The Salt Marsh (14 page)

‘But you don't believe in ghosts. Lost souls hanging around, doing their time in purgatory?'

‘No. I'm a scientist. I leave the superstitions to my old Irish rellies and the yokels of Skell.'

‘I didn't think there were any yokels left in Skell, it feels so desolate.'

‘Well, the London lawyers and academics have snapped up a fair few of the quaint fishermen's cottages and pushed most of the remaining yokels out, but they've just gone down the road to the new-build houses on the outskirts. And now they make a living out of servicing the second-home owners. But I don't think their beliefs have shifted since the witchhunts of Matthew Hopkins's day. Mind you I'm not sure the beliefs of the lawyers and the academics have shifted that much either.'

She wondered whether he was right.
Daemonologie.
Beliefs etched indelibly below the surface, written in our sacred texts.
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
King James Bible, Exodus 22:18.

Dave continued. ‘There's still nothing the English enjoy better than a witch-hunt, a collective venting of the spleen. A good public hanging and burning on the front pages of the tabloids. Irish. Unemployed. Immigrants. Whoever.'

He was always animated by a chance to have a dig at the English. She didn't blame him. He had told her that when he was an Oxford fresher and had done the obligatory introductory glass of sherry with the Dean of his college, he had mentioned that his father came from Tipperary. Later, he had overheard a tutor repeating the information with a sneer and a reference to the ‘Bog Irish'. Dave had been shocked. He couldn't quite marry the small-mindedness of the remark with his expectations of Oxford as an intellectual hothouse.

‘Like the woman who comes to clean the house, Marge,' Dave said. ‘She had a go at me the other week for leaving my toenail clippings on the floor in the bathroom. Told me I had to be careful in case somebody with a grudge gathered them up and used them against me. She told me, in all seriousness, that there were still some people around here who dabbled in the old ways, casting spells and cursing neighbours when slighted. Maleficent witches.'

Her hand went to her cheek and down again. Dave didn't spot her reflex action, continued talking.

‘Although, to be fair, Marge isn't really a yokel. She moved out here from the suburbs of London.'

She swiped at furry reed-heads as she walked, mind going over fragments – her birthmark, witchcraft, conversations with Luke – wondering whether she was on the radar because she was Jim Coyle's daughter, whether it was her who had drawn some kind of negative attention to her boyfriend which had forced him to disappear. Was it all her fault?

Dave said, ‘You're worrying about Luke again.'

‘It's difficult not to.'

‘You're freaking yourself out. There's usually a simple explanation for everything. He's probably...'

He left the sentence hanging.

‘He's probably what?'

‘He's probably decided he needs a break or something.'

‘What, you mean from me?'

‘Maybe.'

‘Fuck you, Daley.'

‘Why are you angry with me?'

‘Because you suggested Luke needed a break from me.'

‘Everybody needs a break every now and then. And he has said... You can be...'

‘What? I can be what? What did he say?'

Dave didn't answer. They passed the windmill in silence, crossed the car park, trod the waterlogged path by the customs house. Disturbed the toad again. Over the road, along the loke, lit only by the bedroom lights of a nearby cottage.

‘So what did Luke say about me?'

‘Look, he's mentioned he thinks you are having a hard time getting over your dad's death.'

‘There's nothing wrong with that.' She was shouting, her voice amplified by the flint walls enclosing them.

‘Who said there was anything wrong with it? All I'm saying is that Luke said sometimes it can be a bit...'

‘What?'

‘Well, it's difficult spending all your time with somebody who is in an emotionally difficult place. So maybe he decided to take a break.'

‘Is that what he said? That I'm difficult?'

‘No, he didn't say that you are difficult. It's difficult being with somebody who is... What he meant... he was a bit worried about you.'

‘When did he tell you this anyway?'

‘It was just a conversation.'

A conversation. She could hear how it went, because she'd had it with herself. She was hard work, a pain, she knew it deep inside. She wanted to kick herself for being useless, or Dave for pointing it out. Or Jim for ruining her life by dying.

