Undercurrent (14 page)

It suited his mood. He had passed an untidy collection of fishing boats which looked unfit to sail with their heavy hulls and ungainly lines; he had paused to watch a team of men winch one out of the water and heard it groan like a half-dead whale. Then he passed a children's playground, listened from the beach to the sound of high shrieking on the swings and hurried on.

He supposed a mother could tell the difference between a howl of excitement and one of pain.

And then he was beyond the reach of the road on beach so steep that the prospect of clambering back was awesome and he could imagine he was finally, completely alone.

The coastal path above the shore took him through flat scrubland, littered with small shrubs, flattened by the wind. Outside of the conurbation it was a bleak enough place; mere was nothing verdant or comforting about it. A mile further on, the flat land rose into a cliff, skirting a cove, looming above it. The path ran out.

The bay reverberated with the ghostly sound of a hovercraft crossing from England to France, a strange, diffused, booming sound he had heard in the distance the morning before. The sound filled the sky. He wished he were on the damn boat, hovering or not. He wished he had never seen this stretch of coast or invested it with the romance she had conjured in her descriptions.

You can see for miles and miles; you can see another country. Yeah. Only if you live in a castle designed to kill any poor bastard who tries to get in.

Henry turned for home. That damn black mongrel had been following him again. He shouted at it and when it went, he was sorry.

Home
. Had to stop saying that. He rang the bell, grunted a greeting and went up to the room in search of privacy. Flung the suitcase on the bed and did an inventory: passport, travel cheques, tickets, the name of the Fergusons contact, diary. Don't any of these people know how important I am?

The light began to leak out of his room; all the documents strewn on the gorgeous silk coverlet looked like an unconvincing statement of identity and purpose. They were so small. He was drawn to look at the sea, so hazy, so absolutely endless, it repelled him. Besides, the sun had moved round, away from it. It shone through the window on the other side of his open door. The sash window opened easily. He put his elbows on the sill and looked down.

There were twisted red roofs of a dozen different contours, chimneypots, large and small trailed with smoke; nothing he could see contained any uniformity.

He could see the worn red tiles, warped with age, glinting windows, a medley of warm colours and a thousand entry points for Mary Poppins. He could see the white painted walls, the rounded gable of the opposite house and the little alley in between.

Then he looked down into the garden of the House of Enchantment, drawn by the sound of tinkling water. Tropical down there. A mass of foliage in green, some damn thing with flowers, a great bursting bush with tiny white blooms. A small pond against the side, catching the sun, water gushing out of a terracotta mouth into a clear pool. A floor of old brick curving away in a circular design, greenery between the stones, mature, evergreen shrubs hiding the beds from which they sprung, brilliant gentian blue in a rockery of alpine plants in the corner away from the pool.

A curving path, leading to a pergola covered with greenery, sheltering a small, wooden love seat which looked as if it, too, had grown where it stood. From this height, it was a piece of perfection with a single flaw.

Tim in a boiler suit, bent double with his bottom sticking out of a Wendy house settled square in the middle of it all. The house was plastic, built in lemon yellow with pink shutters, lime roof and royal blue door. It sat, as offensive and disparate as a wart on a beautifully manicured finger, defying all standards of taste. Tim was on hands and knees, dusting it.

Henry forgot everything else, ran down the stairs, through the kitchen and out the back door. He passed Peter, marshalling coal into buckets for the fires.

From below, the garden was even more impressive. The comparative ugliness of a large utilitarian shed and a compost container were hidden beyond the pergola. The place was larger than it had seemed from on high, extending further than he could see, and even in the doldrums of winter there was colour.

'This is just
great.
' Henry was passionate about gardens, read about them, viewed them and dreamed of creating something different from his own dull lawn.

'All our own work,' Tim said. 'Everything begged or recycled, you know. We got the bricks from a demolished wall, backbreaking it was; we've raised most of the plants, and we built the pond from scratch. We're extremely grateful for what other people throw away.'

