Gold Digger (15 page)

She fell into sleep abruptly, halfway through the making of a list, thoughts veering to the Lady in Pink, the map, the girl called Peg who was on the brink of something, thinking also of the fortifying of the house, lulled by the familiar sounds of it settling for the night. She was aching for the most familiar sound of all. She had been staring at the picture on the opposite wall, a crowd of daffodils. The sound she had missed most was the sound of deep sleep and quiet breathing.

She could hear it now, imagined she could, only it was unquiet breathing.

Someone else was breathing in this house. It was more than the sound of the sea.

The noise came from overhead. Then it turned into the creak of a floorboard, a groan, and then, sobbing.

She lay still, pulled the blanket over her head, denied it and willed it away until she could no longer believe it was not Thomas, still breathing, somewhere close.

A
restful room, with moss green walls and no pictures. Night time. There were mismatched tables and chairs, a blue window seat with a view of the sea.

‘I shouldn’t have done it, you know,’ Monica said. ‘Her hair came out all wrong and she was all the wrong colours, already, but I was that annoyed with her for not talking, my hand slipped. Although I have to say, it went with the leather trousers and all that. She doesn’t suit red, never did.’

‘Dressed to kill,’ Jones said.

‘Well, she wasn’t in mourning, that’s for sure. I mean, really, she looked like an anorexic barmaid with attitude. As if she meant to look brazen. There were half of us in the shop wanting to hug her, the rest wanting to know what’d gone on, and she doesn’t say a word. Black leather trousers. Off to London, with that silly old suitcase. I mean she looked like a footballer’s wife down on her luck. She doesn’t help herself, really she doesn’t – doesn’t exactly reach out, does she?’

‘There’s not been too many people reaching in,’ Jones said.

He sipped his whisky. Monica and he were sitting in the snug on the second floor of the Bell, right on the seafront, near the pier with a view of it made gloomy by the salt-and dirt-encrusted windows. The sea mist had risen and gone away. It was after closing time and they had been there long enough for the outside world to become uninviting.

‘If only she’d said.’

‘Said what?’

‘Said how it is. How she feels,’ Monica said.

‘She doesn’t do that. Never bloody did. Close as a clam.It’s me should have asked more.’

Monica pulled at an earring, looked at her watch and decided on one more drink. The late night arrangement in the Bell consisted of the landlord rolling to bed and leaving the out-of-hours customers to fend for themselves. Jones and Monica were the only ones remaining, smoking like chimneys in public premises that for all intents and purposes looked shut. Only a short walk home; if it happened that they should coincide later, at his or hers, no one would notice, although neither of them cared who knew about such an occasional, private arrangement. The town was full of such. Only Monica wasn’t going to invite him in tonight and she hadn’t for a while. She was hiding something and listening too closely. He should have noticed that sooner, shouldn’t he? Monica came back fairly steadily and resumed her seat with a degree of dignity. Two middle-aged old soaks, a long way from being fully soaked, yet, close, but becoming adept at keeping secrets and avoiding hidden subjects in a way they never had before. Now they lied by evasion and told the truth with equal ease, always avoiding that other agenda of Di’s dad.

‘C’mon,’ she nudged. ‘Tell me what’s going to happen next?’

He considered the question.

‘I’m going to the lav.’

She punched his broad shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean here and
now
, I mean with
Di.
Will they come and take her away again?’

She knew about that already, or he wouldn’t have told her. Didn’t want to speculate about how she knew.

‘Madam,’ he said, touching his nose. ‘I am no longer a member of the Constabulary. How the hell should I know?’

‘Come off it, Jones. You still got people who do.’

‘Only just. And no, I don’t think so.’

Shouldn’t have told her. Shouldn’t have boasted about the contacts and how he knew that the Porteous children were raising Cain and pulling strings and all that shit. Fuck. Whatever slipped his tongue to Monica got passed on somewhere else and he had a sick feeling he knew where. He hadn’t told her how he had waited on at the house, but he bet she knew that too.

‘I only know those kids of Thomas have got their fucking teeth in. He left everything to her, and they want it. And maybe someone else is helping drip the poison, don’t suppose you know who, do you?’

