Perfectly Pure and Good (26 page)

`That's all right,' said Sarah, equably, but dry. 'I confess I don't usually receive quite such a flattering reaction when I take off my clothes.'

Edward blushed, relaxed more than slightly. Even like this, so serious and frightening, she was able to make a man think there was nothing incurable about his own condition.

`What shall I do, Sarah? What on earth shall I do?' he asked humbly.

She noted that he asked nothing about her own history, nothing about the scars, nothing which expressed concern about anyone other than himself Men in extremis were always thus; she was used to it in the adult version, and this was a mere, play-acting boy. She sized him up, considered her own code for dealing with misery by the simple if temporary means of bodily comfort. The men in question needed to command affection and respect, this one commanded neither. All he deserved was a chance of redemption.

Ì don't know. Stop dreaming of wealth and changing the landscape into something you might like. You hate this place, leave it. You're the younger son, the underachiever, your sister says.

You'll always be powerless here. Make a break for somewhere else, before your last friend rumbles you.'

`Leave? With nothing?' he asked incredulously, glancing at the table, full of papers, brief notes in neat handwriting, valuations, lists.

`Yes. Enough to sustain you for a while, perhaps. There won't be much of an inheritance anyway. Not after your mother's finished with it.'

He looked at her, the pink spots on his cheeks an alien version of his sister's. Sarah spoke patiently.

`She wants to give it back, Edward dear. She wants to give back all this property to the local people who need it. That's what she wants.'

He started to laugh. A whinnying chuckle which went on and on until his eyes streamed.

`You need food and an injection of sense, Edward Pardoe. You never felt this way before working up at the estate agent's and discovering how much you might have, did you? You can get away with dreaming and painting and doll's houses, Ed; you might even make a living at it, but you can't get away with murder.'

Food. The thought was no longer beguiling. Charles lurched in the narrow alleyway which skirted the back of Miss Gloomer's cottage, leading by a route as twisted as her frame into the high street. The village was criss-crossed with similar environs, ancient rights of way, coal- and fish-delivery routes before the days when anyone would even dream of pulling a horse and cart in front of their own small doors, when families lay cheek by jowl in houses Rick found adequate for one.

Food was not the problem for Charles: enough for the day was all he could contemplate after the sandwiches which had scarcely touched his rotting teeth. Something in the solidity of the scones, like hairs tickling his throat, made him cough, stand where he was and gag, left him thirsty even after the milk which had washed them down.

There were fresh-water taps on the caravan site, easily found by dark when no-one looked. Too soon to go back to the beach, too far to go without water.

`Give me water,' he whispered, 'and there is nowhere I cannot go, nothing I cannot do, even if I am beaten by women; rendered impotent by the weaker sex, when I could have snapped their necks like killing chickens, just like that.'

He had no plans, there was no point in planning, but a dim feeling that he was running out of time for revenge. The image of Sarah Fortune, snarling at him, superimposed itself on the image of his Elisabeth's face, but then these two images had always been blurred. Red hair, red bitches; a feeling of weakness. Was I always like this? Was I never strong? Who loved me?

There was a tap in the graveyard. Perhaps if he went to the second grave of his wife, where he had left the thistles, she might let him in to sleep. Come back to him, chastened, beautiful, the way she was before. Porphyria. Perfectly pure and good. He would tell her he forgave her, raise her from the dead, the way he had raised himself from the sea.

His footsteps were quiet in the dark; an old man padding through a village, unable to force himself to the brisk military walk, tardy, irritated by his own lack of strength, spitting on the ground in contempt of his own sloth, failing to see the blood in the phlegm on the road by the wicket-gate. By the side of her grave, he could almost believe she would rise and greet him; knelt, suddenly humble, felt for her shape in the dark.

His hands felt the petals. Someone had prepared her. The ground was covered with fresh flowers, damp from the rain, smelling of heaven. Gifts for a lovely lady.

Someone. Some man, some thief in the night had borne these tributes. Charles scattered the flowers in a fury of moving hands and kicking feet, ignoring the onset of pain as he bent and tore at roses and daisies, breaking the stems flinging them as far as he could, kicking the containers, not caring about the sound, stamping on petals as if putting out a fire in a ritual dance of fury, finally laying down on the naked earth which covered her. An innocent piece of earth. Even beyond death, even now, just as he forgave her, someone else had laid their claims first, just as they had before. It had all been for nothing.

