Undercurrent (35 page)

They don't wait for me, they just use me, they don't even want my dog.

But I'd lost the dog already.' He went into reverie. 'That's right. I'd given her to Granny to look after for a day or two. I'm always giving her to Granny for a day or two and she's always getting out, daft bitch.

Anyways, on that morning ... Christ, I was glad when Franny admitted it was her did for the kid, 'cos I thought it was Angela.'

'Angela shoving Harry through the broken boards?'

Neil looked at his feet. 'Yeah.' He nodded in rueful agreement with himself. 'Yeah, she could do that. Got a temper like nobody's business, you might have noticed. When she loses it, she really loses it.'

'There was a fisherman on the pier,' Henry began. The single inhalation down his throat made him dizzy and slow and when the spliff came his way, he handed it back after a token pretence to draw on it.

'No there wasn't,' Neil said with sudden precision.

'There was a brolly and a box of bait, I remember that, how could I forget it? You'd think I was fucking rich the way I keep leaving stuff. I'm always fucking leaving it. Awh, bugger it. I've got to go back.' He rose and then sat down again, abruptly. Huddled back into his corner and resumed his morose stare at the ceiling.

'That's why I was late. Went fishing early, forgot the time, the way you do, because it was good. You don't look at the time when you're waiting on a fish.

Then Granny let the dog out. It was wandering round. I shooed it away and went home with my rod.

Nobody really wants that dog, never did. I. was going to come back for my brolly and the bait and the spliffs. later on, but after what happened, I never did. I wasn't going to say they were mine, was I, no more than anyone else. Saying there were signs of a fisherman doesn't mean to say there was one. I was long gone. You didn't really think it could be me drowned that kid? I was cleaning fish. Give us a break. All I'm good at is catching fish. So I better go back for my rod.' He turned belligerently to the dog, which remained with its muzzle on Henry's knee, eyes closed as if afraid to hear anything to its own discredit.

'Are you coming or not?' Neil demanded. Henry could feel the weight of the dog's heavy head and its damp jaw staining his tan trousers. The constant stroking of its ears made it a big, soft sloth.

'Where do you take her?'

'Home with me if it's too late to knock on Gran’s door. Don't worry. She's fed and bedded.

She roams but she's always got somewhere to go.'

The sound of his boots striking the concrete floor made the dog spring into life. Henry felt the thrashing of its tail against his legs as it stood and Neil patted its back with rough indifference. It would never be sure of him. 'Always looking for something, aren't you?' Neil demanded of the dog without unkindness. 'So take me back to where I left my fucking rod. And while you're at it, tell him

... oh fuck it, don't tell him anything.' He stretched his arms above his head. 'Tell him I couldn't hurt anyone I don't care about. Like you. I might not be very nice to you, doggie, can't even give you a name, but I only hurt the ones I love.'

The dog stood indecisively between them, large head regarding them in turn.

'I cuffed Harry once,' Neil admitted gruffly, suddenly more expansive now he was on the move. 'But that was all it was and I wasn't too sorry either. He had a scream set your teeth on edge, you'd do anything to stop it. But I haven't got the bottle to do more. Unlike my wife.' He fingered his jawbone as if remembering a blow, nodding with rueful wonder, a slight smile altering his features.

'Never passionate enough, me. Not like those two, Fran and Angela.

Pair of furies.' He looked down at the dog. 'C'mon, girl.'

'Go on,’, Henry said softly.

They began to walk back in the way they had come. The dog would go with Neil; that much was established. It would find his rod on the beach in the absence of light and be rewarded for usefulness.

'Everyone stopped laughing when Harry died,' Neil said, pointing at the dog. 'I thought Tan would want the dog after all, but they didn't. Neither of them would let me in the house for months.

Tan stopped talking and stayed off school. They spent the summer on the beach, away from everyone. It was only in the autumn it all went back to normal.

As normal as it ever is. Christmas came round again, wasn't bad.

Then you came along, you berk.' It was said without recrimination, simply a sad fact. He stopped and put his hands on his hips, facing Henry under the dark eaves of the hotel. 'Making a mess 'cos you were so sure Francesca couldn't be a killer. But how can you know? How can anyone ever know?'

