Desire Line (5 page)

So, Sara's story. To start, there's her re-entry to Rhyl that could've been staged by Alfred Hitchcock himself. That caused a stir. How did she die? No—! Before that, who was she
?

Who was she?
I could begin She was the child of Professor Geoffrey Severing and Wife Number One that died when Sara was too young to remember. Her stepmother, Fleur, bucked the stereotype and was anything but wicked. Then as a young woman she met and married a man called Josh and
they
had a little girl and so on. Flash forward to the bones so polished they could be actually part of an old cockle-dredge. I shouldn't have started with The Wave I realise now. But backwards or forwards is a trick question anyway. I'm the teller and I don't get to decide. Biography was
her
flair – you may be the sort of person who doesn't need to be told that? – and the published work gives her independence beyond the grave (if she had one which she hasn't), meaning do a search if you like. From the verifiable facts this stands out. At the beginning of what everyone thought would be an academic career she wrote a book,
A First at Oxford.
It was about a woman who'd lived in eighteenth century England and had sort of dropped out of the records. Or at least was there in a low-key way but lucky Sara came across hers just as the Secret History concept became a craze. Characters weren't so much being rediscovered as reinvented and this one had everything going for it. Poor clever girl. Bad men. Sara's book was an immediate success. You'll find more tributes to it than it has pages.

‘An effortless display of cleverness makes it almost too-readable,'
Guardian.

‘Pity the feminist icon. Her biographical fate is so often a grotesquely attenuated characterisation in the manner of advocacy for mediaeval sainthood. Meredith earns our gratitude for freeing Thomasina Swift from the plethora of sentiment surrounding that name:
why
is no longer severed from the
how
of her achieving the unfeasible.'
Pittsburgh Historical Review
.

My all-time favourite goes, ‘Thoroughly absorbing, deeply humane… most impressive is the way she can use a sentence from a blathering Parliamentary speech – or even a statistic for Oxford rainfall – to put racing plates on her hobby horse…'
Sunday Independent.

And for Sara it was life-changing.
Bestseller!
Like the name Tess, the word's enough to make the mouth water. In 341 pages – OK so I overestimated the tributes – Thomasina Swift goes from innkeeper's daughter to first female ‘ever to keep a term at Oxford', which translates as managing to study at a university still ringfenced for aristo sons. Edition followed edition – then a huge printing to cash in on the
Tom Swift
film. But I have an original copy, the one with the awesome Pythian Press logo, the python drawn by Lucy Llewellyn, twisting along the spine and a dust jacket in mint condition. On the back the author is shy, proud, the eyes a challenge, her hair being swept away from her forehead in a move implying ready for action. She's very attractive, the chin down on her collar like that, a photographer's device to disguise the length of the face. Visible over one shoulder is Garden Quad, St Clement's College, Oxford (c.1765), it being the only survivor from Thomasina's era. The book is signed and dedicated, though not to me. Sara offers its new owners, G and F, her love but just the position of the rest of the inscription's revealing, ‘— may you have as much fun reading this as I had writing it' lies above the frontispiece Jane Austen quote, ‘
I was… dragged through numerous chapels, dusty libraries and greasy halls. I never was but once in Oxford in my life and I am sure I never wish to go there again.'

She's saying, I don't care about snubbing Austen. Here's my view of Oxford. The great Jane's being called out by Sara Meredith, which makes what happened to her afterwards a real puzzle. Only a month ago on my way south by train, a fellow passenger was well into Sara, and I rehearsed one of those conversations you've no intention of starting.

‘Yeah!' (All casual) ‘I've got a
signed first edition!'

‘—?'

‘Obviously not, it's to her parents.'

‘ —?'

‘I think it's
very
good but then I would, wouldn't I?'

The woman's brows pinch up. My appearance makes connection with our topic hard to believe. I find it hard to believe. She's about to be spun a line, she thinks— and anyway the dialogue never happened. One thing Tomiko insists on is a Japanese
never
asks a stranger for information concerning self, family, education, place of origin, occupation and current level of prosperity. And never gives it. So I stayed silent— but I've butted in again. Trying to be dutiful— or maybe highly-motivated— leads you into it.

Actually this is three people's story. But what do you do if number three doesn't want to be heard?

OK. We need to start a long way from here. ‘Sara married a man called Josh and they had a daughter—'

Named Eurwen, a Welsh name, a difficult name but to look at her, you'd never guess she's going to cause the trouble we're all in. Every morning, from an anonymous saloon car, a tall rangy Mr Meredith delivered the child to the school door. Bradwardine's severe frontage disdains to broadcast it caters for Oxford's chosen next generation. But even here Mr Meredith was a presence as he moved through the mothers and childminders, his dark suit a male put-down of multi-coloured anarchy. While other children were chivvied or coddled he ran a hand over his daughter's chestnut curls letting her turn beneath, offering one sentence per day to exchange with the gatekeeper. Probably a bit wet for rounders? We're
enjoying
The Hobbit
!
When he walked away eyes other than the girl's followed him. The car might turn left in the direction of Carfax and the city centre but most often right, circling to Thames Valley Police Headquarters in Kidlington. Or at least it spent precious minutes trying to make for the seized carriageways that served Oxford as walls… and more than one mother speculated aloud that he must be so-o tempted to blast a way out with the siren.

Mr Meredith: the only rank he ever admitted to was parent. At three-fifteen a red-haired, thirtyish Mrs Meredith was waiting and she had a Christian name. ‘Sara Meredith—she wrote that book!' ‘
She
's
the clever one— a Bradwardine girl herself!' ‘Daughter of Geoffrey Severing – he was on
Newsnight
again over globalisation – or it might have been something else.'

