Undercurrent (31 page)

'And I suppose you work at that place,' he gestured towards the barnacle on the view.

'Where they make all them happy pills that can't keep me walking or daft old Chisholm alive.'

'You were saying that you were a receptacle and Angela told you too much,' Henry whispered helpfully, speaking through pursed lips to make his voice sound rather more BBC.

'Speak up, will you? Yes. Far too much, but it does make a change from someone sitting there and watching the clock, wishing they could go. A bit like you. Talk, talk, talk, about this and that, such a storyteller she should go on the wireless. Not much of it true, I shouldn't think. People like making up things to make their lives more interesting. Never enough drama in daily life, I found. You need a newspaper for that. That's where things happen. Not that I believe them entirely either. Mad axeman strikes again, that sort of thing. Not here he doesn't. It's more like frog remains on coastline for third day running.'

Henry smiled. He was beginning to see how visiting this old man was less than a chore. He himself could feel an anxious enjoyment.

'What kind of stories did she tell? Murder, rape and mayhem? Burglary, robbery? Happens in the best of places.'

'Well, I wish it happened here. Not in Warbling it doesn't. Absolute nonsense. The way that girl of hers talked in the beginning, well, of course I didn't believe it. She learned how to fantasize from her mother, I suppose. Very entertaining. Matilda told such dreadful lies...'

'It made one gasp and stretch one's eyes,' Henry murmured. '... about someone I was supposed to know pushing a child off the pier, as if anyone would. I just said, how dreadful and let her go on while her mother went to the lavatory. Then she had to go and sort out the car, water in the brakes or something on the way up this damn hill. And anyway, telling me all this and getting me to pull faces made poor Tanya upset. I managed to shush her before her mother got back, get her to talk about school. I didn't really approve, you know.'

'Approve?'

The old man lowered his voice and leaned forward.

'She could describe it in such detail, you see.

How the child was pushed by a dog on the pier. Her mother shouldn't have told her such stories, even though she's an angry woman. Very. They need a dog. Mind, I wasn't going to say anything. None of my business and she might have stopped coming to see me. Angela's forgotten about it. Other worries.

Now she's got a whatsit, you know, one of those buggers who goes after kids, a . . .'

'Paedophile,' Henry supplied through gritted teeth.

'One of them, running round the town. I ask you.

I told her to get a dog!' He laughed uproariously at his own suggestion. The teacups rattled as he slapped the table. 'Bite his balls off. Lock him up!' Henry winced. Then the old man became sombre. 'I might have caused offence,' he said sadly. 'Is that why she won't come any more?'

'No, I'm sure it isn't that. And I'm sure she'll come back. Why shouldn't she?' Henry rose from his armchair.

He needed to think; the warmth was oppressive and the door was closed, he could feel the beginnings of the familiar agitation and he was ashamed of it.

'And so shall I,' he added, wondering at the wisdom of what might be a lie. The old man grabbed at his sleeve, he shook his hand, feeling the surprising strength of the bones. His own hand seemed enormous by comparison.

'Those things she told me . . . None of them were true, were they?'

'No,' Henry said. 'Of course not. Remember Matilda? None of them.'

The old man winked, a slow, deliberate wink.’ you haven't heard the half of it. So you'll have to come back, won't you? Bring some of that Viagra with You. We could do with it.'

He stood on the headland and watched as the fog rolled in. Down below, before the mist covered it in blanket, the Fergusons buildings caught the light and then faded into an insignificant part of the white landscape. Without being able to see the details he could make out the shape and thought he knew where everything was. When the fog rolled back, a slightly different picture would emerge, but he would still know what was there. And he had been looking at all the wrong books.

The taxi moved off with evident relief and a horrible grinding of gears. He had the impression that the vehicle could find its own way back to the flatlands, to speed home on automatic pilot for the sake of a real fire in a warm garage. He wanted to weep. The driver grumbled under his breath because of the open window which made them both shiver.

