Desire Line (41 page)

Her broken necklace often made me want to touch it. Of
the stuff
this seemed most hers and most bittersweet, pretty and fragile, made of cheap nickel silver and moonstones, which are only feldspar anyway and what she seemed to feel she deserved. After failing to fix it I'd let the links run out onto Josh's floor but it'd survived and back home with me, a touch of style developed. Each droplet was cleverly positioned to give a shiny ripple to any throat it was round. Then I reread Sara's description of buying herself this treat and even the gems improved. Opalescence was good under bright light with no surface flash— a giveaway of exposure to heat, I read, and fakery. Authentic then. Like the journal writer. What I am is here. Feldspar instead of diamond. Not durable. A broken link. All flaws as seen. It drove me crazy. Crazy enough to come to a decision. Natural moonstones deserved to be worn.

‘While I'm gone, will you do something for me?' I tried Glenn with. He was in my kitchen next to the suspect vintage poster. I'd been interrupted finishing a salt pickle roll with curd cheese. He wasn't expected and in the wrong. Therefore I could ask another favour. I added, ‘I've more if you could eat one of these?' because he wouldn't.

‘What do you think?' It was black enough outside for Glenn to slick down his wiry hair in the window. The big ears bunched it out again. ‘So— you want?'

‘William Jones.' (Glenn's grunt says a bit of a minor character. He'd been down to the harbour with me to see WJ at work but Glenn's main interest right now is a bottle of Hope & Glory lager I don't have. He lived here nineteen days and still isn't capable of believing I don't drink.) ‘When he's ready to launch, will you make sure you get it for me? I won't be gone long but could be any day now.' I was feeling better all the time about the request. He was used to me wanting Rhyl oddities, being a source himself. Places and things usually. William Jones was a hostile old man which made no difference to the grace of the craft he'd restored— nor would stop me using its rebirth in my pitch sequence
Harbour and Riverside
,
the mark in time and space for where PalmWalk started. ‘And I'll need her name, a close-up of that.'

‘What's he calling it?'

‘I don't know. I gave him materials and he still wouldn't tell me.'

‘I'll find out,' Glenn said, winking at the challenge— then casually, ‘Just a short trip, then?' He just couldn't seem to give up admiring his own forgery skills. Or was it really another of his gifts he was checking on? He'd be disappointed. The mug's obsessive gaze had turned out to be unbearable, so banished now to under-sink. Glenn wandered next door and sprawled, feet up and chewing my cashews, much the same as on every night he'd been my guest, looking for anything else to poke into. Sara's watch caught and then lost his attention. But not her necklace— that had been collected from the repairers coming home from FR and was already stowed away. The heap of withered orange leaves were just rubbish to Glenn – I wanted him out or Sara's glass of water would get drunk next, once the cashews were finished. ‘Your screen's off,' he told me. ‘Bust? You're coming back, are you?'

‘No. And yes, I'm coming back.'

‘Yeah right.' He chomped some more, mouth ajar, mulling. ‘That time after it hit, and us up there and seeing just acres of crap, I thought he's off! Omar
maybe
but him for sure now it's all gone.'

‘Not all. I made a list—'

‘Aw-w and there's you with your Abbey Street job just finished! Whack!' His arm was The Wave again smashing through the smoked glass clinic window and he laughed till his face bloated and his big nose ran.

I sat it out. ‘But a wider site's left with multiple uses. Thirty metres at lea—'

‘Fuck it, I'd hate to be cheerful as you.'

‘No danger.'

‘And I was thinking Chrr-rist, this time it might
have
to be Spain. Me'n Alice, we'll be at each other's throats
muy rápido!
' He winced. ‘Then you go off on your schemes.' He switched to a higher register. ‘Oh we'll have this Glenn, we'll have that. Along here we'll put the Crystal Palace—'

‘Box.'

‘And shops people with money might wanna go in and an apartment complex, a weird shape— and weirder than that even, we'll have a new funfair. Every day the mammoth runs amok!'

‘Not a real one. A simulant.'

