Desire Line (42 page)

No— it was a terrible
and
brilliant choice. Ambition, violence, loss of respect, misery, shame, suicide. Glenn never mentioned this story was Japanese—

—probably not his doing though. And he only sang because he could and wanted attention but then anyone with a shred of talent does that. Look at me. Look at that architectural model (an architectural model,
these days
?) that had taken chunks of time. Look at the sketches of PalmWalk filling the walls where a hundred takes on Rhyl had been pinned up.

With just journey fodder left to pack I let Peter Grimes, the best bits, go again as I tidied Sara's shrine then put
Facade and Bald Tree
up on screen to enjoy
By Egon Schiele,
believed lost.
It was actually safe in an Oxford vault. Schiele's carbon marks, his continuous output direct from eyes never leaving the subject, were down in the dark like the mug. And still making a house. In the foreground branches strain at the sky— a net full of nothing, Josh's old tree. Your own mind fills it with the early greenish light. Extraordinary. And so was Fleur as a student buying or being given it, because Vienna was her area of study, she'd visited often, but still, a chance find? Schiele and Fleur— one of the few images he ever made that she'd be attracted to. (See for yourself, the contorted lovers, the hags, the portraits of the artist as the devil or a madman, the body parts.) Even then Fleur condemned him to the half-light. But noted my admiration.
Convergence
, people say like it explains anything, like my mother and father, or Josh and Sara. Only together because some thief looked at moonstones and silver, thought
trash
and left it for PC Meredith to bring back in person.

Eurwen said, This was meant for you. (We stood sizing each other up, gunfighters either end of a passage, an empty Pryorsfield echoing round us to). Take it, Yori!

The Egon Schiele is worth— enough to free me for life. Or build one great building. I'm tracing chestnut stems grown through an actual spring in 1913, when a rush of future-zest comes over me so powerful I have to grimace. Things might be about to change, after all wasn't I off in the painting's direction tomorrow? That wasn't it, though. ‘It' escaped me, left me with OK, exposing the family secrets was a poor strategy but not as bad as putting money on Casino Pigalle— and when you mention
those
odds to regular players they say, yes,
yes
but in any town that gets seven sevens up the player gets a billion dollars. (Seven sevens in a row on a forty nine square grid— the odds on Caesar's last breath are better).
A billion dollars
they repeat
and the Cassie P girl off the lightboards will go naked through the streets.
Like she was real.

Because if the whole of Rhyl didn't kid itself blind where would we be?

I'd won the Sara footage on the strength of a small stake, a few confidences, and it had got me back to the diaries. Seeing is everything and I'd needed an Alfred Hitchcock to stalk her and he had. She might be a problem to people she knew, to herself, but to the camera she was Marion Crane, she was Judy Barton, she was the first Mrs de Winter, she was Dead Woman Walking and however many times you watch, if you're human you get angry at the waste. Why doesn't somebody stop her? you keep thinking. Every step. Why not stop her, AH?

He answers. Says it's what he wants you to ask – before, like any good storyteller, he explains.

Chapter 30

A train journey's a kind of movie. It bottles characters up. I try to keep off boats and planes— and out of cars as we're told to. But I'd choose trains anyway. They're the future if we've got any sense which we won't have.

After not enough sleep (Peter Grimes, you deserved to die) I snoozed out of Rhyl on the ten-thirty. Twenty minutes later I'm off again at its first stop in England, handsome Chester. Doesn't matter it's sham and sincere in about equal parts so you're walking along a street going 1530, 1830 or 2030? Doesn't matter it's greedier for your money than Rhyl is. I like— and if you're travelling you need to suck the experience dry. At The Grosvenor in the heart of Eastgate I have tea and a plate of sculptured savouries that cost more than a meal for two back at Rhyl's little Nepalese café because The Grosvenor's where the Severings always stayed. Multiple guilty Yoris watch me from the Brasserie's mirrors savouring slivers of Kobe beef on the tongue while a pair of very thin older (maybe) women sip watermelon juice and consider a young Archie Kao as their post lunch entertainment. Another time, maybe.

