Desire Line (43 page)

The exception being the hand-painted floor.

Take away Reading Women immersed in Sara, take away Eurwen herself, suddenly and out of the dark, and this is the weirdest thing yet. Instantly recognisable as Glenn's ‘before' image from the Butterton Road House Collapse, here it was again, intact under my stocking feet.

‘Go and get warm,' Eurwen ordered.

At the room's far end the log-burner she indicated was throwing too much heat at the poor cabinet's walnut veneer. Although I could never have housed the thing, this was actually
my
walnut veneer. On show inside instead of blue and white plates and chargers were pottery mugs with the logos of various charities my mother and Henri Fortun have been involved in, FOURWAYS being just one of the biggest and crudest. As a job lot they brought back no happy memories and cumulatively looked too heavy for the shelves. If only I'd sold the thing along with the rest.
Bou-ah, bou-ah, ah, ah
suddenly livened up and turned jazzy and the
Rotti
lead threw a few near words into the mix.
Hurt
might be one and
bou-ah
turned into
you-back
very plainly.

‘Like it?'

For a moment I thought she meant either the mug library or the song. Masses of red hair swung as she passed through without stopping and out of another door then she was back offering me a big striped towel. ‘The bathroom's through there.'

‘Thank-you. Um, it's different.' I gestured around. ‘From Thame,' meaning the cottage in Oxfordshire's capital of quaint she once rented. With Henriette Fortun. Details of its many lop-sided charms had been sent me in Bristol. Here's the spare room— if wanted? I'd graduated, was working but between projects— no, wrong, was drifting and had just been dropped for the first time by Kailash. Maybe Eurwen expected
We'll all fit!
would tempt me. Or maybe expected my no thanks?

‘What was it?'

‘Ah-h!' She was impressed. Her smile offered a part in a conspiracy. ‘Good question. Just like you. Well, it was an office when the gravel extraction was going on,' she head-gestured to mean close-by. ‘That's finished now. I bought the two flooded pits, one of them very big— with swans! Imagine it, covered in swans the first time we came here. Plus sixty acres. Some of it's ruined land but improvable.
And
this redundant storage facility, as was termed.'

Near the mark, then. ‘Change of use?' I'd no idea why I was asking. Or why we were talking about it, except it felt safe, i.e. not what I'd come for.

‘Of course not. But we were frantic to find some grazing. The situation with the equines is heart-breaking, Yori. Racing never changes its ways. Nor the breeders. Nor the meat-men. I thought I'd need to buy somewhere else close for us to live, Appleford village say, rather than Didcot— obviously.' Us— her and Henri. She must have seen a reaction though I tried to keep my face blank. ‘Come by the fire and I'll tell you.'

‘I'm damp still.'

‘That's hide you'll be sitting on. It's been out in all weathers before it was furniture. Not my choice,' she shrugged, ‘but there you are.'

I thought Geoffrey's chair was terrific, in fact I'd forgotten just how terrific, elongated and moulded to the sitter's body. I came over but chose the fire surround instead. ‘Are you legal then?'

‘Absolutely. When we were mucking the whole place out we found a box under a pile of rubbish— up there.' She pointed to the ceiling hatch. ‘Full of old photographs of a family that lived here in the nineteen sixties! The transport foreman with a wife and child. Nobody had registered this as their home at the time but the precedent meant it could be lived in again— well, you'll understand. To me and Henri it was a miracle, being able to be on site. So— we were only near to not-quite habitable in the spring when it all happened. Your flood. The rest.' Leaning closer remade her, from the Sara I'd been watching just lately in turn-of-the-century Rhyl back into herself. And superb. Particularly sparking with enthusiasm, like this, so the huge turquoise eyes looked almost warm. ‘I'm using the rest of the Pryorsfield money to buy every bit of land I can. Even blighted, it's still really expensive! I know, I know— that's because they're not making any more.' She knelt next to me smiling in triumph. ‘I've just completed on a new patch along the lane. Everything is— working out!'