Henry shook his head in agreement, suddenly anxious to explain himself, for his own benefit at least. 'I began with the belief she had to be innocent,' he said, earnestly. 'I began with a belief in her virtue. But that isn't why I went on. I went on because the facts didn't fit... it's galling when facts don't add up. Offends me.' They continued walking, a little faster in response to the cold. The dog's paws clicked softly.

'Well now you've got them to add up, perhaps you'll be going home soon.'

Henry stopped, arrested and grief-stricken by the very thought. The dog stopped with him, careful of the presence of them both, waiting for a sign of aggression. 'Yes,' Henry said slowly. 'Yes, I probably will.' The light of his room shone out in the distance. The sky was ominously clear. Peter had told him that clear skies were an announcement of forthcoming storms and if he could see the shores of northern France from his window, the omens were bad. Better to run from a storm than face it. He turned to Neil.

'I'll get you the Viagra,' he said. 'Least I can do.'

'For what?' Neil's voice was full of shocked surprise. Henry shrugged.

'For settling something. Making me face up to truth.'

They did not shake hands. It was not a deal; it was two men walking away from one another, one of them possessed of an animal which the second one craved.

Only the dog looked back.

As Henry drew nearer, he could see there was a head sticking out of the top window of the House of Enchantment. The head retreated hurriedly. There was so little which could be done in a town this size without anyone noticing. Except kill a child, throw stones, break hearts. The head retreated as he drew level and waved at it.

The window remained open.

Henry felt churlish about being observed, just as he had felt foolish about being rescued. He wanted to spite her and not go in, go off wandering simply in order to make someone worry. Like he had done once or twice as a child, like all children did. Except Harry, who would probably rather sit indoors than go out in the cold when it was raining. He was too small and frail for the luxury of runaway gestures. Pity the child and what he might have been. Francesca would have made him better.

Henry sat, his legs suddenly weak. He seemed destined to sit on the wall outside the house across the narrow road from the big front door. Watching the sea and wondering for how long he would watch.

When he would go home, by what means, what he would do when he got there, to whom he should write, e-mail, fax his next intentions. Whatever they were.

She bewitched me

With such a sweet and genial charm,

I knew not when I wounded was,

And when I found it hugged the harm.

Who wrote that? Francesca would know. He sat still from sheer weariness and an aversion to climbing all the stairs which would lead either to a night of disturbed dreams or to Maggie, standing guard like a protective housekeeper, scolding him for going out.

Let her wait, she was not his guardian, and yet there was a faint pleasure in the knowledge that someone was concerned about him; it was a novel sensation to know that someone might register his comings and goings and a long time since such a thing had happened. He had begun to enjoy coming back to a house which was inhabited and he was sure he was becoming immune to the cold. Nothing seemed to touch him. He took out a cigarette and smoked contemplatively.

Ten minutes? Fifteen? Two cigarettes and his fingers numb. Amazing the difference in the time it took for a person to smoke a cigarette. Some took two minutes, others seemed to make the thing last half an hour. Amazing how time eclipsed. How long you could sit still in a state of indecisive shock, grief for an unknown child, admiration for sacrifice and work out you were feeling too ill to move, like someone falling over in the snow and finding it was a nice, warm place to be, comfortable to sleep. He could stay here all night, looking at the sea, waiting for the frost to form.

He could sort everything into clinical order, label his conclusions and put them into bottles.

He could smoke another cigarette if he could work out where he had put them. He felt something hit him in the back with a light thump. Then another small object whizzed over his head and crashed on the sidewalk beside him. He bent to see what it was and saw a smashed brown bottle and a litter of pills of a familiar size, the colour difficult to distinguish. A plastic canister followed, about the size of a camera film, but heavier. It was shiny and he knew by the shape of it as he bent to retrieve it what it was.

