You Don't Have to be Good (27 page)

Katharine rifled through the papers of Bea’s in tray, then opened and shut the drawers of her desk.

‘How many pairs of glasses does one woman need?’ she asked, pulling several cheap and battered pairs from the top drawer.

‘Oh, she couldn’t bear it. Her eyes were going . . .’

‘What?’

‘Just getting long-sighted. It’s an age thing, you know.’

Katharine didn’t know. She had excellent vision. If Bea couldn’t afford proper eye treatment, why in God’s name didn’t she ask for help?

‘Oh!’ Katharine pulled her hand away from the bottom drawer and sat up. Precious looked over at the packet of cigarettes and the pair of lacy knickers. ‘I didn’t know.’ Katharine blushed. ‘I didn’t know that Bea smoked.’

Precious shrugged. ‘Just occasionally. She said it made her feel more grown up.’

The familiar twist of anger coiled in Katharine’s gut for a moment. Despite being the older sister, Bea had always refused to behave like one. Katharine had had to do the growing up for both of them. She checked herself and buried the feeling. For all she knew, she didn’t have a sister any longer.

‘So this Patrick,’ she said, closing the drawer. ‘It’s not possible Bea might have gone to him, is it?’

Precious observed the pale, knotted length of Katharine, the no-nonsense skirt and blouse on her girl-like body. There was a prying hunger about her that she was reluctant to feed. She understood that Katharine was a woman for whom everything was a mission – work, family, marriage, and now rescuing her sister. She and Bea had laughed about it and Precious had developed a dislike for the woman sitting here now in Bea’s chair. Neglect, in Precious’s book, came in many forms: neglect of mothers, of children, of marriages, of sisters.

She wanted to say, ‘I hope that Bea’s on her way to Patrick. I hope that she’s working something out. I pray nothing bad has happened to her.’ Yet during her one tentative phone call to Patrick’s number in Ithaca, she had got his wife. After a guarded conversation she was handed over to Patrick, who was adamant that he had no information on the matter whatsoever. And so perhaps Katharine, with this arrow-like determination of hers, was Bea’s best bet.

‘I found this at home.’ She slid a picture postcard over to Katharine. It was of Kioni, Ithaca. A circle was drawn round a white house nestled in the trees above the harbour. The card was from Bea and addressed to Precious’s home. ‘I could stay here for ever,’ she had written, signing it just B.

Katharine noted the date, ten years earlier. Before Frank. Just.

‘That’s his place. And these are his contact details.’ Precious passed Katharine a business card.

‘Patrick Cumberbatch, Consultant. Oh, so quite high up then?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Professionally,’ said Katharine. ‘I hadn’t realised.’

When Bea told her Patrick worked at the council, she had always imagined a cross between a street cleaner and a housing officer. She’d never been able to picture him clearly – that was the point about a secret lover, she supposed, a kind of invisible friend. But clearly he was something rather better paid than a rent collector. She peered at the postcard and felt hope flutter up inside her. She straightened the little piles of Post-Its on Bea’s desk. What if some promise had been made to Bea and she was making her way there? It made her rather cross, for a moment, the thought of Bea gazing down on that translucent sea, idling away her days.

Katharine sank slowly back on to Bea’s chair. Because if she was going there, she would have let someone know, she told herself, not least Patrick. She opened the bottom drawer again and lifted out the cigarettes and knickers. She held them on her lap and looked helplessly over at Precious.

‘I need to talk to this Patrick. Apart from anything else, I have a thing or two I want to tell him about the way he’s treated Bea.’

Precious wondered whether she was referring to the ten-year affair or the other thing.

‘I told the police about the abortion,’ she said, frowning. ‘It didn’t feel good telling them but they asked me outright. “Has she had any operations that you knew of?” They would have found out from her doctor anyway, I suppose.’

Katharine absorbed the blow.

‘Sorry,’ said Precious, seeing all at once that Katharine knew nothing. ‘I thought you knew.’

A void opened up, a sickening drop. ‘When?’

‘Years ago, just before she met Frank. It was the end, really.’

Katharine did the sum. Ten years ago. Bea was forty, Adrian was two, and Laura was four. Precious pressed on. ‘Bea was horrified when she found out. She was so afraid of jeopardising Patrick’s marriage – he has four children. She was always very good like that. Wanted to protect him and his family.’

