Desire Line (31 page)

‘Na, she'll have gone in the sea! Otherwise tide'll bring you straight back to Foryd.'

‘Drowned in the sea? Not the river or lake—?'

‘I didn't say drowned, did I?' The sentimental impulse had been brief. He actually winked, making me wonder if he was revisiting old gossip and scandal or just enjoying the new going the rounds. ‘All I'm saying is whatever or whoever killed her, she
ended up
in the sea. Anywhere from here to Splash Point would do it. Old gear catches her, she goes to the bottom— then it'll take an Act of God to get you loose.'

That night I laid out Sara's
stuff
on my swept floor, feeling and probably looking like Tomiko in the kneeling position. But Japanese work best at low level. Fleur's letter answered the obvious query, Why is a valuable manuscript included? It wasn't. The genuine working version of
A First
, decorated with Sara's second and third thoughts was safe in St Clement's library still, in some atmospherically controlled storage, Geoffrey's bequest more valuable now its author was properly dead. I'm not skilled with documents so hadn't recognised this as an excellent copy— sent as therapy by Fleur (and made by her because who else would've had access granted to the original, so quickly and easily?) Renovating Thomasina was meant to be a safe haven for Sara's mind. And this
was
an original in the sense Sara'd attempted to play along as the pen marks proved. Fleur hadn't bothered with the book's frontispiece and title. The Austen quote was dropped in favour of straight into Geoffrey.

Chapter One

‘Economic fact cuts through a hill of homilies. In the latter half of the eighteenth century the average male servant was paid £6-5s per annum while the average female received £2-15s.'

Geoffrey Severing, The Money Masters, OUP, 1981

A relaxed old building of local golden stone under a tile roof, the Merman's Tail Inn on the main square of Heystrete Newton once stood about 30 miles out of Bristol along the London road. At the time we are interested in, its licensee is one Jacob Swift and his wife is Maria and they are enlivened by a small girl child who laughs and chatters throughout a warren of parlours, public rooms, cellars and corridors. Although the structure itself was demolished at the end of the following century, in its history lie events which today would make a preservation order much more probable. For example a young Charles Dickens was a visitor; he stayed a solitary, incident-packed night in February and used some of those recollections for
The Uncommercial Traveller
,
changing only the establishment's name:

‘Before the waitress had shut the door, I had forgotten how many stage-coaches she said used to change horses in the town every day. But it was of little moment; any high number would do as well as another. It had been a great stage-coaching town in the great stage-coaching times, and the ruthless railways had killed and buried it.

The sign of the house was the Dolphin's Head. Why only head, I don't know; for the Dolphin's effigy at full length, and upside down— as a Dolphin is always bound to be when artistically treated, though I suppose he is sometimes right side upward in his natural condition— graced the sign-board. The sign-board chafed its rusty hooks outside the bow-window of my room, and was a shabby work. No visitor could have denied that the Dolphin was dying by inches…'

With no great stretch of the imagination a peeling but entire merman held by a rusty hook can be conjured up, literally grating upon a sensitive guest's nature. Yet prior to the Great Western's schemes (abetted by a young Isambard Kingdom Brunel), the Merman's Tail had been an example of that most vibrant of enterprises, the English wayside inn, comprising bar, beer garden, restaurant, boarding house, livery stables and several other services less favoured by the local magistrate. And this particular one was the birthplace in 1759 of the child who would come to be known as the Peerless Lady Quarrie.

From other travellers' reports we can be sure a complete merman was the sign under which the Swift's infant daughter played. And it is possible to piece together other visual elements of little Thomasina's early years from William Hogarth's (1697-1764) famous illustration ‘Country Inn Yard'. (
Plate 1
). Passengers are being loaded aboard a waiting coach: young bucks already perch on its roof, a matron is assisted by an unceremonious male hand applied to the buttocks, while in both foreground and background a mass of yet more figures compete for our attention. As in much of Hogarth, there is a suggested assault upon the senses with noise, scents, stenches and movement.

