The Right Thing (16 page)

‘A sort of millennium Lolita. Rather sinister and dark.'

‘Oh, paedo-porn.' He really thought that was more than clever enough, given the spontaneity of thought, but Amanda got up quickly and swished about with her hair and her bag and a jacket that she pulled so fast off the table that her coffee, most of the cupful, fell over and soaked his newspaper.

‘You're such a
boy,
Petroc. I'm really surprised at you.'

‘What have I done?' Petroc mopped at the mess with his sleeve. He would reek of stale coffee for the rest of the day and be reminded of this hopelessly failed encounter. Jamie was approaching with a leer and the kind of lolloping swagger he liked to amble up to girls with. Amanda pushed past him and he made a sympathetic face at Petroc. ‘Upset the queen bee, have you? Let me guess, I bet you said something like, “Let me put my tongue in your ear.” Subtle. Or perhaps it wasn't ear . . .'

‘Piss off, Jamie.'

‘Ooh! Petroc-loves-Amanda!' he sang.

‘Which bits of those words “piss” and “off” are you not getting, Jamie?' he growled, squeezing greyish liquid out of his sweatshirt sleeve. ‘Though you might be right. I might just as well have tried the unsubtle spell-it-out method of pulling her. Perhaps that's what it takes.'

Glyn had a long lunch break, for which he'd phoned Kitty and suggested she meet him at the Tate in St Ives. There was enough time; the classes he'd taken over from Maurice had now been cut to the minimum, doubling up the numbers where feasible and simply cancelling the ones with habitual low attendance, all to save money. Poor Maurice was out of action with serious depression brought on, Glyn soon realized, by the deathly futility of trying to drag the most unwilling and barely literate students through the final stages of GCSE English Language. The oral exams were coming up soon and each pupil made so much effort to avoid preparing for a practice run, choosing a subject for discussion and giving a four-minute talk on it, that during the first period he'd made six of them present an ad lib speech on avoidance of work. Now he was looking forward to lunch.

He drove his scruffy mud-encrusted old Volvo carefully through the narrow streets across the back of the town and down the steep lane towards Porthmeor beach. There were several spaces in the car park, tourists hadn't yet arrived in numbers large enough to make a difference, but Kitty's Fiesta wasn't anywhere in sight and Glyn felt mildly annoyed: he was the one with a class to get back to. George's bizarre turquoise Bentley, though, was parked up on the road above the beach. ‘On the lookout for inspiration, I suppose,' Glyn muttered as he locked his car door and gazed, as he always did, across this strip of the finest pale sand and out to the sea that was the most perfect, most unEnglish shade of turquoise. If this beach was a fabric, he'd always thought, it would be up there with the best cashmere, whereas the scrubby strip of foreshore, loved though it was, in front of Treneath would probably rank with, say, denim or calico.

‘Hey, Glyn, aren't you coming up?' Kitty was up on the road looking down at him.

‘I thought you hadn't got here yet,' he said, climbing the steps towards her. He hadn't expected to see Kitty just then, and managed to catch sight of her for a second or two as if she was a stranger. The wind was blowing her thick fair hair wildly across her face. He liked her like that, unkempt and cosmetically careless. She had large, expressive brown eyes that looked all wrong framed and tamed with make-up. As her hair blew around he could make out her joyous smile and the glint of delight in those eyes as if she was more pleased to see him than she had ever been about anyone else. He'd wondered such a lot lately what exactly, maybe something more than the funeral of Antonia, had prompted the decision to make it possible, after so many years, for her lost child to find her. It had crossed his mind that if she thought there was something lacking in her life, it might be to do with him. ‘A retired man is a diminished one,' his own father had warned him when close to death from the cancer that had hurried so quickly to fill the awful gap of bored inactivity left after the giving up of his all-absorbing work in the Home Office.

‘I got a lift in with George Moorfield.' Kitty laughed. ‘He's meeting someone but wouldn't say who. Keeping up an image of a mysterious and complicated life, I suppose. I thought perhaps you might be able to drive me halfway home at least. I can get a bus the rest of the way, if there's one around.'

