Meet Me at the Pier Head (30 page)

‘You wanna bet? Are you questioning my authority, Miss Bellamy? Because I own your apartment, too. I can turn you out whenever I feel like it.’ He chuckled. ‘Not while your
mother’s here, though. She’s kinda special.’

‘So gentlemanly of you, Sir. Lend me a sweater or a cardigan, please. If I go upstairs, Ma might collar me and make me unpack.’

‘Is she diva-ish?’

‘No, just lazy.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ he muttered.

Tia snatched the proffered cream-coloured jersey and led the way out of the house. She climbed into the passenger seat of Theo’s MG and waited while he closed the car’s folding
canopy. For some inexplicable reason, she felt elated, like a child preparing to go somewhere exciting and new. He seemed more relaxed today, as if he might be coming to terms with whatever made
him tense and preoccupied for much of the time. She also felt strangely shy and rather like a sixteen-year-old on her first date . . .

He opened the driver’s door.

‘What’s our destination?’ she asked as he sat and started the engine.

‘Are you going metaphysical on me?’ he asked, an eyebrow arched in amusement. ‘Is it one of those poetic purpose-of-life questions or a matter of simple geography?’

Tia shrugged.

‘Automatic pilot,’ he replied. ‘God’s supposedly in charge of the dimensional probabilities, and this car will take us where it wants to go. OK?’

‘You need treatment,’ was her tart reply.

‘Shut up, or Tom Quirke will put you in his next book. You’ll be a double-barrelled spoilt kid with too many toys and an attitude problem. Making you comedic would be no difficult
task.’

A smile tugged at her lips, but she didn’t give in to it. Was feeling flustered a compulsory factor when it came to falling in love?
I have no idea, have I? Twenty-six years of age,
and I’ve never before suffered from this condition. It seems I’ve been waiting ten years for this strangely sad man with genetic problems, a back like a relief map of West Yorkshire and
a doctorate in humour. His books are so funny and . . . ah yes, that’s it. His books are his escape. Where are we going? And yes, I want the long- and short-term answers to that
question.

‘You’re quiet,’ he said. ‘Are you cogitating?’

‘Only in the privacy of my own home,’ was her smart reply.

It was Theo’s turn to squash a grin. She was a handful. She was several handfuls, tall, energetic, beautiful, naughty, talented, adorable. Very little would faze her. At last, he’d
made close contact with a woman who might understand, because she had the intellect and generosity of heart to cope with his past and his future. He parked the car.

‘Where are we?’ Tia asked.

‘Belle Vale,’ he replied.

‘Why?’

‘My alter ego Tom Quirke owns property here. He’s richer than I am, and he lets some out to families, some to students at the university, some to medical staff from the hospitals.
Money standing still is worthless, so it’s invested and doing some good.’

Tia scanned the street’s substantial Victorian terraced houses. ‘Why are we here? Are you throwing me out?’

‘No,’ he said emphatically. ‘The students have dispersed for summer vacation. Two houses are empty. There will be no audience here. Before we go any further, before we move
south in more ways than one, I’m going to introduce you gradually to me, the me I tried and failed to leave behind.’

She swallowed. Her heart was suddenly in fifth gear, and breathing was becoming a luxury. She felt the colour creeping across her cheekbones. Even as a teenager, she had seldom blushed.
It’s Roedean’s fault, Tia. When it comes to love, you get to analyse
Sense and Sensibility
and write a report about the radical differences and similarities between Elinor
and Marianne Dashwood, both of whom were hysterical females. Why are you trembling? It’s not as if you’re about to lose your virginity, for goodness’ sake.

‘Shall we go inside?’ Theo asked.

Her mouth lacked moisture. With a tongue as dry as unused blotting paper and a throat that seemed to have narrowed, she felt unable to give birth to language. She was going to meet a child
disguised as a man, the man she loved.

‘Portia?’

She didn’t even mind when he used her full name, because he had a way of coating it in honey.
Stop this now, Bellamy. This is the first time, because you’ve never teetered on the
brink of love until now. Are you sorry that you didn’t save yourself for him? He’s no virgin, either – remember that.

‘Portia?’ he repeated.

‘What?’ At last, she managed to force a syllable from the depths of her lungs.

‘Are you nervous?’

She nodded just once.

