Undercurrent Read online

  The window stood out from the roof in a small bay made for one, angled against the slope of a turret, so that when he stood inside the frame of it, he felt part of the sky. The gulls wheeled round his head, quarrelling and screaming so close that he ducked automatically, convinced it was he who angered them. There was a streak of guano on the glass, blurring the sight of the watery sun.

  It was paler than pale egg yolk, opaque, almost no colour at all. He lived with such artificial colours, the bright primaries of packaging and pills, colours made for noticing and remembering.

  Not like this. Cloud moved across the egg yolk sun. The sea itself was too vast to contemplate; the horizon melted into mist. Henry looked down towards the ground. It was not nearly as far away as he felt it was. '

  There was greater comfort in looking down than looking up. The vastness of sea and sky made him feel small, while the activity on the ground made him feel human. There was a jogger in a red fleece, varying the muscles deployed in his exercise by jogging backwards on the broad pavement opposite the House of Enchantment, flanking the sea.

  The jogger stopped moving, breathed deeply, hands on hips for a second while he surveyed the sea before stretching his legs, placing them one at a time on the low wall of the parapet and bending his torso towards his thigh. Good boy, Henry applauded. A woman with a posse of chattering children and a baby in a pram passed by the jogger, oblivious to anything but her own amiable instructions. She slowed the pram to avoid a couple with two yapping dogs, one small and piebald, one large and tan, overexcited, pulling at the lead, dancing in tail thrashing frenzy. The jogger continued his stretches. Another runner appeared from stage right. A child sat, waiting for a bus, hugging herself into her coat. A black dog was at the edge of the water, recovering a brown, crumpled object and worrying at it. Henry had the fleeting thought that the object might actually be his hat and hoped he was wrong. He felt a brief and inexplicable moment of happiness. There were people here, after all. A backwards-running jogger, guys keeping fit, that was normal. The dog owners chided their animals.

  The dogs made him sentimental. He should not have lied about owning a dog, just to ingratiate himself. The black dog, tail blurred in movement, yapped and growled at the water's edge, big, bold and secretly scared. Henry scratched his chest and smiled encouragement. When a big wave came in, the dog retreated, barking defiance. Know how you feel, buddy. We all have to bark, whether we mean it or not.

  Then, from stage left, came a strange figure, walking so fast he could compete with the jogger. He was tall and thin and nothing seemed to fit, a suit and coat hanging from his frame like a series of scarves. Business attire, if you happened to be a funeral director, Henry thought; a rabbi on a bad day, some distraught unorthodox, orthodox Jew, smoking, talking to himself, looking at nothing but the inside of his own skull, forgetting in between furious drags on the cigarette that it was lit at all. How could anyone smoke in that breeze?

  His hair stood on end, black, like his clothing, the skin of his hands alabaster white. He strode past Henry's line of vision, arms waving, cigarette unsteady, engaged in a debate with an invisible adversary, a client, a confessor, maybe mouthing words of admonition and advice, so earnest he was laughable. Henry smiled again, engrossed in the view; then sensed the presence of breath other than his own, misting the window. Someone standing level, closer than the seagulls.

  'One tends to spend a lot of time staring out of the window,' Timothy was saying with a sigh, pointing at the figure below. 'He's barking mad, that man, but frightfully clever, you know. Where do you want me to put this?'

  He was carrying a delicate tray of fragrant smells: coffee, sweet scented toast, a hint of silver pots under a large, stiff linen napkin. Henry had the irrelevant thought, hung over from a similar one of the night before, of how odd it was for a house to possess such fine crystal and silver, such elegant china cups and not have central heating. Speaking for himself, he might have sold it all and turned the proceeds into warmth.

  Timothy was dressed in heavy cords, boots, shirt, sweater and cardigan, relatively normal and a comforting contrast to the outfit of the night before, despite the yellow cap which was squashed on his head at a rakish angle. Behind him strolled Senta the dog, carrying a newspaper in her mouth which she dropped at Henry's feet.

