Desire Line (51 page)

The usual practice of
tomuraiage
, a last anniversary for the departed, should start with tidying up the tomb that's probably got a bit unkempt after three decades. Just the word tomb calls up weathered Aughavale gravestones and one under— anyway, since Sara's remains have been cremated and her ashes are to go in with G and F's on the south side of St Peter's church at Boarshill, (when Eurwen gets round to it) my yard will have to do for the ritual. At 7:13 it's almost dawn, breezy and less than four degrees. A fine day's being promised, meaning trippers and footfalls on PalmWalk. Excellent omen. Now I carry the shrine I've kept in the corner of my living room outside— and place it on a brick plinth specially constructed in the angle of next door's wall and Mr Jenkinson's workshop. 7:16. As I go in and out I'm desperately praying to any god that'll listen for Libby not to break with habit and get up early. The fleecy sleep suit smelling of her bed, the daisy tattoos, the new-dyed hair and the Rhyl accent in which she shouts
whatyoucookingonthebarbecueinthebloodydarkfor?
would scare away my guest.

7:19. Overhead is still the no-colour of a switched-off screen that you hardly ever see. Since The Wave, the big difference about out here is my neighbour's missing birch tree, now back on his side as a log pile I helped make. The sky's wider and the moon's at the half (actually 48%) and, having risen just post midnight, it's balanced on the rooftop but without branches for support. Glenn's hibachi has at least agreed to stay lit (second attempt) and better still I didn't have to invent a story for the lend. Alice is home— insatiable. And I've got my white chrysanthemums and other necessaries, the lamp being the most important, a cheap rechargeable model you give to children scared of the dark. Just enough to guide her back. I'd like a real Kongming lantern as mentioned by my illustrious grandmother in her journal but they were banned years ago for fire raising. So I add my Raku wide-lipped tea bowl with freshly made tea – like me she hated coffee – and slices of blood orange and grapefruit, sugared and also personal to her. She shared them with Josh. (I'm so hungry just the smell makes my mouth water.) The photo taken at St Clement's College, chosen for
A First's
dust jacket in what seems like a past aeon from here and now, is propped up and I've printed her name in white on a black card that keeps falling over. I've bought a silver-metal bell from the GiftPlanet that's been allowed to set up.
There'
s something to connect anyone to the real world, ersatz rubbish sneaking back into Rhyl— but just in case, and because my hollow insides are complaining, I ring the bell anyway. And wait.

7:20.

And wait. 7:21. Not that I'm expecting anything. I'd be worried about Yori

otherwise.

7:23. A shiny streak in the east. As the breeze drops the yard fills with smoke. It takes an effort not to cough – 7:25 – or ring again because that tea and blood orange are pretty tempting and even if I'm half Japanese, what I'm doing makes less than half sense –
Hello Yori! –
even if it wasn't for the drug withdrawal and a growling stomach and being out early always reminding me of Josh—

Did somebody say
Hello Yori?

Like everyone my age, I haven't been off 
 
 
since I was eleven. If 
 
 
is The Great Smoother, then
Hello Yori!
might be the sound of me hitting a bump. Hard. You'll find wilder symptoms reported by people who just stop.

I said Hello Yori.

It seems cold but was cold before. And the 48% moon is incredibly zapped up but thin cloud will have cleared from in front, as promised, is all. A minute ago the gulls' usual abuse was loud from the beach direction— no squawking now but there has to be a last, doesn't there? Always. Yet something's changed. Smoke thickens into shapes—

—and I don't want to give a false impression here. I'm not registering anything uncanny. I can't see her. Well of course you can't, dolt!

Where are your manners?

But she's arrived. It's not like she walks through me. I remember another time, her on the corner of Conwy Street and me, watching the footage felt her suddenly there and not-there— a moving
shirei
. No. This is more how the essence of somebody I recognise is now present and, by coincidence, it's in the exact space I'm using. I've made room.
Welcome Grandmother—
is what you're meant say
.
Bit late, Yori, considering
she's already in, all the thoughts, experiences, instincts, feelings and desires, especially
them.
She was real once. Solider than Rhondda and a thousand per cent more substantial than Tess. I'd imagined Sara fragile
and
sharp like a good blade used too often on the wrong material— jagged but it can still cut. Which she did. Ruthless and greedy, though, they came as a shock. She's ravenous for a daughter who never existed except as Sara's invention and couldn't be revised but that won't stop her trying. And something else, something gone dormant before it erupted here in Rhyl of all places— she's ravenous for Josh.

Hi Sara! Glad you made it. And so what d'you reckon on us? I mean me, of course. I'd like to hear. Think I've pretty well got it sorted re: the rest of the gang. Big pity about Josh— or maybe not from your POV?
Attraction, regret, low expectations, anger and fake indifference at the end— I totally understand. Douse them in drink! Stop caring! Respect is an echo according to Tomiko— well fuck that, eh? Why can't Love be? That would really make a difference to the world. To be loved back the way we want, when we want, from the person we want. For as long as we want. That would be worth the game. We've masses in common, you and me, a pair of brackets round Eurwen— because I know exactly how she makes you feel. Same as on my planet!