‘Rather hypocritical really,’ snapped Katharine. ‘If she had really wanted to protect his family, then why see the man at all?’ The harshness of her voice surprised them both and Precious regretted saying anything. Katharine blew her nose fiercely. ‘Sorry.’

She waved away a fly, or was it a dust mote, something, something there just in front of her face. The skin on her forehead contracted and she lost control of the muscles round her mouth. Karen appeared round the corner of the room divider, hesitated and disappeared again. Precious leant forward and patted Katharine’s bony shoulder.

‘She was very matter-of-fact about it. But I sometimes wondered, as the years went by, what it cost her to do that.’

Katharine shook her head and swallowed fiercely. A high-pitched whine escaped her. She dug the fear and the sadness into the palms of her hands with her nails. All around her were notices and overflowing waste-paper bins, screens flickering as far as the eye could see, stifling static, the hum of printers, Xeroxes and phone calls. She would die if she worked here. What would she do in Bea’s shoes? If she was in Bea’s shoes, she would take pleasure where she could find it. If she were Bea, she would go to Ithaca. She hadn’t realised how little Bea had left to lose.

She put the postcard and Patrick’s details in her bag and got up to go.

Precious smiled and stood up. ‘Bea talked about you all the time, you know.’

Katharine was taken aback. ‘Yes. Well, we’re very important to each other. We’re the only sisters we’ve got.’

D
RIVING HOME
from the council, Katharine wailed at the top of her voice so that the tears blurred her vision. She cried all the way round the ring road and down along the traffic jam by Midsummer Common. She tried to recall whether Bea had ever talked about children. She could remember both occasions she had announced her own pregnancies to Bea and she could remember Bea visiting her after the births, laden with gifts and tenderness and love. Then, for quite a few years, Adrian and Laura had filled all the space of their lives, and anyway, there comes a point when it is tactless to raise the subject of children with a single woman in her thirties. It couldn’t be helped. Bea had made the decision to keep seeing Patrick and she must have known what that would cost, although perhaps she could be forgiven for not knowing it would cost her a child. Katharine wiped her face dry with one hand and shook the hair from her eyes irritably. Foolish woman! To all intents and purposes Bea was single for the ten years of her life that she secretly saw Patrick, which was why they were all so relieved when she met Frank at the age of forty. Bea’s met a writer! Quite a catch for Bea. No, not a writer that anyone had heard of, but still, a writer all the same. They had all got excited when they had a moment to think about it. Children weren’t out of the question, but then, as the years passed and no children arrived, they all assumed that it just wasn’t to be. Katharine hadn’t given the matter much thought after a while – life had been such a mad rush what with her career and her own children.

The crying had stopped. She felt washed out and thought how she should have given Bea more thought. Bea had given a great deal of thought to Adrian and Laura, had always been on hand, never complained, always been ready to step into the—

From out of nowhere a woman walked out into the road. Katharine slammed on the brakes and a split second later slammed her palm down on to the horn. For Christ’s sake, she could have got herself killed! The woman, wrapped in layers of feculent clothing and pulling a makeshift shopping trolley, looked neither left nor right but continued her way to the other side of the road. Katharine watched an oncoming van in horrified fascination as it bore down on the shabby figure. It slewed to a halt with inches to spare. The driver leaned out of his window and vented a torrent of abuse. The woman paused just before the opposite pavement, looked at him and hauled her trolley up on to the kerb.

Slower now and shaking, Katharine drove on. She tried to put the spectre of the bag lady from her mind. She focused on Bea. Bea and Frank. The woman in the road must once have been missed. Once, a long time ago. And then wasn’t. This was not the same as the situation with Bea at all. No. Let’s think about Bea and Frank. Bea and her husband. Katharine and Richard had been impressed at first and they had been well suited in many ways, having washed up on the shore of middle age together, both a little the worse for wear inevitably. After all, thought Katharine, the person you are at forty is an awfully long way from the person you were at twenty. Another country really.

She slowed at the roundabout near her turning. She was driving carefully, gently now, looking out for the unexpected. She waited patiently for an opening in the traffic. It was one thing to think that Frank was a disappointment to Bea, but nudging at the edge of her mind was a new thought. For the first time Katharine wondered what it had been like for Frank to live with a woman who was in love with another man. Perhaps he had hoped for children as well. Perhaps he too had hoped for more than he had found.