‘You got that right! Couple of years from now they say they'll be doing real mammoths again— d'you believe that? Na, me neither. But anyway, it'd be more Llandudno, eh? Classier by miles. A fake mammoth's for us— yeah let's order a whole herd of fucking dinosaurs, that'll bring 'em in. I was almost on board, you know?' Getting excited, he'd broken through to different feelings. They'd been there all along. I saw it, Glenn finally turning serious over our current state. ‘But it'll never happen. You can't buck a slide like ours. So a short trip, then back here?' He had a yawn and a scratch of something inside the formal black pants he'd turned up in. I had no warning what was coming next. ‘Only it's not like you need the job, is it?'

Another advantage of being half-Japanese. You blush in secret.

With no answer, ‘Rhondda—' he followed it up, ‘—controls your budget these days.'

‘Therefore?'

‘Our Rhondda noticed, after the changeover, how for three months on the trot you don't get paid. Which was more than you did. Three months and not a murmur. Me, I'd have been at 'em every day. Where's the loot? What d'you think I am, eh, a fuckin' seagull can live out the bins? She sorted it and you still never said a word.'

My resources. I smiled only because it was safer than showing anger at my stupidity— and the First Grade unfairness of it. So I'd failed to notice I should be getting into debt. Why would I? Libby was sorted months in advance. I didn't gamble or drink and hadn't travelled since Westport. Tess cost but it was modest, (actually with the little extras she was going up all the time) but nothing like Kailash had (Kailash had
really cost.)
And I'd never been one of Rhondda's customers. As for everything else, clothes, food, possessions, obviously they weren't flashy. They needed to fit in.

What I ought to say is, I've got money
.
But that led straight to me smirking every time Glenn complained about tax on lager and meat and sugar or shared his fantasies about a Casino Pigalle jackpot. I saw that. He'd see it. (
And
at Omar's lookatme tailoring – and how might it work with Tess, her going
Gorgeous
house, Yori. All of Rhyl out that big window! Wouldn't you just love to be able to—?)

And at the cheap Nepalese banquets we'd shared at !Terai! ‘I've got money enough to live on,' I said, stalling. So he was insulted. What about
Tess?
I mapped out the roleplay. She took it well, not resentful, not too many questions, and then we went on better than before. Couldn't quite get it. ‘Fleur, she was Geoffrey's—'

‘Brought you up,
yeah
.'

‘She left me her own things.'

This made him stop chewing and sit up. He even wiped his fingers on his pants. ‘Worth a load?'

‘She liked clutter.'

‘And some of it was worth a load? What, for fuckssake?'

‘Well, you know—' I tried to sound apologetic. It
was
shameful. A child from Rosemont— father a penniless Japanese student and an unemployed, unqualified mother— had managed to scoop up everything I reeled off. ‘I got her Meissen collection and the Early Delft which was just coming back up after the dip. Sold them. A Steinway piano. Loads of furniture. Also now got rid of. There was a painting or twenty.' Now he had a handle on me is what his face said. But decision made, no thought – dolt! – I had to go and give him, ‘Favourite was always a drawing. Quite small and spare, graphite with touches of oil pigments on tinted paper.'

‘Who by?'

‘Not signed. Used to be in the kitchen corridor nearly in the dark. At Pryorsfield. When I lived there. The subject's—'

‘How much?' he said over me.

‘—a shingled house front up to the eaves. In the foreground, branches. You look at it and you think yes,
very
good
.
The artist's showing you how the building holds together. I guess it would've been worth a lot more if the subject was a woman.'

He tried staring me out. I hung on till he nodded. He believed he'd find how
muy costoso
my list added up to
.
But I didn't tell him I'd sold
Façade and Bald Tree
, did I? So he couldn't.

