Desire Line (37 page)

Since she had survived her dip, Josh explained he must work later, the inference, which amused or she pretended it did, being that only her demise would have necessitated taking twenty-four hours' leave. An evening surveillance, he clarified, could prove lengthy. Pointless to wait up. His having to desert her was a comfort in a way: smooth it out or let it fester, it must at least stop. About to leave the room, he changed his mind and leaned back in his chair again, the leather under him complaining. ‘Tell you what, come out for a breath of air. I'll be cooped up after. Come on. Do us good.'

Josh and Eurwen both found indoors uncongenial: roofs, walls, safety and comfort, none of it seemed to count with either. Eurwen, a Quaker of a baby, become a toddler lurching from room to room, never able to give an explanation for her movement even when speech became adequate. (She was slow to annunciate, a tormenting time for the Severings). This burning-headed Dervish, bouncing off tables and chairs and child-gates and the legs of adults, was in training for the day she would bolt.

Sara fought the urge to sink further into the cushions, to plead benefit of blistered feet. ‘All right.' Her stomach performed a new trick; already a cave, the vacancy expanded into her loins, thighs, and raced down into the floor. For a vertiginous moment, she was a half-creature, floating free. ‘Give me a moment.'

Sallow but tidy, she returned and he nodded encouragement. He was in jeans and a fresh olive sweatshirt. Almost they matched. She slipped on sunglasses:
Don't want to frighten the horses!
But he refused to participate, instead grasping her elbow as they stepped out into brightness… and a background bustle reminding her for the umpteenth time of the BBC Radio Drama studios, the eager technician offering his take on Oxford in the seventeen-somethings. An infant yelled. The May Quay's doors stood open and excitement at joining those inside spread to the group heading in its direction. Males talked too loudly, their women shrieked with laughter, merry already, stepping off the pavement to be hooted at by cars, From amongst the caravans they passed, snatches of vintage ditties, The Beatles and Frank Sinatra were being enjoyed by elderly owners… and in odd company, were the church bells which today drifted toward Sara from inland. Only to be outdone as she and Josh crossed the river, by Rhyl's own muezzin, the bingo caller—

—her beautiful night-time mirage had been wiped away, drink being a requirement for generosity towards Rhyl. Very much the Lady Anthropologist this clear noon, cool, disparaging, her metaphorical notebook was at the ready. Take a baby to a pub on a sunny day? Gamble the hours through till dusk in a dark, plasticy den?
These people
. She was answered once they took the first set of steps down to the sand, a vast emptiness in comparison to the town, by a breeze at ankle-level whipping grit across her blistered insteps: extraordinarily unpleasant. Josh chose the route, steering her first out to a shingle bank for the better footing, back in when it petered away to crushed shell. Like Eurwen's, Josh's stride ate up the distance, was uncomfortable to match. Coming up was The Sky Tower and Sara paused to indicate the gondola's slow, nausea-inducing ascent. ‘Have you been in it?' she asked.

‘Of course. I took Eurwen. First time she came here. Y'know Eurwen— see it, got to try it.'

‘Why say that?'

He jerked her onward. But his anger had worn away and a couple more minutes had him offering her, ‘Because it's true. Not because it's a bad thing. I think it's a good way to… live.'

‘Do you?'

‘Can be. Who knows?' He squinted against a stray reflection, a head flick denying her eye contact. ‘See you Sara! Daddy's little girl. Little Miss School Swot, working hard to make top of the class. All your life. Where has it got you?'

She should have been immune to an attack so familiar. Around the time of Josh's final defection it was an open subject for one of those vicious half hours a couple can fit in, usually between a school pick-up and an evening with in-laws. Every response is short and neat and careless of the other's feelings as a stage line. If a phrase strikes too deeply, too unforgettably, at the curtain they can take a bow, go back to their real selves, surely? So she should have known better, did know better. ‘It got me a good first. And a book from what could have been just a run-of-the-mill dissertation. A television cheque you seemed pleased with once. Eventually a film, which against all the odds, is excellent. Have you even seen it, by the way?'

‘
Yes. I've seen it!'

‘Oh.' She had lost track of where they were. An unrecognisable roof loomed over the landward concrete wall with an unwalked part of the beach ahead so velvet smooth it could have been swept. ‘Oh, what does it matter?'

Suddenly a striped beach ball came spinning towards her at chest height. The pint-sized players after it froze as Josh punched it back. ‘I'm the same,' he said. ‘The force had me jumping for jellybeans since I was twenty. For what? I've got D.I. stamped through me like a stick of rock. Came back here on a promise, yeah? You never asked, did you?'

‘Once you'd left…'

‘'Course. Why would you? So I'm back here. Trouble was the promise came from somebody about to get shown the door.'

‘I didn't know.'

‘You probably think I may as well've stayed.'

(
An hour ago I thought
finally
I have seen the real Josh, the one that was meant to come about, the personality he could not have attained, burdened with me… a bead of sweat is running down from that well-known hairline to your eyebrow as you polish shoes, a mind already out there at the black comedy of your work. This Josh knows he'll never have to say OK Sara, who have I upset/shocked/disappointed now… is that it? Just tell me, Sara! Look at the state of you! Why? What in Christ's name's wrong? )

‘Yes. You may as well have stayed.' Or come home: find Eurwen and come home, there's still time. But one more word and she would weep.

‘No.'
His
self-pity was being shaken off. ‘Na. That's the Dad in me talking. I don't mean it… except if I'd stayed in Oxford we wouldn't be here now and Eurwen wouldn't be God knows where. That's all. Ifs, ands and buts don't count. We are and she is. Jesus Fucking Almighty I could wring her bloody little neck!'

‘You mustn't say that.'

