Perfectly Pure and Good (17 page)

The leftovers were abundant. The man with the white hair was grateful for that.

My name is Charles and I have no name, he chanted, rocking back and forth in the small space of the hut, watching the dawn rise on a Sunday morning. I rose from the sea like Christ from the dead. Sunday is a day of grace for sinners and I am not one of those. My name is Charles. There were occasions when he almost forgot. Just as he forgot what it was he had been when he had the name, until he remembered again.

The beach hut, last of the line, was slightly askew; the stool on which he sat also slightly crooked, so that he leaned, constantly to one side. The stick with the carved duck's head assisted him to redress the balance. It was against the local by-laws to stay in a beach hut at night, in case the wind got up and encouraged the endless hunger of the tide. People obeyed the rules. Charles held such people in contempt. Also those who treasured the small possessions he stole, but left them out for him to steal all the same.

People without names cavorted on the beach in front of the hut by day, looking to their own pursuits, their games, their dogs, their delicious children, never to left or right and never towards anyone old. He could walk amongst them as if he were invisible. When there was a crowd, faintly excited, they sounded like the geese which had travelled over his head the autumn before, when he decided his new existence became his so much it was better than the one before.

Who needed prestige, when they could reach out and reclaim it whenever they wanted? Who needed a fine apartment when an empty holiday cottage would do? Places like the one where Edward found him. Looking for Elisabeth and who had buried her, giving himself a reason to live. When he had done that, meted out his own version of justice, then he could go home.

It was necessary for a man without a name to have a reason. From his casual and contemptuous observation of humankind, no-one else needed such a thing. They just existed, like lumbering animals.

A child was attempting to clamber up the rickety steps of his beach hut. A plump little thing with a nappy rump and curly hair, grunting with the effort. Charles peered over the top half of the stable door, hissed, bared his teeth, watched as the child met his eyes, waddled away, crying.

Good. Oh, it was a clean little thing. He could have cooked it. The thought made him dizzy.

The tide was out again this morning, fickle bitch, leaving a huge expanse of mud and sand for the fools to play on. If only they knew how difficult it was to keep clean. It was the desire for fresh water which drove him the half mile into town, made him careless.

Between the daily business of eating and cleaning, cleaning was the worst. He slithered down the steps of the but with his stick, dived behind and up the bank into the dunes, to find the place where he met Edward, if the young man deigned to arrive. Sandwiches would be nice: he could live on sandwiches and save himself foraging time. It was only when he was hungry that the urge to destroy became so paramount. A hypoglycaemic rage, he would have said, when he had a name. Which he didn't, now. Nor half the command of words. Snippets of poetry was all. The haunting and cynical voice of Browning, all he remembered from a thousand books.

`
The moment she was mine, mine, fair,

perfectly pure and good: I found

A thing to do, and all her hair

In one long yellow string I wound

Three times her little throat around

And strangled her . .

He sang the words to the tune of a hymn.

From inside the worn pockets of the track suit rescued from behind the church hall, he pulled out the crumpled letters, the medical record card and the envelopes he had taken with such fastidious care from Dr Pardoe's desk in the surgery

`
Darling Julian
,' he mimicked, reading in a high and breathy voice.
'How wonderful to know that
I shall see you soon . . . Your loving Elisabeth.'

Oh yes, he loved you, darling Elisabeth; the good doctor loved you to death; look at what he did for you, in case you should cause him a scandal. Look at the record of what he did. The last billet-doux, a prescription on the record card for enough diazepam to stun a crowd of women, let alone one.

Charles without a name looked out to the sea. 'Escape me?' he murmured. 'Never.'

Flames danced in front of his eyes, the morning sun blazing over shallow stretches of water left by the tide, moving and dazzling. He could burn down the Pardoe house, that was what he could do, a house he had entered and left a dozen times, all of them so mad or so preoccupied they never noticed. Charles could hear the crackling sound of fire, imagine the sight in the dark, as they rushed out screaming, for him to pick them off with a knife or a stick, one by careless one, until finally, he would stamp on the hands which had touched his wife, buried her without permission.

