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  ‘Sarah, nothing was further . . .’ He was blushing like a schoolboy caught smoking in the lavatory, and she was smiling like an indulgent teacher who was going to forgive him.

  ‘Nothing was closer to your mind, Ernest dear. Don’t worry about it, please, but don’t treat me like a fool. I may not deserve much, but I deserve better than that. Of course you’re right to think I’m all wrong for Malcolm in the long run. I know that; he doesn’t. Yet. It may take him some time. Now, do we understand one another?’

  He could have wept. She sat down again.

  ‘Don’t fret, Uncle Ernest, please don’t. Worry’s infinitely worse for the ulcer than a bacon sandwich.’ She looked at the grease-stained photocopy of a badly typed will. ‘But is sending me to this particular part of East Anglia a clause in the master plan? Same village, I see, where Charles Tysall walked off and drowned, mimicking the actions of his wife the year before. You want to punish me or something?’

  ‘No, no, I promise you . . . Sarah, I swear!’

  ‘You’ve just told me not to do that. I believe you, but if you’ll excuse the pun, I thought you might have wanted me to lay the odd ghost.’

  Malcolm Cook did not have his stepfather’s shrewd business acumen, nor did he think his life was ruined by the omission. He considered that less pay for more enlightenment was a good bargain. As for the rest of his limitless kindness, he had learned his compassion as well as his tolerance on the sharp learning curve of his own loneliness. The metamorphosis from laughable clown to thin athlete also made him an incurable optimist, most of the time, although not on this particular evening. ‘You don’t know anything about women,’ Ernest had warned him, a truism liberally applied to the whole male sex, but one which was, in his case, less accurate than usual. Malcolm’s former fatness had only preserved a habit of celibacy, not innocence, making him a confidant rather than a practitioner, without rendering him naïve. So had childhood illness. Even a once-fat man, helplessly in love and struggling to disguise it, knows when he is being abandoned.

  There was no point in going back over old ground trying to work out where one or the other had failed, no point arguing; no purpose in analysing performance and saying ‘if only’. He knew you cannot make a person stay if they want to go any more than you can make a tiger a truly tame beast, and with Sarah the analogy was sound since she had that sleekness, with none of the ability to maul or scratch. Nothing had been said, neither in her flat (where she hid her shopping from him), nor in his, where he had nursed her more than a little following the ministrations of obsessive Charles Tysall. They had survived a hot summer of healing wounds, a companionable winter of hot toddies, laughter and warm blankets and he had thought she was his for ever.

  He should have known how no man is allowed to assume anything. In the spring, he could feel her straining the leash, like the dog guided away from the daffodils. He could feel the numbness of loss from the moment of realization when he began vainly arming himself. He must not carp, he must not complain, he must not. He could never go back to what he was before and if he loved her, he must let her go with grace, make himself run into the distance without complaint.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he said peevishly as she let herself in at eight o’clock. So much for grace. Grace is a virtue, virtue is a grace, Grace is a dirty girl who will not wash her face.

  ‘Your father sent us some wine,’ she said, humbly. ‘He and I went out for a drink.’

  There was a pause when both of them turned to the task in hand, she to taking off her jacket and making a fuss of the dog whose greetings took precedence over all other formalities, he to watching rice boil, while both privately, desperately, considered whether they could get away with another evening of pretending nothing was happening. Ready to eat and fill the air with smells and brittle conversation, drink to cure emotional indigestion, pray that neither would say anything real. She came into the kitchen, followed by dog.

  ‘Your father has a job for me. Norfolk, somewhere.’ She was ultra casual, foraging for food. ‘So I’ll be away.’ She shrugged her shoulders as if she had no choice. ‘Don’t know how long.’ Malcolm stirred the rice unnecessarily, hiding his face in the steam.

  ‘That’ll suit you fine, won’t it? You must have persuaded him. No-one litigates in Norfolk. What does he want you to do, go and dig up Charles Tysall? Pay your last respects?’

  ‘Charles was buried in London. Your father gave me the client’s address. You know how vague he is on that subject. I honestly don’t think he even registered it was anywhere near . . . Old client, he says.’ He turned on her, his face hot, his throat choking and his eyes full of salt and water.

  ‘My own father, who professes to love me, enters the conspiracy! Well, well, well. As if you needed help to escape. You’ve been detaching yourself from me for three months, only you don’t know how to say. Am I right?’ He tried to keep his voice light.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Don’t say sorry, will you?’ He poured a glass of wine with a shaking hand, then stuck a piece of kitchen roll near his eyes as if it was the heat which troubled him. The day had been long and hot; he was hungry.

  ‘I would say sorry since I mean it, but not if you’d prefer I didn’t. Listen, Malcolm, it’s nothing you’ve done or haven’t done: I love you and I owe you, but I can’t breathe.’

  He was an articulate man, a large, kind man who liked to cook, a patron of defenceless animals, a natural lover, and all he wanted to do was hit her. He caught that look of mute terror in her eyes and heard the warning growl of the dog before he knew that one arm was bunching the front of her dress in his fist, while the other arm was raised, ready to inflict the futile blow which would never connect.

  Malcolm slumped, let his arms drop to his sides.