At the other extreme of artistic achievement, and a few years further on, we have ‘Outside a Country Alehouse' by hack painter George Morland (1763-1804). Here is a chocolate-box scene. The local Master of Foxhounds is being served a much-needed tot of liquor after the finish of ‘a good run'; the lounging and exhausted pack around his horse's hooves suggest general contentment. The innkeeper's wife stands in attendance with eyes downcast but, presciently, it is the minute cherub of her little daughter that gazes up, wide-eyed. The glamour of an aristocrat has entered her child's universe and the low ceilinged inn at her back, the grimy interior suggested through leaded lights that obstruct more light than they admit, will not contain her for—

Across the top Sara has scrawled,
where is Dickens' sleepwalking waitress story? Whole point dolt
– a new one on me but I got it. She was heckling herself. A few other single words – such as
unproven, rephrase
and
Starkey? –
also some symbols that didn't appear on any keyboard I'd ever seen (three parallel lines very close together, a circle with two dots in like a button drawing) littered the following pages. Arrows mainly said to me she was thinking of more inserts. I couldn't approve. And Sara seemed to see my point. After Chapter 1 the manuscript was clean. But the backs of
A First
took over from the filled organiser I'd dipped into already which meant while Thomasina's life progressed in good order on one side, Sara's lurched forward in chaos on the other. Only a few entries were dated and these had gaps and additions while whole other sections had been crossed out beyond deciphering, not just rejected— eradicated. The overscoring was so deep it slashed through in places to the Peerless Girl. And was a mess. Beyond deciphering by anybody who didn't work for an antiquities department— for a second I tried to dredge up any contact I might have on the Ashmolean's staff before I had to stand and walk around shamed by my own stupidity.
Dolt!
That boat had sailed. Named
Josh.
He will have been painstaking. After an initial read through, a second, a third, however many it took, his policeman's brain will have made a decision that either:

the journal contained nothing to explain her disappearance, just showed them both in a bad,
really bad
, light or,

it totally explained it and showed them both in a bad, etc, etc.

And since then he'd had years alone, side-by-side with an empty Windsor chair while he went through it methodically, (again and again, Sara's other book) my money was on 2.

I'm no Josh. That sinister woman Sara nearly ran down on the first day snaffles my attention, urging me off on a search for Kim. Tighe. I make a mental note to question Glenn re: Clear Skies Café. Then flick backwards— so how do they recognise each other, hooking up by the railings? Sara knows nobody in the whole of Rhyl apart from her husband. And Eurwen, of course. So—? Back some more to the genie and Sara's three questions— then Meg I warm to as if just introduced, good uncomplicated Meg hasn't changed, a friend to Eurwen when needed, the woman who might bounce if dropped. She was and she did.

The Upton parties didn't need describing. They were happening late enough for me to be dragged along more often than I want to remember, the hot drink always in frozen fingers, smarting eyes desperate to shut. And suddenly there's Kim, again— but she's a small
mouli
compared to one other person I bump into now and recognise. Muscling in at the end of an unsuccessful night documented by Sara, a night of spliffs, juggling, lovers, stars and
Mama Rotti's
ominous lyrics, that's Tomiko there just across from the fire. He's watching a desperate
but good
woman. And he can't be. Because they never met.

Chapter 21

When he said ‘a good woman, your grandmother' he implied as a Japanese would because she was your grandmother. It meant what it meant, I thought. Your ancestors are not for criticising. They're for respect. Like I'd ever give you an argument,
otosan
.

