Winterton Blue (27 page)

Bored by the conversation, Vernon raises his glass,

Somerton, Winterton, how fabulous, he cries, Now I'll drink to that!

Blood Hill, says Lewis, in his head, For fuck's sake. I'll drink to
that.

The wind barrels around the side of the hotel: rising from her deep, wine-drenched sleep, Anna dreams of being on a ship. It is not an unpleasant dream, and she's had it before: she is aware of the exact location of the lifeboats, has worked out her exit strategy, and she's wearing her rubber ring. It's just that, this time, she can't find her mother. She's looked in the cabin and the bar, and is making her way up to the top sun-deck when she hears, quite distinctly, her father's voice.

Anna, he calls, Anna.

She follows the sound up to the deck and through a throng of people all gasping with amazement. In front of an ordinary school chalk-board, her mother is giving a lecture. She has drawn a great many pictures on the board, and her hands are white with dust. She's throwing aniseed twists into the crowd.

Look at the lustre, at those facets! she cries.

Anna wants to ask her mother where her dad is, but she can't make her voice heard above the din. Without warning, Nonna appears and puts her arms round her. Anna smells garlic and 4711 cologne.

He's down there, Nonna says, pointing at a dot in the sea, Go on, child, jump!

Anna squints at the figure in the water; the waves are a tripe-grey, rolling mass.

Just do as she says, dear, and dive in, urges her mother, taking Anna's elbow and leading her to the guard-rail, You've got nothing to fear. We've all
been
there, you know.

Anna stares at the figure, nearer now, and sees it's not her father at all. She leans further over, to get a better look. The face is familiar. She leans further still, further and further, and feels the rail slide away from her grip as she tips into space. Now she's tumbling, past the lower deck and the aerobics class in mid-jump, past the duty officer sneaking a sly cigarette, past the porthole where Vernon's round face stares out at her. She closes her eyes and waits to smash into the sea.

The morning sky through the half-open shutters is the colour of raw dough. Anna turns over, sees her mother's bed is empty. With a dry mouth and a banging head, she recalls the previous night. They'd talked, and drank, well into the early hours; they'd discussed love and men and sex like two old friends. She can't recall exactly what was said, but her nausea is mingled with shame: she remembers telling her mother, to wails of laughter and the occasional, intense silence, about Roman and all the others—even the married one. And she'd cadged endless cigarettes from the waiter. Anna feels furious with herself: now, everything she said will be hurled back at her. Her mother will just be waiting for the most inappropriate moment.

Bugger it, she says, pulling on her clothes, She was probably too pissed to remember, anyway.

Anna passes through the foyer and out round the back of the hotel. She finds her mother crouching down at the far end of the yard; in her arms, the big round head of the dog.

What are you doing? she says. She stands over them, her hands on her hips.

And a very good
kalimera
to you too, says her mother, I was just saying
yassou
to Geoffrey here. I shall so miss him.

Geoffrey?

Her mother grins up at her,

An old, very old boyfriend, she says, turning to the dog, But
very
handsome. I told you about him last night, remember?

She stands up, and the dog, freed from the embrace, slumps down on the ground at her feet.

He's going to miss me too, she says, That's plain enough.

We should get going, says Anna, We've got to be at the airport in an hour.

I know, I know, says her mother, waving her away, Don't get your thong in a twist.

Anna follows her mother back through the foyer, fuming.

I do not wear a thong, she says, so loudly that the woman at reception raises her head, I do not even
own
a thong.

Her mother sniffs,

That's not what you told me last night, she says.

Anna refuses to answer. It will be an easier journey back if she doesn't respond to her taunts. Her mother repeatedly prods the lift button.

The light's on, mum, says Anna, pointing at the lit-up arrow.

But no one's home, says her mother, Got out the wrong side of bed, did you?

I had a bad dream. We were on some kind of ship, and you were giving a lecture and I fell in the sea.

Her mother laughs, warming to the story.

Trust you to wreck my cruise of a lifetime, she says, nudging Anna to show she's joking, So that's why you're so cross. I dreamed once that your father ran away with Hattie Jacques. It took me a week to forgive him. Sophia Loren, now, that I could understand. But Hattie Jacques!

Dad was in the dream too. He was swimming in the sea.

Her mother looks up at her, round-eyed.

Can't have been him, she says, He loathed swimming.

Anna feels her headache scythe across the back of her eyes.

It was
my
dream, mum, I think I'd know.

Wonder what it means, her mother says, archly.

It means I had too much wine, says Anna.

Your father hated the water. It was as much as he could do to take his socks off and paddle afterwards. But you'd know that.

Anna thinks she's misheard.

After what? she says, confused.

After that time in Cornwall, says her mother emphatically, as if Anna's a simpleton, When he nearly drowned. He'd got an ant bite on his elbow and went in the sea to cool it off.

She presses the button again. From far above comes the sound of doors sliding shut, and the steady grumble of a motor.

I don't remember it, says Anna, How old was I?

Her mother inspects herself from all angles in the mirrored walls of the lift.

You? You weren't even born, silly, she scoffs, It was on our first anniversary.

Then how could I remember? says Anna, through gritted teeth.

I didn't say you'd remember. I said you'd
know.
Do keep up.

Anna follows her down the cool marbled corridor. Now there'll be a fuss with the key, as there has been every day of the holiday.

And how would I know? says Anna, staring holes into the back of her mother's head.

Because you've inherited the same fear, obviously. I've been observing you—you sit so far back from the sea, you might as well stay in the hotel. Here, I can't get this key to work.

