Double Vision (27 page)

He tried to laugh. ‘That sort of thing. I didn’t think I had this much hatred in me.’

Justine started to speak, stopped and tried again. ‘I’m going to get over this, Dad. I’ve no intention of wallowing in it.
And neither should you
.’

‘No, well, I’ll try.’

He seemed surprised. Perhaps she’d sounded tougher than he gave her credit for, or perhaps he’d sensed her resentment. Because he had burdened her. The onus was on her to get better quickly, so he wouldn’t have to go on feeling bad about himself. Was it fair to say that? Perhaps not. She was too tired to work it out.

‘Peter brought you some roses. They’re out there. I’ve put them in water. Shall I bring them in?’

‘No, let’s leave them, shall we?’

And why choose today to tell her about Peter? Now, when it was too late to do any good? It simply focused her attention back on to him and
his
relationship with Peter. What kind of tropism for the limelight was going on here? And yet he meant well. He loved her. She made herself get up, go to the sofa and sit beside him. He put his arm round her shoulders and she snuggled
into his side. It wouldn’t hurt to go on being his little girl for a few more hours. One last time. The world would catch up with them soon enough.

Twenty-seven

They were going to the Farnes. Justine couldn’t wait to leave, sitting forward in her seat, waiting impatiently for Stephen to start the car.

She was like a kid on the first day of the holidays, he thought, eager for the first glimpse of the sea.

‘Are you sure you feel up to it?’

‘Yes.’ Dad had been asking her that ever since she got out of bed. She felt fine. Only when she looked in the mirror did she understand the reason for the question. Overnight, the bruises had developed. She looked much worse now than she had immediately after the attack. But she felt better. ‘I’m all right.’

Almost at once the mist closed in, becoming thicker the closer they got to the coast. Once they were on the way, Justine forgot the burglary, the shouting and banging, the fetid smell of fear. All her childhood she’d gone to the Farnes at Easter, and to be setting out like this made her feel young again. She knew if she said this to Stephen he’d laugh, but age wasn’t a simple matter of chronology. In the hospital watching the cut-off part of her self pace round the walls she’d felt ancient.

Stephen nodded at the mist. ‘Are you sure they’ll take a boat out in this?’

‘It mightn’t be like this when we get there. It clears very quickly.’

He switched the radio on, found some acceptable music and concentrated on his driving. They were inching forward, the headlights revealing nothing but a wall of mist. Even on the higher ground, where it thinned and became wraith-like, skeins drifting across the road, it was not possible to pick up speed, because the road dipped almost immediately into the next hollow, and there the dense, damp whiteness became impenetrable again. Justine wondered once or twice whether they should turn back, but she couldn’t bear the idea. Talking was impossible. Stephen crouched over the wheel, peering into the blankness ahead. She opened her window and there was the sound of the wheels hissing on the wet road, less disturbing to her than the music. Any loud noise felt like a threat. She looked at the rear window, where drops of rain or distilled mist were trapped, pulsing round the edges of the glass. She was aware of Stephen, the bulk of him, but she didn’t look in his direction. The atmosphere in the car was tense, and she hoped the tension came from the driving rather than from something she’d done or said. Everything today felt fragile.

At last they turned on to the motorway, and she felt him relax, settle back in his seat, because at least the road was flat, there were no sudden white-outs in the hollows, though the hazard warning-lights were flashing and the traffic crawling along.

‘We’ll be lucky to get there at this rate,’ he said.

But then, as quickly as the mist had closed in, it began to clear, and Stephen found himself driving through a landscape that reminded him of Ben’s photographs. Border country. That’s why Ben had loved it and photographed it so obsessively, Stephen thought, because he came back from whatever war he’d been covering to a place where every blade of grass had been fought over, time and time again, for centuries, and now the shouts and cries, the clash of swords on shields had faded into silence, leaving only sunlight heaving on acres of grass, and a curlew crying. He thought now that he understood Ben’s ties to this place; he was beginning to fall in love with it himself. On impulse he reached out and squeezed Justine’s hand.

‘Not long now,’ she said.

Kate put her eye to the spy-hole in the front door and there was Angela, gaping like a fish in a small bowl.

