Desire Line (18 page)

The house had been nearing the end of a big sleep. In a month they would admit the year's first injurious light and even more damaging push of bodies. Carpets and rugs were being groomed, rosewood and ormolu tables unclothed and distorting glass in the runs of bookcases must sparkle again for Easter visitors… which was why a vacant slice of desk space had to been found for her elsewhere, a too-small space that the reeking mass of papers, newly ripped from beneath a water tank, soon filled. In the distance the volunteer workforce prattled and jested while a dozen vacuum cleaners droned and in front of her lay an afternoon of sneezing and shivering and cursing as the fan heater set in motion anything not anchored down. But nothing would ever be sweeter: suddenly, between smudged thumb and forefinger, she held a poet's lost lyric to Heystrete's chatelaine
*
. They signalled a vein of pure Thomasina had been broken into and was hers for the processing, this biographer's sole claim to status: an accident of maintenance.

Amongst Fleur's photocopied pages the poem lay, safely embedded in her own text.

In putting me thus from her side/ Has caused my heart to break,
Southey whimpered.

Was there such a thing as a broken heart? Probably not. Or last week she had been at risk of accepting the condition but was this week more secure. However steep the incline, I shall find you, she told Eurwen. Determined to accomplish
something
she sat with (yes, more helpful than a drink)
the phone in hand. Polly Reith will be unlocking her rooms in Garden Quad about now for another day of industrious existence… and Josh is gone to his. ‘Mr Upton? It's Sara Meredith. I hope it's a good time?'

‘As any. Na-a- up since five. Racing hours.'

‘I hoped, well… you mentioned you would ask about Eurwen?'

‘Did I?'

Why the unhelpful tone… or the belligerence? Without Josh as witness he was not going to waste his politeness on her, it said. ‘It's your rental properties that are of interest. You might consider any new tenancies? Even if the name were different, Eurwen's description would stand out to someone. To whoever manages them?'

‘Bit of a long shot.'

‘But they sometimes win, Mr Upton, don't they?'

‘Fair enough.' The snap though belied the words: Clive Upton, body of an insect, head of a man. Or vice versa? ‘I'll have to get back to you.'

Meg's mobile went straight to voicemail. ‘…so if you could let me have a contact number for Jay and Neil? Other questions have occurred. Could you get back to me? Please.' All perfectly true; since that night she'd become convinced they knew more than they were saying. Jay, wary as a coney, Neil with that show of rubbing sleep from his eyes when he came from the van's interior though the smell of the fire was already on him. And Meg herself, she knew things: the whole of Rhyl did because, oh yes, it was a small place. If anyone else told her that she would tear her own hair.

For the hundredth time she called Eurwen.
It has not been possible…

Notes

*
The poem SM refers to – and misquotes – is now in the Heystrete Collection on loan to the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

DONNA PRIMA

The timbre of thy speech so mild,

Youth's dew illumes thy cheek.

Yet putting me thus from thy side

Has caused my heart to break.

So art thou famed – ‘tis just my Tom –

Prima
of Oxenford?

But, sweet, that mind, so burnished keen

Hath pricked me like a sword.

           Robert Southey (1774-1843)

Chapter 12

The ailing and unemployed are cruising with ice-creams through Bad Luck on Sea, stalked by gulls. Not that they mind. Air this clear gives a Technicolor zing to everything fake or real. That could be a distance shot from— I was going to say
The Birds
, again
.
Honestly? Rhyl's nothing like Bodega Bay but then neither is Bodega Bay. Hitchcock built it on the Universal Studio lot. That's the film business where even real isn't enough to convince. The actual Californian fishing village couldn't match up to his auteur's vision and now the actual BB trades on illusion – advertises itself as Home of That Movie! – and tries not to disappoint the cinemabuff tourist.

At least there's a bit of recovered energy in the way Sara's moving today. Her head strains forward of her shoulders. The SunCentre, ugliest construct in town, is her likely destination, a sheaf of leaflets clasped in her free hand. Very purposeful. Catching her in close-up where she'll need to cross, the face, though unmarked by Josh yet, is almost haggard. Then a fresh reflection off the sea remakes her. She's my Sara again.

This is the evening she'll give Josh the postcard of Crook. He'll take one glance and throw it down while he prods Fleur's box with a toe.

‘Another edition is… overdue. Fleur thinks I should try to get on with something.'

‘Work?
You?
' (She could only guess at who that day and other than herself had put the cruelty into him.) ‘Yeah, go to it! Just what the world needs, more bloody Thomasina,' he said and left them together.

Sara at twenty-one, busy on a thesis, had two things happen to her in the same week. First came the ‘discovery' of Thomasina Swift.

The second? A house she shared with others in Cherwell Street, equidistant from St Clement's College and Magdalen Bridge and in those days not the best part of Oxford but certainly not the worst, had the side door forced and every room tossed. It would emerge that Polly's cheque book, Damon's money and hashish, and her own jewellery had been stolen. Petulant and shaken, she called for Fleur, who set out from Boar's Hill but only after having summoned the police. Fleur and PC Josh Meredith arrived virtually together. He stood back— and then darkened the entrance, tall and in uniform, his eyes showing private amusement at female flurry, she thought. ‘The lock they broke's pretty vintage. This on the front's no better. Not exactly secure is it? You've done everything bar hang a Please Rob Us sign up.' The voice was
very
Welsh then and she knew no one Welsh.