‘Sure,' Glyn said, putting an arm round her and pulling her close. He could smell her Clarins body lotion and for a moment he closed his eyes and breathed in the reassuring scent. The first pangs of Rita-guilt hit, as if it was a flu bug he'd known he'd been incubating but had hoped would never come to anything.

‘Hey look down there.' Kitty suddenly stiffened and pointed down the beach. ‘I wonder if that's who I think it is . . .' she said, squinting hard and shading her eyes from the sun. ‘It is. So George was meeting that Amanda girl that Petroc likes. Sleazy old sod, no wonder he wouldn't tell me. Poor old Petroc.'

Glyn gazed out to where she was staring. George was sprawled on the sand, at last managing to look as if it was something he did every day rather than perching gingerly as if there was a cunning freak wave out in the ocean, destined to swirl up the beach and wash him away to the next life. Beside him, clutching a folder, sat Amanda Goodbody, her arms wrapped round her knees.

‘He looks like a lovesick swain at the feet of a goddess,' Kitty commented.

Glyn chuckled. ‘Rather an old and porky sort of swain,' he said. He didn't refute the goddess bit, though, Kitty noticed, but then what man would?

The gallery was full of schoolchildren, swarming and circling and chatting as they filled in activity sheets. Their bits of paper fluttered and waved and were dropped on the floor. A furtive collection of small boys sniggered slyly in a corner in front of a painting of a fat pink naked woman, lying on a beach. Kitty thought she looked as if she'd been tragically drowned and washed up on the sand, but the children giggled and grimaced at and pointed at her breasts and the blue and purple seaweed that trailed through her pubic hair like party ribbons. It reminded her sharply, and with deep retrospective shame, of an appalling incident in the school gym changing-room, with a miserably naked Antonia (who'd foolishly braved the showers) held captive and spread-eagled on the cold tiled floor, while an attempt was made to race a pair of snails along her thighs. ‘First one to her fanny's the winner,' stipulated Rosemary-Jane. Kitty, watching the small boys, shivered guiltily, remembering her cruel self remarking that the snails would never make it, there were too many dents and dimples. She turned away and made for the café entrance. Glyn, who had never known her as anything but grown-up, kind and reasonable, grinned sympathetically at the children's teachers who glared back at him with protective hostility.

‘They probably think you've followed the kids in and you're waiting your chance to sneak one out to the beach,' Kitty said as they went into the comparative peace of the café.

‘It's more likely they were expecting us to make some complaint about the noise level,' Glyn said, picking up the menu and wondering if he fancied vegetable lasagne or a smoked-salmon bagel. ‘There's a common look of defensiveness that all staff on a school trip have. It comes from being thought to be forever in the wrong.'

‘Is that how you feel?' Kitty asked as they sat down.

Glyn thought for a moment, wondering quite what the subject was. ‘I haven't done a school visit for years, so I guess you're referring to an all-the-time feeling. Usually no, I don't, but just lately, I have to say that yes, I do feel as if I don't quite fit.'

A woman with frizzled greying curls was at the next table reading
Northanger Abbey,
the book propped open with a salt pot. She was taking large bites out of a big untidy sandwich, scattering shards of tomato and shreds of lettuce all over her plate along with messy drips of mayonnaise. Kitty sensed she wasn't really reading: she was peering just too intently at her book and had pushed her hair behind the ear that was closest to her and Glyn. She reminded her of Julia in the bar, forever vicariously alert to the goings-on of others. She wondered if Julia had any idea that Ben was phoning her almost daily. She was almost tempted to ring and tell her, ask her to give him a call and take over as chief sympathizer and counsellor. Glyn hadn't noticed the woman listening. She prodded his arm and tipped her head just a tiny bit in the direction of the scattered sandwich.

‘Is it because of the baby?' Kitty said loudly. The woman looked up and met her gaze, an incredulous expression firing from her wide blue eyes. Glyn glanced sideways and grinned wickedly. ‘Yeah, well there's the baby, and that old lover of yours being back in your life.' He leaned towards Kitty and murmured, ‘Do you think she's just nosy or researching for a novel?' Kitty giggled then said loudly, ‘It's not my old lovers that's the problem, more their
wives
.'

