Undercurrent (7 page)

The child slept the sleep of healthy exhaustion, fresh air, exercise, stimulation and plenty of food. She was a wiry little thing. Not so little, and incredibly strong. She might make an athlete; she shone at school sports and showed a capacity to excel if only she was not so bored with it all.

Difficult to get the hang of the rules. Why not outrun everyone else and shove the ball in the net, using the quickest route, even if it did mean going out of the ground and pushing people over?

Why obey the whistle if you were ahead? Why not use skull, feet and fists and anything else which was useful, even if you were only supposed to use your hands or a stick? She was learning, though; she learned fast. Angela smiled fondly, touched the pillow in benediction, then touched her own hair, hidden beneath a rustling shower cap. Time to rinse. Twenty minutes maximum, or her hair would look like a bonflre in full flame once it was dry. There would only be a slight resemblance to the rich auburn of her daughter.

Tanya had said that a girl at school had said, why hasn't your mummy got hair like yours?

The fond and logical explanation that only half the mothers who collected at the school gates had a colour of hair resembling that of their children, or even their own, had failed to reassure. There were gaps in Tanya's logic, as well as her sensitivities, and if she wanted Mummy to have the same hair colour as herself, well then, Mummy would fix it. Angela glanced in the mirror and wondered if Uncle Joe would notice the difference when she visited next; she'd take a bet on it.

Henna was such messy stuff and the application was roughly the equivalent of shoving her head in a cow pat of warm dung, with a not dissimilar smell and texture. It stained where it touched the porcelain; she had spent half the waiting time scrubbing at it, and the towel round her neck would never be the same again. It would be relegated to towels to be used for swimming in summer. If they ever did that again. Of course they would. By the end of the summer before, Tanya could float like a cork and swim like an eel, although eels had better understanding of the tides.

Angela set about the task of getting the muck out of her hair with the aid of the shower attachment, cricking her neck at an uncomfortable angle over the sink. All finished, and she felt a huge impatience to get it dry and see the result. Tanya might not like it and she might have to do it all over again, but if the little brute said she wanted a blonde mummy next time, that was what she would have.

No. Not blonde. That was Francesca's colour. It might remind her.

Coffee; too early for a drink as long as it was daylight. She looked into the refrigerator, anxiously, checking supplies. A piece of cold chicken, a bottle of cheap Bulgarian wine, a dozen kinds of the yoghurt that Tanya loved, enough for a meal, later. Gone were the days of finer foods, all ending, as they had begun, with Francesca. When the doorbell rang, she made a quick, furious check of the tea and coffee supply, and hoped to heaven it was no one she owed the politeness of hospitality.

As if there was anyone to who she owed nothing, or any time when she could refuse to answer the door, or fail to explain why it was her daughter was asleep in the afternoon. Because we get up so early,
see
?

On her way across the carpet (worn, but subject to rigorous cleaning; must not let anyone imagine standards were slipping) she flipped the switch to the radio, filling the flat with the calm music of Classic FM. Made her look as if she was in control; relaxed; in command, not someone waiting for inspection.

Maggie, looking bloody brilliant, in the way she did. A ripe, well proportioned figure in just the right kind of warm, lightweight coat, slimline trousers, neat little boots which combined practicality with a touch of elegance, and a somewhat breathless Hello! Just wondered if everything was all right. . . Bitch. Hate her. Coming round for a sympathy fix, the sort which was given but never solicited, making Angela feel deficient.

It was hard accepting solicitude from someone who never seemed to need it. Angela knew what she was going to say before she said it; the words were already assembled like something wrapped for the post. Hello!
Maggie, nice to see you, come on in, won't you
? the smile on the face ready glued like the stamp on the parcel, hoping she really was just passing.

