Desire line, p.21
Desire Line, page 21
See that, Josh? (I’m speeding us forward.) There’s the rancid remains of Seaquarium, where you took Eurwen as a little girl. She loved it but ‘wanted to let all the fish go’. Then those stretches of cleared ground let you see SkyTower ahead, still here! The skirt of huts is the clean-up crew’s rest area, floodlit to prevent vandalism. I jog on but then have the urge to halt and lean out on a bit of surviving cast iron and smack my lips on brine. Another wave, Josh! Another grain of Sara just made landfall. And why not? Tomiko’s hand is what I recorded Quay Street with before it washed away. Part of me’s still in Westport with you as right here, right now, my brain sprouts plans for a vacant lot that even in Sara’s time was taboo.
My feet have brought us to Rhyl’s black hole. And even Josh has run out on me. I’m on my own.
The board fence put up after The Wave has already been breached with lollipop-shaped holes hacked out. I stop at one, listening against Rhyl’s wet white noise. We must be a ghost town like they claim— there’s not so much as a rattle. The only drop-ins tonight apart from gulls are oldies, asleep in their beds but riding the Waltzers, young and reckless again. The Ferris Wheel Sara expected was already scrap by she gets here, gone the way of the first wooden Roller Coaster you could hear halfway to Llandudno— and the rest. Britain’s oldest funfair had boasted every rickety ride you could want and every thrill, every promised beauty, every sleazy side-show and freak-show and their hangers on. Wonderful. Human life in miniature. This is a place you can’t make, it has to grow, Glenn Hughes will tell you, Ocean Beach, a Pleasureland for a world short on it. Rich kids, poor kids, teenaged lovers, couples so vintage they remembered bathing machines still used as changing huts or thought they did. One size fits all. Then we let run through our fingers. Thirty years on and they’ve tried their best with gradients in dual planes to lake, river and beach, the finest empty lot in Wales. And every scheme crashed.
I’m scared of the dark and there’s not even passing traffic this end of town, the bridge still shut. I’m scared of Nothingness. Started early with Tomiko. He had his alibis, so OK, but missing Kochi he filled the dark with onyudos and kashas and satoris and every other subspecies of monster. ‘Pear Tree Spectre’, that was a good one, eh Yori? And don’t forget dear old ‘Cobra-Demon That Eats Boy’s Ears’and how it had you pissing the bed.Right up till I step inside I pretend I’m going to turn and walk off fast instead of stooping through into the void, feeling my way. Why? Yori’s not saying. Above it’s black overcast, underfoot very spongy ground. Deprived of one sense you have to rely on others. I ‘see’ by memory and nose and lack of echo the vast space stretching ahead, heaped with debris. Further on, across a deserted Wellington Road and beyond there’s plenty more of the same, till your imagination takes a startled plunge into Marine Lake (one plan I’d heard was to use spoil to fill it in) and throughout, the overwhelming reek is from pulverised buildings, brought in over the last couple of weeks and spread a metre thick, caustic as lye. I blink with it and teeter forward— then I do brush an object, a good solid flat something, maybe a chunk of Victorian stonework. I clutch on till the shooting stars in my eyes finish. You’re meant to clap three times to the kami of any location to get on its good side. I managed once and then had to pee, legs spread just where I was— another insult to all the discounted, conned, defrauded and poor that loved the rides.
And now Josh had left me, suddenly Sara’s here, jostled along with them.
Links. Outlines. Patterns. Sound. Tightness round the heart. ‘Sara’s here’ didn’t pop up in words. On the rubbish-stench and the ammonia of my own piss, an extra Big Bad wafted up, a certainty. (Not that I believe in ghosts. Or half of me doesn’t. But try telling it to your teeth, Yori! Hear the clicking? That’s fright music.) Sara’s here. Part of her always was and what’s left has come home with you, Yori. Before the water made bones of her there was a woman chasing the child who loved the Wheel who became the girl coaxing ducks off the lake with bread – as sketched by a young Japanese that taught her, ‘Three clap-hands to the kami!’ Because if you came to Rhyl you came here.** Then all you had to do was wait.
At 3 a.m., late spring in Rhyl, 2040, about where Sara ran aground I sat on a pile of trash and called Eurwen and even though a warm wind still blew from the south, I shivered. When I say we hadn’t spoken in years it implies somebody’s mistake. A fall out plus brooding results in a final flare-up. Then you get the weight tied to a foot, hers or mine. Wrong. Never over-generous with words, Eurwen’s muteness came on gradually.
