Desire Line (50 page)

‘I suppose I'm forced to think about it because I've got nothing. Completely nothing. I didn't have any warning— as to what was going on with Dad, I mean, up there on that foul Crow's Patrick, if that's how you say it. No messages via the
paranormal.
And yet I felt
Mum die. I told you.'

‘Yes.'

‘Yet he and I
were
alike. So I believe in nothing and at the same time I was asking myself, at the grave I mean, is this silence by choice? Well Dad? Mute of malice, it's called in legal terms. He told me that years ago when I moved out of Pryorsfield and he phoned. I'd been arrested— not for the first time but he wasn't playing the heavy father, just doing that policeman thing of his, yes? Is there anything you's like to say? Did I need any help? What was my current address?
Ah, thank-you miss, and who else
occupies the property?
He could be funny, couldn't he? I said, It's off the Cowley Road, DI Meredith. I'm sharing with Henri. You do remember Henri? One of the Fortuns? I told him about what we were hoping to achieve— we'd only just started on Species Alert and he was interested. He was! That's fine, he said. You're grown up enough and smart enough to do anything you want now. Your mother would be proud of
you, by
the way—' Her eyes shone and reddened and overflowed as they hadn't for Sara. ‘And this is the last time we have to talk about it— or her if you want. And all the things we got wrong, the three of us. That's what he said. And oh-h,
thank God, Yori!
we kept to it.' Suddenly a face already deathly white was transparent and the veins, a near-match in shade for her irises, stood out across her temples. ‘Proud of me? As if!' She's going to faint, to fall— I panicked and made a mis-timed catching-lurch that got shrugged off. ‘I'm proud of
her.
We all can be. Order another pot of whatever this is. I'm cold again.
Funerals!
Remember Gramps Geoffrey's and hail in April as we came out of the college chapel? And suddenly it was a Christmas card, white over the lawns and the paths and the— those carved thingies? It took your breath away.
He
certainly
didn't believe— and yet we still had to go through the full ordeal, the parade of the worthies. And today I keep remembering Julien Fortun reading, ‘There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known.' It's from The Bible. Therefore complete and utter garbage to Geoffrey. Rot as he would say. He could be
scathing
behind Fleur's back. We all go to fairy land and the naughty children get found out and spanked and the nice ones are given prizes? No. I don't think! But he left his instructions. Insisted on— well you were there. So Dad would have to listen. Nor did it occur to him how, if it were true, I'd be the one sitting and saying to herself
I'm for it, then
. Not Josh. Me! He couldn't see past Dad though. Preserve us from intelligent people, huh?'

‘You're intelligent.'

‘No-o. Never have been. All that petered out with Mum, which was a relief— I've no complaints there. And it was for nothing, Geoffrey's last swipe at Dad, because we won't ever be sure, will we? The husband's fault? The daughter's? I—' From nowhere a couple of teenagers came level with our table, locals, making for the Casino Pigalle board, discussing strategies until they saw Eurwen. She returned their stares. ‘It was white over,' she repeated, making them invisible. They shuffled off but it had been a well-timed intrusion, judging by the new hard smile she turned on me. ‘These events would be worse in high summer, don't you think?'

No.
I went to the bar to order actually thinking if Josh had set out for The Other Shore with Sara and Geoffrey and Fleur, then a less functional travel group's never been put together. Imagine the disputes, the snubbings, the demands for affection. I pitied Fleur. A more comfortable spin would be Sara had stolen a march on them all and an early start meant they'd never catch her.

Chapter 34

You should let her go as well, Yori. Because? For one, I was pained beyond pain over losing Josh. Unlike Geoffrey, who'd gone straight from Great Man to Perfect Ancestor, Josh left this life as Tomiko's ‘Wolf With Wounded Throat'— its message?
Good acts will be ignored— you're a wolf!
Looking to the future, I'll miss the cobalt blue house and him in it for a long time, the pared-back interior of hard Windsor chairs, scrubbed things, jelly jars along a shelf, driftwood polished by handling, the smell of smoke— gone. Sara's work again.
And
the minor tasks we'd never get round to like pruning a tree, painting a gate. ‘Take care of Eurwen,' I told Henri. (Unnecessary, her pretend smile said.) Yet another argument in favour of doing nothing was Charity Weiksner, seasoned Sara follower and now with a professional narrator in tow. Something has happened to Charity lately, some fix up has made her not so Geoffrey-like about the chin area as she gives her interviews, dropping lures everywhere for
Toys of Desperation.
The title alone tells you where it's going. A dead husband is just fuel for more shabby hints.

I'm at that husband's door for the last time. Asking along the lines of why
not speak to Charity— it might shut
her up?
gets me from Eurwen
,
‘Because it's more complex than you want things to be. How many times do I need to say this, Yori? She wouldn't be content, people like that never are. And I've been informed through a third party—'

‘Who?'

‘That she only ever liked Fleur.'

‘Everybody liked Fleur.'

‘Exactly. '

‘Fine.'

‘Which is what I used to say to
my
parents.' Was that Eurwen sounding
resentful
? No— she took the sting out by pointing where on her cheek I ought to kiss her. The colour was properly back in her complexion since yesterday, but my lips touched chilly flesh and her eyes glittered like ice-crystals. Strands of hair I'd had to watch Henri teasing out with the brush half an hour ago caught the light as they reknotted themselves, whipping into my mouth. It wouldn't surprise me if this was the time her physical beauty reached its peak—
Ka chou fuu getsu,
Flower, bird, wind, moon. So what's that about, father? And Tomiko had floundered, Um, all have beauty getting bigger— maybe as they extra time of?