Monica shrugged. ‘Course not. It’ll be his bloody kids. They must be sick as parrots, but what did they expect? They never went near him after he came out of hospital, nor much before that, for that matter. Brought
their
kids and fled screaming from the party. And as for Di, well, you’ve never been sure of her yourself, have you?’

No, he hadn’t. Still wasn’t, but he was always going to defend her, and this affection he and Monica had all depended on not falling out. He leant forward and patted her
hand. Didn’t trust her and didn’t want to lose her. Quig was the problem, unless he really was fucking paranoid.

‘I don’t
know
fuck. Di’s got bigger problems. And the cops are going to come back, for sure. All I do know is that maybe we all should have done more, you know. Can’t have been easy.’

‘What’s so hard about waiting for a rich man to die?’ Monica scoffed.

‘She didn’t just wait, Mon. She stopped it happening. She hauled him out of the water twice last summer, I saw it. Whatever her reasons, she didn’t want that man to die until he was good and ready.’

‘Or she was ready to collect.’

He stared at her, aghast at her callousness, and hid it with a shaking of the head, clinked his glass against hers, and started on a joke.
Have you heard the one about …
and forgot the punch line. He thought, sickeningly, of the figure at the door of Di’s house, pressed against the glass. The hat.

‘You’d think old Quig might get in touch,’ he said, as if it was simply an observation. ‘Like he might like to know that his daughter’s fucking widowed.’

They didn’t talk about the wedding.

‘I wouldn’t know about that, Jones love. You’re getting maudlin. Best go home, hey?’

‘Can I come with you?’

He was teasing her, knowing what she would say.

‘Another time, love. I’m bushed.’

Jones got up and swallowed his drink, started pacing around the little room, lighting another fag and feeling queasy. He wanted to go up to Di’s place, now. Small town, they knew everything and knew nothing. He grinned at Monica as if to say, no hard feelings.

‘Couldn’t have done anyway, Doll. Got fishing to do. I’ve left my rod on the pier with a nice young bird looking after it.’

She smiled back. There was never any winning with a fisherman. They always had to have the last word.

J
ones had been fishing earlier in the evening, coming and going. He wasn’t lying or talking big. There
had
been a girl there, hunkered down with nowhere to go. Told him she was fucking resting, did he mind? He gave her some chocolate before leaving his rod and telling her to get inside soon, love, it’s fucking cold. The pier was open all night tonight: he might even catch a fish. His conscience was heavy, but his steps grew ever more certain as soon as he saw the lights. The pier was his haven, his space, his vantage point, his extra lung. It was always like that. He was a free and powerful man there; the pier ennobled those who loved it. No fancy wrought iron, no elegant railings and definitely no amusements. Solid concrete, with a closed caff at the sea end and a bunker by the gates on the landward side, the pier wasn’t for fun; it was for fishing. Others said it was so ugly it existed purely for the convenience of the suicidal. Jones knew the three watchmen who worked the shifts and took turns to bed down in the bunker by the gates, so the pier was always open to him. Jones’s idea of heaven would be to live on the pier because it was home. He found his rod where he had left it, stroked it fondly. Not a bite, but that was not the point.

The pier was officially open all night, four nights a week, depending on the seasons and the fishing competitions. Fishing folk brought foul-weather clothes and stayed the course, sheltering in the open concrete shelters that hardly deserved the name. To stay out there all hours, catching fish
in a gale, was the highest achievement most of them knew and they rejoiced in it privately. They weren’t a club but a confederacy, not of close friends but distant allies, co-existing in silent, apparently indifferent harmony like card players concentrating on their own moves. No hierarchies except between the skilled and the unskilled, no enmity either and no social barriers. Harry, Jack, and Stefan would share a smidgeon of disgust for the incompetent newcomer who would not ask for help and got in the way, while Harry might envy the equipment owned by Abdul, but that was it. What Jones liked was the blessing of their sheer indifference: no one cared who the fuck you were. They would let you sleep. You could die quietly here.

