Darkmans (41 page)

She turned as he spoke, registering the sudden clatter of heavy footsteps on the staircase below them.

‘An old German widow in Berlin. There’s extensive water damage,’ she murmured, strolling over to the door. ‘The warehouse where it was stored was heavily bombed during the war…’

As she spoke a woman hurried into the studio. It was the woman from the courtyard; the tiny, incomprehensible woman with her scraped-back hair, her heavy clogs and her plastic apron. The apron was now streaked in what Kane presumed to be goose gore. She held her two hands out in front of her, fastidiously (as if she’d been caught on the hop and hadn’t had the chance to scrub them clean). She was short of breath. She quickly patted a sheen of sweat from her forehead with the inside of her arm. A strand of hair had come loose from her tight bun.

‘What’s wrong, Ann?’ Peta asked, gently tucking the errant strand behind her ear.

‘Ya kiraysee jammun frund jast tooned ap, scratchud ta peases, raven lick a maddun,’ Ann said, indicating behind her, with some urgency, ‘a laft im inna kite-chen.’

Peta seemed surprised by this news. ‘Was that wise?’

Ann shrugged. ‘Well wat alse kad-ee du?’

‘Okay. Fine. Well just try and keep him calm. Don’t confront him, don’t
scare
him. I’ll come straight down.’

Ann nodded, turned and darted back off again.

Peta glanced over towards Kane. ‘Something’s come up,’ she said, holding out her outstretched palm. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to send you packing.’

‘Where’s she from?’ Kane wondered, walking over and instinctively grasping her fingers (like a child looking for a mother’s reassurance before crossing a busy intersection).

‘Who? Ann?’

He nodded.

‘The North East.’

‘No. I mean originally. Romania?
Lithuania?
’

‘The North East,’ she repeated, ‘near Sunderland.’

‘Oh.’

Kane was perplexed. He stared down at his hand, in her hand. He blinked. For a moment he could hardly tell which of them was hers, which was his. The big hand? The small?

‘You’re right, though,’ she conceded, ‘it’s an amazing accent…’ she led him out firmly on to the stairwell and gently released him ‘…the best piece in my collection, actually; so raw, so spare, so rare, so
antique…
’

She gestured for him to lead the way, then followed – smiling faintly at his confusion – as they commenced their descent.

‘She’ll have to stay in the car,’ he told the boy, gruffly, ‘her wheels will get stuck in the shingle.’

‘But we can take the cart
off
, Papa,’ Fleet wheedled, his face creasing up as if he might cry, ‘and I can carry her.’

‘She’s too heavy,’ his father insisted, ‘she’ll just get in the way…’ He paused. ‘I
told
you this would happen, didn’t I? Perhaps now you’ll understand why I counselled against bringing her. She’s sick, see?
Disabled.
She’s much better off at home. She’s
happy
there…’

He peered down on to the back seat where Michelle currently sat on a large, black, plastic sheet. He was pleased to note that there’d been no unnecessary ‘mishaps’ so far.

Elen clambered out of the front passenger side, bent over and quickly swiped the creases from her skirt. She couldn’t face another argument. It felt like they’d been arguing for the best part of the journey.

‘Aren’t you excited about seeing the lifeboat, Fleet?’ she called over.

‘Michelle wants to see the lifeboat, too,’ the boy insisted.

‘Michelle doesn’t give a
damn
about the lifeboat,’ Isidore snapped.

The boy’s eyes filled with tears. He held both of his arms, stiffly, by his sides. His lower lip protruded and then started to wobble.

‘
Please
,’ Isidore’s voice was hoarse, almost desperate, ‘not another scene. I don’t think I could stand it.’

‘Mama?’ The boy turned to face his mother. He held out his arms to her. Elen hurriedly made her way around the car. She squatted down in front of him, gently trying to force his arms to his sides again, but they remained stiff and unwieldy, like a rented deckchair which wouldn’t fold properly.