'I was just passing,' Maggie said: the way you did when you lodged in the other direction. The
just
passing
stuff was nosy neighbour code and it was bad manners to be seen to doubt it. 'On my way out,' Maggie continued. 'And I'm late already. I just thought I'd bring you these. . .' Now this was better already; an immediate announcement of no intention to stay. Angela liked that kind of visitor and she smiled with extra special warmth as she accepted the flowers. Winter blooms, on closer inspection, snowdrops wrapped in brown paper, not long picked and artfully bound. Angela never knew what to do with flowers. These were tasteful, without being edible.

'I was thinking of sending some to Francesca,' Maggie was saying. 'Only then I remembered they wouldn't let her have them. Don't know why. Infectious or something, some new rule.'

'Bastards,' Angela said with real feeling. 'Bastards.' She squared her shoulders, put the proffered flowers on the chair by the door with a nod of thanks she did not feel. 'I've got to dry my hair. Why don't you go and look at Tanya? She's fast asleep, poor love.'

It was important that she make this child accessible to anyone who wanted to see her. She must always answer the door and behave politely, make it clear there was absolutely nothing to hide.

Maggie crossed the floor of the living room into the bedroom with long-legged speed. Angela heard the muted ahhh of appreciation as she stood by the bed, and almost liked her for that. No one could be all that bad if they loved the child. She liked Maggie all the more when she was back within the minute, adjusting her scarf, ready for the off without a single suggestion of lingering longer.

She had a ski hat with darling little tassels bursting from the crown, poking out of her bag. It matched her brown boots, would look perfect over her voluminous, well dressed hair. There was a pale scarf at her neck, too; she would never get cold. Sheer, naked dislike returned. They stood by the door. Maggie had opened it, stood elegantly with her hand on the jamb.

'Has Neil been round recently?'

'Yeah. Took her out, Saturday. It's great she likes the castle so much.' As if she didn't know.

As if she didn't check on Neil, too.

'Oh, by the way. There's this bloke in town, got here yesterday. He, hmm, says he knew Francesca years ago, wants to get in touch. I. . . hmm, well, any idea what I should say? I mean, I'm her cousin, but you were her closest friend and you, you sort of hmm, know her best. What do you think she would want me to say?'

She spoke as if she were tossing away a careless and purposeless question, but she was hesitant and slightly flustered, the way she never was. It made Angela more suspicious than ever. She shrugged, thought of the sleeping child, and crossed her arms, defensively, careful not to let irritation show.

'I dunno what you say. Truth's best, isn't it? Tell him where to write to her, I would. I expect she likes letters. She used to write enough of them. Always writing something.'

Maggie nodded, smiled and was gone. Angela picked up the artfully wrapped snowdrops, and after three seconds' contemplation of stamping them underfoot, unwrapped them carefully and found a cup to put them in, with water, so that they should not die. They must be prominently displayed until they decayed.

They had the fresh look of half-budded winter blooms which would last in a cool room for days.

She would take them to Uncle Joe. The child began to stir in her sleep and cry. Sudden sounds like that made Angela anxious. When this child had come to her, she had newly mended bones and scars the healing of which she could never quite believe.

It was nonsense for anyone to believe that a woman could not love an adopted child as much as if it were her own flesh and blood. Impossible to love anyone more than this. But real mothers, real, neglectful, selfish mothers, did not have to open the door to every knock.
They
could ruin their kids and no one would know.

The cry of the seagulls woke Henry from his doze on the pier. He was aware of a vague sensation of being watched. A long doze which left him consulting the time to find the day waning.

The last bench had been sheltered and caught the sun; it had invited him to sit on it, but not for so long. Tired again. He blamed the influx of cholesterol having the same effect on his arteries as all those militants blocking negotiations somewhere in the countries of Europe beyond the horizon.

He had dozed with the readiness of an old, old man, and the afternoon had struck him unawares. His eyes were rimmed with a brittle crust of salt. He rose stiffly, peered over the rails to the fishing platform, and saw again the broken boards and the sea, swelling gently beneath. He remembered the things he needed to do - buy a new hat, find another place to stay - and felt indecisive, fuddled by sleep and ashamed of it. He started to walk back the length of the
Titanic
towards the town, slowly.