The afternoon connection came as a reality lesson. I had to stand all the way to Wolverhampton, the model in my arms— it's like travelling with a baby except I'd attract sympathy if it was a baby. And then into a seat and downing my fizzy water, the halt at Oxford arrives in what seems like five minutes. I haven't been
here
since Fleur died. No time to get off. Rain will be blotching its signature limestone all the way from Fleur's workplace at the Taylorian Institute – into Magdalen Street – along The Broad – darkening the leaded dome on Gibbs' Radcliffe Camera, more perfect than St Paul's Cathedral – kissing the pavement for the geniuses of All Souls (Eurwen's joke) – until, coming down like stair-rods over The Plain, it closes on St Clement's College. An unimprovable route
and it's nobody's scheme.
Who'd be in my business? Stop planning and you get Rhyl. Plan hard and you can still get Basildon—

—our carriage is steaming up. So am I at the woman opposite. She's had
A First
loaded since getting on at Warwick and every so often needs to pull at her neckline for air so the jacket gapes on flesh that I don't want to get noticed staring at. She's twentyish, has long blue/black hair braided with those tiny cubebeads that've gathered between her breasts. Student. Oxford, not— London, maybe? Meaning even less chance, every weekend who's coming to who, where's half-way? Doesn't matter, I'll pay, must remember to offer, making the beads swing as she nods. The halt turns into a long one so I rough out our conversation,
really well-written I think but then I would
— I rifle that Camille woman for a quote, ‘Meredith's Thomasina, the girl from the bayou, is a righteous icon for females of every age and race, pushed to the front of the “talkers-back”' and then all the way to authentic personhood.' No help there. And
A First
is keeping Reading Woman hypnotised, speaking straight to who she would've been if a Thomasina hadn't come along. No surprise that since Sara's bones stranded, Lady Quarrie is more of a brand than ever, ninth place today (up three) in the list of Most Famous UK Hers, behind Jane Austen and Princess Diana but miles ahead of Virginia Woolf. The Severings would be proud. I'm proud.

Didcot's Parkway Station is filthy but then 59,975 people pack the town (doubled since Sara's day) and try to use it. Most of them are at this now, clumping along the train's length, young, old, exhausted-looking, coats thrown on top of overalls or admin-types in sub-Omar suits. I've only ever been through before, not off. Why would I? Once a nineteenth century railway junction, Didcot's other name is Oxford's Servant Quarters, fifteen kilometres down the line from the City of Learning and a light year economically. Lo-cost and lo-care. In the lo-en gloom around the exit, I have to squint to make out a battered Sustrans bikerack through the press of bodies. In the open air for the first time in hours, I can predict we've barely outrun the rain without checking. My ears itch. Japanese ears are useful that way. And Reading Woman is hurtling towards London without me. And ahead there's a ride in the dark and then the real climax of the opera. Hope takes a dive.

Shape up Yori. At least your pre-ordered transport's ready for release— the kiosk says
Thank-you-you-have-paid-for one premium cycle forecast-in-this-area-is- fine- with showers later.
I try to catch the tailend of maybe thirty other cyclists off the train. The first section of Sustrans Way is a gloomy gully to keep us off a B-road edged with apartment blocks, thick with traffic. Flat South Oxfordshire's a pushover though, to a man on two wheels. I'm soon away, almost high after being cooped up and this county seems like another home, even its unloved corners. Yori's husk is back there in the carriage and real me is whizzing along like a
tengu
, now trying to overtake, now diving through a better-lit tunnel that takes us
under
the railway— clumped together, a race but the tunnel makes us a string now. Cyclists start to peel off, shouting out to each. The last one calls, ‘See you, sluggy!' and that's Didcot done with. I'm on a flat, glowing surface run through open country. Except what I make out as undeveloped scrub either side has a condemned feel, with the town close enough to take it with one flick of the tongue.

A crosswind's coming at me out of an invisible landscape of rattling stems.
Ahead forty metres
the machine says— and thunder like a demolition drowned out the rest. Then came rain. On the plus side the lane I'd got into was traffic-free (I've had a morbid fear of the bike/car/rural dark combo since three fellow students were killed on the Bath to Bristol overnighter in my final year)— a minute or two more peddling and
You have reached end point
,
the bike said
.

I dismounted.

