Perfectly Pure and Good (15 page)

A man in the corner roared with laughter. He wore cheap clothes, fed his red face on ice-cream in a state of uproarious contentment. He was not rich. The Pardoe children should be happier than him, looking at the world as a cake for nibbling, not moping about with their private disorders, listless, lovelorn, bitter. Their money was a privilege, their behaviour an abuse and some time during the day, the brothers would foregather and tell her to leave.

A shadow fell over her table, the girl with the coffee, twittering. Rick stood towering, bruises fading, grinning widely.

`Not stopping,' he said. 'Only I wanted to show Stonewall here, that you weren't a ghost.'

Ì have no illusions about that,' she said primly, the dimples of a big smile forming in her face.

`No,' he said. 'Neither do I,' and his laugh hit the roof 'Is it a ghost, Stoney?'

`Nope,' said the boy. 'And nor's that other one, either.' Òh,' she breathed. 'Two ghosts?'

Stonewall squirmed, torn between silence, a sense of loss and a desire to do whatever Rick suggested. He could feel an undercurrent here, adding to his normal anxiety and the constant challenge to make Rick believe him and never send him away again.

`What would you like?' she asked. Rick shouted with laughter again.

`Don't ask a lady that, she might tell you.'

Ìce-cream?' Stonewall said mournfully

`Two,' she said cheerfully.

Rick got up to order, none of this sitting around politely when he knew he could jump the queue as long as he grinned. He swaggered a little.

Stonewall looked at Sarah and Sarah looked at Stonewall. She was all right, he thought desperately, must be all right, Rick likes her and she isn't no woman I ever saw before. She, on the other hand, simply considered him beautiful.

Ìt's a ghost,' said Stonewall, when his ice-cream arrived in a big glass dish stuck with wafers like a ship in full sail. 'Went into Miss Gloomer's.'

Ì'd told you to go home and stay there,' said Rick sternly. The boy ignored the interruption.

What else was a window for, but to afford an escape?

Ì seen him go in. I seen him last night and I seen him down the beach when I was getting bait.

Ed Pardoe knows him, this ghost.'

Rick looked worried.

`Tell me about me,' Sarah teased, not quite lightly. 'Me, before I was the ordinary mortal I am now. Whose ghost was I? What did I do?' Cold ice-cream in too large a mouthful made Stonewall swallow with a gasp. Everyone listening: he could make them wait.

`You used to go in the doctor's a lot. You were married. To that other ghost, I think. The one who sits and talks with Edward Pardoe. You got run over by a bus. You went off walking into the sea, didn't come back. I saw you, but it wasn't you, it was someone else.'

Stonewall could guess what Rick was going to say. He'd say, You shouldn't eat all that ice-cream so fast, makes your brain go soft; but the woman with the hair listened intently, her skin suddenly paler, so that the red hair looked redder than ever. All Rick could do was grumble, even though he was outrageously happy.

`Why didn't you do something when you saw the ghost go in Miss Gloomer's, you twerp?'

Stonewall ducked his head. 'Cos my mum would know I was halfway out the window, wouldn't she? Don't be daft.' He looked hopefully at the empty plate, the last icy morsel trailing down his throat.

Anything else would require a bigger fee from a stranger. Despair filled his eyes. Everyone was more important than him.

After they had gone, Sarah rubbed her arms beyond the confines of the full, elbow-length sleeves of her shirt, her fingers feeling instinctively for the tiny scars which adorned the fleshy part of her upper arms. They'll grow smaller in time, the surgeon had told her with manic cheerfulness; no-one will notice.

Enough. Saturday afternoon, holiday time: families, ghosts, moral obligations and bleaker memories had no place. She wanted to shrug off the whole human race, their unhappiness, their miseries, above all, their presence, sink them into the sea with her own inadequacies. Wanted, as she walked back to the top of the crowded street, to cleanse herself and all her fears in the vastness of the ocean she had been craving.

Once inside her car, the sun beating down on the roof to make the sense of confinement worse, she looked briefly at the Ordnance Survey map, propped it against the wheel, drove back through the town and miles beyond. Such a flat, deserted coast. She wanted what she knew she could find: a place where others did not go. A desert with water, the emptiness she had been searching for to heal her own sickness.

