Desire line, p.15
Desire Line, page 15
‘So she’s… finding herself? Is that all?’ Contempt wrestled with frustration which straggled despair. Yet on the very cusp of disbelief, her hunger was for more. Evil omens couldn’t sway the prepared mind (she clung to an image of her father here)… in fact, unsettling news should be expected, almost comic. Clichéd! Kim piling on the agony to command attention. And hadn’t comfortable assurances from Josh been offered with as little basis? It will be fine. Trust me. ‘So how does the Emperor interfere?’
‘Perhaps it’s like… him doing the sorting.’
‘But he isn’t a dangerous influence? There’s nothing there to suggest it will lead her to harm?’
A slightest shake of head: ‘We’ll do three cards today. I don’t think we should do more than that. All right?’
‘I have no idea… If that’s your advice.’ She tried to hold herself in check, tried to take a slow breath against a pounding pulse. Kim, of course, intended to reveal what was to be the last card with extra slowness and recognising the cheap drama of it couldn’t shore up her own waning control. The shivers and the beetle-crawliness returned and that ache in the back of the throat and numerous other bodily alarm calls if she deigned to listen. These were mere background chatter though in comparison to a totally novel sense of intellectual vertigo. Suddenly the air between Kim and herself was charged… and she believed. She believed. Knowing nothing of Tarot nor wanting to, stored fragments of data, phrases from somewhere, now suggested she was about to face Death on a Pale Horse… or The Hanged Man. Either could turn up. So when a voice said, ‘Judgement,’ her heart filled with joy. But it was not a good card. She could tell by Kim’s pursed lips and the hand that came up to them, preventing speech. ‘Let me see! What is it?’ Firstly her eye was drawn to the central angel, a boy/man blowing a trumpet from which a red and white flag hung, a confusing emblem… definitely an angel, though, against a background of jagged mountain peaks. But the foreground was gruesome as a scene from Bosch. From their graves figures were being summoned by the Call, a naked father and mother with a child, a girl child, all displayed at the point of rising, their skins ghastly as befitted three corpses. ‘Oh God,’ she could hear herself say, ‘Ohgodohgod. Not dead. No-o.’
Chapter 14
Into Forward Rhyl even earlier than usual after a chill-no-jacket ten-minute ride. The sky’s cloudless, the sea free of its usual chop and letting the sand bars of Rhyl Flats show mauve as beds of underwater heather. Survivors out at the wind farm seem to poke through it, barely creaking round. Daylight’s crossed England and the rivers Mersey and Dee and now it’s caught up with snail-like, stupid Rhyl. Needless to say workstations are all unoccupied when I walk in. I wander straight past them to look down on a mega truck, parallel parked to our building, engine running, come to take away temporary barriers. Or those that have not been already stolen. A patch of new tarmac spills out from under the truck’s wheels like an oil slick. No one’s loading, no one’s even standing around and gulls have settled on its cab. When a dull thud echoes from inland there isn’t a single bird bothers to lift off. They don’t even complain.
PalmWalk is my prize for being in early. The new route. Just a path in one sense, but one that’ll stitch together the entire broken beachfront since The Wave, one that will let me do what years of picking and patching never could, use all that energy for a purpose. I bring my plan alive and run yet one simulation, gathering perspectives – here’s out across a populated beach, the next is down the Water Street intersection then down Abbey Street – ahead is a glimpse of river now. Honestly? I’m struggling with it, convinced there’s a best line of sight at some spot, probably where the line-walker rises that extra half-metre and the distant prominence of Great Orme rears up. Can’t find it yet. Has to be past SkyTower. You don’t want both in. What does it matter? Tess asked when I showed it first, not expecting help – she’s technically untrained.
The two things shouldn’t crowd each other, I say. A progression that’s designed to surprise – and give you a buzz, Tess! – should actually work.
—Well nothing else round here does.