No-one has claim to my image, Mouse Pardoe thought, not liking the indecision, not one little bit. She was being allowed only one ally at a time, most of them leaving her for diplomatic reasons, the verger first, Sarah later. They had talked a little about the ghost and who he was, and all this time, Mouse kept her hands in icy water. The verger, fisherman born, had dealt with the worms; there was now a ghastly smell of roasted flesh about the place, centred round the Rayburn, drifting through windows but determined to linger.

The sky remained the colour of gun metal. Mouse thought she would always remember the colours of the room; the verger's black against the pinkness of his skin, Sarah's pallor, her freckles, the hair, the russet colour of her shirt, then the colours of the best Pardoe hat with old feathers on the table, the surface of which seemed to glow a dirty yellow. She only noticed then the total absence of the yellower scones with their little bullets of burnt sultanas. She must have been mad. How could she? She talked to Sarah, a little irrationally and over-expansively, about her life, burbling, she said in apology, and all the time she looked at the space where her baking had been. There had been no-one looking when she had made those scones and still she had made them.

Mouse was chill beneath her evening frock and woolly dressing-gown, a combination of garments she would otherwise enjoy. A little lonely, too, but not enough to shout down the earlier suggestions of getting a doctor. 'I've got one of those,' she said to Sarah, 'and a daughter, although I hate the thought of relying on either.' Mouse noticed, quietly, that dear Miss Fortune had been uneasy as well as practical about calling the police. They met each other's eyes over the dialling in a mutual suspicion of authority. The police might question, Mouse thought, the quality of her baking. And the motives, which she could not now remember.

Then Joanna came home. After thirty minutes of PC Curl's questioning, a process as slow as Sarah's delivery was quick, she took the Biro from his hand and wrote it all down for him. Then Sarah left too, just before Julian arrived and there they all were, the whole business protracted by news which put it in perspective.
En famille
, with all the complications of being so. Oh dear.

The trouble was, Mouse Pardoe did not know whether she should go on being sweetly mad or loudly sane. It had been so pleasant, even with blistering hands, to talk to the only two people in the world who knew she could think. She missed it sorely, could not decide whether to keep up her act with her daughter and son, could not even quite remember when it had started or why, could not imagine above all, how she would explain herself for all these months of calculated pretence. Julian was looking at her closely.

The stuff he had put on her throbbing hands had been applied, she noticed, with peculiar gentleness. No. Good Lord, no; she could not keep up her twittering birdsong, not after hearing what the same ghost had done to Stonewall Jones, the boy who had waved and danced for her in the garden whenever he brought up bait for Edward. Her own hands, her own fortune, were not important enough by comparison, and besides, her children were listening to her, really listening, not even pretending.

Ì think the shock seems to have cleared your mind a bit, Mother,' Julian was saying, without talking as if she was deaf all the time. She glanced at him slyly. He did not seem to be playing games; like Joanna, he was honestly and simply concerned, listening with both ears. Jo flitted round the kitchen, bringing back bits and pieces of bland food, the panacea for all ills; Julian offered the wine. Each time Jo passed, she hugged her mother. Mouse had missed the hugging which was something a mad woman denied herself; if not with the verger, certainly with her children.

`Yes, dear,' she said demurely to Julian. 'I do believe my mind is feeling better. Now, what is PC

Curl going to do?'

`Send out a patrol car regularly overnight to us, then organize a search party in the morning. That policeman can't do anything too quickly. He isn't the type.'

His father was not slow, Mouse thought, with a secret, reminiscent smile. Now there had been a neat and nimble figure of a man with a twinkle in the eye to match, oh yes. Tuesday afternoons, for a long time, he was.

À ghost hunt,' she murmured, forgetting to add a manic giggle. Should she say who she knew the ghost was, or say she had seen him with Edward? She could keep her powder dry until she found out what other people knew. Her conscience was variable in its hints, but he was always on it, whatever he did.

Ì don't think the search party should include Rick,' Jo said. `There's no telling what he would do.

Julian, what's the hope for Stonewall? Rick loves him.'