Her annoyance was tempered, interestingly, by a wish not to be in this ancient sweater nor the cycle-oiled trousers. She was aware of their stains with heightened senses: filthy streaks on the inside of both calves and an oily smell that would be associated with loss forever after. Working Class Fascist
was how she categorised Josh and, at twenty-one, she was infallible. He was the type who would alter as though by hidden switch if he had found them both cashmere-suited and kitten-heeled; whereas here she was… and Fleur had arrived in gardening garb. But Fleur laughed. ‘Absolutely! That's telling us, Sara.' Fleur's genuine laughter, another indelible memory.
A week passed… he arrived out of uniform and with her moonstone necklace in a plastic evidence bag… she took it.

‘You've actually caught them!' was about the most offensive thing she could think of to say.

‘'Fraid not. This was handed in. Chucked, I guess. Once they looked at it properly.'

‘
Thank-you
.'

‘Not the crown jewels, is it?'

‘It is to me.'

‘Why I brought it round.'

Eurwen loved
this
history at least. As a little girl she would beg to hear it told, correcting Sara if the smallest detail were omitted. ‘
No-o!
You couldn't get it out of the policeman's bag thingy and he had to take it back and… and
then
he gave it you Mummy and you said—'

‘Thank you for troubling.'

Her impulse to mock had evaporated. His jeans looked almost new and had creases
ironed into them
.
The polo shirt's first outing? Certainly. But did she believe she had the upper hand with him, ever? Arguably in that final second as he lingered with a touch of a smile that never did find the eyes. ‘Would you like coffee, since you've been kind enough to come here… um…?'

‘Josh,' he said.

From the date Josh walked out of Tackley Close, Geoffrey Severing's unspoken rule was never to mention him by name: it was possible to refer to him by position. When Eurwen won an essay competition, the professor enquired, ‘Will the other proud parent be at the prize-giving?' The need to ask this sort of question again was unnecessary, it being the final accolade of her school career. Then there was the fall from the pony that necessitated an overnight in the Radcliffe. ‘And is Eurwen's father intending to visit?'

With Fleur it was very different, all built on that solid plinth of their first meeting: Josh dry, reassuring, handsome, Fleur placid, stoical, a no-nonsense, Well, that's telling
us
! as she took to him.

So from Fleur came a gentle, ‘So it really is over?'

‘Apparently. He intends to leave Oxford.'

‘Don't be flippant, darling. You know better.'

‘Do you think we should go with him? Eurwen and me to that awful place?'

‘No… no. But a married couple who have a child can't make decisions for themselves
and
that child based on a postcode.'

‘So what do you suggest?'

A liquid shine in her eyes now: ‘Oh Sara, I'm not
suggesting
. I'm reminding you of something you know. That two clever people, caring for each other as you do still, can find common ground.' Fleur's voice, so soothing and humane, almost does it. ‘He's never cared for us, you know—' small deprecating shrug, ‘but for Eurwen and… and
you
. There's always a way with enough good will. You could, for instance… I'm giving an example, here, you could—' but Geoffrey Severing strode into the Pryorsfield's kitchen, home from a cancelled something or other. Incensed, to judge by the meticulous way he sorted the contents of his pocket and then by the curtness of his explanation. So Fleur's solution remained unshared.

As did her own admission that she loved Josh more than he could ever love her. This man who hissed, ‘When was the last time you did any work?'

And why must he take a wad of flyers and crumple them in front of her face to make his point? She had chosen an image of Eurwen at the aquarium, copper hair against the blue glow like tendrils in the tide but he barely gave it a look. He grabbed at the pile, insensible to Sara's own backstory of failure, the locations where she had hoped to display them barred or about to be, so many closed on this brilliant clear day.
Out of season, love.

When, for goodness' sake, is
Rhyl's
season? How short can it be?
she had wanted to demand of people who were blameless and harmless. Now about half a dozen rejected Eurwens were being turned into waste paper just for emphasis. Small wonder it went rapidly askew. She shouted, ‘Don't do that! That's Eurwen's face you're destroying. Can't you see?'

‘Oh wonderful! First it's some crackhead you're putting your trust in, now it's– what? What are we into now, Sara? Voodoo, is it?'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' she said, shaken by how close to a hit he had come.

‘Me?'

His voice turned foreign in anger. From that one sound, if heard in isolation somehow, she would not have been able to recognise the man she had lived with for years. But further destruction of Eurwen's image stopped. Though he was claiming to be above superstition the rest of the pictures were thrown down with contempt but intact. Those big hands ran across his scalp and he changed from the intimidating figure in possession of the centre of the room to a normal Josh looking down at his wife through sickness at their joint loss… but if he expected her to smooth things over he was going to be disappointed. So much for the morning's energy; her frustrated trudge around town was weighing on muscles, bones, every chamber of the heart like the first salvos of a virus.
Feel some of it, Josh. Small wonder I needed that drink…

Suddenly, he relaxed. He dropped onto the sofa beside her, sending it backwards on its castors and stretched out an arm revealing the dark sweat rings in the fabric beneath. ‘Couldn't you have told me what you were up to?' he said.

‘You may have stopped me. There would have been some excellent reason for not doing it.'

‘There would've been— because
there is one
.'

‘What harm can it do?'

‘We said we'd handle it quietly.
You
agreed that first night here that we'd let the lads look for her. That's how we know she's not turned up hurt or… injured. Not been in an accident. Teenage boys run away and walk the streets. Girls run to other people's houses. Always. She'll be sixteen next month and she's gone off of her own accord to a friend.'

A tiny part of her craved for him to carry on with this scenario, to be carried away with it, but it was a part growing weaker day by day. ‘That's not true!'