‘Did you hear about the burglary?’ she asked, almost falling into the hall.

‘Yes, Beth rang. Justine wasn’t too badly hurt, was she?’

‘No, she’s back home. We thought they’d keep her in, but they didn’t. In fact, she’s gone out.’

Angela sounded breathless. Almost frenetic. ‘Have some coffee,’ Kate said, resigning herself to a late start. She was so nearly there, it was torture to be kept away from the studio, and yet she dreaded this final effort and would grab any excuse to put it off.

‘Everybody keeps asking if she was raped.’

‘She wasn’t?’ Kate asked.

‘No, thank God.’ She took a mug of coffee and gulped the first few mouthfuls down. ‘That’s what Alec thought. When he got to the hospital, they’d taken all her clothes away, but apparently they were just looking for hairs on her sweater – things like that. Or perhaps
they
thought she’d been raped. Anyway, there she was and Alec couldn’t bring himself to ask her. He couldn’t say the word. He’s been in quite a state. He says he keeps imagining what he’d do to them if he had them tied up or something, helpless. And he feels dreadful about himself. He says it’s like a waking nightmare and the worst part of it is he’s such a gentle man. He’s not like that at all.’

The trouble was, Kate thought, Alec had always thought of himself as a good man. That made him sound smug and horrible, which he wasn’t, but he did tend to assume that in the great war of good and evil he’d always be on the right side, whereas Kate couldn’t help thinking real adult life starts when you admit the other possibility. ‘We’re all a
bit
like that, aren’t we?’

‘But he’s worked all his life with young criminals like those two, trying to give them a fresh start.’

‘Yes,’ Kate said drily. ‘We fell out about it a couple of weeks ago. You remember?’

‘Oh. Yes, I’d forgotten that.’ An awkward pause. ‘He came to see her last night.’

‘Peter? What did he have to say?’

‘I don’t know. I’d gone home.’

Kate offered her a second cup of coffee, but she
waved it aside. ‘No, better not. It just makes me jumpier than I am already.
You
must be nervous.’

‘You can’t spend your entire life cowering behind locked doors. If you do that, the bastards have won anyway.’ She poured herself another cup, intending to take it across to the studio with her. ‘Did you say Justine had gone out?’

‘Yes. They’ve gone to the Farnes.’

‘She’s with Alec?’

‘No. With Stephen.’ Angela said grudgingly, ‘I must say he’s been very good.’

‘He’ll take care of her.’

A few minutes later Angela left and Kate walked across to the studio, pausing by the pond to look up at the misty hillside. She hoped it cleared for the crossing. So many times she and Ben had set out to go to the Farnes and nearly always at this time of year. Her heart felt full. A distinct, entirely physical sensation.
Possess, as I possessed a season, the countries I resign
…

They parked by the seawall and walked down to the quayside booths, where he bought the tickets.

‘You know what we’ve forgotten to bring?’ Justine said. ‘Hats.’

‘Why do we need hats? I don’t mind getting wet.’

She smiled. ‘Wait and see.’

It was a rough crossing. The waves were steely-grey with a fine mist of spray flying off them. Their hair and clothes were wet before they left the harbour, but neither wanted to go into the covered cabin, with its
fug of human bodies and damp wool. The boat rocked and dipped, wallowing in the hollow of the deeper waves before rising to face the challenge of the next. All the while the black hulking cliffs, the houses and the harbour dwindled into the mist. Ahead there was as yet no sign of the Farnes, no sight of Holy Island either, though by now both should have been visible. The boat had become its own world, in which they turned to face each other, Justine’s hair blown across her mouth, drops of spray clinging like grey pearls to the surface of her skin.

‘Are you a good sailor?’ she yelled above the noise of the engines.

He opened his mouth to reply and gagged as the next sheet of water hit him in the face. ‘Not bad,’ he yelled when he could speak again.

The boat stopped bumping from wave to wave as they edged into the calmer water between cliffs that rose up out of the mist on either side, grey-black walls of wet granite, streaked white with bird lime. Birds lined all the ledges, lifting off, squabbling, resettling. One of them passed over the boat so low he flinched and could have sworn he heard its wings creak. At the top of the cliffs he could see cormorants, with their serpentine necks and crested royal heads, spreading their black wings out to dry.