She drove fast, then swung away into narrow lanes where the meadowsweet lurched from the banks and touched the roof She kept the coastline ahead of her as she bumped down tracks designed for smugglers and bird-watchers, until finally, land ran out. The map had led her to a place where no-one needed coke or ice-cream.

Two more cars were parked on the same spit of terra firma. Four people, muffled despite the heat, sat on shooting sticks, binoculars aimed towards the hinterland, each looking as if breakfast and lunch had passed while they waited so long for the sight of the rare bird which had drawn them, that they seemed to have become permanent features of the landscape themselves. Sarah ignored them as they ignored her, left her car unlocked, handbag and keys under the front seat, jogged towards the sea. A year's rigorous punishment of her own body left it lean, shapely, hard. She stopped a hundred yards from the indifferent spectators, peeled off every stitch of clothing and left it with her shoes balanced on top as a marker, the bright purple of the silk shirt iridescent in the sun to guide her route back, then jogged on towards the flat horizontal of blue. The sand looked as smooth as baize, dipping into valleys which were velvet on the feet.

She ran on and on, but the ribbon of waves seemed to recede. Then, when she stumbled into a narrow stretch of shallow water as warm as a bath, she gave up the pursuit. The water was soft as silk and the breeze a silent fan. Lying with her naked limbs tickled by salt felt utterly natural but at the same time blissfully decadent. The sand bank acted as a couch, moulded to the shape her body had designed for itself, while soft water crept up her neck into her hair.

Some sybaritic millionaire would pay a fortune for this. As she lazily splashed water on to her flat belly and her thighs, she felt again, with a little frisson of disgust, the tiny white scars on her abdomen which mirrored those on her arms and her back and reminded her of maggots. She wanted to scrub at them with sand until they disappeared, but somehow, in the water, they were less offensive and she could no longer imagine them shifting and moving like the vermin on a carcase, eating away at sanity, and the will to live. The sun was hypnotic; she could not be sombre under the merciful glare, sprawled like a cat before the fire, dozing to the sound of soft breeze and silence.

Ten, fifteen minutes; she could not guess how long she had lain in her feline pose. Neither did she know what woke her, whether it was the sound of distant shouting or the sudden sensation of a deep chill curling round her. When she opened her eyes, she saw the greater expanse of water all around her, lapping greedily at her bare breasts, colder water mounting above her knees, pulling slightly as if inviting her to float away.

For a moment she was tempted to let go, simply drift like a rogue vessel, but sat up, watched her pool expanding before her eyes, the surface corrugated by breeze as she scrambled to her feet, alarmed, disorientated, still in a muddle of a dream. From the rim of the rise on which she stood, the ribbon of sea seemed ominously closer and clearer, the wind on her face sterner. She looked back to the shore for her clothes and could not see them; two pin figures stood by their toy-like car, waving and shouting as if cheering some invisible team, dancing in a fury of agitation. They seemed a long way off and the rim of the sea even closer.

Sarah began to run. The route back bore no comparison with the careless route out, when she had imagined the golden surface flat beneath her feet. Now the sand dipped and rose before her into gulleys where water collected into swift rivers, pulling at her knees like an hysterical child. The first channel was easy; the second brought the breath to her chest and fire into her veins; the third rose against her like an engine fuelled by hatred.

She did not pause to look again for her clothes, pushed through the skin-ripping flood with her hands above her head, bending into it, the tide tearing at her waist until it receded like a tease at the moment when she thought she could no longer fight the relentless, inland pull. The steps became firmer; she splashed through a dying current, shrinking to a gentle tugging at her calves, and walked unsteadily up the incline to her car. The prickling of thistle and sand grass marking the point where the tide did not reach and land began, felt like a blessing. A woman stood with a brace of binoculars round her neck, stout shoes on her feet and tears of consternation on her red face.

`How could you be so stupid?' she yelled. 'He wanted to go for you,' pointing to the man on her left who stood shivering, leaning on a stick. 'Wouldn't let him! We've been shouting for hours, you'll give him a heart attack, you wouldn't listen, I could kill you!' Then her face crumpled into lines of relief. 'Oh, you silly, silly, girl. Don't you know about tides? You must have been so frightened.'

Sarah stood before her dripping and shaking, humbled and ashamed.