Having dropped me off with her grandparents, Geoffrey and Fleur – thanks to bunching up of the generations they probably seemed like mine as well – Eurwen roamed. OK. She couldn’t live with us so didn’t. It was almost a relief. And thanks to Fleur I had a lot more communication with a vaguely-familiar Japanese man on the other side of the world than my own mother for the next two decades.
It did me no credit revisiting this as an adult. I got punished. Eurwen made me wait. Then VoiceOnly should’ve meant a soft reintroduction, neither of us needing to overact. Apologies for waking her first. Not asleep, she corrected. Dead air was her background while the gulls would be pinpointing my location. I finished my story and could feel her thinking hard. I tried a round up with, ‘It is her. I’ve been to see Josh— that’s why it’s late. Just back from Ireland. It seemed right to tell him first. Maybe you don’t think so?’
‘Mm.’
‘But I didn’t wake you, at least?’
True to form, she ignored questions. ‘I knew it would be a shock when— no, if we did finally know. But it seems unbelievable. Yet I’d decided she was dead. She may have gone but she wouldn’t have stayed gone,’ she clarified. ‘So it’s astonishing and half-expected both together. You didn’t know her.’
‘No.’
‘And what did he have to say? And how did he—’ she was able to answer herself at least. ‘Badly, of course.’ But her tone had already given the game away. Another ear was listening. I knew whose.
I said, ‘I could come and see you.’
‘You should. Yes. Not now though. I’m about to move.’
Goodbye Eurwen. Never really lost, always there if you kept looking. She actually sounded very close for once.
Notes
*Honestly? I’m wrong. It doesn’t— only works for air. Next morning I realised my mistake. Volume of Atmosphere v Volume of Sea? No contest. Geoffrey would have expected better from me, even tired and distracted and Trankijenned. Me not him.
**Appendix A
Chapter 20
Libby Jenkinson in a black and sulphur one-piece was at my door next morning like some mad wasp. I was wearing just pants. It earned me a loud coarse whistle, Glenn Hughes style. Why’ve I let myself got fond of her? Why haven’t I moved? Do I think this is what I deserve? Before she can start on about so what happened to your holiday etc I get in, ‘Back late— no bread. Never have butter.’ Usually it didn’t stop her asking.
Her weekend make-up threatened to shatter. ‘Got my own, so—’ she gave me the finger, ‘to you Yori. It must be a laugh a minute down them council offices.’
‘Forward Rhyl isn’t run by—’
‘Right.’ She walked straight ahead, pushing past. Libby has no embarrassment setting. Her little bright eyes darted round my living room that had been her dining room. Not that I could ever see a table set with china and the candles lit. Across the yard was an outhouse with Mr Jenkinson’s tools laid out on a homemade bench and a mechanism in bits that he’d been fixing and wrappers from chocolate bars he seemed to have lived on. I still didn’t know his first name. ‘God you’re massive tidy,’ she said, a Tess line. Something else was brewing, I could tell. ‘Oo-oo, hang on what’s this then?’ She was over at the desk that had been shielded from the door. When I didn’t answer she chose Sara’s little watch to paw, giving the necklace only a brief poke. ‘Lady pressies? I hope they’re not for the one came last night— no night before last, I mean.’
‘Who?’
‘I dunno.’
‘A woman?’
Libby thought for a moment, puckering her mouth for me to notice it. It took another dry look before she convinced herself the question was genuine. ‘A she. Never seen her before.’
‘Wanting what?’
‘I wasn’t going down there, was I?’ Exasperated, though that should’ve been me, Libby pushed at her fringe with fat fingers. All the heavy rings clinked, the Jenkinson’s and pre-Jenkinson’s. ‘It was well late and she’s banging on the front door. I didn’t like the look of it to be honest— I just opened the window and asked what’s up and she kept knocking. Ru-ude!’
‘And definitely not a person you know?’
‘No. Head covered. Ignored me! So I shouted you weren’t here and she went off.’
‘But she walked like a woman?’ I tried.
‘Ah-huh.’ Libby’s attention was usually short but she stayed with it ‘Prob’ly bladdered,’ – while she took another inventory of my possessions. ‘What happened to all your pictures you took down?’
I shrugged. ‘I’m doing better ones.’
