Brodmaw Bay (21 page)

As he studied the old crustacean monster, noticing the barnacles on its ridged back and claws now that his eyes were fully adjusted to the gloom, he heard a noise behind him he knew was real rather than imagined. It was the clack of a heel in silence on a tiled church floor.

James turned, slowly. Angela Heart stood halfway down the aisle staring at him over folded arms. Her expression was severe and for a moment he felt absurdly as a child might, doing something naughty, caught red-handed in the act.

‘Why are you here?’

‘Why aren’t you at school?’

‘Inset day. This is a dangerous structure. It has lain derelict for years. It must be more than half a century since it was last surveyed. You should not be here.’

‘How did you know I was?’

‘You passed my cottage on the route. I was drinking a cup of coffee and enjoying the view of my roses through my front window. On foot, you could have had only one destination in mind. It seemed pretty improbable. I was fairly incredulous to be honest, but I knew I hadn’t imagined you. When you had not returned after five minutes, I came to look for you. I did so out of concern, James. This place is not safe.’

He nodded. He thought her phraseology odd. It was the structure that was unsafe, rather than the place. Teachers were usually more pedantic in their linguistic precision. On the other hand, Angela Heart was not your typical teacher. He had felt a physical thrill just now when she had used his Christian name.

She had not had time to change, surely, before following him to the church. It meant that she had been enjoying her coffee and her roses dressed as she was now, in a short black dress that showed her cleavage under a loop of black pearls and with her mouth shaped in crimson lipstick. The solitary clue to the impromptu nature of her errand was that her hair had only been carelessly brushed. Strands of it hung free on her cheeks, softening her features and making her look more youthful than she had the previous evening, especially now that she had dropped her hands to her sides and was smiling.

‘Listen to me. I sound like I’m telling you off.’

‘Are you going to make me go and stand in the corner?’

She looked around and pushed one of the stray strands of hair away with a thumb. ‘Neither of us should be in here. Come on, James.’

They were at the churchyard gate before he said, ‘What’s in the sacks?’

‘Bones,’ she said.

‘Not human bones?’

‘Really, how would I know what’s in the sacks? They look like they’ve been there for decades. They’re probably full of debris from an attempt to clean up the place, between the wars, back before the bay gave up on organised religion. You should really be asking Michael Carney about this. He’s our local historian.’ She closed the gate latch carefully behind them. ‘If I invited you back to my cottage for a cup of coffee, would you feel completely scandalised?’

James looked at his watch. He would set off at about one in the afternoon, the time when he judged traffic would be at its lightest, back in London to beat the rush hour. It was just after eleven o’clock. ‘I’d feel flattered and delighted,’ he said, which was only the truth.

They drank their coffee in her back garden. There was ivy on the ancient walls that formed its boundary. There was the smell of herbs and sweet grass and blossoming flowers. Birds sang from the branches of a sycamore tree. She studied him with her green eyes. In sunlight, after the gloom of the church interior, they were startling, almost mesmeric.

‘I like men like you.’

‘Oh? What’s likeable about men like me?’

‘You like women. In fact you are fascinated by women. It makes you attentive and charming and a bit flirtatious, but not in a patronising way.’

‘You think I’m a flirt?’

‘You do nothing to conceal the fact that you find me attractive. But you love your wife very deeply, James. When you talked about your family last night, the passion was plain to see in your face. It was ardent in the tone of your voice. You would never be unfaithful to her.’

‘No. I would not.’

‘I like that about you too.’

‘Then we should get on.’

She smiled. ‘But not
too
well. People might talk.’

‘I’ve never met a teacher who talks like you.’

Angela lit a cigarette. She said, ‘Many teachers draw no real line of demarcation between the children they teach and their parents. They speak to the parent as they might to a bright but sometimes tricky pupil. I’ve never done that. I have a mode of behaviour and a dress code and a rather correct and didactic persona I use in the classroom. I don’t bring it home or use it after hours because to do so would be a bore and make me a slave to my occupation.’

And teaching was an occupation for her, James knew. It was not a vocation and she was not in the business of pretending it was. She was too honest, with herself and other people for that.

‘What keeps you in the bay?’

She smiled again. ‘Why would I leave?’

‘You are clever and stylish and beautiful. I would have thought you’d have left years ago.’

‘I did leave, James. I came back.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t mind telling you, but it is a complicated story and we don’t have time for it now. You have a journey ahead of you.’

Lillian decided that she would tell James about her affair with Robert O’Brien as soon as the children had both gone to bed. She did not trust Robert. He was neither mature nor predictable and he was completely unused to failure and rejection. She thought it quite likely that he would compromise and expose her over the coming days and weeks. And living with that possibility would be a prolonged agony she was not prepared to tolerate.

She believed anyway what she had told Jack on the Thames towpath at Hampton Court. Secrecy was corrosive. She did not know whether her relationship with James, and therefore their family life, would survive intact her confession of betrayal. She did know that she could not live a lie. She had to tell the truth and then try to salvage what was salvageable once she knew the extent of the damage she had inflicted. She had to tell the truth as the first step in regaining the trust and respect of her son.

