Veil of Darkness (12 page)

Avril will not give up. ‘Say you made up the name Kirsty Hoskins.’

‘But why would I say that?’

‘All sorts of reasons. You were shy, in case they turned you down. You didn’t want anyone to know what you’d done, or you thought Kirsty Hoskins sounded more like a proper author.’

‘We could get round it, I suppose,’ Kirsty slowly agrees.

‘We can’t stop now, we have to go on,’ says Avril, whose heart and soul are sunk deep in the project. Never has she felt so determined. Stupid, uncanny really, and hard to explain how urgent this feels.

‘Well, we could ask Bernie what she thinks and get her to ring up. And Bernadette Kavanagh sounds more professional to me.’

So Avril breathes a sigh of relief. Never before has she taken part in a venture so abandoned and daring.

The following morning a formal memo is issued to the staff. Mrs Stokes pins it up discreetly on the recreation room noticeboard and retires with haste before she is seen. It reads:

The Miss Lewises, who recently mislaid a piece of jewellery in their possession, are happy to say that the item has now been found. The management apologizes for any inconvenience caused by this matter.

Derek Pugh.

T
HE NIGHT LIFE IN
St Ives, although not a patch on Liverpool, gives Dominic Coates the release he desires after spending day after day lolling vacantly on the veranda outside the lifeguard’s hut surrounded by sultry beauties. A pretty boy, with the looks of a girl, he has never suffered from pimples.

With his long, curly hair, enormous brown eyes fringed with long, dark lashes, and his suntanned chest with its couple of whiskers, he feels like the macho hero he is as he struts along in his flip-flops and shorts, staring importantly at the silver water. How Canute would have loved his power. Occasionally, to impress and to reinforce his own self-worth, he shouts into a megaphone warning the brain-dead on lilos to come in closer to shore, or admonishes those who insist on swimming outside the two red flags.

But the most threatening aspect of his sweep of the beach are the lusty lads, like himself, who leap and sway and wobble and thrust themselves about on their surfboards, mostly locals whose favourite patch has now been invaded by sunburned grockles with flaming thighs. No wonder they are aggressive when you think that they endure their sport through the most majestic of winter storms, when the mighty waves curl and rise as high as the roofs, and the furious spray foams and screams into crests of blinding whiteness…

Compared to these heroes Dominic’s surfing efforts are feeble, so he has to compensate in other ways to prove his manly credibility. Luckily he has an impressive crawl, the result of holidaying regularly in the deep blue seas of the Caribbean. The life-saving certificates he gained at his public school are impressive, while his ability to pull birds is awesome.

His peers, impressed, watch his methods covertly while outwardly taking the piss.

The sea is so calm today that the surfers are resting and each isolated swimmer spreads a halo of rings around him. All is well with the world. Dominic can afford to relax. Bodies on the sand move restlessly, arms wave, faces turn, shining surfaces flash back at the sun, and flags and towels and windbreaks slump without a breeze. All is massed and pulsing life, flickering and astir. Dominic’s concentration wavers.

To Bernadette he gives not a thought. OK, she was a great lay for a while, and OK, he admits, he did lead her on to think they might get hooked one day. She assumed it, he didn’t deny it, and who is to blame for that? A looker, a real head-turner wherever they went. It’s fun to mix with those from the other side of the tracks now and then, but she was a clinger and Irish, highly strung and dangerous. God, she tried to top herself after they’d finished and they said it was because of him. Shit. Some of the tricks women play.

‘I shouldn’t drink on duty.’

‘It’s only one can of wine,’ says this classy bird from Yorkshire, rich and husky, here with her family and bored out of her mind. ‘It’s beautifully cold. What’s up, can’t take it?’

‘Don’t tempt me.’ He grabs her by her bare shoulders and bites the nape of her neck, daring her to taunt him again. He has already downed two lagers.

She gazes at him full in the eyes, but he won’t respond, he makes her work for it. Leaning back on one casual elbow he rips the strip from the can and puts the chilled metal to his lips, watched by his small throng of groupies.