‘So am I. This falling in love is bloody hard work. I haven’t written a word since . . . for a while.’ That wasn’t true; he’d worked on no body parts, but
he’d started to write an account of his own life, and it was draining. Seeing it pouring out of his typewriter, page after page of his own absolute truth, made the whole mess revive itself to
the point where nightmares were a distinct possibility. Yet it was cathartic in a sense, as if the process were a cleansing agent. She was sitting as still as a lovely statue. ‘What is
it?’ he asked. ‘Are you afraid of me, Portia Bellamy?’

‘I’m afraid of me,’ she admitted, honesty etched into the statement. ‘I’m no innocent, but I haven’t felt like this before.’
Keep talking, Tia.
Don’t sit here like a block of that Wall’s ice cream, solid, rectangular and slow to melt. Where’s your confidence gone? Back to Kent to hide in a priest hole? You’ve always
been in charge, even where Pa’s concerned. Keep calm. Stick with the truth.
‘I feel odd,’ she admitted. ‘Fascinated by you, needing to know everything about you,
leaping off the edge, but afraid – do you understand that?’

‘Absolutely, because there’s no parachute, no safety net. We seem to be suffering from the same disorder. It must be communicable, either infectious or contagious. Don’t worry,
I can assure you that I haven’t brought you here to have my wicked way with your delightful self. To be truthful, I wouldn’t eat in a place that’s been occupied by students, let
alone . . . anything else. Just privacy, a place to talk – it’s what we need.’

‘OK.’

They left the car and walked up the short path to the house. He opened the door and breathed in sharply. ‘There’s the student eau de toilette,’ he told her. ‘Heinz beans
and testosterone – a heady combination.’

Tia laughed. ‘You should put that in one of your books.’

‘Don’t worry, I will.’

‘How many live in here?’ she asked.

‘Four pay rent, but the rest are nomadic. I don’t mind, because I remember my own time at university. I was older than most, and I had part-time jobs, although I know how poor the
youngsters were. Someone has to house them.’

‘You’re a kind man, then.’

‘Maybe. I think of myself as pragmatic – the houses gain value.’

They entered a large living room which was rather frayed at the edges, but spectacularly clean. ‘I thought it would be a mess,’ Tia said. ‘It seems quite tidy, too tidy for
students.’

‘It was in a bad way, but a Mrs Venables comes in during vacations to fight the good fight. She’ll have shifted decayed food and filthy clothing, and she keeps rodent life at bay,
though even she can’t eliminate the under-smell of confined young manhood.’

They sat on a cleanish sofa, and his arm crept across her shoulders.

‘We’re supposed to talk,’ Tia said, a huge smile fastening itself across her face. At last, she was relaxing.

He repaid her with a grin. ‘We’ve done everything apart from
the
deed, so don’t be coy. About Saturday – the ambulance is garaged and ready. Tom and Nancy are
close enough to walk to it, and I’ll pick up their luggage this week. Officially, they’ve bought raffle tickets and won a couple of weeks in Blackpool. You take Rosie on Saturday
morning, and I’ll take Maggie. We’ll get the ambulance out, and put our cars in the garage.’

A few beats of time strolled by before Tia spoke again. ‘So we are definitely kidnapping a child and putting our jobs in jeopardy?’

‘Would you rather leave Rosie’s life on the line?’

‘No,’ she answered with vehemence.

He kissed her gently on her forehead. ‘Think about Maggie. Her daughter is ill in hospital, and no matter what Maggie might say, she loves Sadie. But she knows that Rosie is more
important, so she’s taking her away to Kent. The poor woman is in danger of making her own condition worse, yet she will risk her health for the sake of that child’s safety. I like
Maggie.’

‘I’m growing fond of her, too.’

‘She’s prepared to abandon her sick daughter for Rosie’s sake. What are a couple of teaching posts compared to that?’

Tia nodded. ‘You’re right.’

‘I’m always right.’

She pursed her lips. ‘So am I. What an interesting relationship this is promising to be.’

‘Just don’t challenge me at school.’

Tia giggled. ‘Not even behind the bike sheds or the air raid shelter?’

‘Especially not in those places.’

‘OK.’ She rested her head on his shoulder and breathed him in. This was her safe place; this was where she wanted to be.