‘Or their children.' Glyn suddenly sounded more sombre. Kitty waited, a forkful of lasagne suspended between the plate and her mouth. Far more quietly he said, ‘Years ago, way way back you told me who that baby's father was, which was all right then because I don't suppose it crossed your mind you'd ever see him again. I'm quite good at maths, especially the two plus two variety. I do have a memory you know, I do know that the fool who married your friend Rose and who keeps phoning is Madeleine's father. If she
does
turn up, are we going to get him as well?'

Kitty put the fork down. ‘He didn't know at the time. There's no reason to lumber him with the truth now. Rose doesn't know either, of course.'

Glyn looked angry. ‘What do you mean “of course”? Just how elective are you women about who you tell what to? When Julia rings she always sounds as if whatever she's about to say comes with a “Don't Tell Glyn” sticker all over it. But you didn't mind popping up the lane and discussing this Madeleine with Rita.' His hands were stretched flat on the table, white with tension. The woman at the next table quickly gathered up her book and her bag and swished past to the door. As it opened the sound of laughing children with no complicated histories drifted in.

‘Your ex-baby might feel she's entitled to the truth. If she's looking for her birth mother, what right have you got to keep the secret of her birth
father
?'

Kitty stared out of the window over the many-greyed slate roofs of St Ives. Everywhere you looked in the town, the sea was always just there, both a means of escape and a way of keeping you trapped on land, depending on your mood.

‘You wish I'd never started looking for her, don't you?' she asked eventually.

Glyn didn't even hesitate. ‘Since you ask, at last, yes,' he said.

Kitty was the only one home when the girl arrived. She had spent the morning up in the studio sketching in the outline for a painting of St Michael's Mount and was in the kitchen eating a tuna and tomato sandwich for a late lunch. She'd brought the finished painting of Coverack downstairs with her and propped it up against the dresser shelves so she could get an idea of what colour frame would suit it best. Josh had suggested all her work should be framed with bleached driftwood, with more than a hint that he'd be the ideal person to do the making, but Kitty thought that was just too folksy and twee for work that was already primitive enough.

The
Archers
theme tune was dying away and the kettle was just boiling when Kitty looked up from the sequined swimwear on
The Times
fashion page and caught her first sight of the girl, out there in the yard. Kitty hadn't seen her arrive, hadn't seen whether she'd come up from the beach or in through the gate from the road. There was a stillness about her as if she'd just sprung up from the earth she was standing on, big and unfitting like a sunflower in a wheat field. She was in the middle of the yard, keeping quite still and looking around slowly, as if very carefully taking in where she was and making certain she missed nothing. For someone who was, on the face of it, trespassing, she seemed very relaxed, not nervous at all that someone might call out and challenge her presence. Her hands were deep in the pockets of an unbuttoned long baggy cream jacket that was in dire need of dry-cleaning and she didn't seem to have a bag or anything with her, as if she'd just come up from a stroll along the sand and had simply felt irresistible curiosity.

For several minutes, during which Kitty poured water into the teapot and stirred it around idly, she watched and wondered as the girl stared at the house, turning to have a long look at the barn off to the side. Then she bent to stroke Lily's cat Russell, which rolled on the ground and across the girl's high-heeled espadrilles, rubbing his broad ginger back into the dusty gravel and waving his tail as she patted his tummy. The girl's hair was a deep rich red, darker than Antonia's had been, thick and wavy. As she leaned down to play with the cat, Kitty noticed the way the heavy hair fell forward into stranded clumps as if it, like the coat, was long overdue for a good wash. Russell's paw reached out suddenly and made a swift grab for the dangling tendrils and she squealed, jumping awkwardly backwards and staggering on the too-high shoes. Kitty stood by the window, watching and waiting and very very still. The teaspoon was still in her hand, the warmth from the boiling liquid slowly making itself felt on her fingers.

‘Fucking cat!' the girl shrieked, gathering up the fat hanks of hair and pushing them roughly behind her ears. The cat stalked off with its tail high, leapt gracefully up onto the beach wall and sat with its back to the house and the girl, starting a dignified wash to its paw.