  'Oh, I didn't expect breakfast. That's nice of you. Should have been up sooner, I guess.' He forced a laugh, suddenly full of the shyness from which exhaustion had preserved him the evening before.

  'It isn't breakfast, it's simply toast. Breakfast is another matter altogether, has to be ordered.

  Actually, it suits us quite well if the guest stays put until Peter's sorted us out downstairs and done the fires, at least. Such a mess.

  We thought we might go shopping after that. Would you like to come with us? We could, you know, sort of help you get your bearings.'

  'Is there a shower?' Henry asked.

  'No, we told you, didn't we? Only the bathroom behind the kitchen. Free at the minute and plenty of hot water. Eat the toast while it's warm, won't you?'

  For a moment, Henry thought Tim would stand over him until he had eaten the toast and drunk the coffee, in the way of an anxious parent with a picky child. Or leave the dog to ensure cooperation, but Tim merely adjusted his cap and departed, holding the door for the dog to lead the way. Henry could hear him whistling until he reached the second landing, and then the sound died away.

  He steeled himself for the journey down. Slightly breathless from the long climb back, Henry was reflecting that the room where he had just taken a shallow and hurried wash was probably the most archaic bathroom he had ever seen. A bath the size of a family coffin, taps equally grand, a washbasin of similarly vast proportions, plumbing which sounded like thunder, and an outside temperature reminiscent of the Arctic. He was left clean but hardly refreshed by the effort of buttoning his shirt with numb fingers. The action of choosing items from his suitcase (neatly folded cashmere sweaters, scientifically packed: Henry was meticulous about clothes) worried him. Did he really want to walk into town with these guys?

  He sat on the high bed, buttoned his cuffs and thought about it. Told himself he wasn't a homophobe, had nothing against gay guys, not really. He just didn't happen to know any; they didn't move in his kind of circles, or if they did, they didn't shout about it and stuck to their own clubs. He did not quite know the code. All he knew was that he didn't want to be counted as one; didn't want to walk into this funny little town in the company of a pair of oddly dressed men and have people think he was of the same persuasion.

  Henry looked out of the window again. The road by the sea stretched into the distance, culminating in a crazy pier. He did not know which way was shops, could not remember his rehearsal of the map, or which way he had walked in the disorientating rain. He took a handful of pills from his enormous washbag, swallowed with a shudder.

  Yes, he needed a guide. He was not in a state to be fussy, or to preserve an element of his own kind of snobbery; he needed to be led. Is that what it is, Henry? You are a snob, you know. He closed his eyes for the sound of her voice. Francesca Chisholm, with the cut glass British accent, talking about living in a castle and calling him a snob.

  'He first deceased; she for a little tried / To live without him, liked it not, and died,' Maggie Chisholm recited.

  That was not the way it was supposed to be, especially if the he in question was not actually dead. She, being an emancipated creature of the twenty-first century, might have pined for a bit, but then she would think of the compensations, such as freedom, and then she would get on with it. She would realize, after a while, that life was more than an emotional vacuum; that is what she would do. There would come a point when she stopped sitting in her rented room late at night writing him recriminatory letters which were always addressed to herself. She would never seek to rely on men and she would sink herself in her work. Only that, at the moment, was difficult.

  This office where Maggie sat was
remarkably free of comforts, which in the normal course of events she would not notice since comfort was not a priority, but in the cold lack of light of a February morning, a lumpy seat was no aid to concentration already impeded by just that tiny touch of hangover and the presence of a number of cardboard files which felt damp to the touch. In another era, she would have insisted on changing things, shouted or murmured disapproval, assumed an air of authority, whichever seemed appropriate to seek an improvement in her lot or the state of her chair, but this was not the place, or the time.

  She signed a letter with a flourish, wincing at the sight of the typing with the faint letters and the occasional misspelling, corrected by her own fair hand in the same blue as her signature.

  Margaret F. Hooper, her married name, used wanted at this point in her life was a lifelong professionally, the signature sloping over the page towards the bottom left corner, as if too, was on the run. That would do for now. Nobody would notice her absence for an hour. Part-time jobs were not important.