‘Yes.' Only my mother could inherit the Severing fortune and delight in a brick shed and ex-gravel workings. ‘I'm pleased to see it.' I swivelled and with a bit of cooperation, got both arms this time round her, if awkwardly. Her face fitted into a space I formed between my neck and shoulder and suddenly I felt her very bones all through my chest. She was so thin.
Breakable.
But also crackling with purpose and only settled on me the way a moth settles. Through my shirt flowers of grass, snagged in her fleece, prickled. Hay-scent filled my nostrils. Her heat was the main thing, though, Eurwen Burning, never a wife not that Tomiko would say it, or a mother. A fiery sister maybe. I always intended one day to look after her, I know that, and would never be allowed to. ‘If it's what you want, well done you.'

She breathed, ‘I know!' onto my skin.

Was I paying her off for Henri by saying, ‘I'm sorry about Sara,' and waited for a response and held her tight while I thought she might be going to cry?

She didn't. It got us closer, anyway. We had a normal for us chat – neutral topics. She asked chocolate or coffee? had to be reminded, and went to make tea. I tried to keep my mind from filling with past scenes because I wanted no distractions from the buzz of
me,
in her home – not exactly
at home
, but hearing her make tea. Smelling hay on the towel. I was grilled down the front from her fire but cold down my back and it was a thousand per cent better than comfort.

I counted colours in the floor. Grey, coral, black and white stripes, a cinnamon shade— quite amateurish and with not enough over-patterning. A puzzling copy. ‘Henri did it,' she said making me jump. ‘While I was out. I saw someone else's a long time ago. That was by a real artist and properly done, therefore— and I remember thinking I
like
that! I must have shown the image to Henri and last month I came back from Benson— mm, the Campbells had called us about a cat stuck on the weir. It took the three of us all day to get him. Then there was finding a vet on duty, bringing the cat back here. Fallen in!' The irises glinted. ‘Thrown in, I'd say, wouldn't you?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Don't you? You must be walking around in a dream then. Anyway after all that there's Henri, painting away like mad.' She dropped onto one of the sofas and folded her legs up as part of the same graceful action. ‘Yori, stop perching and sit down!'

I joined her about to say,
I know about the floor. It was Neil Rix, the artist, Tomiko's friend. I must've seen it when I was baby! Before—
but as always, she was too quick. ‘Where are you going to sleep?'

Fair question. I was here at my own request— Could I come and see you, talk to you? ‘On this.'

‘Too short. Not you! The sofa.'

‘In Gramps Geoffrey's chair then.'

‘Are you hungry?'

‘Uh-uh.' My last food had been a slimy hummus baguette, eaten somewhere south of Leamington Spa. I was starving my stomach said but I wanted to stay like this, me turned to her, Eurwen not— just right for studying her profile, the high forehead and the very fine upper nasal arch and then that slight scoop toward the nosetip. The shading beneath a cheekbone. And when her hand went up to cup the point of her chin, I surprised us both by taking hold. Tomiko's jade ring was loose and mobile beyond the index knuckle and none from Henri. I smoothed her fingers out on my palm as you would a sheet of paper. All the nails were clean but untended and a purple brand at the heel of her thumb could've been a bitemark. I took a deep breath and said, ‘Sara being found was a shock. But you seem to've taken it pretty calmly. I'm only going by Josh who—'

But she mimed
No!
and then choked and this time she did cry, going from perfectly normal to caved in— the speed of change was a stunner in itself. Suddenly the fingers were trembling but she pulled them away, a signal she wasn't wanting anything from me. Then a shock wave ran through her and her voice when it came back was hoarse.
I always— knew that she'd gone— that we'd never— ever— see her again— that everything was going to be different from now on— Dad couldn't make his mind up— and Gramps Geoffrey— and Fleur— wore themselves— out with worry— at it— but— but not me— because—
Deep breath
— I knew. I'd killed her.
The look was somebody running on their sword.