'But what about that Henry pointed with trembling finger at the obtrusive Wendy house with its hideously artificial pink and blue. Tim's dusting and cleaning operations were complete; he was looking at his work with satisfaction. The plastic was conspicuously dirt free and had none of the sadness of summer items left out in the cold. It looked prepared for imminent occupation.

'Oh, I get it,' he said, relieved as the dog approached and sniffed at the door of the house. 'It's Senta's kennel, right?'

'Good Lord, no. She's only allowed inside by special permission.' The two men were looking at each other, as if deliberating on a proper explanation that would not offend him. Peter took charge, with Tim's tacit agreement.

'Well, I hope you don't mind, but we do know that you had a little chat with Maggie this morning.

About knowing Francesca, and everything, so we may as well tell you. This is Harry's little house.

He used to play in it, you see, when Fran left him with us, and we keep it nice for him, for whenever he wants it. He lives in this garden, you see. Not all the time, just sometimes when it's sunny.'

Tim nodded confirmation of this unquestionable fact. Peter was pointing through the open shutters of the Wendy house. 'He has his little sleeping bag, which he was ever so fond of, and his little shawl, which he used to chew, and his teddy, which he used to abuse dreadfully. Always throwing it away and then yelling to get it back. Love-hate, you might say. Of course, we take the bedding indoors at night. He'd be frightened outside in the dark.'

'The kid's been dead for more than a year,' Henry said, brutally. 'Drowned, buried, cremated. Dead.'

'Yee-ees,' Tim said, considering this. 'Yee-es, you could put it like that.'

'So his ghost comes back to play? Slips down a damn moonbeam?'

'We knew you'd understand. Henry,' Tim beamed.

'You seem such an understanding man. We had such a
terrible
time after he was killed. We really weren't allowed to grieve, you see. There were plenty of people thought Francesca was completely bonkers to give him to us three or four afternoons a week, but he
loved
it here.
We know
how to nurse people, especially little people, and we adored him.'

'You see. Henry,' Peter continued the narrative,’ there are so many people who still think that being
queer
means paedophile. As well as
rampant,
always at it, like rabbits. Instead of being an old married couple like us who would guard a child from harm like a pair of anxious grannies. When Harry disappeared, I tell you, the police were round here like a shot.

They would have dug up the garden if he hadn't been found so soon and Francesca confessed. I suppose we should be grateful to her for that.'

'And for plenty of other things,' Tim murmured.

'Such as letting us get to know him in the first place. He was a sweet, sweet child.'

In the day's emotional turmoil, and in his grief the night before, Henry had not had time to contemplate the identity of the dead child and did not want to dwell on it. All that had mattered was the impact of his awful demise. He got the picture: this 'murder' had messed up plenty of lives, not least that of the murderess; fallout still coming down.

No one so far had spoken of the child with love. Tim was weeping openly, and Peter was patting his shoulder. 'Oh, come inside, dears, we all need some tea,' he said. 'And besides, in case Henry here starts seeing spirits, we'd better show him what Harry looked like. In case he gets the wrong idea.'

Henry wanted no such thing; the conversation horrified him, but he could not see how to evade it. It was he, after all, who had invited himself into the garden, he who had failed to keep his distance, and now he was trapped. A comfortable trap in the warm kitchen, with the world outside clouding over and his elbows resting on a scrubbed table and a tame dog dozing at his feet.

Tea poured from a huge, brown pot which looked too heavy to lift but yielded sweet scented Earl Grey, flavoured with a slice of lemon in the cup. It cut through the clog of the day's snack diet, refreshed him, even as the warmth of the Rayburn fortified him for this exercise in politeness. Peter was coming into the room carrying the TV.

'We've got a video, although I like photos better.

See what I mean? He was an angel.'

'Was there ever a suggestion of any other culprit for the killing?' Henry asked desperately.

'Well, no. Someone had been fishing on the pier earlier on. Left his stuff and didn't come back.

And lots of people resented Francesca. And we do have bad people here. Oh, look!'