‘Did you take a peek at the Channel yet, Fleet?’ she asked. ‘See? Over there…’ she pointed towards the flat, seemingly boundless grey splodge of water roaring hoarsely to the right of them. ‘And the lighthouse?
Two
lighthouses. You’re spoiled for choice here.’

‘But why can’t I bring Michelle?’ Fleet persisted. ‘
Look…
’ he pointed to an adjacent power line. ‘Daddy brought
Phlégein…
’

Isidore stiffened at his son’s casual use of this strange word –

Phlégein?

From the Ancient Greek?

To burn?

‘Don’t be
ridiculous
,’ he barked.

He slammed the driver’s door shut, quite furious.

‘But you
did
,’ Fleet squealed. ‘Why can’t I have Michelle if you have
Phlégein
?’

‘D’you think it’s going to rain?’ Isidore asked Elen, stiffly. ‘Should I unpack the waterproofs, just in case?’

‘Yes. The sky’s a little dark…Good idea,’ Elen murmured.

Isidore marched around to the back of the car and yanked open the boot.

Elen turned to Fleet.

‘Michelle has to stay in the car,’ she chided him softly. ‘It looks like rain. She’ll get all wet and catch a horrible cold. You wouldn’t like that now, would you?’

‘I’ll hold her under my jumper,’ Fleet said.

‘No,’ Elen struggled to keep her temper in check, ‘no you won’t. She’s going to stay in the car and that’s that. She’s happy in the car. She likes being in there. She’s guarding the car. That’s her job.
Look…
’ Elen indicated towards the window where Michelle’s nose was currently pressed, her poignant eyes mercifully obscured by a small patch of condensation on the pane.

‘Why doesn’t
Phlégein
stay in the car?’ Fleet whispered, conspiratorially. ‘I don’t
like
him, Mama. He’s horrible. Why does Papa always let
Phlégein
come along? It’s not
fair.
’

Elen drew a deep breath. ‘We spoke about this before,’ she said, ‘remember? Mummy doesn’t like it when you talk about
Phlégein.
It makes Daddy cross. Mummy doesn’t want you to talk about it any more.’

‘But why doesn’t
Phlégein
stay behind too?’ Fleet persisted.

Elen tried a different tack. ‘Would you
like
it if
Phlégein
stayed in the car with Michelle?’ she asked, her voice taking on a slightly ominous tone. ‘Just the two of them? All alone?’

The boy’s eyes widened.

‘Let’s not speak of this any more,’ she said, hating herself.

Isidore slammed the boot shut.

‘I can only find two mackintoshes,’ he said. ‘Yours and Fleet’s.’

‘Are you certain?’ Elen stood up. ‘I’m sure I packed yours with mine…’

‘Positive,’ Isidore insisted, throwing her mac over to her.

‘Should I take a quick look?’ she asked, catching it and shaking it out, just to make sure the two weren’t caught up together.

‘Fine,’ Isidore snapped, ‘if you think I’m incapable of hunting down a stray mac…’

‘No,’ Elen murmured. ‘Of course. You’re right…I’m just being…
uh…
’

She began to yank on the mac over her plain, black, knitted top.

‘I don’t like it here,’ Fleet muttered, turning into the wind and hugging himself against the cold. ‘It’s ugly and messy and all…all
squashed.
’

Isidore unrolled Fleet’s mac then reached out and grabbed hold of one of his arms.

‘I can put it on
myself
!’ Fleet screamed, snatching his arm back. ‘Stop that!
Now!
’

Elen spoke sharply, pulling her hair free from the neck of her mac and trying to wrestle it into a ponytail.

They both glanced up at her, as if uncertain which of the two of them she was actually chastising.

‘Fleet,’ she added, as an afterthought, ‘don’t be such a baby or we won’t go and see the boat after all.’

‘I don’t
care
about the boat,’ the boy griped, ‘I
never
cared about it.’