The shoreline met the sea in a curve. He felt, as he stopped, that he was approaching the rim of the world, a newcomer to it. To the far left he could see the suggestion of a cliff, at odds with the flatness of the coast, as if marking the beginning of new, alien territory a mile away. In the nearer distance there was the squat outline of one of the castles he had come to see, and for a moment, recognizing it from illustrations, he was disappointed. It seemed mean looking and close to the ground, squatting like a toad, instead of rising high against the sky into misty battlements like the castles of fairy tales, and it seemed sadly dwarfed by the redbrick block of flats next to it.

Henry did not want to register disappointment, so he let his eyes wander, away from the dun castle walls, across a fine parade of white buildings to the junction and then to the houses which stretched out to the right. All of them seemed to be different heights and colours, pinks and blues and whites, red, pantiled roofs, slate roofs and a riot of chimneys. They looked as if they had been randomly built, each to its own idea, and then huddled together for warmth and company, the better to face the sea.

Smoke idled from crooked chimneypots. By the time he was halfway down the length of the pier, Henry could imagine the houses shuffling together to fill the gaps; he could see greater detail; a variety of windows and widths of frontages, brave windowboxes sporting ragged bursts of greenery. He noticed with a curious pride that he could see the House of Enchantment in the distance, larger than its neighbours, with its distinctive turret worn like a hat making it markedly different from any of the others, although nothing was uniform.

He imagined the streets they had walked that morning wriggling away behind this frontage into a warren of picturesque dwellings, each with a chimney stack for Santa Claus. The houses, from further back, looked as if they should have been inhabited by pixies; closer in, they had an utterly human and humane scale. Henry found himself grinning. The splendours of the big hotel, which simply disturbed the line of his vision with its obtrusive presence near the end of the pier, seemed suddenly inappropriate. Why would he want to stay there? He felt invigorated with a peculiar sense of homecoming.

There was a bulbous sculpture at the pier entrance he had not noticed before. Men and boats and fish, all of rounded shapes, were intertwined in the design. It was metal, but weathered like stone.

Henry patted it in approval.

The breeze, which had died and, in its dying, lulled him into sleep, sprang back into life, and he missed the hat. He plunged downhill again, confident of his route back to the shops and the house which he decided to call home, for a day or two more at least, even With that bathroom. He wanted to be back there, watching the sky grow pink, looking at the view in reverse from his high, casement window long before dark.

He noticed the details of buildings he had missed on the earlier route. . . ah, there was the library, but tomorrow would do for that. And then, turning into his path from a narrow road at the side, he saw a tall, slender woman, walking briskly away, her head and neck wrapped in a white scarf which trailed down the back of her long, dark coat. He could hear the click of heels on the pavement, louder than any other sound, but all he noticed was the luminous whiteness of the scarf. Some fine woollen cloth which drifted in the draught of her movement.

A peculiar stride; it could be her. He hesitated, embarrassed and indecisive; her stride seemed to lengthen as if she was determined to increase the distance, and then Henry broke into a run. What did it matter if he touched her on the shoulder? No one could arrest him for that.

He was stiff from sitting still; the body which he forced to run at home, for the good of its health, was reluctant to cooperate. The exercise regime had slipped since his father had died; everything had, and he was wearing too many clothes for comfort. The soft leather jacket was cumbersome.

The whiteness of the scarf tantalized; Henry felt he could reach it, at least draw level and glance at the face before he committed himself to a greeting.

He could say I'm sorry, but. . . , that would make it OK; then he tripped, stumbled and fell with agonizing slowness, breaking his fall against a wall with a jarring pain in his wrist that made him yell. He landed heavily on one side, lay there, winded and blind. There would be lump on his forehead. His heart was pounding.