The Severings seemed to agree. A gesture to Sara's loss had to be made every year and I was part of it. Fleur and Geoffrey would arrive by train from Oxford and we'd meet them on the platform out of First Class like visiting VIPs, Geoffrey straight as a tree, giving off status like cologne. It was left to Fleur to recognise us and get the first smile in even though she was burdened with The Offering. Our mission was simple— to go straight down to the beach and lay it on the sea. Sara's favourite flowers were violets but who could get violets in November in Rhyl or anywhere? We laid white chrysanthemums –
not
in a wreath – which you could get locally but Geoffrey and Fleur brought with them as though anything Rhylish was tainted. The bunch of flowers, made up by the same North Oxford florist responsible for Sara's wedding bouquet, had usually suffered in transit. Then, once launched, it was in the habit of refusing to follow the absent spirit out to sea— if she'd gone that way. My great-grandfather chipped in words to the effect that Sara, beloved
daughter,
beloved
mother
, was remembered and desperately
missed, the pretence being she was held tightly still by this small family of a septuagenarian, his ageing wife, a sulky girl and the boy in her arms with a Japanese father lurking on the edge of things. Who were supervised by a tall policeman, not in uniform though not a member of the cast either. How did Josh bear it? And as the professor aged, the event became increasingly unsafe, top-heavy with his venomous feelings.

I got older and was expected to participate. At eight years and still living with Josh and my mother in Avonside, there was what must've been
the
worst occasion for the adults. To begin with Rhyl sky's cloudless but the wind comes from the north, a true Arctic Circle blow. Fleur is important by her absence through a knee injury, I think, Tomiko is already in Japan— and Eurwen has a cold. Even whiter than usual, her sore nostrils are a match with the unruly hair. Her prominent lower lip's cracked and she gnaws at the damage making me want to beg her to stop, leave the poor lip alone,
please.
She's wearing a scarf of turquoise silk edged with tassels over an ankle-length coat of such intense puce it makes me feel sick. I connect it with the lip and think of bruises, of the way a bruise can hurt especially in the cold. I think cold – flesh – stone – bone. Freezing stone striking cold bone. Now I'm
sure
I'll disgrace myself and be sick. I grit my teeth and anyone that actually sees me says things like Look! the child's shivering, needs muffling up, shouldn't have been brought out on a day like this, is going to cry. Which is true. A quick flashback prior to our expedition— Eurwen and Josh engaged in a rolling boil of an argument during which my mother has stated several times she won't go. Not that she's too ill to go. My mother never admits to illness and never uses it as an alibi. So she
won't go
. Also that
it was stupid, the whole horrible thing
just stupid— and did nobody any good
.
She and Josh aren't capable of speaking to each other now. I notice they keep either myself or Geoffrey between them. But Gramps Geoffrey can just about acknowledge his son-in-law to ask a question. Not otherwise. Even then he gives the impression he'd rather look it up.

I'm a conscript in a ritual performed by three people who can only communicate through me. ‘Put the flowers in, Yori,' my mother says. ‘You're big enough. You do it.'

‘You don't want to, do you?' Josh demands.

The tribute looks wider, heavier, and even more battered this year, reaching beyond Geoffrey's black-trousered knees to his black shiny shoes. His reddened fist holds the stems too high up and is crumpling more blooms. They're called white but are green at heart.
Green
flowers, I think as I scan each face for interest in life at my level.

‘Be careful,' Gramps Geoffrey says. ‘The waves will get you if you're slow.' At least he can be relied on for fair comment. The tide's on its way. (Why I've wondered, since, didn't anyone make sure it was
going out?
) And any second the wind can send a mouthful of sea well beyond what you expect. I push myself back against the soft wool coat. What must the group've looked like from East Parade? Two men almost equal in height, dark-suited, and a dazzling young woman – because any male would see past the sniffles and the scabby mouth – wrapped in imperial purple, the red snakes of her hair meeting the brilliant scarf, both streaming away. And a stray boy they could've just picked up anywhere. ‘Well will somebody please
get on with it?
' Eurwen hisses. Josh takes my hand and the lead to where water is encroaching on a line of black rocks. Pebbles caught in the spaces are live, scratching things trying to skitter away, and as he places the flowers I catch at them, let them run through my fingers, a part of the event. Against all odds they not only float but progress along the tideline. My grandfather watches suspiciously but they go on their way in the direction of Prestatyn. I'm tugged back up the shingle and Gramps Geoffrey falls in behind, his arm around my mother who sobs Never doing it again!
– which turns out to be true. The swirling wind chooses its moment to throw sand in my face but I don't care. I'm buoyed up by feeling part of things.