Love was a funny commodity. Lillian would have sacrificed her life willingly for either of her children. She loved them profoundly, above anyone, above anything. She knew that they loved her unconditionally. Jack loved her despite the betrayal he had found out about. Sons tended to love their mothers. And until the catastrophic error of judgement with Robert O’Brien, she had been a good mother; an affectionate, unselfish provider who tried to teach her children right from wrong and good from bad through example.

The love an adult individual felt for their partner was a less certain, more negotiable commodity. There was still much that she loved about James. But she had meant it when she had said to him it was difficult to love someone who did not have any love for themselves. James felt that he was a failure in some important ways. What he saw as his defeat in the cut and thrust of the commercial world had made him melancholy. Perhaps he was even depressed.

His defeated mood had distanced him, at least in her mind. She could not have precisely identified the moment at which they had ceased to be soul mates. She thought that it had happened, though, in the months prior to Jack’s assault. James had become moody and preoccupied and less easy to communicate with. He had not wanted to inflict his company upon her, she realised now, because he had not had sufficient self-regard to consider himself a worthwhile companion.

There was something quite noble about his reason for distancing himself. But the effect had been to distance her and that had been damaging to their relationship. They had become careful and tactful and deliberate around one another, where before there had been only spontaneity. They had grown apart. At least to her mind they had. They had started to behave around one another with a sort of formality that was alien to real intimacy. She had become isolated and she realised now, in retrospect, rather lonely.

She catalogued his attributes in her mind. He was loyal and faithful. He was sober and gentle and kind. He was selfless and patient and always had time for the children and was forever encouraging and trying to stimulate and inspire them. He was clever and physically courageous. She could not remember ever having seen him afraid. He was a bit of a flirt, but that was because he was good-looking and well put together and women responded to him positively. He was always encouraging her, was always genuinely thrilled by her achievements. He was a man who loved his wife.

How would he respond to her confession?

Her thoughts were interrupted by laughter from the sitting room. She was in the kitchen, making tea for the dashing DS sharing a sofa and some choice football anecdotes with Jack. She thought Alec McCabe less inhibited than he had been when James had been around. Maybe it was just a case of the second visit being one he was making to someone he had got to know a bit. It was obvious Jack liked him and the feeling seemed to be mutual. They had a rapport.

She looked at her watch. When she had made the tea, she would have to go and fetch Olivia from school. Clichés become clichés because their aptness earns them constant repetition, she mused, with an ironic little smile to herself. The cliché she had in mind, as she stirred sugar into McCabe’s tea, was the one insisting that there is no rest for the wicked.

On their return, Olivia scampered up the stairs to her room, saying that she had something important to write in the journal she kept. Lillian made her daughter a snack and took it up to her. Then she went in to the sitting room for her formal chat with the police officer. He had rung that morning asking to talk to both the crime victim and a parent. Sensing that the boring, grown-up stuff was about to commence, Jack excused himself. He would nap for an hour. He was sleeping for less time in the afternoons as his strength recovered. But he still needed a little siesta each day if he didn’t want the evening to bring a headache with it.

‘He plays centre back, doesn’t he?’

‘He played centre back. How much relish he will have for aerial challenges when he’s healed is yet to be determined.’

‘He seems a resilient lad. And he’s young, has youth on his side.’

‘Maybe he can play on the wing,’ Lillian said. ‘Wingers provide the crosses, don’t they? They aren’t required to get on the end of them.’

‘Sounds like you know a bit about football.’

‘For a woman, you mean?’

‘No. I mean what I say, Mrs Greer. It sounds as though you know something about the game.’

‘I’m sorry. The sarcasm wasn’t called for. When your son is a footballing prodigy, you do sort of learn about it.’

‘By osmosis, you mean?’

‘I wish by osmosis. If I had a pound for every time I’ve cheered him on from a rainy touchline . . .’

‘You’d have a lot of pounds.’

‘Quite. Does your daughter play a sport? She can hardly follow you into the ring.’

‘Jack told you about that?’

‘My husband told me. Jack told him.’

‘These days, Dora could very well follow me into the ring, actually. It’s an equal opportunities sport. But her passion is ballet, thank God.’

Lillian looked at the floor.

‘I know what you are thinking. You are wondering how many black prima ballerinas there are and I can tell you, they’re as rare as hen’s teeth. But my wife is white and my daughter mulatto and quite strikingly beautiful.’

‘Do you think my husband a racist bigot?’

‘No, Mrs Greer, I don’t. I think your husband is an empiricist. He doesn’t have much time for righteous ideology. He judges the world on how he sees it.’

‘You sound as though you approve.’

‘I grew up watching news bulletins in which they constantly banged on about the black community. It’s so ubiquitous a notion, people don’t really question it. To understand just how bogus it is, consider the white community.’

‘There isn’t one.’

‘No, there isn’t. It’s an absurd concept.’

‘Why did you want to see me, Detective Sergeant?’

‘I spoke to your husband yesterday afternoon. He sounded as though he was on a beach.’

‘He probably was.’

‘After I spoke to him, I had a call from the social services department dealing with Jack’s three alleged assailants. They’re all having the same dream, apparently.’