At first it seemed there was nothing— then tall bushes trying to link hands across a narrow side turn started to make sense to my eyes and I pushed through, one arm shielding my face. Got a soaking anyway. When I looked up ANIMAL FARM in big luminous letters hung in space, about level with my chin. I blink but they persist, free-floating against matt black. End point, Yori! Apart from Didcot's distant mechanical hum it was quiet, or nearly quiet. A bit of dripping. The bloodswish in my ears is from nerves that have rattled like those stems along the entire journey.

Animal Farm. Never welcoming or sounding like any place you'd want to visit. To disturb me it doesn't need to do what it does now— open up that yellow rectangle about ten metres beyond the sign. And have Sara Meredith step out.

‘Where have you been?' she said. What a question from her! She actually shouted it because the exact moment the doorway appeared dogs started up from behind the building. She tries to pull me across the threshold while I am still getting my bike balanced and baggage de-secured. ‘So what's wrong with taxis?' The sound of her is enough to do it, the challenge in a light soprano – that pure Oxford ‘wheah?' instead of ‘where?' as taught by Bradwardine School among others – all working together to inflict the same old insides-pulled-apart pain. Then there's the thin white hand on my arm, the brush of her hair across my eyes, the scent of it. It was Eurwen, of course. My mother. About time she re-entered the story, the person I'd been waiting to see again, maybe the last few hours or the last five years depending on how the next couple of seconds go— and the daughter Sara's ghost will always search Rhyl for unless I—

—and she's an instant frustration, moving or dipping her face into shadow when I need to look at it full on.

‘I still prefer bikes.'

‘You're soaked.'

‘Spare clothes in the bag. This is worse than Ireland!'

‘You must have brought it, then,' meaning the storm, ‘because it's been fine for days,' she accused me and we were inside and she closed it out. And here comes the awkward bit. We stalled. Somehow there's rain in her hair too that glitters under the bare bulb. As though she wasn't bright enough.

‘Sorry.' No good – everything depended on the moment and it was slipping past – always like this, looking forward, the warm up, the rehearsal or the lack of rehearsal, both useless, and then the meeting itself, spiked by a random thing. Being soaked this time. With the model wedged under one arm, I could just about open my other one in half-love but don't bank on her coming close again. She doesn't. I admire how she's slim as ever inside the dark trousers and fitted fleece, and is only about my height though seeming taller-because-narrower and her red hair's still worn spilling over her shoulders, lustrous and untrimmed down to the waist. The heavy-lidded eyes have maybe a touch extra shadow round them. The smile's like someone else's.
She's here, this is her, straight in front of you, dolt.

She didn't help me off with my rucksack and waterproof but my sodden trainers were almost snatched from the floor and she was gone leaving me to follow. I'm inside a tiny, totally empty hallway. Not a rack, not a peg. Up a tiled step, resisting the urge to duck because the hall ceiling's not much higher than the door lintel I've entered under, then a ninety degree turn, another step— I don't know what I was expecting. Nothing, probably. Eurwen and I had shared various houses, none of them hers and during that time she never gave any hint of how she liked things. Hit by the rise in temperature, I loosened another layer of clothing while I stood in an archway and took in her latest home.

The living space was maybe seven metres long but too narrow and said non-domestic by its fibreboard panelling and overhead lights. In the exact centre, bizarrely, a pair of claret leather sofas from Geoffrey's study (but they'd seen life since) faced each other while Fleur's Edwardian vitrine bought to display the Early Delft bridged a gap between thick-curtained windows. Hence the blankness as I'd pedalled up. The only other object was a white Kofod Larsen reclining chair, also my great-grandfather's, and a present from the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters the year I went off to university. It pretty well completed the effect of a few Pryorsfield pieces being stored in a vacant unit while they waited for auction, unappreciated. My ex-dining room at Libby's was homely in comparison. I walked forward. Now all the through routes for pedestrians showed, giving a hotel reception air – aided by the music that started to filter in, synthesised, using a female voice as the instrument in this track, Tess's sort of taste,
Mama Rotti
— the real thing too. They were on the cusp of a revival. No pictures hung up or were projected (just like Josh) and no screen visible— so in fact an
unfinished
hotel lobby.