‘Sounds a nice tidy stash. Lucky prick.' Confidence in being able to price up my art work was putting him in a better mood. A power thing. He reverted to, ‘Splash the cash and you could be fighting them off! Lucky, lucky prick. But there's only me'n Rhondda knows.' (A lie
,
Glenn or soon will be— your mouth's bigger than the old Ghost Train's). ‘Good for you though! Never bloody me, huh? Not even close on Casino these days. Fuck, I've gotta dash— You're a tight one! Me, I'd just sod off.'

‘You wouldn't.'

He shrugged. ‘Anyroad, it's our full rehearsal.' Without warning and very loud, he sang
Bring them in sweetly/ Gut them completely/ Pack them up neatly/ Sell them discretely/ Oh, haul a-way!
The rich, accurate, accentless tenor/baritone from Glenn was always a shock— actually it was embarrassing,
him
performing well. I'd have been happier if he'd cracked on a difficult note, though they all sounded difficult in this work. ‘You've heard ‘bout the Stop the Opera group now? Supposed to be against it because of that kid went off the bridge. We're only doing Selections for Chorus for fuckssake then it's straight into Cole Porter and then the
Mama Rotti
tribute band from Colwyn Bay headlining.'

‘I hope not with
You're the Girl.
'

‘What? Dunno. Whatever. But some bastard has to go blabbing how Peter Grimes' cabin boy dies, doesn't he?
And his
next
cabin boy. Two in a row! Then Grimes ups and drowns himself to finish.'

‘No surprise happy ending then?'

He ignored this. ‘Oh and it's not Christmassy. We had three performances planned for December. Fucking typical of this fucking place. Fuck 'em!'

‘Don't worry. There'll be a Keep the Opera group in twenty-four hours. Massive support from um— Mexico. Or anyplace with floods this year. They'll pile in.'

Not convinced he squinted, started checking. ‘Look! 14,973 against now. That's half Rhyl if it was all votes from here which it might fuckin' be. Even Alice isn't coming! Not back till the 23
rd
. You're away down south—?'

‘Tomorrow. There's a person I need to see.'

He could read my mind. ‘You're still at that. Thought your granddad didn't do it.' OK, he made references to my family and I'd have to accept them because of the Sara images. But I seem to keep giving him more ammunition. Why? See now, I'm tempted to describe the mystery woman visitor, it was the sort of story he loved— but he was reaching for his coat, thank-you
Benzaiten!
(music deity), part of him already being off with the difficult tenor parts. My windfall carried on bothering him though. ‘Train, yeah? You certainly know how to live it up,' he skitted, a joker not a buffoon. I admired his battle with the multi-fastening parka – teenagers were wearing similar along the Rhyl front right this minute – and the way he pulled it straight over his chorus uniform that wouldn't be needed, probably. On his way to rehearse an opera. Subject? Deaths of cabin boys whatever they were. No wonder the show was as doomed as an accident-prone fisherman.

‘They'd be wrong to cancel,' I said. More's needed— even Alice isn't coming. ‘I'll buy tickets.' He just hunched his shoulders. Debt-wise I still wasn't clear.

Once I'd seen him out the door and checked the avenue – only Ram and Musa Yilmaz on a wall keeping out from under the eye of their mother – I made tea, got as comfortable as you can on a chesterfield and called for ‘Peter Grimes, synopsis and best bits.' Apart from
Sunday Morning By the Beach
everybody knows from the coffee dramads, my knowledge
was entry level—

—a full orchestra fills the room with a string section that cuts through you like a wire. Even after the theme fades your scalp zings with needle sticks. It was a brilliant choice. My blood pressure must've fought the last dose of
 
 
I'd just swallowed to rocket skywards. It was also a terrible choice. As the rich female commentary (by the mezzo-soprano Wendy Silvester of MidOpera) explains Peter Grimes is poverty-stricken and isolated and freaky and his cabin boy has just died at sea— how exactly? An inquest! He's given the benefit of the doubt— a narrative verdict, then. Grimes finds himself a replacement from the workhouse, another spare kid, not wanted. This one's beaten. Slips off a cliff. They point the finger— that'll be Glenn in the Chorus doing that— but he gets away with it. Doesn't! Scuttles his boat for the finale.