‘They weren’t that bad. I’ll have to go’n buy milk then. Anyhow, good to see you back, love,’ she finished, leaving me puzzled by both my late visitor and Libby’s out-of-the-blue swerve into niceness. Like someone had propelled her there.
Or scared her.
Speak to Tomiko? Also try to contact Josh and check on his mental state, though Josh often cut himself off from every form of messaging and now was bound to be one of those times. Talking to Tess – much better. The Casino Pigalle lightboards were back up so I told her how I’d walked from the station in the early hours past three Linda Darnells – all you! – bodies hairless as geishas, nude apart from their flickering numbers, all with the same invite, Hi Yori! Wanna play me? I’ve only played CP the once to shut Glenn up but that’s all it takes. Now every board in the entire world can go Hi Yori! Wanna—? No, I told it, I’d rather play Tess.
Thought you’d be longer in Ireland, Tess prodded me. You could-of come round. But she liked it I’d rather play Tess, I could tell. It got me out of trouble. Never happened with Kailash that way. (Stupidly I have the odd flicker of regret over Kailash just because of that sort of thing, not being able to get out of a fix easily, never measuring up. I crave salt.)
Tomiko, then. He exists nine hours ahead and I’m lucky. My father’s basic model Japanese face with the marked forehead materialises looking straight at me, his visible upper body this morning, his evening, in a smudged shirt. ‘I’m very sad for,’ came the response to what I had to tell him, outdoing Sara’s husband and daughter. ‘A sharp knife in here. She is dead.’
‘Yes. No doubt.’
‘A good woman—’
‘But you never met her!’
‘She was your grandmother. A good woman,’ he said.
‘Of course.’ I thought I understood though it would turn out I hadn’t. In my defence I hadn’t read more than a page or two of the journal, remember. It was still in my pack in the bedroom. His reaction seemed pretty genuine after Josh’s and I let it go.
‘When did she die? When—’ struggling now, ‘—actual day?’
‘Why does it matter?’ Particularising the date must be a Japanese thing, I guessed. ‘They’re not sure. Soon after she left the house, Josh’s I mean. I mean, where else could she go? In Rhyl. What they can tell probably isn’t enough to decide cause of death— so they’re not saying how long they think she’s been dead, just a long time. Nothing about any injuries— it’s a skeleton. Thirty years in the water! I bet all the changes happen fast and early on. Then less and less once—’ Talking to him was the first time I’d thought about what I was saying. The flesh. Gone. Sara, quick and clever and maybe a good woman as Tomiko said, and more important than any of it, Eurwen’s reflection. Younger than Eurwen but the flesh gone—
—first the white freckled skin gets peeled back from her arms like Grace Kelly’s elbow-length gloves, then the face starts to flow into soft focus, into nobody’s, and that’s even before the crabs get under her ribs. Break in at any time, I felt like saying to the screen. ‘You’ll find the story’s everywhere because of who she was. Still very interesting to a lot of people.’ Tomiko nodded extra respect. ‘Dr Sara Meredith and this town, they think it’s a meekfreak combo. Like some Royal caught in the kebab queue.’ Nothing. ‘Students from Bristol I haven’t seen since I left have started messaging.’ Tomiko wasn’t intending to join them. ‘And Charity Weiksner’s right in there as family spokesperson. They’re making do with what they can get. Have you caught any of this? Or her?’ Tomiko indicated no on all counts. To be honest Geoffrey’s other daughter was ageing well. Olive-skinned and intelligent and mannish— very Geoffrey apart from the colouring. We’d had no further contact once Fleur died and I found I didn’t appreciate her staking a claim, (which she could only do because Josh and Eurwen were yet to be tracked down). Now it was all that My Tragic Sister stuff— ‘Oh and I’ve got a bunch of Sara’s possessions he gave me, left in the house after she went. Most were. So what do you think happened? Because, you know, something doesn’t add up.’
Tomiko examined his garment’s streaks and blotches. He’d been kneeling over his work like a floor scrubber but Japanese must be the best-made people with never any sign of cramp in him despite days hunched like this and in his hemisphere it was near the end of his shift. When he jumped back up the paper came with him only to be crumpled and thrown out of shot. The hand picked out a fresh ink stick from somewhere. ‘Bamboo thicket—’ he said, then a couple of words I missed that might’ve been English and to me or Japanese, to himself, and then, ‘snake’, he finished.
