Brixton Beach (48 page)

‘Nothing much, a bit tired, that’s all. Why?’

‘Rumours are rife! Had Tessa on the phone.’

‘Ah!’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Simon, isn’t it a bit quick? Aren’t you being a little rash?’

‘I don’t think so.’

All my fault, it seems,’ murmurs Ralph, with self-mockery. ‘Better give up having dinner parties.’

‘Thank God you had that one!’

‘D’you want my advice…?’

‘No thanks.’

Ralph grins and looks at his old friend. He opens his mouth with a rejoinder. But he never makes it. Three bleepers go off and the door opens simultaneously. The staff nurse from A&E comes in.

‘There’s been an incident on the underground,’ she tells them. ‘Reports are just coming in. An explosion—deliberate, they think. Nobody knows yet how many injured. We need the standby team, now. A&E to report to casualty, please.’

The meeting breaks up as everyone reaches for their phones.

‘Oh, now what!’ curses Ralph, looking pale. ‘Now what has some God-awful fundamentalist nutter done?’

But Simon does not hear him. He has turned, as though struck with a sixth sense, towards the nurse.

‘Where?’ he asks, not recognising his own voice. ‘Tell me? Which line, where was it?’

The nurse looks startled.

‘I think it’s the Bakerloo, sir, but we haven’t had confirmation.’

A dark ugly flare shoots up through the bubbling water of the fish tank. It is the last thing he sees in the room as he makes for the door.

Grass and trees. The day’s warmth still lingering in the shocked London air. It stunned him that desolation could be so peaceful. The heart of darkness is here in this incinerator of mangled metal and bodies. All that happened in a split-second will last forever. The willows by the river weep as he stands bareheaded and bowed by incomparable grief. A breeze comes up from nowhere; it carries his memories, for that is all they are now. He imagines her as she had been, answering the door to him, only yesterday; when he was young. Terror has come to Britain, he thinks, his mind bludgeoned and weeping. For at the end of this ordinary summer’s day, he sees with finality that terror is all around. Everywhere love is, there is its possibility, and love has made him understand this.

The garden at Regent’s Park is closing. All over, under a sky pricking softly with the subdued stars of this summer night, there is a drowsy ripeness in the air. In the dying light an overflowing of warmth, thick and heavy and inaccessible, engulfs him. The park-keeper mumbles and nods, his face shocked, shutting away the flowers for the night. Doing what he has always done, but differently, now. The park-keeper is changed forever too. Simon passes a border of red peonies as he leaves. Did she like red peonies? He never asked her.

Alice! his mind cries. All she had wanted was to be loved. She had wanted someone, one person in this country that had become her home, to acknowledge what she had tried to do. In spite of everything she had been forced to leave behind, she succeeded in transferring her allegiance. Yes, he thinks, she had wanted to be loved for this achievement. And he, Simon Swann, had loved her. But it had only begun, he cries; he has only just begun to love her. Too many years late in finding her, still, find her he did. And in this moment of being locked out of the garden, staring at the peonies through the railings, knowing what this must have meant to her, he is so glad that it has been
him
and no one else. Even though they have passed like ships in dark waters, and he is left alone; a foreigner in his own land, still he is glad. Oh, but that he might tell her this! Looking up at the sky, at the lights of a passing aeroplane leaving the city, he sees this night, the first without her, will pass, leaving him behind. And seeing this he understands with terrible,
sweet certainty the thing that he must do. Turning his back on the garden, leaving the bunches of flowers piling softly against the pavement, the flickering candles, the messages of condolence, he heads towards Lambeth Bridge and hurries south. Towards the river, and a remarkable beach, transported by her many years before, moved inch by painful inch, reconstructed. For it is clear that he, Simon Swann, needs this beach; it is clearly and irreversibly part of his internal landscape now. Nothing and no one will erase it. And so he heads towards it, and the small house perched nearby. Where a young man called Ravi, with his mother’s dark, unforgettable eyes, sits in stunned silence. Waiting for him to arrive.

As always to my agent Felicity Bryan for her belief in me and for finding me Clare Smith, my wonderful editor at HarperCollins, who continues to allow me the space to develop as a writer.

Essie Cousins for her tremendous support and encouragement.

Also at Harper Press, Taressa Brennan for making life so much easier and Anne and Sophie not least of all for their excellent maths.

Michele Topham and all at the Felicity Bryan Agency.

Charles, Nicky and Henry Chubb, old friends who gave me a brief insight into the workings of the emergency services.

Thank you.

Mosquito
Bone China

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Press
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First published by Harper
Press
in 2009

Copyright © Roma Tearne 2009
Endpapers © Roma Tearne 2009

Dedication on page 273: an unsourced passage (originally in German) that Wilhelm Hesse pasted in Eva Hesse’s first Tagebuch; EH 1, inside back cover, 1939. Courtesy of the Estate of Eva Hesse Lines from
White Flock
, 1917, by Ann a Akhmatova on page 374 © Anna Akhmatova

1

Roma Tearne asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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EPub Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007330775

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