Bigger? OK, bigger, higher, deeper— Eurwen's effect went too deep for hooking out by word. Now it delivered another dose of the Animal Farm pleasure with a tinge of dissatisfaction, the old warning of heartburn. I really didn't want to leave like this, undecided if we were entering a new phase or not. In future would we always be pleased to see each other, even during bad patches, and be able to build on that?

‘Bye Yori. Go,
go!
'

She meant nothing by it, I'm sure, apart from get out of the cold, get on your way.

But you can always look on the reverse. Tomiko asked in the summer, I think it was— I know work on PalmWalk was creeping ahead by then and I'd been showing him the progress with my sea buckthorn saplings gone in—
Is she well? Is loss of father still hurt her?
And I admitted I hadn't visited Eurwen since.

Thirty-Three Years On. In the Eastern world this is a sort of graduation for the dead— or if that's too remote, try thinking of it as the Next Life equivalent of up-and-down Croagh Patrick in bare feet. Except ghosts don't have feet. I could pretend what comes next is ‘from Tomiko' again but here's Fleur instead. A face Sara once called horsy is lost in a borrowed volume by Kunio Yanagita, the king of Japanese folklore, while her frizzy hair's held back by some sort of cruel metal clip. Fleur, the stereotype Educated Elderly Englishwoman right down to her cashmere cardigan, could dress an Alfred Hitchcock set without a single line of establishing dialogue. The expression I can't make out will be fixed in concentration. Pryorsfield still stands around us. The satisfied and the sickly monks still lock eyes across the kitchen corridor. ‘
Now
the writer comes to how and when death must be dealt with,' she says. ‘Mmm. After thirty-three years, the dead are literally
gone.
Very specific, isn't it? Every culture has its coping mechanism but I do admire the Japanese way— it's taking a ruler to life and drawing a line. Thirty-three. And so rational— ye-s-s. If the loss were suffered when you were a child, then you've reached adulthood before the final goodbye. If the person died when you were an adult, then you're mature enough for acceptance. It's quite humane. As far as I can determine, this next section we come to is on the subject of purification. Tomur-ai-i-age.
Tomuraiage,
' she corrects herself and glances straight at me over rimless glasses slid to the end of her nose. I'm just into my teens but as always she addresses me on equal terms, so lets me see she's confused. ‘It's some sort of ritual you have to perform for the
shirei
. Ah-h, the afterlife and the whole question of good and bad and blame— well they're virtually side issues by comparison. By this time. This is what you have
to do
. Yes. I think so.'

Josh's funeral made the idea of signing off on the past seem like sense. As my father demonstrates in every act— loving my mother from a safe distance, say— the Japanese are practical people. They take a ruler to life. Who knows what they
believe
? After thirty-three years, a day arrives when you can stop bothering the
shirei
, and tell him or her, OK, we've done our bit. We've been respectful and remembered your good qualities. We've apologised oftener than we've drunk tea. Your turn now. Being a stiff's no barrier to a new career – so go get busy on our behalf. Watch over the family. Bring us lots of wealth and dutiful children and success and good opinion and luck, especially luck.

I like it! To be able to say, Hit the highway, ancestor. Or in this case, Sara—

—because every ripple of applause for her bones was something to hold against her when grief for
him
smashed into me like a train. There were moments of, So what if he did cause her death somehow—? Losing Geoffrey and Fleur was nothing in comparison and even back at work, there were days I wallowed like Marvin the pig in mud. The Westport house I could only picture now as emptied, items left on the doorstep for neighbours to take away, the local custom. And the casual Croagh Patrick ramblers would soon stop expecting to see him, also the fishermen on Roman Island and that Maltese couple who keep the store we bought our wood, nails and glue from. Yet on two separate continents people were working on Sara. The First Definitive Oxford Biography hasn't even got a title yet but that doesn't save it from being openly trashed by Charity. ‘With this Apolline Reith you're getting a professional historian, OK, and yeah, she knew Sara— briefly. Half a century ago! She doesn't have the insight a family member could provide.'

It was enough to make you do Ray Milland's
*
smile from
Dial M for Murder
,
the close up that finally lets the audience in on the secret. He intends to kill his wife.

Thanks for that AH. I'm glad I kept you
.
Let Tess go but kept
you.

My pleasure.

Nov 17th 2041

7.09 am

It's a Saturday and eight months on. Something has happened. If you don't mind, I'll explain as I go along—

—
so
my entire floor of Gaiman Ave including the step-outside shower room has been swept and cleansed and on the bed there's new linen. Consider this as
higan
plus. No food has been cooked or eaten for twenty-four hours. Nor
 
 
taken for same period. I'm noticeably light-headed. Other effects? Too soon to tell— maybe the dry mouth I've just rinsed, having even denied myself a cup of tea. And because after returning from Animal Farm that first time, I cancelled Tess, I've nothing to give up in that category. My biggest luxury, she being time consuming, an interactive instant learner. Substatial too, holographic quality state-of-the-art. She was
good
, too good, over engineered I often thought. But a spot-on question from Eurwen burst her like a bubble. Sorry Tess. I could've let her down gently or received heartbroken messages over a six-month period, tailed her off. Decided against. If I ever needed a top-up of personalised abuse, Kailash showed no sign of running out of steam any day soon. But new development! Regular weekday appointments with Rhondda Jones, formerly Leisure Services now Renewal Czar, for a light supper at 8 Gaiman Ave (me to provide) plus basic sex. She isn't slim and definitely not delicate. You need to think Romanesque not Regency. And all of a sudden she can't get enough of me. Thanks Glenn.