He got out in front of the House of Enchantment and paid what seemed a small sum. Almost a third world sum. He thought that might have been why he always went back to the East for his travelling; the cheapness and the idea that it might have been a deciding factor did not exactly cheer him up. So undemandingly demanding, the English. They had an aversion to making money.

He crossed the road and sat on the steps which led from pavement to shingle beach. The cold seeped into his ass, arse, bottom, behind, bum, an English person doesn't have an ass, not even to go to work on. His spine, then. The cold was calming and chilling; he liked it.

Then the dog with the warm muzzle inserted a fat, moist nose into the crook of his elbow as he held it tight against his side in the awful jacket. He felt the interference of a snout, burrowing away in there. Snout: an informant; a muzzle. He had looked it up.

He moved his arm to contain the shoulders of the animal, loosely, exerting no pressure, no suggestion that it could not go whenever it wanted to go. The big black dog sat beside him, allowing the touch of his arm, both of them staring straight ahead.

'You've got some secrets, I bet,' Henry said.

I was always proud of my ability to keep a secret. The obligation to keep a confidence was one
I learned early and it was one of the earliest surprises to discover that not everyone else did the same.

It was exactly the same with promises. I would be the one waiting at the bus stop because I had
promised, but no one else turned up, because there were promises which are not really supposed to be
kept, just as there are secrets which are meant to be told.

The instruction 'don't tell' might mean 'do tell', but only selectively, with the right
interpretation. It might also mean what it says. To save a minefield of confusion, I’ve abided by my
original principle of keeping quiet as the proverbial grave and denying the knowledge I've received
rather than break the seal. The irony of this high-mindedness is that it turns the keeper of the secret
into a liar while the teller of it goes on to share the burden with other close and confidential friends, all
seventy-five of them.

The one thing I've learned is never to confide anything vital about myself unless the person
told is quite unable to repeat or understand. Confessing to a brick wall, in other words, someone who
can't be moved or distressed, simply to get it off one's chest and rehearse out loud what to do.

Which is why I took the coward's way out and told Uncle Joe, the day after. He was deaf, after
all, and mimicked the act of listening with every sign of enjoyment. (Such dissemblers, the Chisholms.) I
could decode what he said, but few others could. And he understood, poor soul, what it was like to face
loss of reputation and disgrace. He might have forgiven me.

I told him how the door was open; I hated closed doors.

It was far too early and wet and Harry was fractious.

Tanya appeared in new clothes, a jacket of shiny stuff she loved and wanted to show off. Harry
clung to her; he always did. I encouraged them go out together. God help me, only on to the pier where
I could see them, and not for long. She wanted to go; Harry wanted her to stay inside with him, but the
lure of doing anything with Tanya was too great to resist. They went. The peace was marvellous. I
don't know how long after that I realized I'd sent him out of doors without a jacket and I started to go
down the stairs with it. Quite some time, I think. I crossed the road. She was huddled by that statue,
trying to get inside it. Hysterical. Her sleeve was torn.

There was a black dog running off the pier. Harry hated dogs; they knocked him over.

That dog . . . It reminded me of how she had been when she first came to us and I tried to
capture her on camera. A scared, vulnerable savage, with nothing to call her own and no ability to
trust. Rudderless as a boat in a storm; she was nothing but a promise. Angela, somewhere,
Neil's fishing stuff, he often left it. . ..

I can't go on with this. None of us ever really tell the truth. It might be better to be deaf and
dumb, like Uncle Joe.

FMC.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

'I wish you'd turned up sooner,' Henry said to the dog. 'Your eyes and ears for a start. Love the coat.'

The dog shuffled. Henry stroked the rough hair of its flank and tickled its chest. There was adequate flesh on the bones, contoured muscle on the legs and the animal, though still, was poised for flight. Don't let me hold you back,' Henry told it, removing his arm.

The dog remained, turned a large head to sniff his face and then, satisfied, leaned against him an resumed contemplation of the sea. The water sounded suspiciously sullen beneath the mist, plotting something.