They sat at table, comfortably elbow to elbow.

`Well, I can only say that will help.'

She rested her head against his shoulder, briefly, the first time they had touched in as long as she could remember. He ruffled her blond hair fondly; she did not resist.

Mouse looked at them. Children, love one another; and where is my little changeling, Edward.

Love me, love one another, but listen to me sometimes. That was all I wanted. I think. She chuckled.

`When that Stonewall comes home in the ice-cream van, I shall dance like Tallulah Bankhead.'

The kitchen shuddered with giggles and delicious, hysterical comfort. Julian poured more wine.

They did not think of Sarah Fortune, united in the forgetfulness of all outsiders, although each of them, with separable and secretive degrees of worry, thought about Edward.

Ì expect he's gone fishing,' said Joanna, apropos of nothing, in a gap between laughter.

Mouse looked at the space on the table where the scones had been, and knew how easily laughter sat with grief, how the madness was not always feigned.

The silence had grown longer. Sarah remembered the smell of worms.

`Will they know?' Edward was asking. 'I mean Jo, Julian, anyone else for that matter, about me knowing this man Charles? The ghost?'

`Yes, if your mother tells them so. She could tell them you've let Charles into the house before, and into the cottage next door. If the boy Stonewall recovers and remembers, he'll say if he saw you elsewhere.'

`Christ.'

`Not that they'll know what you discussed,' she said distantly. 'You could have been sorry for him. You could have been passing the time of day with a fascinating stranger.' She spoke with a touch of bitterness.

Ànd what will you tell them?'

`Nothing to contradict what you say yourself I'm a lawyer: we only repeat what we should. I'm well-schooled in that.' Ernest Matthewson came to mind, like a malevolent spectre.

`There's a price. Help find Charles. Help save your family, and yourself'

Ìs that all?'

Ènough, not even much. You encouraged Charles. You conspired to rid the world of your mother and brother, even if it was a malicious day-dream. Didn't you?'

`Yes.' The voice was dry.

`Well,' she said with a finality not quite approaching either threat or promise, 'I think it would be best all round if no-one ever knew about that.'

Ì think I'd like to go away,' said Edward shrewdly. 'Try living somewhere else.'

`What a good idea,' she said with a quiet approval of such intensity he could almost believe he had thought up the idea himself And I suppose for now, you'd better go home.'

`Do you want to come over with me? I mean, should you stay here by yourself? For your own safety?' The onset of genuine concern upset him with a sensation as pleasant as a warm swallow of tea. She seemed to consider for a moment.

`No. Thank you. Taking refuge isn't the best way to deal with fear. In case it becomes a habit.'

`Perhaps I should stay with you, then? For the same reason?' She seemed to consider it, shook her head.

`No.'

Às a guarantee of good behaviour in the future?'

`To stiffen the sinews?' she suggested ironically.

`Something like that.'

The wind had risen with the tide, pushing the water, encouraging the movement. Not the howling gales of winter whipping the waves on the open sea, a nudging wind, swollen with rain, eclipsing the shore line as the sea rode gently forward, filling the quay, lapping over the edge, covering the car-park, wavering at the edge of the road, creeping towards the front doors of the amusement arcade and the gift shops, shifting the litter of the evening and finally dragging it back, prudence dictating a pragmatic retreat on the eve of destruction. Stuck behind the hull of a forgotten boat, the bloated corpse of a dead animal was dislodged and floated away to another part of the coast.

Two Dutch boys from a tramp vessel borrowed the dinghy and rowed for shore in search of bright lights.

On the beach, the sea nibbled at land, obeying the wind without enthusiasm. Those in the adjacent caravans, stirred in the night, the ground beneath them somehow softer, the weight of their shelters settling more solidly after the rain. The sea crept right to the edge of the dunes, way beyond the high-tide level of the afternoon outlined by the sluggish boundary of variegated weed which led the unwary to presume it could invade no further. As the faintest of punishments for man's arrogance, the creeping water brushed the legs of the two furthest beach huts, eroded by similar attacks. The one requisitioned by the ghost collapsed to one side with a sighing groan, settled to sleep like a drunk on crutches as the retreating water sucked from the upended floor Charles Tysall's stolen blanket and other souvenirs.