That lovely woman and the brave man coming fresh from a School Nativity, riding on his broad shoulders the child dressed as a shepherd, were ALL players once! Then two of them only got to watch the show—

The rule is, I'm told, Get Tough On The Departed. For example the sun'll be up any moment. After crossing the sand, the ultimate tracking shot, it'll pimp the town. My new paint on SkyTower is almost luminescent in itself and the gold beacon in the shape of a flame— whose idea?— is masterly. No one cares there's a missing gondola Princess Diana rode in and felt sick. A good digestion and a short memory was Ingrid Bergman's recipe for happiness, as given to Alfred Hitchcock – and it's always worked for Rhyl. Putting Rhyl back doesn't mean ‘like it was', Sara. Streets I'm intending to transform have their gaps ready cleared. It'll happen and it'll be good. A really great new building by the Lake. Better. Whereas
Nothing for you ever again, that's the only offer anyone can make to the dead. Sorry, Sara. Your choice.

7:26 I have the evidence. I flap her confession at the fire. She can't argue with that. Citrus leaves saved up over the months are well alight so I tear out and feed in
It was my good fortune that tree-lined Polstead Road was devoid of other vehicles now, placable and familiar as ever, otherwise I may not have begun my journey at all or at least with something less spirited than, ‘Look, Eurwen! Lawrence of Arabia lived here!' spoken aloud and ‘Here's where J.R.R. Tolkien grew tired of marking exam scripts one day and wrote “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit ”.'
And from then on it's easy.

7:29 My messages to her on rice paper which strictly speaking I should've burnt first— I got carried away— come next. Six of them.

I'd like to have known you
goes in before I can take it back.

I build things here because of you
which is probably nearer the truth.

Time to give up wandering.

Be a good kami, huh?

You can get properly lost in Rhyl now I know your secret.

Deal? Or do you need it spelling out?

7:37. It's light! Still freezing though. I'm here dithering over the notebook's (recyclable) cover before poking it in with the late Mr Jenkinson's screwdriver, willing the thing to catch. Stubborn— wouldn't you know it? First shrivelling then the fumes given off are eyestinging before it seeps down to tar. Her scribbles, doodles and every bit of correspondence that started
Dearest Fleur
and either not progressing or going on page after page and still never sent are handy to encourage total combustion. The Thomasina manuscript, the main bulk, comes after, squared up and put out next to the hibachi on the yard. Turned over, it would be Sara hopeful, Sara useless, Sara self-harming, Sara down in Slot-Machine Hell meeting a native fellow boozer before she staggers out onto the Parade and sensory overload—

—I find I'm Josh. I'm frustrated and impatient with the process, experimenting with how thick a wad of paper will burn through at once. Try to fan the next lot, Yori, get the oxygen in there. In fact the temptation is to shred a sample, that'll get you some heat. Who credits
tomuraiage
anyway? And wouldn't fragments of Sara blowing over town be just as right— or wrong? But the idea of some visitor stooping into the gutter along Grange Road, which is where the breeze is making for, to pick up
I realised I had been unconsciously expectant, catlike, willing and waiting to respond. Now the force of the delivered blow was enough to snap my head around and send my body sprawling after it in one ungainly arc. My wrist gave way, of course, as I struck the floor with a secondary pain that was almost wel—

No! Burn is best. Sara loving us, Sara hating us, Sara sneering
When is Rhyl's season exactly?
Burn the lot and leave less written in aqua fortis (her words). Damage limitation is the whole point of
tomuraiage
,
the denouement, fade and closing credits as the individual is finally washed away. The clothes she chose were the ones she'd arrived in and a husband's borrowed old coat to keep the chill out and no money for this (technical) millionairess and an ex-friend's book to distain on the journey, they all shriek of an occasion, of her own ritual. She should understand.

Singeing my fingers twice, I reach the end with a blaze so respectable it'll need watching for stray sparks. But from the kitchen window. Hardy but no masochist, I retreat, safe from the threat of Libby now being ready armed with What am I up to? I'm just starting an early breakfast, Your Landlordship. See, marinaded tofu and burdock strips, prepped to go. Delicious. You want? Be plenty! More than enough for two. Flames dying down— all ready! You sure?

Sara is thin grey smoke and glowing ash if she was ever here. She won't mind being cooked on. Now I've one last duty— and the toughest. Back in the kitchen is an item I've saved so far. I pounce on it. I'm holding— my first impulse is just to describe what I wish you could see, the yellowed paper fragment, thin as the
gashenshi
gauge Tomiko uses only for important work. But this is spotted with mildew and snowing bits of itself at the corners and fold and showing way too much age to be abused, left lying around. She should've known better, I thought. Had it ‘conserved', not tucked away in a piece of her own gash A4 as poor protection to be found by— wrong word. Never lost. Always been there. For some reason at the
n
th time of looking, the last, probably because it
was
the last, I laid flat an ancient, well pretty ancient, document and nothing to get excited about if you're me. Hidden in this dump of drafts never sent and random replies and her worst thoughts and to be honest a lot of senseless, wandering wackcrap from her drunk days, is just— something. To Dr George Buller, it starts off, Master's Lodgings, St Clement's College, Oxford. The author is Sir Louis Quarrie. Actual writing by Thomasina's husband when only his name on deeds or bills is thought to exist. When made? Who knows? Except reading between the lines, Sir Louis, has got lucky by now, mopped up his inheritance and married The Peerless Girl.