  She was killing time; she did not want to do anything that carried weight. What she really at this point in her life was a lifelong contemplation of the sea, doing absolutely nothing.

  Maggie lit a cigarette and watched the smoke rise and descend in an unequal battle with the cold air of the room. Bugger you Philip; why did you leave me? Why, oh why, oh why?

  He could have been a help, but now she had no choice. She would go to the pier. The sinking pier was good for the soul, because it was rotting. From start to end, it was the same length as the Titanic. She would shiver and chill and postpone awkward things, eat breakfast at the caff, back within the hour. She bolted from the back room to the front door, pulled it behind her with full force. It was a large door and the slam reverberated through the building, making her departure less than circumspect.

  She paused to wipe the brass plaque with the sleeve of her coat; the thing was a disgrace, but then, so was a door to a solicitor's office which was so difficult to open and close in winter that it required the firm application of a boot or shoulder to deal with the warp. Not the kind of behavior to be encouraged amongst the ranks of those in desperate search of legal advice, precisely the category she wished to avoid. Ten in the morning, the place far too populous for her liking; too many familiar faces in this street.

  She was born and raised in this town, escaped it, came back ignominiously and did not, at the moment, want to be acknowledged. By anyone.

  The slam of the door caught his attention, briefly. Henry was delighted with the High Street.

  A butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker, Timothy was pointing out to him, a fishmonger, plus all those other things so useful to mankind, or perceived to be so, such as Dixons for televisions, a delicious shop for linens and a greengrocer with yellow milk and white, free-range eggs. In absolute pride of place in Tim's eyes were the thrift shops, four or five of them, each described enthusiastically to Henry's mystification, as if they were more important than anything else.

  Supermarkets? he muttered, not really familiar with the idea of anything else, and already, by the time it took to draw level with the slamming door, both charmed on the one hand by the row of disparate shops, puzzled by the thrift shops in particular and irritated with the time it took to get around them all.

  By the time they reached this point, Henry was giddy with gossip and information. The slow passage, with long commentary on the buildings, each fulsomely described down to the last occupant, was accompanied by bewildering pauses, when all he wanted to know was Does this street run parallel to the sea? Where is the castle where she lived? Where am I? How can I get back?

  He patted the map in the top pocket of his immaculate jacket. The map was difficult to detect but he needed to know it was there, reassure himself. He had, after all, come here to find himself, and even in his slightly disorientated state, suddenly wanted to be by himself.

  Again, he felt ill mannered. It was a cheerful, bustling street, a complete and reassuring contrast to the desolation of his limited view of the place the night before, and it was not raining, but still he was impatient.

  'And there's the church,' Timothy was saying, grabbing his arm and pointing out the obvious structure further down the road with an urgency which suggested it was about to flyaway.

  Well, one of the churches. There are rather a lot. . .' They had drawn parallel with a narrow building on Henry's right, dwarfed by It

  s oversized front door and a tarnished brass plaque

  fixed to one side.

  CHISHOLM, LAWTON AND COOPER, Commissioners for Oaths. It was the name CHISHOLM

  which caught his eye and held him transfixed, a reminder, as if he needed one, of his real purpose.

  Not the real purpose, he told himself angrily; not the real purpose at all; he was here to earn his living, to see a part of the world he only knew by proxy, to be a tourist, but all the same, the hidden agenda which had underpinned it all came up and slapped him when he saw the name.

  'What's one of these?' Henry said, stabbing a finger at the sign.

  'Commissioner for what?'

  'What? Oh, lawyers, to you, I suppose.'

  Henry cleared his throat, which was suddenly constricted. 'Are there a lot of people called Chisholm around here? I mean, is that a common kind of name?' He was trying to sound as if the question was not urgent. Peter shook his head, in mid-flow.

  'A few of that name,' he said cautiously.

  'I think I'll just go in here.'

  'Why?'