‘Is that what you think? That I'm hard work?'

‘Look. I don't mind. I'm the bloke whose mum committed suicide.'

He paused and in the silence she saw an urban Ophelia, face up in the Digbeth Branch Canal, under Love Lane Bridge, caught among the coke cans and beer bottles.

Dave said, ‘I'm used to misery. I've been there.'

They stumbled along the unlit alley while she wondered why he was telling her about this conversation with Luke now, whether he was exaggerating, deliberately stirring, trying to stoke a rift between her and Luke.
Trust nobody.
It must have been Harry who left her that message. A follow-up, a reminder of their earlier conversation, a confirmation that somebody, somewhere, who was compiling a computerized index of suspected terrorists had come across the name Dave Daley. A bat flitted and swooped across their path.

‘That's a barbastelle,' Dave said. ‘You can see the outline of its pug nose. It's amazing how they use echolocation to find their dinner.'

She wasn't paying attention. Any other time she would have been interested, but right then she didn't care.

‘I was trying to make you feel better,' Dave said.

‘By telling me I'm a pain?'

‘No, that's your interpretation of what I said. I meant there are some fairly obvious, mundane explanations for Luke's non-appearance at Dungeness.'

They turned a corner, round the back of Dave's garden, along the side of the house. She sniffed, wiped her nose on her coat sleeve, wondered whether she was a wreck, and had driven Luke mad with her misery. Although, if she had to analyse it, she would say she wasn't miserable when she was with Luke, she was happy. Maybe she was guilty of dumping her miseries on Dave and he was projecting his feelings about her on to Luke. She couldn't fathom it. Best to change the subject, her default tactic when dealing with emotional situations she couldn't handle.

‘So, the Professor who owns this place, the one who let you stay here. Does he indulge in irrational beliefs as well? Is he a big Christian?'

‘No. What makes you ask that?'

‘The Palm Sunday cross.' She pointed at the window as they passed, the palm leaf crucifix pale against the gloom of the unlit kitchen.

‘It's there for show I should imagine. He probably goes to one or two services a year to keep in with the second-home owners posh set. You know, Easter. Christmas Eve. That kind of thing. His wife probably makes him do it.' He removed the front door key from his pocket.

She said, ‘Another long-suffering man having to put up with the irrational and unreasonable demands of his overemotional wife.'

Dave sighed as he pushed the door open.

‘I'm sorry I said anything. Let's drop it.'

*

She locked herself in the bathroom, lowered the toilet lid and sat down, elbows on knees, face on pummelled fists. She wanted to be somewhere happy. She wanted to be with Luke. She needed to talk to him, feel him next to her. Dave knocked on the bathroom door.

‘Sam, please.'

She stood up, leaned on the sink and examined her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were pink and puffy. She splashed cold water on her face, surveyed her image again. If she turned her face away from the light, she could see the fine lines forming around her eyes, unspoken anxieties eating into her skin. She opened the bathroom door. Dave was in the hall, arms crossed, his face tortured.

‘I'm sorry,' he said.

‘No. I'm sorry. You're right. I'm overreacting to everything.'

‘No you're not.'

‘I am.'

‘Well, actually you are a bit. But it's understandable. You're worried. Come downstairs and have a drink. We could sit in the back garden.'

*

Dave sat at the wooden table. Sam lay on the ground, ignored the dampness of the grass, watched the Milky Way emerge, a thumb print marking the sky.

‘That which is below is like that which is above and that which is above is like that which is below,' she said.

‘Don't tell me,' he said. ‘More hippy rambling from your friend at Dungeness.'

‘Yep. The
Emerald Tablet
, Hermes Tresmegistus. Some ancient alchemical text. Newton had a translation apparently. As above so below.'

‘I suppose there is some truth in it in a very general way.'

He opened the wine with the corkscrew attachment of his penknife, poured. She rose from her grass bed, came and sat beside him at the table.

‘In what way?'

‘Well, the chemical elements that are in us are elements that come from the earth, the plants around us, and those elements come from stellar explosions. We are made from stardust.'