I repeat some things don’t connect. Sara, for example, can’t have trusted in Kim’s ‘talent’. Where was the scholar in her? You only had to look at this shell of a person to ask yourself how likely isit? Tomiko’s craziest sayings make more sense. And respect for Sara isn’t easy to maintain after Kim Tighe— I’m distracted by that woman now, seen running away from Avonside with money in her pocket, fear in her wake, wearing black and totally right too, Kim Tighe, a variable overhead even Josh couldn’t cover. If Kim Tighe hadn’t latched on things might have ended differently—
—Outside there’s a commotion. In fact what sounds like a fully ripe rumble’s in progress. A car hoots. An extra loud, aggressive ‘Yeah-h-h!’ is the response. But by the time I’m across to the window again the truck’s being driven off. Empty. Vehicles pass underneath and a few pedestrians, old, young, in-betweens who’ve witnessed something, drift away and keep going. It’s nearly eight now and maybe a handful have jobs to be at while the rest are just out, sea-gazing, waiting for events like this one, any happenings. Whatever it was happened. That I’ve missed and they caught. Most of them will still be boarded in cramped, makeshift accommodation. A recent news story was about a family preferring to camp in St Thomas’s vestry – what’s a vestry? the reporter joked to camera – instead of the badminton court they’d been given space in.
Twinned with Soweto, it made me think.
Rhyl isn’t ever properly awake till past midday not till, to quote Libby, the streets are aired. But it’s given itself a shake, rubbed its private parts and yawned— which is virtually what Glenn Hughes is doing when he comes in. He nods and starts unpacking a rucksack. He’s wearing an open-neck shirt, mauve against Celt-pink flesh. The jeans are the latest cut. I get a wicked grin, obviously to do with the small wrapped object he drops in front of my screen which I’ve blanked anyway.
‘Either your Casino numbers have come up or Alice Norman’s home.’
‘Gottit.’ Glenn’s smile is crafty. ‘This is for you. She told me ‘bout them last time she was over. I said to get you one— for putting me up.’
I handle a squat cylinder, heavier than expected at around 400 grams. No rattle. ‘You bought me the poster.’ Giving in, I peel away paper and padding to free a white earthenware mug. The curved handle’s poorly proportioned against height and circumference. Drinking from it won’t be comfortable.
‘Turn it round.’
On the other side is a pair of silver blobs contained by black ovals. Eyes. Cartoon eyes. No, the more you looked at them real eyes. ‘Thank-you.’
‘Don’t thank me yet. Move about a bit and watch!’
Glenn flattens himself against the window ledge and clears a space leaving no option but to do as I’m told. As I stand the mug’s eyes – which seem to be fixed on my face – are raised as well.
‘Good, innit? They follow you. Come on – come on! Over here – see? Still fixed on you.’
‘Movement sensitive—’
‘Not just that. Keep watching.’ In his enthusiasm, he edges me sideways. Loyally the mug’s eyes strain to the corners of their black surrounds. ‘Dip round behind the cabinets – here, come on! Surprise it from the other direction.’
This is humiliating. I’m being asked to outwit a piece of ceramic. But, I do as instructed and arrive back to see the mug’s eyes flick across and hone in on me.
‘Yes.’
‘Ah-h! Wait for this now.’ Glenn promenades across the room. The effect is meant to be casual but closer to camp. ‘Keep watching!’ he whispers as though the mug might overhear. An obstructed view makes the pupils seem troubled. ‘It’s all in the molecules— d’you want to know how—?’
‘No.’ I run a fingertip over. The black eyeball is just detectible by touch. Oddly, I’m not willing to poke the silver pupils. ‘I’ll work it out. Thank Alice for me. It’s a good present.’
‘Yours for life. If you pass it on to somebody else, well-ll.’ He shook his head.
‘Well what?’
‘Just don’t do it. So the salesman warned. Bad pow! You’ll be sorry— or they will more like.’ He laughs nastily and then turns thoughtful. ‘Y’know while Alice is in Spain I miss her like buggery but when she does shift herself and turn up, it takes getting used it. Can’t sleep with her in the bed. She’s still there of course. Gerroff! I told her, it’s a work day. Now I wish I was back with Alice.’ He shrugs— a happy riddle, a koan, to himself.
I recall Alice’s wiry woman’s physique and then her aggressive look. Alice was once a psychiatric nurse. At our Christmas party she explained architects were responsible for most social problems, her proof being one of her hostels had recently subsided down a Spanish cliff. ‘Alice Norman’s one in a million,’ I say. ‘But how d’you rate Alfred Hitchcock?’
‘What?’
‘The world’s greatest storyteller. Everything is black and white.’