In a quiet voice, Theo told her some of his past, the easier bits. He described stepchildhood as vicious, as a cavern deep and bottomless and lonely. The isolated hole, cold and damp, was
created by the interloper, the invader who separated a child from his own blood, from his dad, gradually removing all evidence of her predecessor and fighting a ghost while trying to create her own
family from her own belly. ‘It’s a meeting of precariously united nations in miniature, feelings buried behind stony masks until a fault near the surface erupts and battle commences,
and some fool – usually me – puts his hand on the button that makes a new Hiroshima. I was twelve, confused, and I missed my mother and wanted my father back,’ he said
quietly.

Tia had to remind herself to breathe.

He told her that he’d felt excluded when half-siblings arrived. He described a teenage where corners had been cut from his life; he opened up about feeling like a satellite whose orbit was
denied any warmth from a sun, recounted the many occasions on which he’d run from the diapers, the screaming kid in the pram, the crawling, alien infants, the ‘wrong’ smell of a
house that was
hers
. ‘Then one day when I was almost fifteen, Timmy made a break for it. He was just about two years old, unsteady on his feet, no wisdom, no street sense. Dad was at
work. He hated city life, but my new supposed-to-be-mother was a city girl and she called the shots, so we were suddenly New Yorkers.

‘I saw the truck bearing down on the child, and in that moment he became mine, my little brother. I ran like the wind, knocked Timmy to the sidewalk and took the blow from the slow-moving
vehicle, whose driver had braked. No bones broken, just my shoulder out of joint. She screamed blue murder at Timmy, the way a mother does when her offspring terrifies her. She then put a grateful
arm round me and held me like one of her own. “Come home with me,” she said. “You’re our big, brave boy, and your mom must be real proud of you, wherever she is right
now.” After apologizing to the ashen-faced driver, she took me and Timmy back to the house, pulled my arm back into its socket and gave me coffee with a shot of brandy in it. A nurse, she is,
and she still works in a hospital. She loved me, Portia, though she didn’t know how to say it, and she loves me to this day.’

‘How could she not? Tia asked.

He shrugged. ‘I was traumatized and difficult. Hearing the screams of my mother burning to death left me angry at the world, at God, at myself. Then my dad shut down like a safe whose
combination was lost. He was silent until he got drunk, at which point he became loud and stupid. Till he met her. And as I grew older, I saw the love between them and allowed myself to be drawn
in. I had to want to be loved, you see.’

‘Yes, I do see.’

‘And she made me go to school. High school was easy, and I made friends. Without my stepmom, God alone knows what I might have become.’

‘You had a tough life, Teddy.’

He stroked her silky hair. ‘There is no light without dark. I’ve had a rich life, Portia, colourful like a rainbow, each hue spilling into the next. The only difference was that my
indigo darkened to black for a while.’ He turned and smiled at her. ‘And if you are my prize, then I am well compensated.’ He kissed her long and hard on the lips. ‘Will you
be my prize?’

‘Probably. As long as you’ll be my prize.’

He laughed. ‘You have to read the rest of it first.’

‘That’s fine. I learned to read a few months ago. But just in case, make sure there are no big words in it.’

‘OK.’

They sat for a while, touching, kissing until breathless, both wanting, both needing, both knowing that Theo, like the man in the truck, must apply the brakes. Tia owned no stopping mechanism.
She could control a class of children, but herself? She indulged and spoiled herself. She was a naughty child; no gold stars for Tia Bellamy.

When they reached home, Theo kissed his darling good night before locking himself in the body parts room. He began to write, his head bent over the typewriter, fingers flying
until keys locked in a tangle on the page.

Although I was young, my bones seemed older, colder, gone to mould, even becoming weak. I could not bear the smell or the sound of fire, hated to be touched or spoken to. Memories depended
from my framework, the still vulnerable flesh drooping raw from sinew and cartilage, since I virtually stopped eating. I was a bag of skin, bone and hurt. Somewhere within the shell I had become, a
parasite embedded itself and sucked me dry from within. Its name was, I think, hatred, and its close companions were fury, sadness and despair.

Surrounded by life with all its colour and sound, I remained alone, locked in, isolated, yet still searching for a true solitude into which I might scream louder than the noise of flame and
crackling wood and swollen metal as it pops and buckles in the path of white-hot flames . . .