Henry saw the head of Francesca, face completely obscured by falling hair as she knelt behind the child and supported him with her hands beneath his armpits, fingers waving at the camera. She was keeping him upright; he seemed in the act of lurching forward. And then he ran, right arm flexed like a piston, right wrist bent. The angle of the arm increased as he moved.

He ran like a slow drunk preserving the arm for the next drink, a look of painful determination on his face, mucus round his nose and a bruise on his forehead.

'That's him at two, when we met,' Henry said fondly. 'He was even more beautiful later. When he learned to fall over properly.'

Henry made himself swallow the tea which threatened to close his throat, pity at war with something like revulsion. The child whose face he examined was ugly. It could have been an old, old man. The face was pinched and wizened and the smile was twisted.

Desperately unappealing, at best. Something to smother beneath blankets and hurry through streets.

A child physically cursed, begging to be shunned.

Ugly as sin. He struggled for an appropriate response.

An image of Tanya's perfection floated across his mind, along with the remembered feeling of holding her close in his arms. The child in the picture looked ready to bite and consumed with rage.

'Poor little mite,' said Tim, his voice tremulous. 'And looking at him. Henry, you have to agree, it's very important to find out who killed him. Otherwise, he'll just keep on coming back to his own little house.

Don't worry, though, he won't haunt you. Why should he? He only haunts us because we don't want to let him go.'

'His mother killed him.'

'Well, sadly and officially, yes. But he thinks there's a question mark, he's told us so.

Unfortunately, he was never very articulate, speech difficulties, you see, so he doesn't seem able to advance an explanation.

But he's perfectly right to express reservations. After all, he must have known his mother better than anyone else.'

Henry put his hands over his ears to blot out the words. He wanted to thump the table and rattle the teacups. He took his hands away from his ears and laid them flat on the table in front of him, willing them to behave. Tim patted his wrist, consolingly.

'Which is why it's so nice you're here. Henry.

We've been expecting you for ages. Someone has to find out, and it can't be us, so it has to be you. Isn't that right, Peter?'

They were beaming at him, as if he were a prodigal son returned and all was forgiven and the fatted calf was in the oven.

Henry shook his head and left them. Walked up all the stairs to his room. The fire they had lit mid- afternoon , without knowing when he would return, glowed softly. The shirts he had flung into a corner had been washed and pressed. He continued his inventory, repacked the suitcase, left it open on the floor. He wished his battery of vitamins included a tranquillizer.

Opened his laptop, wrote himself a note.

GET OUT OF HERE, HENRY.

NOBODY NEEDS YOU.

YOU HAVE NOTHING TO OFFER AT ALL.

Easier today. Easier to breathe and easier to write. I like these little pills.

I could no more tell my friend in the kitchen that I was brought up in a castle than I could fly over
the moon. She would think I was taking the piss, although if I explained that my father was merely the
caretaker, and I the caretaker's daughter, she would find it less offensive. Initially, she disliked the way
I speak. I can't amend my accent and although I have the family talent for mimicry, which children
love, I can't sustain it. She has forgotten about the voice, now, which is just as well, because it's easy to
make an enemy here and she's bigger than I, as well as more socially powerful. I think I'm forgiven the
voice and the habit of sentences because I like her, I really do and she doesn't know quite what to do
about that.

I
DID
grow up in a castle, although it was only the small part in the middle, and when I was a child
it didn't feel unique. There was certainly no sneaking in or out of it or possessing my own key. Nor was
the space we occupied either huge or luxurious, simply sufficient for the standards of an ex-military
man who put efficiency far ahead of comfort, and a wife who found she had married a late-blooming
eccentric and gave up making decisions.

We would re-enact the Normandy landings and she would knit. She couldn't sit and knit as well as
look at the view, because the windows were too high, so she would stand. The keep was utilitarian and
meant for soldiers. It was a terrific place for parties and family gatherings (I can't remember when
Uncle Joe was excluded), a complete playground, but for a houseproud wife, it was no wonder she
preferred her bungalow.