The images were soothing; Sunday was a day of grace. Charles without a name, listened for the church bells, hearing nothing but the wind in the pine trees at his back and the desolate mewing of the gulls on the beach before. One day soon he would go home. He wondered how he would ever get clean enough to go home — and where home was.

Edward despised the mere notion of going to church, quoted religion as the opiate of the masses.

Joanna went to accompany her mother, also to put flowers on her father's grave. There had been no ordinary plot for Mr Pardoe, of course: he could not have been buried in the serried ranks of the others who now stretched out into the field behind, not he, but in a plot in the old graveyard, bought from the vicar long before as the price of charity.

Joanna thought of it now as she sat in the congregation with her mother, saw for the first time how people might resent Pa's privileged resting place. She was thinking too, of how much better her own life would be if the family did not own so much, how pleasant if she could ever present herself as an ordinary contender for friendship instead of a race apart, unable to enter a shop without putting someone in mind of owing rent. Perhaps if she had nothing, Rick would love her, but on this footing, she could never be equal, never belong, even here with her elders, singing the same hymn in a great, slow groan of tuneless sound.

Mother sang lustily
, Da, da, da da da daah,
her voice loud and cracked, humming without words, the feathers from her hat curling over her face, another evening gown of purple trailing round her pink-shod feet beneath the mackintosh, her face flushed from yesterday's sun. Nobody minds, Joanna thought defensively, so why should I? Mother was popular, always had been; men flocked to say hallo after church. Men had always flocked in that direction, Joanna realized, surprised at her own observation. Poor little Mouse, to be so pitied.

On the other side of the feathers, Julian gently took his mother's hymn book and turned it the right way up so that she could at least pretend she was reading the words. She ignored the gesture. On the last hymn of the service, he sensed rather than saw Sarah Fortune slipping out of the pew behind, late arriver, first to go, with her hair concealed under a straw hat. He shut his eyes for the final blessing, seeing nothing inside his own skull but the vision of her body in those circus cartwheels, hand over graceful hand across the lawn.

The sun struck with cruel brilliance as they emerged blinking from church, the sound of the organ receding behind them, the bells taking over. Groups formed on the paths between the graves, women with women, men with men, a division as old as time. Julian counted a small congregation of largely advanced years, hinged together by habit and the continuity of their lives rather than belief or commitment to virtue. That was certainly true of Rick's dad, from the amusement arcade, sedulous as ever towards the doctor even though he must have known the evidence Julian had seen on his own son, signs of drunken violence which were always explained away as the boy falling downstairs. Rick's dad, his cousin, PC Curl the village copper, others who may have needed God's forgiveness as much as Julian felt he did himself, but never prayed for it, believing, perhaps, as he did not, that a visit to Church wiped the whole slate clean.

There was a murmur at his elbow.

`Can we have a word, Doc, before you have to rush away?'

He liked the presumption that he was always busy, always in demand, disliked the deference. If it had been towards him for his qualifications and his value, he would have been pleased, but they bowed to a Pardoe for the supposition of money and influence. It was that which put him beyond companionship, nothing more, not even his own brusqueness, which they tolerated.

`What do you think, Doc? Time we began to take this ghost business seriously, don't you think? I mean, after Miss Gloomer, not fair, is it? Could have been this white-haired bastard did the fishing shop, other places too. I mean, he's real all right. He ain't a ghost at all.'

`He hasn't hurt anyone, has he?' Julian said sharply. He couldn't make himself care, except about Miss Gloomer. If there was a poor, summer vagrant wandering about at night stealing the surplus, it wouldn't be the first or last to go of his own accord. The idea of hunting him was vaguely repellent, although not to Rick's dad, nor to PC Curl who always dramatized problems of law and order.

`My nephew seen him plenty,' Curl murmured. Julian laughed. Stonewall Jones was his favourite child, stubborn, discreet, incredibly brave in the face of a cut arm, chickenpox and anything which had ever ailed him, but not, surely, a reliable source of information.