P
ATRICK HAD
taken to swimming to the village shop most afternoons. Apart from keeping him fit, it gave his day some purpose and appealed to his sense of the absurd. ‘I’m just swimming to the shop!’ he liked to call to his wife as he left the terrace and took the path down to the water. It was a few hundred metres from the small pebble beach near their house, out across the bay and over to the harbour. He always thought it was a shame that he couldn’t swim back, although he had done so once, with Bea, years ago, swimming on his back holding the bread out of the water while she towed the tomatoes and cheese in a bag beside her.

The afternoon sea was choppy and felt chilly when he waded in so that he hesitated before throwing himself under and striking out across the bay. He swam in a measured, steady crawl, aware of his blood gradually warming his muscles, of his breath becoming calmer and catching the rhythm of his limbs. Each time he broke the surface for air, he saw a freeze-frame of the rocky coast beside him. Today the tourist season was well and truly over and the village had a sombre, still-life look to it. The yachts and hire boats were gone, the tavernas had closed except for Penelope’s and the waterfront guesthouse was shuttered up for the winter. His previous visits here had always been temporary, a holiday, but now this was his real life. Well, they were going to give it a go. At the jetty, he hauled himself out of the sea. He flicked the water off his limbs and turned to look back at their house, seeking out the white wall of the terrace in among the trees halfway up the hill. He usually gave a wave to his wife once he was standing on the quayside, but today there was no figure waving back.

The sun warmed his skin and he stood a moment looking up at the sky and letting its rays bathe his face. It rained a bit at this time of year but the sun always came out afterwards and the rain gave the air a crisp, clean edge to it. The light here was wonderful, especially off season. The light was the whole point, wasn’t it? All those years in England in the bloody dark. It was one of the things he always told people. Why live in the Dark Ages when you could come and visit us in the light? Very few visitors yet, though, other than their daughter of course. He took a deep breath and ran his hands through his hair and down over his torso. He knew he was in good shape for a man of sixty; he still had his hair, his muscle tone and his height, and that mattered to him, although – he licked the salt from his lips and raised a hand in greeting to Yannis sorting nets in his boat – he wasn’t sure how much it mattered to his wife.

Patrick looked over towards the shop. The great thing was, he didn’t even need money. They had a tab set up there. All very civilised. A cockerel crowed and a donkey’s complaint sawed the air. Yes, at this time of year it could get fairly quiet out here, but one bar stayed open and the ferry from Kefalonia still brought the occasional visitor in search of solitude and blue skies. He looked up at the house again, set among cypress and oak and eucalyptus trees. He thought of his wife, setting the coffee to boil in the kitchen and preparing the guest room for the arrival of their daughter Annabel and her children. He tried a smile and shook his head. No, no one in their right mind would give up all this.

He took a deep breath. Theirs was a quiet, careful marriage. No sudden movements or loud noises. Susan had put up with a lot and he had much to thank her for. But then he had always been careful about his marriage; there had never been any question of jeopardising his family or his home. And he would have been a fool to turn down the severance package from Cambridgeshire County Council, although some days – Yannis had untangled an octopus from the net, gathered its legs up into his fist and was striking its head against the quayside – although some days, when the hours seemed slow and the view somewhat static, he did rather wonder about that word
severance
. Yannis grinned at him and threw the lifeless octopus into a bucket.

Patrick waited. He was waiting for Yannis to finish in his boat and come ashore, he was waiting for a boat to enter the harbour or for the farmer to arrive with his mule. Once or twice he and Yannis had drunk coffee together in the bar next to the shop. He enjoyed that. It gave him a chance to practise his Greek and made him feel more a part of things. He loitered now in his wet shorts, reluctant to go into the shop and back up the hill with the groceries. The move to Ithaca had been a lifesaver really, as far as their marriage was concerned. Not that it was ever on the rocks. Not really. After all, it wasn’t as if he had behaved like some media star and detonated the marriage with a lethal mix of hubris and cocaine. No, he had protected Susan and the children throughout. It wasn’t until the very end that she somehow found out about some of it, and of course things had been difficult for a while. And then the restructuring at work happened over his head, which meant he would have to apply for his own job, and what with the poor inspection performance of his department, the gossip at work, well, it didn’t take a genius to realise it was time to jump ship. And so here he was.