I haven't done her justice. I've fallen into Sara's trap, describing things she says and does, the Western way, as if it made her. A betrayal— Sara realised that. Eurwen's like nobody. She's not my mother or only technically, not my sister, certainly not my friend and we have nothing in common. But I'm the ugly little boy who lived for the goddess and I worship her. Sometimes it's a feeling makes you think you've swallowed a hot coal but there it is. Remember though, we hadn't talked for five years and we still probably couldn't be alone together for long – because what
can
you do when a tiger's sharing the cave
?
and wearing stripes doesn't work and begging to know what uniform she wants you in gets no answer? She wasn't Japanese— but she'd still managed to beat my father into a two-dimensional on-screen extra. She had power.
She
would never kill herself. Actually, seeing her like this, I couldn't believe she'd ever die. Sitting in her don't-care room I had a vision of myself grown old and keeling over one day still at work and they'd bury my ashes under a building I hope I wasn't too ashamed of— and there unchanged Eurwen would be, telling whoever turned up,
Just to-oo
morbid! Under his own creation? I'm glad I don't have to live here.
She said, ‘The number of times I must have heard “famous Oxford historian's last day in Rhyl!” It's the only thing I'm an expert on. Your grandmother walked out around ten in the morning, she took the clothes she wore and no money apart from any coins there may have been in her pockets and no keys. But one book by somebody she'd been at college with – she took a bloody useless history book
but no money
– what does that suggest? Oh and Dad's coat. She wore Dad's oldest, grubby coat. You don't need to be a genius, do you, to decode it— what she was telling us? So I
should
be able to stay calm by now.' She rubbed her dry cheeks in a way that was meant to say Over it, you see? ‘Not as if—' she shrugged.

‘I didn't mean to upset you.'

‘No?' The switch to hostile was instant. I had radar set for this mood. ‘Well, let's take it as read shall we?' A long pause though. She didn't take it as read. ‘If Dad has become a wreck, and we have spoken by the way, that only shows he kept hoping. And I never did. Not possible, you see. We were linked, her and me. When I was small she'd describe knowing when I was ill, odd incidents like that. And then, on
the day,
my birthday, I was in Jay's kitchen, late afternoon. I can describe it exactly—' was that a tremor? – ‘Jay's scraping carrots to make a cake, there I am crouched on the floor, trying to feed a bird with an eyedropper, and suddenly I thought, My mother has died. It was as clear and evident as Jay at the sink and Tomiko across the room sketching— and the starling in my hands with its heart going crazy.'

‘But how?' Before she could explain, if she could, I followed through with, ‘and who did you tell?'

‘Nobody.
Nobody!
I carried on trying to get the bird's beak to stay apart without hurting it, to get the sugar water down. You have to use a fingernail in the corner, very gently.' She sighed. Maybe it hadn't worked. ‘Then I stood up and put the starling back in the cage. I said to Tomiko, I'll write to my father and you'll have to take it.'

I can recite what you wrote, I wanted to boast.

‘
But
then there was composing the thing! We had a lot of tries, between us. Not that he was much help. The afternoon dragged on and then he said No writing! Not needed.' She smiled at her own impression of him. “I will go to your mother and father.” That's what he thought.'

‘You didn't let Tomiko in on this?' (Who would probably have believed you though I'm having trouble. With Sara there was always the drink to fall back on, but
Eurwen?
Though I'd reassess her story later, for the moment it changed her and I resented the slightest change. I liked my mother inside her sharp black outline.)

‘We had a huge row which was a relief— a distraction, at least. Then we made up and Tomiko said things would get better, now I'd decided. We could write down— well, whatever was necessary in the morning. Jay gave me something to take, Jay always had something, and we slept on it. But things were blunted, next day. And I started having doubts.'