‘Wherever she is,
she's all right
. Believe it. You know, my own Mam left home at fifteen? Ran off the farm, got to the coast, got a job as a waitress in a posh hotel. Just up there!' His gesture was in the general area they had left but at nowhere particular. ‘That was when we had posh hotels. I remember her telling Eurwen about the smart little uniform they gave her, black and white, how it was the best clothes she'd ever had up till then. She and the other girls'd sit outside on the steps of a summer evening watching the
ladies
go by in their frocks. She thought she'd died and gone to heaven and this is a teenager working a twelve-hour day for a few bob a week! You should've seen Eurwen's face. And Mam stayed for the season. Turned up home for Christmas and didn't let on where she'd been.
Eurwen's safe
' He pulled her closer, ran his arm across her back, hugged her to him as they walked.

‘Yet when I said that… I knew, I thought I knew she was here somewhere—'

‘I was a shit. OK? Come on.'

Gradually they edged outward until the town became nothing. Some strength was left in the sun even as it dipped. With the attractions far behind, more and more beach-users appeared, sea-watchers, dog-walkers and then the static retired, hanging onto the day's dregs behind their striped windbreaks. A waxen old woman, so old her cheeks seemed to be in the process of defecting onto her chest, offered a beautific smile.

‘A lovely afternoon,' it drew from Sara.

‘Right enough, chuck.'

The vista ahead was unsullied, seeming to stretch on and on under finespun silver cloud. ‘That's Prestatyn you can just see on the skyline. There's only the golf links really keep it separate. If you don't like Rhyl, don't go to Prestatyn,' he said.

‘I don't
dislike
Rhyl.'

‘Yeah.'

‘Oh, then it is the Cap Ferret of North Wales.' But with laughter dizziness threatened to lift the top off her skull. White horses out at sea, the soft umber of sand and ebony of wet posts and their long grey shadows, they were all of them shouting to be noticed… Without any warning the beach came up under both feet and all sense of self began its rise out of her… she was toppling backwards onto the wooden groyn just stepped over.

‘You all right?' Josh's grip was fierce to the point of pain.

‘Yes. Better— now.' But she hung on while the colours continued to sing. ‘Actually, my headache's better. Eased.' She could walk forward and did, like a little girl showing off. ‘So where does the town end? If more or less at Avonside and the bridge one way, where at this—?'

‘Splash Point. At Beacon Point- not the bridge!- to the west and Splash Point to the east.' And then, almost seeming to arrest her, ‘Come on. We've got time.'

Despite Josh's downplaying it as just
more of the same
,
this new area struck her as… she struggled for it,
innocent
. Even the small villas and bungalows that he pointed out across on Marine Drive had charm. He tried to orientate her. ‘You probably drove this way in?' but she shrugged. She had no recollection of their tiled roofs fairy-tale
red and sharp and turned instead to Rhyl's Golden Sands, a soft, buttery plain: toothsome. ‘Did Eurwen come here?'
Poor Josh, you've no idea what's going on, have you? Of course Eurwen was here… comes here… will come here. I can see it though you can't. Through Eurwen's eyes… Poor Josh.

‘Her favourite place to swim,' he said. ‘The tide sweeps a heck of way in, hotting up. Makes it great for going in the water. Summertime, anyway.'

‘As in clean?'

‘I wouldn't know about that. It's warm. Never did me any harm.'

Chapter 26

Under the Coast Protection Act, 28
th
Sept 1987, profile of stepped concrete revetment to be extended at Splash Point, Rhyl
—
meaning limestone was dumped and then plastered with tar so the effect is an oil spill come ashore and never cleaned up. They couldn't actually destroy the beach here. But it's bordered by that dirty tide mark and then a three-metre width of pathway, poured in separate sections. Think runway to a processing plant. Back from these outlying defences, the brutalist barrage that reared up over Sara and Josh still exists. So does this part of the town, so who am I to complain?

I would've liked to share an extra feature Splash Point has to offer with my grandmother. On the furthest sand at low water, you can make out the fossil remains of monster trees, stumps of a size that'll never be seen again. And find antler-picks dropped by the Men of Rhyl as they struggled to make a living under the 10,000-year-old oaks.

November 16th 2008

Getting late: it should not be warm enough to sit but it was, side by side, Josh's arm a pressure, the bulk of him between her and Rhyl. The tide had definitely turned.

‘It
is
coming in,' Sara said after a silence.
But still a long way out.
‘What happens if someone gets trapped? The water must come right up here and then what? Nobody could climb this wall, not with the overhang.'

‘Why would anybody get themselves trapped? Um— steps? There's some every so often.'

‘I can't see the next set.'

‘Well, they're there.'

‘How far?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Have you ever had to use them?'

‘
Had to?
Course not.'

‘But you know they're there… within reach?' He stopped bothering to answer. ‘Because they seem to have built a sort of canyon. The water could creep up and then suddenly, well I could imagine panicking. If you were a stranger.
You've
been coming here for years and yet—'

‘Uh-huh,' Josh said. ‘One thing you're right about. We need to move.'

‘So the tide comes in very fast?'

‘No. I'm on at five.'

‘You said six.'

‘Did I?'

Neither moved. This wall could certainly hold the heat, a huge source of pleasure where the spine moulded to it, as were the brush strokes of sunshine twisting with each wave, pretty as tinsel… as the Christmas decorations that Nora Meredith came home for— ‘Josh! There's someone out there. I can see a head in the water.' She pointed at the small darker object. Waves threatened to break over it, but it did not disappear. Round… shiny… a bathing cap! And eyes in a human face that presumably had a human form submerged beneath. He, she, was staring inland from fifty yards off, staring at them.