Then there was, of course, the other reason why he loved and needed the pier. From here, he could see the whole sprawling frontage of the town for a mile in either direction and when he was here, he used his powerful binoculars as much as his rod. He knew when lights came on and lights came off; knew the colour of the doors of the houses and the shadows of the alleyways in between.
So dull on the front these days
, one of the old fishermen said.
When my grandad came here, every second house on the south side was a pub or a brothel, that was the rough end; you could hear the screams from here. So ordinary now.
Not to Jones it wasn’t.

There was that same girl huddled asleep in the shelter near his rod, and Jones paused to pity her. He had given her the blanket from his bag, and the chocolate, and that was all. You couldn’t touch runaways these days; you had to keep your distance and watch, like he had with Di. He smoked a cig -arette, ignored the girl and trained his eyes on Di’s house. There were lights in the top windows. Nothing to worry about, then.

Someone hit him from behind. He staggered, keeping hold of the binoculars, and crumpled slowly. The girl leapt up, shouting, ran into him and broke his fall.

I
n her dream, Di was in the water with Thomas, hauling him to shore and fighting for breath. She could swim like a fish, even against the tide which she knew better than he. She knew what he intended, and she yelled at him,
Not yet,
she said,
please not yet. You’ve got things to do
.

All the sounds of the house had become background to that loud, laboured breathing, turning to sobbing, an undisguisable sound coming from close by. She sat up and listened, touched the surface of the pillow, then the bedside table, feeling with her long fingers for anything tangible to prove she was alive, turned on the light and saw the picture on the wall to the left.

Man with dog and child. Blue sky and sea. Prominently placed waste paper bin, dog cocking leg against it, old couple on bench all looking forward, him looking at them. A conversation about to start. Stubby figures against a great big sky. Her own description of it, written yesterday.
The sort of picture that makes you listen to it
, she had typed,
like putting a shell to your ear
.

Big sky, big sea. It wasn’t the sound of the waves she could hear, nor was it Thomas, but someone weeping and coughing next door.

The master bedroom was next to the gallery. She put on her dressing gown, put the knife in the pocket, plucked a scarf from those decorating the bedpost and a blanket from the chair and moved towards the next room. The gallery room glowed only with the light from the windows. At the furthest end away, there was a fine old settee and a man lay
on it. He was dressed from top to toe like a stage burglar, black lycra, black surfing shoes, his face a pale contrast of chalky white. He was wheezing
ah, ah hah, a hah hah,
trying to smother his own noise. She stood over him, taking in his slenderness, the handkerchief clutched in his hand. Then she flung the blanket over his body and knelt on his chest. His eyes opened as she placed the scarf against his neck, pinioning his chest with her knees, throttling him with silk. A sweet, salty smell came from him. Blankets were good for catching birds without hurting them. She had even caught a rat that way. She released the scarf, slightly.

He spoke.

‘I was only fishing,’ he said. And then the coughing started. A racking cough, enough to make him buck and rear, flail his arms and legs, thrashing like a landed fish. She touched his white face and felt the hectic heat of a fevered body, relented, took away the scarf. He raised his arms and shoved her off. The coughing resumed until he lay back exhausted. She sat on the floor next to him, assessing weight, size, appearance.

‘You’re a bastard, Saul,’ she said.

‘So I am. I do apologise.’

It was a disarming thing to say and she was not disarmed.

‘Such an intrusion,’ he said. ‘Such a terrible intrusion at a time of grief. Only I couldn’t resist it. Not such an opportunity to see things in secret, so I found my way in and then I couldn’t find my way out, got sick, something like that. And all I find is lovely stuff, collected with love. He was a real collector, wasn’t he? The real, real thing. You’re one, too. I was overcome with sorrow. So much crap out there, and so much real.’

‘You’re a shit, Saul. Where have you been? Why didn’t you even try to speak to me?’

He closed his eyes. She flicked her fingers against his pale cheek, painfully.

‘Nearly a week since Thomas died and not a word. You shit.’

He shook his head, opened one eye.

‘Dear, dear. I thought Thomas had cured you of bad language. Where do you think I’ve been? I’ve been con -sorting with the enemy, as instructed. I have been in their houses and in their minds. I have been reading their correspondence and listening to them. Playing bluff and setting snares. As well as waiting for you to learn about hatred and greed. Are you going to call the police? You may as well. I’ll go quietly.’