Beads of sweat form on his forehead as the sun beats down mercilessly—if only he could cool off with a dip, but while he’s on duty that is out of the question. He must maintain his watch, but the sun is so hot that a haze has formed between him and the edge of the water, a haze through which a blend of sounds echoes: the shrill laughter of women, the happy screams of children, the mock-terrified shrieks of swimmers, and behind all these the whispering sea.

Dominic glances once again at his expensive waterproof watch. Three more hours to go, bloody hell, he only got four hours’ sleep last night.

The girl from Yorkshire is giggling now as she traces a sandy line down his leg, between the soft, downy hairs.

He needs something spicy to keep him awake.

‘Get us a cheeseburger, sweetheart.’

‘You’ll get BSE with all the crap you eat. You don’t know what they put in those things.’

‘I’ll get you one, Dom,’ says a large-breasted rival of the Yorkshire grockle. ‘Sauce and mustard?’

Dominic Coates is not quite sure what first turns his blood to ice as adrenalin surges through his body. It is like a silence on the edge of sound, a tiny, unidentified pocket of alarm with a heartbeat all of its own, and it comes to him like something primeval, like whales or dolphins communicating. He is up before he hears the first frantic screams.

‘
It’s a child in the water
!’

‘
Help, get help
.’

He is like Cupid with wings on his heels, but the shifting soft sand holds him back. His eyes seem congested with bright red blood. His breathing thunders in his head as if he’s reaching the end of some marathon. Dear God, let it not be too late.

Terrorized and impossibly white, her eyes gone black with fear, a woman stands at the edge of the water pointing out into the distance. ‘She’s out there, Melanie, she’s only three…’ and her teeth chatter with cold and fear.

Three or four disorientated adults group helplessly round her, gaping stupidly into the void of disbelief.

‘
Help me, God help me.
My husband’s already gone out, but he’s not a strong swimmer.’

Dominic’s desperate eyes scan the water, and there, at an impossible distance, almost beyond the fringe of the bay, he spies something floating.

He runs at full pelt through the knee-high water until he can throw himself into his crawl. As his strong, young body picks up the rhythm he curses the booze that restricts his pace. He turns his head for breath now and then, gasping, gasping, trying to glimpse how far he has come and how far there is still to go.

Dear God help me.

Pace yourself.
Pace yourself
.

He imagines himself in the pool at school, swimming for a medal in the relay, swimming for the cup. Now he is swimming for life itself. He had always believed this would be fun, a challenge, a test of his strength and courage.

What crap.

The sudden blow to his head almost stuns him. Bewildered and blind he gasps for breath and struggles to undo the heavy arms that clutch at his body like suckers and threaten to drag him under. ‘
What the fuck
?’ Such desperate strength, a madman gone wild beyond reason. The terrified words play back to him, ‘My husband’s already gone out…’

‘It’s OK, Dom, I’ve got him.’

Dominic can breathe again. Thank God, it’s Justin, a young local lad, a surfer.

‘I’ve got him,’ screams Justin, ‘help me kick him off, get his neck.’

With all the force at his disposal Dominic chops at the throat of the man with the beaten eyes and the mouth full of screams. If he wants his child saved he must loosen his grip.

Now it’s just him and a hostile sea totally indifferent to the interests of men. And somewhere a child. And incredible silence. His body blunders on, but his spirit moves in an infinite waste where he sees no reassuring horizons. If he fails in this he can’t live with himself, knowing he should not have drunk alcohol, knowing full well what it does to the stamina.

Her hands shake, her body jerks.

Bernie gapes at the morning paper,
at the front page of the local paper
, at the near-naked figure of Dominic Coates emerging from the sea with a child in his arms. Has she reached the stage of hallucination, has her madness gripped her with such intensity that she sees him when he’s not there?

She must get her thoughts in order. Her wounds burn afresh with this memory.

‘What is it? Bernie! Hey!
Are you ill
? Speak to me,’ shouts Kirsty. ‘You look terrible. You look like a corpse.’

Bernie hands over the paper. ‘Holy Jesus. That’s him, Dominic Coates, the fella I was with.’

‘What’s he done? Let’s see what it says.’

‘He has rescued a three-year-old girl who they all thought was dead. He brought her back to life on the sand in front of a crowd of people. He’s a hero. Hang on, let me read.’

They read on together. ‘They’re getting at the mother, the kid was out of sight for half an hour before she even missed her. What’s the matter with these sad people?’