S'not funny, Doc. Something's got to be done.'

`Such as?' he suggested lightly, refusing to take the lead. They were silent. No-one else wanted to do anything other than talk.

`Such as locking doors, keeping your eyes open and letting him be?'

They nodded, each following the other. Pass the word, that was it, the full extent of civic duty on another day so warm it should be treasured, Sunday lunch beckoning as a prelude to an afternoon's doze. The heat made them lazy, turned their minds to other things. Rick's dad fingered his tie, tight at the throat, uncomfortable. The mood of vague purpose fragmented into nothing; Joanna called for her brother. The vicar stood next to her, the verger on the other side, planting a kiss on Mother's powdered cheek while she embraced him, the powder falling on to his dark jacket without him seeming to mind.

We could set off through the streets, Julian thought with sudden, savage amusement, in my car, with Mama waving to the locals like the Queen. She's the only one of us they can love, because she requires so little. They passed through the churchyard gate. There was no sign of Sarah Fortune's car with the dented wing.

`Just a minute,' Julian said. He walked back to the gate, sprinted through the old graveyard, into the newer environs of the field where Elisabeth Tysall was buried.

The same temporary headstone, disgracing him; the rest tidy. His old dead roses spirited away and at her feet and her heart, fresh flowers in new vases.

The chimes of the ice-cream van rang out to the faithful long after the church bells ceased. Down by the beach, they rang to a greater effect and the formation of a sporadic queue by mid-afternoon. They were parked on the edge of the caravan site, by the main track over the dunes on to the beach, ready to catch the corners and goers, who came forward as if the van, next to the refreshment hut, but somehow more enticing, was a mirage in the desert.

`What's the matter with you, Stoney? You suffering heat sickness, or what?' Rick was doling out a double 99 cone with Cadbury's flake on top, watching it melt even as he presented it out of the window to a lad who'd have to be quick to get it all down in time. All down his vest, more likely.

Talking over his back to where Stonewall lounged, ready to dive into the freezer for a Mivvi or a raspberry split or those iced lollies built like space ships which were so popular this year, but so phallic in appearance, he and Rick sniggered over every sale especially to girls. Nothing was funny this afternoon.

Nothing's the matter,' Stonewall said sulkily.

`Whenever you say that, I know you're lying.'

Oh, Rick was on the ball today, jokes to customers, the bruises round his eyes making him look like a pirate, hands over the ices quick and deft, shirt shining clean and his hair falling over his forehead so he could flick it back and wink. There was a pause in the line. Give it half an hour, when they all started trailing home, business would be brisk. Rick checked stocks and whistled.

`Come on, Stoney, talk to me.' There was a shuffling. Stonewall looked out the window.

Àre you going out with that redhead, Rick? Are you?'

So that's what it was, a little
frisson
of jealousy, a little bit of the old insecurity creeping back, as if it had ever gone since the boy lost his own father and screamed in his sleep.

`Course not. I like her, that's all. You be nice to her if you see her, Stonewall. She did me a good turn on Friday night.' Rick laughed uproariously. He'd been laughing like a hyena all weekend, imploding with silent jokes Stonewall didn't understand.

`What about Jo, then?' Rick stopped what he was doing, and the laughter.

`That's something else,' he said sharply. Stonewall kicked his frayed training shoe against the door. He was miserable without knowing why.

`Cheer up. We got things to do after. My dad says we got to go looking for that ghost. Your white-haired ghost. Typical, doesn't want to bother himself, lets us do it.' He whistled again.

`Did you really believe me, then?' Stonewall asked, his voice quivering. 'No you didn't. You just pretended you did in the caf, to please her. You never believed me until other people did. You never believed that ghost got my dog.'

He had carried the stiff, twisted collar in his pocket for the two days since he had found it. Rick could see it now, protruding from the side of his shorts above the thin, pale brown legs with their covering of freckles. Stonewall was such a thin, sandy boy: even his legs weren't significant.