  Henry shrugged. Peter was offended, but his offence was minimal. He rallied and smiled brightly, 'Well, don't forget to take a walk on the pier, before you come home.'

  Home? Did they think he was going to stay there? With that bathroom?

  Peter and Timothy linked arms unselfconsciously and waved him on. Henry hesitated before he applied force to the handle on the door and went in. A pencilled sign, pinned to a wall, told him to bear left. He stood, uncertainly, wondering why he had done as he did, wishing he had rehearsed something to say, feeling a touch defensive. But lawyers were lawyers: there was no task a lawyer would not accept, however frivolous. They were the ones with the local and long distance knowledge, and as far as the lawyers Henry knew were concerned, the customer was always right.

  The client did not exist who was turned away, unless he had no money. Henry's disorientation, which was becoming habitual, like that of someone wandering around with a mild dose of flu, increased as he stood there trying to decipher the source of a clack, clack, clack noise, interrupted by the ttring! of a bell.

  He turned into a room lit by the window, the light penetrating on to the two tables, where two large females sat, hammering away on stand-up-and-beg ancient typewriters big enough to dwarf the size of their formidable bosoms. He had a dim memory of his father typing on one of these infernal machines when he was a child, putting into it the kind of manual effort which would be useful for mending a road. He looked on in amazement.

  The nearest woman, with a bleached frizz of hair and a comfortable face, stopped work and whipped off her spectacles.

  'Yessir. What can I do for you?'

  It was a ratatat command, in tune with her neighbour's continued typing, accompanied by a smile which informed him at once how she could strong-arm him out the door, or welcome him in, depending upon his own manners.

  'Could I speak to Mr Chisholm?'

  'Dead these fifty years, but if you'd like to see the current partner, I'll see if can raise him. Not from the dead himself, if you see what I mean. I'm sure he's somewhere in the building.

  Maybe. Can I ask what it was about? Only Mr Chisholm's substitute might not be the right man at all.'

  'I'd rather not say. It's. . . kinda personal.'

  She nodded, understandingly. The word divorce was mirrored in her eyes as she moved into the foyer and yelled into the cavern of the stairs. 'Mr Burns!' There was an answering, indeterminate echo. She nodded. 'Have a seat in the waiting room. He'll be out
in a minute.' She made it sound as if Mr Burns was unfortunately stuck on the toilet, and the length of time a client might wait before receiving the privilege of the great man's attention was uncertain. All the same, Henry was grateful.

  The room into which he was ushered seemed, in the harsh light of a central bulb scarcely concealed behind a paper shade, to consist more of metal than anything else. One side was occupied by three massive safes, balanced against each other, the one in the middle acting as prop to the two, slightly smaller versions of its iron-clad self, like ancient cousins in three-way conversation. They smelt metallic; they looked icy cold to the touch; they were two metres high, leaving a stretch of yellow wall between their heads and the yellower ceiling. The touch of green on the metal suggested the presence of something perishable inside. Henry turned away and looked for a chair.

  Twelve chairs, he counted, ranged round the sides of the room not occupied by the volume of the safes, each of a different style, a couple made of plastic alone, two more which his untutored eye could see in a museum taking pride of place with their frayed, Georgian beauty, three of lesser, but refined Victorian vintage, despite the rotting forepaw of a leg here and there. The wooden floor dipped dramatically, nothing particularly clean or polished; his hand encountered a piece of extra-cold chewing gum on the underside of the seat he had chosen. He waited.

  The outside door slammed with the same shuddering reverberation which had drawn him towards it in the first place. The clack, clack ,clack of the typewriters went on, interrupted by a telephone and a burst of irritated speech. He waited. A head appeared round the doorway.

  'Do come up, Mr . . .' 'Evans. Henry.'

  'Good morning. Cold, isn't it?'

  The black legs in front of him took the stairs two at a time, and then they were in a bigger room overlooking the street, where it was light and mercifully warm. Not warm enough for Henry to want to fling off his coat, but tolerable.

  'American, Mr Evans?'

  'Oh . . . how can you tell?'