That gets him to shuffle off. ‘I only worry about you ’cos somebody should.’ His baritone breaks out from his cubicle with a blast from Peter Grimes. I know a lot more about his musical taste now than I did pre Wave. Rarely any Bach but surprisingly varied thanks to choir membership. Yet he’s been singing this stuff for days now – many days. ‘May he restrain our tongues from strife/ And shield from anger’s din our life/ And guard with watchful care our eyes/ From earth’s absorbing vanitie-es!’
Even the mug’s panicky. Glenn’s rehearsing for a concert in aid of the flood victims and he’s given me the story. Only in Wales would they be practising bits from a child abuse opera with a megastorm and multiple drownings to cheer people up. ‘Earth’s absorbing vanities?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Not exactly catchy.’
‘Sounds better in force. If a couple of dozen of you are belting it out, yeah? We’ve had no complaints so far.’
‘Is the rest of the chorus your size?’
‘Bigger. And younger, some of them.’
‘That’ll help.’
‘Oh hang at open doors the net, the cork/ While squalid sea-dames at the mending work—’
‘Can you callsea-dames squalidin public?’
‘Nobody’ll know what they are.’
‘I don’t know what they are.’
‘’S’how we get away with it. “Whoever’s guilty gets the rap./ The Borough keeps its standard up-p!”’
‘I didn’t know it was a comedy.’
‘That’s the only joke. Too deep?’
I shrug.
Sara has her puzzles, her koans as well. She wants to and needs to find Kim Tighe after the Tarot reading, after Kim’s taken her money and fled. But she can’t. I can though.
So watch out, Kim Tighe.
Chapter 15
An innovation, two in fact: a besuited Josh announced he was off to the County Court in Mold to give evidence in an Actual Bodily Harm prosecution (not his own) and several vodkas later, a person called to save Sara’s soul. Sara was dumbfounded by the woman’s being there at all, as well as by the pinched face under a grey bob and billowy summer dress worn with an anorak. The instant they made eye-contact, her visitor took the opportunity to demand, ‘Are you ever afraid for the future? Do you know someone in distress? Have you thought how many problems in this world could be solved if we only listened to Our Lord Jesus Christ?’
Sara shook her head gently and as gently closed the door. From behind the living room blinds she watched the caller pass by the parked VW, oblivious to its potential for griming her skirt and bare legs… rather shapely, smooth legs that made her glance down at her own downy ankles poking out from the chinos, remembering buying a razor her first week but never using it… Further along Avonside, the evangelist was able to up her rate as older houses clustered even closer, lacking fenced gardens. Most seemed empty and unresponsive. Each merited an insert through its letter box. Where she did get an answer, it was of seconds’ duration… a step forward, a step back as though joined to each door’s movement by string. Such a display of fortitude: Sara felt her own eyes prickle with it. After every rebuff, the woman’s shoulders were squared and she adjusted the angle of the chin for the next, resetting hope. At the road’s curve she vanished, a flap of fabric the last token of oddly assembled parts. But sneaking back to the hall now it was safe, Sara found no digest of sacred texts lying there for her, nor any personalised free gift of succour. Apparently she’d had her chance with the Lord, this augmented version of Professor Geoffrey Severing, rigorous, benevolent, even more irascible (had He not once cursed a fig tree?) and disappointed with her.
But if you do know something, Jesus, Saviour, Father, Counsellor… Smug Sadist, I can still be yours. So, please, please, whereisshewhereisshewhereisshe?
A refill necessitated a lurch towards the kitchen, to the vodka she had hidden in a new place, a gap between the wall and the refrigerator. The tumbler’s wide mouth was not enough. She spilled a measure at least but with the rest of the glass safely drunk, she and Jesus scrambled back onto better terms somehow. If Your Emissary had been less ridiculous, she told Him as she wiped down the worktop, discovering a peculiar satisfaction in unstickied whiteness under the matching trinity of Sugar, Tea, Coffee, and if only, Sire, the woman’s expression could have been less pained, I might… but already the actual look in the woman’s eyes was dissolving, followed by the mouth, the entire face and the shape of the hair. Only some dress fabric hung on, a thicket of patterns and movements and botanic uncertainty… and after the next glassful, knocked back in one standing at the sink (who knew when Josh might barge in?) her confusion worsened… the anorak had been fur-trimmed like her old Bachelor of Arts gown with its silly hood which, to Eurwen’s disgust, sported white rabbit. White rabbits and rabbit holes and sunny Oxford afternoons and adored children: the muddle incited the desire to throw herself upon the mercy of the Professor, to feel the reassurance of his love. All my sins and failings have been visited upon Eurwen, Daddy, she will say. Mea culpa… mea culpa… but elsewhere in the house a radio was playing and she thought to turn it off before she rang Geoffrey, whose hearing was not as acute as it once had been, and she did go as far as the next room in her search, the while rehearsing, ‘I have a confession to make, Daddy, a terrible confession that should have been… could have been… made years ago. No, no. Not drinking, we can’t mention the drinking, can we? Such a small falling off anyway, I think. As will you. When you… when I… once I tell you what I did….’