Henry found it was difficult to turn his head up towards the window, he seemed to have frozen to the spot; he put his hand to his face and found his fingers were numb. Squinting towards the light he saw another missile and realized what she was doing. Chucking out his supply of vitamins and stuff. Perhaps she had shouted too, but he had not noticed that. He tried to pick up one of the ginseng pills but his fingers could not grasp it. Henry got to his feet slowly and gestured surrender. Realized she was right; he could scarcely move.

Serious cold; everything slowing to a halt and his vision of the house on the other side of the road slightly blurred.

He thought of the boy who could not grasp with his right hand.

There was a crackle of thunder.

Maggie was behind the door when he reached it; she closed it softly behind him and began to push him up the stairs. His hands were ghostly white. The stairs were endless 'People die of pneumonia. Henry,' was all she said, calmly enough but with a catch of anxiety he may have mistaken. His teeth were chattering; there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

Beneath the silk coverlet, the warmth began to come back slowly and then he was raging hot and his chest was on fire. She went away and was a long time coming back with water and a kind of pill which, when he swallowed it, had the bitter taste of aspirin.

Her absence and the fluctuations of temperature alarmed him; all that wanting to be alone and now he did not want to be alone at all. 'Don't go,' he said to her. 'Please don't go.'

'No, of course I shan't go. I should never have gone in the first place.' The glow of the fire turned her into a mere silhouette, a sweet smelling creature in a mannish dressing gown.

'Where did she put her letters and diaries?' he asked petulantly, his eyes closing with the effort of keeping them open.

'In the Wendy house. But they don't help, honestly they don't.'

'Oh.'

He found he was squeezing her hand tightly, relaxed his grip. He could grip; he could count her fingers; he could learn to fish. He tried one more time to conjure up an accurate picture of Francesca’s face and begged her forgiveness.

Where's Henry? I asked her. I referred to him as Henry on formal occasions. I pushed him, she
said. I pushed him under. He's a wanker. Harry is, he wouldn't have me alone. The dog came on the pier
and he started to yell; he pushed me first, he did. He's a baby, he's such a baby.

WHERE? I was screaming. I thought we could have been heard on the moon, but it rained and
the sea was crashing. Show me WHERE. No, no and no. I dragged her along the pier, past where the
fisherman had been. We started running. Got to the end where she showed me the barrier she'd
climbed and he stood whingeing behind. She said she was trying to get away from him; he couldn't run
anything like as fast. She wanted to hopscotch over the broken boards and trespass, of course she did;
it was the sort of thing I'd taught her to do. He was timid, crying for company when the dog appeared.

And then he would have got over the barrier out of sheer terror. He ran at me, she said, he pushed me
and he slipped. It was only a dog, it was MY dog what I couldn't have 'cos of Harry.

Then he slipped into the crack and got stuck. I laughed at him and he screamed. So I went to
pull him out. He looked silly. He grabbed at me and bit my jacket, my lovely new jacket. He tore it with
his teeth and I pushed him off with my feet. Fucking big tear. Where do you want to go? I shouted at
him. You going to swim or wait for that dog?

You bite like a dog! So I shoved him down with my feet.

I lost it, I just. . . Did you hit his head? Yes. Did he go through the first time you used your feet?

No, but I heard when he hit the girder thing down there. I heard a thump. I thought he'd just come up
the steps the other side. But he never. The dog kept barking, didn't it? You pushed him really hard,
didn't you? YES,YES, his jumper was up by his neck, he wouldn't go . . . How long since? She was always
good with time, knew how long things took. Well, she said, I waited for him to come up, an' the dog
made funny noises, an' I walked back, again an' again. Fifteen minutes?

I wanted to kill her there and then. I knew it was too late to save him. He could swim a little
bit, but no one can swim against that current. I tore off my coat to jump after him, but she clung to me,
reminding me there was no point. It was bitter. Survival time is about five minutes for a grown man in
February and he was hurt. I know this sea; it was my playground, my friend, my enemy. I made her tell
me again, blow by blow as I walked her back, just in case. The dog sat at the end and howled. I knew he
was dead. And knew what I held by the scruff of her beautiful neck was a child with no conception of
what she had done. No one appeared; no one at all until we saw Angela at the door. And I made Tanya
tell it, all over again.