He knocked back his wine, placed the glass on the table, twiddled the thin stem, stared at the puddle of red liquid covering the bottom of the glass, poured some more, knocked that back too.

‘Oxygen. Carbon. Hydrogen. Calcium. Iron. All of our elements are listed in the periodic table. And sometimes when I study the periodic table, I reckon it holds the secrets of human behaviour and human history. We are like the chemical elements from which we are made, and we are bound by the same periodic laws.'

His voice was monotone, as if he was in a trance. She wondered whether being out here all by himself on the bleak edge of Norfolk was taking its toll, affecting his stability, pushing him to weird places.

‘I could map my life on the periodic table, with all its repetitions, the same actions and reactions in slightly different form – every two years. Or eight years. Or eighteen years.'

He filled his wine glass again. Leaned over and topped hers up too, brushing her arm as he sat back. She pulled away, scared of being pulled down, drowning. She dug in her overcoat pocket, pulled out her puff in its clingfilm wrap, rolled herself a spliff, lit it, inhaled, let the stars swirl around her head, searched for the patterns. The periodicity. The death of her father, then two years later Luke's disappearance, Jim's diary, the whistle on the phone, the reappearance of Harry.

*

Time loops. She tugged on the roach. Dave was studying his wine glass. He knocked back the dregs, reached for the bottle, and she surveyed the heavy outlines of his face, the marks of his sadness.

‘I suppose it's my way of dealing with the difficult stuff. I'm not saying I'm bound to top myself like my mother. But I do think it helps to deal with the past if you can recognize the tendency to repeat the traits of your parents.'

She searched for something comforting to say.

‘You can change the patterns. You can be like an alchemist and transform the elements.'

‘But you have to work with what you've inherited. Nobody is a blank slate.'

‘I don't know about that. Sometimes I think I am a blank slate because I don't really know that much about my father. He was always a mystery.'

Dave straightened, looked at her with a sudden intensity.

‘What, you mean because he was a cop? An undercover cop? Like a spy?'

She took a final puff of the spliff, stubbed the dead roach in the soil. The conversation faltered. She wasn't in the mood for talking about Jim – she had only mentioned him to stop Dave dwelling on his mum's suicide. She wished she hadn't bothered. Why was Dave interested anyway? The screech of an owl broke the silence. She listened, waiting for another call; a car passed, wind rustled the oaks. A faint whistle. She stood, stepped over to the flowerbed below the flint wall. She considered climbing the apple tree, but spotted a large terracotta urn upturned on the soil. It looked sturdy enough to hold her weight. She pulled herself up, head and chin above the wall top. Cat's eyes fizzled and disappeared around a corner. Nothing else. She jumped back to the ground and examined the pot she had been standing on.

Dave persisted. ‘So was he really a spy? Or was it more mundane than that?'

She should humour him, stop being so prickly. Fight the doubts about her friend.

‘He was a kind of spy. He worked for this funny part of the Force that was like a cross between cops and Intelligence.'

‘Who did he spy on?'

‘I don't know. I blanked it out. Laughed it off. He was always disappearing. We didn't know what he was doing or when he would be back. It scared me so I tried not to think about it.' She heard her parents arguing in her head, Liz cackling, the front door slamming. ‘The Home Secretary knew what he was doing, apparently.'

‘The Home Secretary?' He gave her his sceptical look.

‘It was all very cloak and dagger. They used spy tradecraft – fake identities, secret codes. Drop boxes.'

‘Drop boxes?'

‘Pre-arranged places where you can leave messages. Secret information.'

She poked the ceramic pot with her foot. ‘Like this. This would make a good drop box. You could leave papers in here. And then somebody else could come and collect them.'

She stepped back, examined the pot from a distance. ‘Although, it should be somewhere more accessible. And neutral. A place not connected with either the dropper or the collector.'

She was making it up as she went along, the rules of the spying game. So what, she reckoned she was probably right anyway. She'd read Kim Philby's autobiography. Dave glanced at her. She glanced away.