The boat moved smoothly on between the cliffs until they came to a landing stage. The two sailors – both very young men, fresh-faced, freckled, blue-eyed, obviously brothers, descendants of the Vikings who’d plundered
and pillaged and raped all along the coast, and not, emphatically not, of the monks who’d done none of these things – leapt on to the shore, tied up the boat to the staithes and handed the passengers out. An elderly man slipped on the green-slimed stones and would have fallen if it hadn’t been for the supporting hand. Gradually, in twos and threes, they streamed up the hill to the cluster of buildings at the top.

Stephen and Justine had waited for everybody else to get off, before jumping on to dry land. On either side of the path there were terns’ nests on the bare earth, some with chicks, speckled like the surrounding sand and shingle, huddled against the cold. Stephen bent down to look more closely, then straightened up. Immediately, they were above him, the adult terns, white wings angled back, beaks gaping red, claws outstretched as they swooped on to his head. Somehow he didn’t believe they would touch him. They’d just dive-bomb him and go past. But then he felt their claws and beaks jabbing his scalp. He put his hand up and brought his fingers away, smeared with blood. ‘Christ.’

Justine was laughing. ‘C’mon, let’s get away from the chicks.’

They marched at a brisk pace up the hill, Stephen flailing his arms around in a vain attempt to keep off the terns.

They followed the paths around the island. He was startled to see an eider duck sitting on her eggs immediately beside the path, and all the while the terns attacked, hovering inches above his head. A small child,
screaming with fear, walked past with her father holding a folded newspaper over her head. ‘It’s not a good idea to bring small children,’ Justine said, which struck him as an understatement. And then they left the terns’ nests behind, and the screeches faded into silence, to be replaced by the squabbling of kittiwakes in their tenement slums.

Gradually the mist thinned and the sun shone more strongly, though their shadows were never more than smudges on the grass. They lay on the edge of a cliff, looking down on the grey and white backs of seagulls to where, far below – he daren’t think how far – the wrinkled sea fretted at the rocks. He was trying to recall a phrase from
Ulysses
, something about the snot-green, scrotum-tightening sea. Snot green, yes, but also blue, purple, grey, brackish brown, flecked here and there with white, the sleek dark heads of seals rising and falling with the waves. He rolled over and lay on his back, sucking a stem of grass. Justine was staring out to sea, not looking at him, not appearing to be aware that he existed even, and he wondered if she were back in the farmhouse, terrified and alone.

He reached out and touched her arm. She smiled, but went on looking out to sea.

She was thinking about Peter and the bloody roses. When finally she’d gone into the kitchen to look at them, she’d found half a dozen red, tightly furled blooms, each with a length of thin wire wound round the stem and through the bud itself, pinning the petals closed. No matter how much air, light, water, food
you gave them, they would never open, but wither and die in the bud. She’d seen roses presented like this before, and had always disliked them, so it was irrational to associate them exclusively with Peter. But she did.

Peter’s ideal woman would be a doll, she thought, a puppet that would stay in any position you put it in, without life or volition of its own.

Completely the opposite of Stephen, who was so scrupulously careful not to constrain her in any way that he sometimes gave the impression of indifference. Go, he always seemed to be saying. Any time you like. Go.

Though he was looking anxious enough at the moment.

‘Come on,’ she said, getting him by the hand and pulling him to his feet. ‘Let’s go and see the puffins.’

Kate had worked till her neck ached from holding the same position too long, but when, finally, she stopped, the thought crossed her mind that she might have finished. You couldn’t always tell. There was a long period sometimes when you had to inch forward, knowing that one more unnecessary chip of the plaster could set you back three weeks.

Somehow or other she had to recover freshness of vision, to look at this as if she were seeing it for the first time. The secret was to put the critical intelligence to sleep, peel off the hard outer rind and work from the core. If she could have read a detective story,
or played a game of chess, and carved simultaneously, that would have done the trick – anything to distract the top layer of the mind – but unfortunately she needed her hands.