This Sara chatted with the staff and joked, sometimes at her small replica's expense. Oftener the wit was directed at the well-groomed mothers. In faded denim her slight figure was easily shouldered aside by Human Resources mothers on flexi-time or Entrepreneur mothers with government-advisor haircuts. ‘How do they do it? I can hardly manage to shop for food, never mind shoes. What amazing shoes!' Her intent was to provide an ear for pedagogic complaints, though
trying too hard
she sometimes admonished herself; the aspiration was for goodwill to be heaped on her child's head. Not that the child was ever in need of it, Eurwen, the daughter with the Welsh name, a difficult name, one that had come to school the first day written on a scrap of paper. (‘Eurwen' – pronounced Ire as in Ireland and wen as in when!) Fragile, beautiful, green-eyed and blessed with a watchful father and amiable mother, sweeping the years ahead clear of slips, trips and falls. What could go wrong?

Afterwards, inevitably, Eurwen's heart-shaped face faded from school memory. But when refreshed on screen and under headlines, staff relived one special Christmas amongst themselves: the girl dressed as a fierce, miniature shepherd, hoisted laughing onto her father's broad shoulders while the woman she would become gazed up at her, a Quattrocento Madonna
… and Eurwen wouldn't play Mary… no way. Really wanted to play a sheep, d'you remember?
Now it was principal Renate Desmond's turn to send a note. ‘All of us here at Bradwardine are thinking of you in this terrible time… and of Eurwen, of course. I can only imagine what you are going through. Staff and children alike… feel sure… are certain… think of the many happy incidents from Eurwen's years with us. Only yesterday we were talking of…'

Another memory: a flu outbreak had forced Mrs Desmond herself to take a lesson. Twenty heads bent over, ripe berries of tongue bulged from the sides of mouths. ‘So,' she repeated, ‘we've done the vowels. What I want you to do is write down all the words you know that don't have any
vowels in.'

Circling behind Eurwen after a minute or so there in a neat, clear hand was the list: my, by, cry, fly, try, dry
and beneath it the completely unexpected finale: Rhyl.

‘Well done, Eurwen.' It let her favour the girl without guilt. ‘You're the only one who's got it. But why Rhyl?' She didn't bother with the suggestion of a holiday, not there. ‘A visit?'

Eurwen shook her flames of hair with characteristic energy. ‘It was where my Daddy was born in!'

And seven years later the place from where Josh Meredith shouted down the phone, ‘Sara,
enough! Just go to bed. I'll talk to you in the morning,' before the line went dead.

Chapter 4

When her ex-husband rang off it seemed easier to slide down the kitchen wall and sit, legs inelegantly splayed, the handset nursed against her midriff. There was a sort of comfort in letting it dig into the knot of muscles… soon her wrist, never trustworthy since a fall on the Merton Street cobbles last winter, would start to quiver. But before this could happen her lids closed of their own volition and the room swam: at the back of her tongue was the taste of quinine. ‘My name is Sara,' she startled herself by saying aloud, ‘and I'm—'

Drunk.
She put the phone to her ear again in case, somehow, Josh would be there to take back what he had just said.
Dolt!
At least it exposed her muddled state to scrutiny.
Get up!
She smoothed the trouser cotton to her hips and tried looking about. Obviously she had come in here with some intention that shock had dispatched; the kettle was cool to touch and apart from the white lozenge of missing plaster in the wall above it (old? new?) nothing suggested the untoward. A tad untidier perhaps… she traipsed into the hall and peered through the open study door. But
not that way
the still-functional part of her pleaded,
recent damage enough in there
. Only when she stumbled back upstairs to the sitting room did the empty vodka bottle offer an explanation: she had been down there looking for its twin. And it was late, or felt it, and she had to drive over two hundred miles now, right
now…

…Waking crook-backed to find light beyond the shutters, Josh's news was debatable for only a moment. Then it was awful, cruel, hideous… horrendous. No, she lacked the word for its degree of badness. She shook herself like a wet dog and agony through her temples provoked
Oh, sweet, suffering Lord!
as a string of yelps. Anyone watching (there was no one) would have seen her freeze up. Then blink and swallow. Time for a stock-take: head as expected and throat
and
lungs raw and dry as if she still smoked. But she had survived harsher bodily reproofs. Stomach… best not dwell on that. Just swallow again. The low-grade itchiness, a recent occurrence, was now more or less endemic inside yesterday's clothes. Eyesight was apparently functional. Tremors registered as medium to severe across her torso and into her limbs but she could stretch them, could stand up now, could scrape thoughts together… all of which she needed to do and do quickly since Eurwen, her fifteen-year-old daughter, had disappeared.

Some short time later she found she was outside, steadied against a car bonnet, oblivious to its grime soiling her blazer, the hastily stuffed tote bag clutched to her chest like a buoyancy aid. Now she stared dubiously at the silver VW that had sat in its allotted resident's parking space, unmoving for… she couldn't state how many months. ‘Only two things to concern you, drive and reverse,' she heard her professor-father instructing. ‘You will never want a manual shift again, believe me. Not that you'll use it… often.' This was his pact with the devil: giving her a new, safer car when he knew he should be taking away the keys to the battered old car and informing the authorities.
Not use it often
… a massive Pickfords pantechnicon rumbled into sight, already coming away from the city with its load and for a blessed moment the exit from Tackley Close was sealed, safe, bright-morninged, tranquil Tackley Close. She breathed its cool air heavy with Thames moisture, nutty garden scents and a mere hint of diesel.
This
Oxford enclave was not an early riser. A last look at her house, the adjoining half of which, the Peppers' half, was still swaddled in curtains, and she slipped into the driver's seat. To her astonishment, after its enforced hibernation the VW engine caught immediately and proved willing to edge out into the carriageway when asked. Taking a left at the corner, she was into Polstead Road almost without volition.