‘OK.’ This was a new one. We exchanged a few more sentences, me smiling to cover my ignorance and anticipating Tomiko’s explanation but the ink stick poised mid-air, the bamboo-thing and the snake caused enough of a mix-up for him to disconnect before I was ready. Of course, as far as he’s concerned he has explained what happened— many times over. He told it as a story.
One version of ‘Burning Girl’ goes, ‘There was an artist who travelled to another country. When he came to a certain place, the lodgings were cheap and he stayed. Though the town wasn’t handsome, the mountains behind and the shore made up for it. But the young man had no friends and wanted his home. One day he was sketching by the harbour and a beautiful girl asked to see his work. She had red hair. It lit a fire even icy eyes couldn’t put out. But he had been taught to be respectful of women and the last he saw of her was throwing crumbs to the birds. That night the young man dreamed he was sitting with his paints and brushes when the girl walked toward him out of the water. Her skin was white as bird feathers. She touched his forehead and he cried out, branded.
‘Each day he waited. Sometimes she came. His own home faded, too faint to pain him. Finally, they ran away from the father’s anger and the mother’s sadness to be together. But a dishonourable life can’t stay happy. The artist begged to go to her parents and make peace. What else could they do? ‘Nothing’ and ‘Later’ she answered. And Nothing stayed Nothing but Later turned into Too Late.’
I’ll stop there because it was Nothing to do finally sent Tomiko back to Japan. And cats.
When I was born the three of us went off to Rosemont to live with Jay and Neil— again. Neil of the toad skin who worked in a paint factory, who painted floors with the leftovers and who dealt in anything. Eurwen’s chosen refuge. Tomiko got work at the local college and despite their differences my parents were ‘happy enough’. Then came the day Tomiko walked up the tiled path and found four-year-old Yori sitting on the doorstep. There’s me, pleased with life, eating cat-food out of a dish and their disagreement started over Eurwen’s negligence. She’d been trying to feed a stray tabby and hadn’t noticed my interest in the bait, or even my whereabouts. She did explain, laughing – she always laughed when she told the story – that cats are fussy eaters. They don’t eat rubbish. ‘Now if it had been dog food—!’ Though it took a while, the end was with Tomiko leaving.
But I had my own problems. I could boast that back from Ireland and walking round in the early hours with Josh like a weight tied to my foot, I saw it all. I bet in future an old Yori will be saying, ‘Faced with the ruins of Rhyl— that’s how it started, Sara’s story. She’d been here of all places.’ I find what would become a favourite bit and let my eyes skim over,
On the landward side Victoriana gave way to shabby hotels. Someone had a keen sense of irony: Westminster Towers, The Chatsworth, Buckingham House… outside which a family waited… hoisted a child onto the hip and stepped toward the kerb meeting my look with her own… a severed head…. zombie-zone segued into single-storey burger-bars… according to Eurwen should lead to the fair…
Instead, backed onto the most extensive area of dereliction yet, there is a lone, rotting pub, a shipwreck cruelly named The Schooner. It remains plastered with its own doomed attempts at survival and these inducements to become thriftily unconscious, (Double Vodka and Red Bull Buy One Get One Free!) for some reason are whatcaused me to pull over.
I don’t have trouble slotting in behind Sara’s eyes even if what she’s seeing had either been swept away, (the Chatsworth and The Schooner for example) or evolved into— how could I break it to her? In the case of vampires and ghouls on the billboards, into a lot lot worse. Un-describable. Unimaginable by Sara. Rhyl makes money where it can now. If, with all her own troubles, she ever bothered to speculate, did she think our prospects were bright? What’s that grandmother? It’s thirty years on and the soft sheen along our famous front isn’t just reflections off the sea? Not any more. Rhyl’s slick moving-pavement filled with soft-spoken visitors, all in paid work, is the wonder of the coastline. And those personalised helicopters dropping down beside the Lake are piloted by sleek, clean Rhylites cured of their colds, anger, unwanted pregnancies and all bad habits. Yeah, absolutely. Or sadly, no, grandmother. There’s a limit to what A can do. We’ve got better bones and teeth and skin with fewer wrinkles. But it can’t fix the stray cat problem in Kinmel Bay post-Wave. Nor the poor families that Sara had been struck by as she drove in and every day after, groups that were female-strong, haunting the burger-bars, then left without transport. Only the olde-worlde alcohol ads she describes (they come across evil as Hitchcock’s smoking villains) place Sara’s writing firmly in its time.