I've left it open, says Anna, turning the handle.

And you a city-dweller, says her mother, disappearing into the darkened room. She opens the shutters at the far window to let in an even pool of light, and turns to her daughter,

So, if it wasn't your father swimming in your dream, who was it?

The light over the east coast is soft and grey. There's no wind, and the stillness of the day is broken only by the liquid trill of a blackbird, and the random cries of the gulls as they fall and rise over the sea.

Anna's room is not what Lewis expects: it's a scene of devastation. The wardrobe doors are hanging open, the clothes spilling out all over the floor; there's a slump of books across the bed and a nest of dirty cups on the bedside table. The walls are covered with sketches and Polaroids, all showing the same scene: the wind-farm, both imagined and real. Thick rolls of paper have been wedged with a steam iron against the back of the desk, and the desk itself is littered with an assortment of charcoal stubs and scrunches of balled-up paper. He unfurls one, holds it one way, then another, then turns it upside down and takes it to the window. It looks like a seascape, but he can't be sure. Perhaps it's a skyscape. He thinks it's very beautiful. Tempted to flatten it, he considers the iron—whether that would do the trick. There isn't time. Turning the sketch face down onto the blotter, he presses out the creases as best he can, then rolls the paper into a tube and slips it in his jacket pocket.

He has a gift he'd like to leave her, but he can't think of where to put it in all the mess. He doesn't consider that Anna
would know exactly where everything is. Deciding that she'll find it eventually, he takes the book of poems and leaves it open on the bed, using the box of matches he stole from her to wedge the page. A last look at the room; nestled among the bedclothes and the spilling books, and looking completely at home, is his love-song to her.

A Woman to a Man

To own nothing, but to be—
like the vagrant wind that bears
faintest fragrance of the sea
or, in anger, lifts and tears
yet hoards no property;

I praise that state of mind:
wind, music, and you, are such.
All the visible you find
(the invisible you touch)
alter, and leave behind.

To pure being you devote
all your days. You are your eyes,
seemingly near but remote.
Gone now, the sense of surprise,
like a dying musical note.

Like fragrance, you left no trace,
like anger, you came my way,
like music, you filled the space
(by going, the more you stay).
Departures were in your face.

Anna reads the poem twice, the little book trembling in her hands. He's left no note, no sign, nothing except this and
an empty match-box. She buries her face between the pages to find the smell of him; leather, cedar, sea-salt. She could wail with the pain in her. Marta said she had heard the front door closing just before lunchtime. Thinking it was Anna and her mother returning home, she'd gone out into the hall to greet them, only to find a heap of notes and small coins on the table. Who else could it be? Marta said, with a sad smile—and not waiting for a reply, added—It could be no one.

Marta's calling her now, from the floor above. Anna shouldn't be angry with her, but she feels it anyway, feels a growing frustration with everyone here—Vernon and her mother, cosying up in the lounge, and Marta, clean, efficient Marta with her bright, artless tones, shouting at her. Anna listens more closely: the tone isn't bright—there's an edge of panic there. Anna takes the stairs two at a time, swinging round the door-frame of Lewis's room. Marta is standing at the window, holding up the net curtain.

I didn't hear anything, she says, as if to apologize, Not a sound.

The room is bare, much as Anna remembers it from her first night at the house. But the window is clear in the middle, as if a cloth has been wiped over the glass. Closer, Anna feels the faint waft of sea-wind on her face.

He smashed it? says Anna.

And this one, says Marta, holding up the net at the second pane, And look here.

She turns to the little table; the tray and the tea-things are covered in shattered glass. Hanging lopsided on the wall is the picture of the river, a diamond smash at its centre. Anna lifts it up to the light. There are fragments of glass stuck around the edges of the frame, and on them, on the picture itself, a thousand dots of dried brown blood.

Is this all the damage? asks Anna, composing her face.

All I can see, says Marta, There's nothing in the bathroom.

Anna closes the door and sits on the edge of the bed. Marta stays at the broken window, as if on watch.

Did you see him at all yesterday? She asks.

Marta's face looks pale blue in the window-light.

Yes. In fact, he had dinner with us. He was quite sociable. Kristian rather liked him.

Your son was here? asks Anna

Yes, and Mr Cabbage—Mr Savoy. It was a merry crowd. We had a pleasant evening.

And did he mention anything about leaving?

Anna hears the tone of her own voice, like an inquisitor. Marta shrugs, but her off-hand manner is unconvincing.

He was interested in a place Kristian mentioned. Along the coast here.

Where along the coast?

Marta doesn't answer at first. She sighs. She looks out of the window; she looks anywhere but directly at Anna. Eventually, she sits down next to her on the bed and stares at the floor.

Anna, don't go after this man. He is—look about you—this is a troubled man, a lot of damage inside him. He's dangerous to love.

Anna's heart is banging so loud she's sure Marta can hear it.

Don't tell them two downstairs about this, she says, Just tell them I've gone out for a while. Now, Marta. What place on the coast?

The walking's not so bad, given that Lewis's usual mode of transport is a van. And his feet aren't giving him any trouble, although, as he's trying to stay mainly out of sight—keeping wherever possible to the beach—he has to stop now and then and tip out the sand accumulating in his boots.

Within a mile of starting he came across a man sea-fishing, a black-cut figure against the backdrop of the waves. They were the only two people on the sand. As Lewis approached, walking a curve around the umbrella and boxes set up on the tide-line, the man turned his head to greet him, just the briefest of acknowledgements, and then continued his long stare over the north sea.