‘You
like
boats,’ Isidore growled.

‘I don’t
care
,’ Fleet repeated.

Elen took the boy’s coat from her husband and set about pulling it on. The boy sullenly complied to her brisk manhandling. Isidore scowled. He drew a deep breath and zipped his winter fleece right up to the throat. He locked the car and set the alarm –

Beep-beep

Fleet’s entire body jarred at this unexpected sound. But then, almost immediately: ‘Beep-beep,’ he echoed, blankly.

‘Well,
I
want to see the lifeboats,’ Elen said, straightening up, ‘and so does Daddy.’

The boy said nothing. He kicked out his foot and propelled a small pebble from the tarmac into the verge. The pebble made contact with the rattling brown skeleton of a dead plant.

‘That’s a Sea Holly,’ Elen said, pointing, ‘can you see the spiky seedpods like tiny pineapples on top? And that’s a Valerian…’ she pointed further along. ‘It used to grow wild in our old back garden – with the pretty cones of red flowers – remember? And that’s a Sea Kale…’ she pointed still further on. ‘Or what’s left of it. You can eat the leaves if you steam them. They taste like cabbage…’ she paused. ‘If we look hard we might find some interesting shells on the beach. Maybe even a fossil…’

‘Do you have the train time-table with you, Elen?’ Isidore interrupted her.

‘The
train
time-table?’

‘Yes. I handed it to you just as we were leaving.’

‘Did you? Oh…Right…’ Elen said, frowning.

‘I gave it to you just as we were leaving the house. In the hallway. I was carrying the dog. I’d dug it out specially from the box of papers in the study…’

Elen slowly felt around inside the pockets of her mac. ‘Well it’s not going to be in the pockets of your mac,’ Isidore snapped, ‘you’ve only just this second put that on.’

‘I don’t
have
any other pockets, Dory,’ Elen murmured.

‘Where’s your bag?’

‘I left it at home. I didn’t think I’d be needing it.’

‘So you shoved it into your bag and then left your bag behind, is that it?’

She shrugged.

‘Great.’

Isidore stalked off down the road, heading in the general direction of a large, solitary white shed positioned on a small ridge between the sea and the shingle.

Elen snatched a hold of Fleet’s hand and trotted along behind him.

‘I thought we were just visiting the lifeboat this time…’ she shouted.

‘I wasn’t certain if the lifeboat station would be open, so I dug out
the train time-table, just in case,’ he yelled back. ‘Fleet’s never had the opportunity to ride on a miniature steam train before…’ ‘But it
is
open,’ she gesticulated, helplessly, with her free hand, ‘I mean it
looks
open, so we won’t…’

‘That’s hardly the point.’

Isidore strode on.

‘Ow!
’

The boy suddenly ducked his head.

‘
Now
what?’ Elen glanced down, irritably.

‘
Phlégein
hit me,’ the boy grizzled, shoving the lower section of his face into the thick knit of his scarf, for protection.

‘Look at me,’ she instructed, still struggling to match her husband’s pace. ‘
Where
did he hit you?’

‘There…’

The boy indicated towards the side of his head, but still looked down – as if afraid to look up – his shoulders hunched.

‘I can’t see anything,’ she puffed. ‘Walk properly, Fleet. Don’t be silly. Lift your head up.’

‘He
did
hit me. I
felt
it…’

The boy tripped on a pot-hole and almost lost his balance. He kept a tight hold on his mother’s hand, exaggerating the trip and forcing her to take the best part of his body-weight. She winced, biting her lip, then righted him, with a grunt.

‘Well I can’t see anything,’ she panted. ‘Show me properly…’

‘No.’

Impasse

‘Well if I can’t see it,’ Elen reasoned, her nostrils flaring, ‘I can’t kiss it better, can I?’

‘I don’t
care.
I don’t
want
you to kiss it. I want to go
home.
I’m
tired.
I
hate
it here.’

‘Fine.’