‘The father died. How dreadful.’

‘He should never have tried if he couldn’t swim.’

‘They brought his body in half an hour later.’

‘God. Just imagine.’

But this life-and-death drama means little to Bernie, far more important than this is the fact that Dominic is working in Cornwall as a lifeguard for the summer. So he followed her after all, and yes, it would have been simple to discover her whereabouts, just a matter of chatting to friends. He must be biding his time, he’ll get in touch when the time is right. He is probably nervous about her reaction after the suicide bid. Secretly Bernie has always believed that Dominic still cares. You can’t love someone as strongly as she does without any reciprocal feelings,
surely that’s just not possible
? After all, when you look at things calmly, it was his parents who caused the split and influenced Dominic with their snooty beliefs, who threatened to cut him off, who must have made him as desolate as she.

Yes, yes
! It makes sense. All is not lost. Life, intolerable yesterday, is now filled with relief and joy. Hope, which springs eternal, walks once again at her side with hot, sandy feet.

It is a reborn Bernie, gagging with hope, who dials the agency’s number from the communal phone outside the recreation room.

‘I ought to have read it,’ she whispers to Kirsty. ‘Hell, if I wrote it, I ought to have read it.’

‘Shut up,’ hisses Avril, plump legs crossed with excitement.

After a short but nerve-racking pause Bernie is speaking to Candice Love.

‘There was a mess up,’ says Bernie. ‘Your phone call got lost in the system. That’s my fault really, I used a false name, the name of a friend. I’m sorry, I thought it sounded better. I was just too freaked out to use my own.’

She raised enquiring eyebrows. Had she said that convincingly? They had rehearsed this excuse, at length, together.

‘Your real name is perfect,’ says Candice, thinking what cranks some authors are but, when all’s said and done, this one’s rather special with a right to be eccentric. The agent is taking one hell of a risk by keeping this marvellous find to herself and not sharing it with her boss, RC.

‘The main question is, Bernadette, when can you and I meet?’

Money is the problem. Bernie, Kirsty and Avril have worked this out and the only way they could club together to buy a return from Cornwall to London is if they got hold of an Apex ticket, which means buying six weeks in advance. Otherwise they would be faced with an eighty-quid bill, not possible.

‘Funds are rather low at the moment,’ says Bernie cautiously. They will beg, steal or borrow if necessary, but honesty has to be worth a try.

‘Fine,’ says Candice happily. ‘You tell me when you can come and I’ll send you the ticket.’

Bernie’s next day off is on Friday, the most expensive day of the week, but this means nothing to Candice. ‘I’ll order the tickets today and get them sent directly to you. Now, let me explain where to come.’

She asks how much of the novel is ready. When she hears it is finished she immediately demands that Bernie should bring it with her. ‘Although I can’t promise anything yet,’ she says with professional cunning, ‘but if the rest of the book is as good as the first five chapters I think we can be sure of some interest.’

‘But how long will it all take?’ Bernie asks, overexcited.

Candice decides it is best to be truthful, assessing, correctly, that this writer knows nothing. ‘I’m afraid these things do take time.’

‘This year, next year?’

‘Not until next year, I’m afraid, at the very earliest.’

‘How much would we be talking about?’

‘Stop it,’ spits Kirsty with a nudge and a glare, while Avril closes her eyes in shame.

Candice gives her professional laugh while her eyelids bat like cash machines. ‘I can’t tell you that either, not at this early stage, but the first impression I get gives me hope. It all depends on the rest of your novel, of course, and the state of the market at the time.’

‘So we just have to wait and see?’

‘It’s a slow and painful process, but you must have found that when writing
Magdalene
. It probably took you a long time.’ Candice is holding her breath, for this information could be all important—best if an author can knock out one a year.

‘About six weeks,’ is the pleasing reply.

When the hair-raising phone call is over, Bernie fetches a bottle from the bar and they go upstairs to their sparse attic room and drink a toast to
Magdalene
.

They raise their glasses and see one another happy and glowing through Sicilian red. They are friends. They have come together. They have a goal in common. ‘Share and share alike,’ says Kirsty magnanimously. ‘Whatever we get we split three ways.’