Ì should have thought. I'm sorry I gave you such a scare. Thank you. You woke me. The shouting wasn't wasted. Thank you both.' The shivering grew worse.

`Your clothes,' the woman said, softening more. 'Your pretty coloured shirt.' So much for assuming they would not notice.

`You'll probably get them back,' said the man, helpfully, needing to say something to control his own shock. 'They'll probably wash up in the harbour down the coast. Or somewhere.'

She felt a terrible desire to giggle, put her hand over her mouth.

Ì think I'll get in my car where it's warm.'

`Do you want a blanket or something?'

`No, thank you, thank you.'

She had to get inside, start the engine and move because until she did, they would watch, without prurience but with an honest concern which made her feel far more exposed. The heat from the driver's seat spread through her buttocks, she dripped into the fabric, the steering wheel was warm on her white knuckles and through the windscreen she saw the advancing sea, marching inland like an enormous army with white halberds and a silent war cry, unstoppable, irresistible, the oldest enemy. She watched until the chill subsided and she could flex her fingers. From their own vehicle, the couple watched her.

The back wheels of the car spun in the sandy gravel, a satisfying sound. The bumping, jolting progress back to the main road made her want to sing. For the joy of survival and for the revelations it entailed.

First, if Elisabeth Tysall had lain in such a pool, warm, drunk, drugged, to make her own death simultaneous with blissful and uninterrupted sleep, she had chosen a tempting method, full of dignity, and that was an obscure comfort. The nature of Elisabeth's death had always tormented her.

Secondly, Sarah could now see how she had never possessed such a well-matured desire for death, even though the number of temptations were beyond counting on the fingers of both hands. She had so often wanted to die. She found a cigarette, lit it awkwardly, and felt a moment of euphoria which was warm and wild.

Late Saturday afternoon, people trailing back from their beaches, passed Sarah's car, not looking, but seeing enough to notice a naked bosom level with the wheel. And that was another thing.

Death and risk made clothes seem irrelevant. A man stalled and whistled as their cars paused alongside, each waiting to turn right. His children in the back giggled and squirmed. Sarah waved at them demurely, laughed at the minor traffic jam outside the amusement arcade as holiday-makers looked for places to park, and pulled into the side, still grinning. A small bullet of a head with hair on end appeared at the nearside window. The face of Rick appeared on the right. While the boy averted his eyes, he did not.

`Lost again, are you?' She had time to notice how the bruises round one eye had darkened into purply striations, well on the way to recovery.

`What's this then?' Rick said grinning. 'Legal services?' `Doubt it. They'll fire me. I just went swimming.'

`You go indoors like that,' Rick said. 'They'll keep you for ever.'

The early evening was warm, but the sky had grown troubled. Edward loved that phrase, a troubled sky. When he owned his birthright, he would paint a troubled sky, with angels interrupting the clouds and coming down to bless him. He shut his eyes and thought of it, until Julian called everyone downstairs into the horrid gloom of their Edwardian dining room, where the chairs cracked shins, and dead flies fell from the plum velvet of the curtains as soon as they were drawn. Edward stayed silent while Julian conducted the meeting like a headmaster in front of the assembly hall, telling them all, Mother included for all that she would either notice or care, how the solicitor sent by Father's executor, was not suitable for their purposes, did they not agree? Mother laughing herself sick, saying nothing except, No, no, no, you've got it all wrong.

Joanna upset, wondering if it was her earlier referrals to their guest as the cow, or the arguments at breakfast yesterday which had made Julian so obdurate. Edward merely nodded his agreement, thought of the easel waiting upstairs and the man waiting on the beach tomorrow. They did not need a disruptive lawyer who made his sister cry as she cried now.

When he watched Joanna weeping, he felt on his own skin a flush of irritation which was the very opposite of desire. If only he could, for a minute, imagine wanting someone else: boy, girl, woman, whatever the body was, as long as it was not this plump, snivelling, beautiful child.

`We're decided then,' Julian said without turning it into a question.

Edward now sat facing the long windows where the paint blistered off the frame and the glass was cloudy with salt from the shoreline which they owned, travelling across the drab marshes, which they owned, to the house, which they owned, while he owned nothing. Bitterness rose like a painful cough. It was warm and airless: the windows were stuck in the dining room.