Gradually, as the cold at Henry's back became acute enough to be almost painful, the dog seemed to hear a signal, shook itself and trotted away to the right. It had the gait he had noticed before, unhurried, even paced, like a distance runner with a long way to go and no doubt of the destination. Someone cared for the dog and someone had taught it to cross a road. An educated hobo with a place to sleep, so they had something in common. Henry thought, except that the dog, close to, was a handsome beast which left a fine coating of hairs on his jacket.

Inside the house, catching sight of himself in a mirror in the hall, Henry wondered how he had become quite so sartorially challenged in such a relatively short space of time.

The dim lighting of the hallway gas lamps irritated him, although they did him the honour of blurring his reflection. Gas lamps, in this day and age, for Godsakes, as if the house was not merely a unit for living but a piece of theatre. Which it was, he realized, looking at the details he had scarcely noticed before.

The hall and the first stairwell were decorated with oriental hangings and above these, flags.

The mirror was framed with ornate gilding and looked valuable until careful examination revealed the chips of gold paint. There was a reason for retaining the dim light of the gaslamps with their delicate sconces and flickering glow. Henry could hear the murmuring of the radio from the kitchen; the rest of the place was comfortably silent.

He looked into the dining room, where the walls were covered with a variety of pictures, the windows draped with heavy, faded velvet and the mantelshelf covered with framed photographs set between two tall candlesticks which were moved to the centre of the table at mealtimes. The table itself was covered with a heavy linen cloth. Henry felt the surface with his fingertips, the mended patches which were invisible to the eye when the table was laid with its magnificence of mismatched plates and cutlery, the items individually charming but never forming a set.

The carpet, like the runner on the stairs, was threadbare and rich in colours. Mess up the artful arrangement and all it would be was second-hand junk.

The sitting room, currently empty of human life, followed the same pattern. There were gleaming fire tongs and old armchairs with hand-stitched covers to obscure the frayed ends of the arms, rugs lying upon other rugs, a small table polished to such a shine he had failed to observe its mended leg. Henry looked at the photographs, framed, it seemed, in driftwood, and saw the black and white image of two lithe young men dressed for swimming, standing against a backdrop of waves, laughing. There were no recent photos. Cameras cost money, Henry counted up what he had paid for his lodging and was embarrassed by his late realization of the stringent budget which must govern their lives.

No phone, no wasted expenditure, no new possession of any kind, except of course the video in the kitchen, looking odd in there, like a garden spade in a bedroom. "

He guessed the source of the video. Francesca had given her car to Angela, her books to the granny who had never wanted them, anything else useful in her apartment to various others. Did she use her gifts as blackmail? Was there a price for receiving them, such as Angela going to see Uncle Joe and Peter and Tim guarding some votive flame for her dead son? Henry noted the decor of his own room with new approval.

The ornateness of the ground and first floor fell away into sheer simplicity by the time he reached the second landing. Bare walls and striped wooden floors of sweet, yellow pine, the runner on the stairs muffling his footsteps, the old silk coverlets on his high bed the only colour in the room apart from the turquoise seat of a comfortable chair. A room for Van Gogh to paint in celebration of a minimalism which was not stark, but comforting.

Peter was there, fussing over the fire, coaxing the kindling to light and embrace a log from the basket of wood he had hauled upstairs. A small bucket held the ash cleared out of the black iron grate. The missing shawl was neatly folded over the bedstead. Peter grinned at him, not quite comfortable with being seen on his knees, genuflecting to his own labours.

'It is the cheapest form of heating, you know,' he said defensively. 'Especially if you go out and find it.

We've got plenty of time for that. I think having time to make and mend is better than having money, don't you?'

'Why did Francesca give you her video?' Henry asked, taking off his jacket and slinging it across the room. How nice to have a garment he could treat with contempt: he had an unaccountable desire to throw the contents of his suitcase, vitamins and minerals included, out of the window. Peter looked surprised.