same cast of characters. The Permanent Secretary expresses mild reservations, but ‘on balance’ gives Treasury approval for the project. I am not asked for my opinion but give it nevertheless. There is an embarrassed silence, followed by a summing-up that gives the green light to wasting £25m of UK taxpayers’ money. As a form of outdoor relief for the PM’s nephew, it’s expensive.

17 June