She opened her eyes and Josh was there.
‘What are you sitting in the dark for?’
‘Listening to the radio.’ Her head throbbed. No wonder she’d had to turn it down… turn it off.
His case had gone well: he burst out into genuine laughter. ‘I don’t have a radio ’cept in the car.’ There was friendly tap to her upper arm as she looked about to rise from the sofa, ‘Stay put,’ he said and clicked on the light.
He was able to look at her now and the bruise was an old friend. ‘I stopped in to talk to this Neil again. Clive’s signed him up for odd-jobs. They live hand to mouth this lot, glad of anything. Gives you a bit of leverage,’ he trailed off.
‘And?’ was all she could trust herself to say.
‘I got the same as you did at first. Don’t know. Haven’t heard from her! But,’ he bared his teeth, ‘just as I was packing it in I came back at him with, Look, you’re no kid yourself. This is a young girl we’re talking about. She acts big. She’s not. She shouldn’t be on the loose on her own. Her mother’s frantic.’
‘Thank-you.’
‘Anyway,’ Josh was speaking but also summing her up, police-style, every swallow and blink added to the total, ‘are you taking this in? Sara! He said she wasn’t on her own.’
‘What?’ Fully awake now she found her tongue when two second’s thought would have suggested leave it lost, ‘Oh God, Josh, so who is it now? These people Eurwen knows, they’re all older. You said it. Twentysomethings.’ Apart from speaking more loudly than the small living room warranted she felt quite lucid and was sure that he fielded her reference. ‘And thirtysomethings. She ought to be with girls her own age like Henriette and… not those Uptons. Who is she with? And what were you thinking of?’
Josh should not be accepting this. Josh should be calling her hysterical and insisting Meg was a decent person. What she did not want to hear was, ‘Not arguing. But Neil mentioned a boy. He’d asked Eurwen why she wanted to stay in Rhyl when she could go back to a city. Eurwen said the boys in Oxford were beyond totallylame which sounds like her. But here there was a nice one.’
‘A boy,’ she repeated stupidly.
Eurwen had met a boy. A boy she could hypnotise just by talking and dazzle by walking into any scene. A suggestion or two about her past – she didn’t even have to lie – and she had him writing a new story in his head, this innocent or idiot, about the Little Fox that didn’t leave, that broke the rules and stayed. For him. That’s Eurwen for you.
Big surprise, Sara? (So what did you think your Thomasina was trading on? Her Latin and Greek and a quick way with numbers behind the father’s bar?) At fifteen, Eurwen was taller than her mother already, a lot more beautiful though that seemed to matter less to her than to other people. To me. A woman— she thought. She’d pass for twenty if she wanted to and she wanted to. She was an irresistible force and I should know. But then there’s a fog of sex everywhere. What else lights the fuse? Watch Hitchcock’s people blundering round in it, falling over symbols of it— and violence, of course, all the violence you get over sex because attraction means death for AH. He was an outstandingly ugly man that assaulted actresses for a living. By hand was favourite. In Hitchcock Heaven, a fragile woman’s being perpetually stalked and however often you tag along it’s to the same car-crash finish. I’ve binged on three, four movies end to end then got out there and lingered over the entire VistaVision openness of the coast. It tends to lead the eye, crying out for a good director and, more often than not, I see it as he does, with the horizon suddenly cut by an attacker. At hip height for the male and his victim by her waist. They sway and grapple. A dance. Her perfect spine bows dangerously, enough to snap it you think. If Bodega Bay served better than anywhere, I’m a fool for Bodega Bay, then Rhyl’s got its big sky and empty sand. And gulls. Tippy Hedron is always wanting to know if we’ve ever seen so many birds?