She stuck out her chin. She pushed back her shoulders. She continued walking. The boy kept his head down. She looked around her, defiantly. The sea hissed and crackled interminably, like a stylus stuck inside the final groove of an old LP.

The road they were walking (there was no pavement, just the wide expanse of pebble beach beyond) slithered through the plain landscape
like a contorted mamba searching for a private nook in which to shed its skin. But there were no gulleys for it to crouch in. The sky, like the sea, was grey and unrelenting. The wind howled.

She inspected the sparse assortment of tiny cottages dotting the shingle around them. For the most part: ramshackle, wooden huts, old train carriages or ancient, flimsy-looking prefabs, often ornamented quaintly with the spoils of the sea – pieces of driftwood, skeins of seaweed, the rotting hulls of old rowing-boats, abstract hunks of what looked like rusty farm machinery, lop-sided flagpoles, broken anchors…

Each property was self-consciously open plan. There were no real fences – no boundaries – as if the fearless inhabitants were perfectly content to own both everything and nothing, concurrently.

She felt lonely – like one of those dilapidated huts: solitary, care-worn,
old.
She sniffed, mournfully. Her nose was running. She shoved her spare hand under her mac, angled it, carefully, then slipped it into a small pocket hidden inside the folds of her skirt. Here she felt the sharp edges of a neatly folded piece of paper. The time-table. Next to it? A tissue. But she didn’t pull it out – not immediately. Her slim fingers dug down still deeper and touched something else. Something cold and metallic.

The
lighter.
Kane’s lighter. She grabbed a hold of it, curled her fingers around it, drew a deep breath and
squeezed
; ducking her head, closing her eyes, almost smiling, as she etched its keen shape into the pliant flesh of her palm.

The lifeboat was out on call. The station was empty. Elen stood in the small shop, utterly panicked, desperate to find any visual evidence of this phantom vessel with which to distract her already dangerously recalcitrant son. She unearthed a pamphlet by the till:
The East/South East Stations and Museums Guide, 2002.
On the front was a photo of an orange, motorised dinghy bouncing through the surf manned by four volunteers in white crash-helmets.

‘There we go…
That’s
what it looks like,’ she told him, pointing. Fleet didn’t look. He was staring ahead of him, blankly, rubbing his index finger up and down on his lip.

The kindly woman behind the till instantly took pity on them.

‘Is he
terribly
disappointed?’ she asked, smiling down at the boy.

‘Just a little,’ Elen smiled back.

‘Well there’s a few nice photos of our actual launch – the
Pride and Spirit
– on the wall over there,’ the woman said, ‘just next to the door. And once you’ve shown him those why don’t you pop outside and take a look at the launch tractor? If you’re very good…’ she spoke to Fleet directly, ‘one of the men on standby might even start it up and take you for a quick ride. Would you like that?’

Fleet completely ignored the woman. He continued rubbing his finger on his lip.

‘Wow,’ Elen said, ‘a
launch
tractor! Did you hear that, Fleet?’

Fleet gave no sign of having heard her.

‘He’s a little overwhelmed by it all,’ she explained, with an apologetic shrug.

‘Did you travel far to get here?’ the woman asked.

‘Only from Ashford.’

‘Well that’s not too bad, is it now?’ The woman spoke to Fleet again:

‘I’m sure Mummy will bring you back again very soon, and you’ll be able to see the boat next time.’

‘Of course he will.’

Elen squeezed Fleet’s hand, encouragingly.

‘Ow!’
Fleet said, snatching his hand from his mother’s grasp.

The woman smiled, distractedly. Another customer wandered into the shop.

‘We mustn’t get in the way,’ Elen said, stepping back from the counter, ‘I can see it’s all systems go today…’

The woman nodded. ‘There’s a trimaran in trouble on the other side of Rye Harbour,’ she explained, checking her watch with a slight air of anxiety, ‘the crew’ve been out for around half an hour…’