  ‘I love you, Sarah,’ he said. ‘I love you to pieces. I’d never hurt you.’

  ‘I’d better go,’ she said, the terror still in her eyes.

  ‘Yes, you’d better. Just go.’

  She went with door closing softly behind her, the dog pawing against a panel already ruined with her claws. Malcolm’s appetite for anything went with her. The dog slunk back and pressed her wet nose into his groin, waiting for him to be pleased. Instead he pushed her away with his hand so tightly around her muzzle she began to protest and he stroked her instead. Couldn’t hit a dog, could have hit a woman, and the mere temptation to violence was a kind of death of anything in which he believed.

  It was finished. She had left him ashamed.

  Mrs Ernest Matthewson dumped a tray on the table in front of her husband and watched fondly as he struggled from the depths of the plump sofa to stare at it.

  ‘What’s this?’ he barked.

  ‘Poached cod. With samphire.’

  ‘Samphire? Seaweed?’

  ‘Full of iron, dear. Better than spinach.’

  ‘It looks disgusting. Do I get potato?’

  She wagged a finger, roguishly.

  ‘Not today. You’ve been drinking. Eat it up and I’ll get you pudding.’

  ‘And what might that be?’

  ‘Low-fat yoghurt.’ He groaned, shot her a murderous look which turned into a smile.

  ‘You remember the Pardoes?’ he asked, looking at the seaweed.

  ‘Oh yes. Awful great house on the coast somewhere. A long drive from here. We used to go and see them quite a lot, didn’t we? In the days when we had to do that kind of thing.’ Mrs Matthewson shuddered. She left home as rarely as possible, did not rue the days when loyalty dictated dreadful social visits to clients.

  ‘Didn’t he make his fortune out of socks, or something? Tried to become a country gentleman, didn’t know how? All sorts of fads and all sorts of mistresses? Bought half the village he lived in? Vulgar taste?’

  Ernest nodded, holding her eyes and taking a long slug of her wine. He did not underestimate his ever-loving wife, but there were times when she was easier to distract than divert. Reminiscence was the cue.

  �
�I saw that, Ernest. Don’t think I didn’t. You know, I can’t work out why Jennifer Pardoe put up with all her husband’s playing around.’ She glared at him, as if infidelity was infectious. ‘Such tolerance that woman had, such marvellous, I don’t know what, qualities. Serene, somehow. She was called Mouse, wasn’t she, because she was like one, small and brownish, pretty, ineffectual little thing, you had to like her. Sympathize, I mean. No-one took any notice of her.’

  Ernest shuffled and coughed. His wife’s memory always amazed him.

  ‘One son came out good, daughter a bit of a dope, nice girl, other son, well he was a nasty little thing, always playing nasty practical jokes. Luck of the draw. You told me it all came all right in the end, with Mouse and her husband, didn’t you? He had that gold hair I’m so fond of. He seemed to fall for her all over again. Then he died. By God, you lot take it out on us. We damn well earn our pound of flesh.’ She patted her stomach, comfortably.

  Ernest cleared his throat, waved his hand and grasped her glass like a man in need. She did not protest. He tried to swig with nonchalance, couldn’t quite manage it.

  ‘I’m sending Sarah there. Mouse – was Jennifer her real name? – well, she’s gone mad. Got to get the estate sorted before she dies too. Sarah’s the right woman to do it.’

  Mrs Matthewson lowered the second glass she had poured while this information was passed with a vague hesitation, incapable of fooling her for a minute.

  ‘What are you planning, Ernest? Why on earth send Sarah away from our Malcolm? Someone else could have gone. You could have sorted it all out from here. Who’ll cook his meals?’

  ‘Good God, woman, you don’t think Sarah cooks his meals, do you?’ he roared, putting into his voice all his own guilt and his dislike of the fish.

  ‘She does other things, then,’ said Mrs Matthewson defensively. Ernest sniggered.

  ‘I’ll bet she does.’

  ‘That’s enough, Ernest.’ His bark was worse than hers, but not as bad as her bite. She threw back her wine as if it was water, allowing the silence of her disapproval to sink in. After a pause, she went on.

  ‘You don’t know anything about Sarah and Malcolm. You know much less than me. Mind you, he always tells me everything’s fine. Such a liar, that boy. I suppose he takes after you. Send her away? You must be out of your mind—’

  ‘Sarah will sort out the Pardoes,’ Ernest interrupted more firmly, recognizing a mutual capacity to lie. ‘She’s a catalyst, she analyses dreams. And,’ Ernest continued as if his wife had never spoken, ‘she’ll never marry our boy, you know. Never in a million years. No grandchildren there.’ This was a cunning move.

  ‘How do you know?’ she wailed. ‘She led him out of the wilderness and she loves him too, in her own way. You just can’t bear the fact she knows too much about you. And the wretched clients. Oh Ernest, what have you done? What have you done?’

  ‘I’ve done nothing!’ he shouted. ‘She wanted to go! She wants the sea!’

  She hesitated for a full minute.

  ‘Charles Tysall’s dead, isn’t he?’

  He lost his rag and his skin went red.

  ‘Of course he is! Dead for a year! Wife dead for two, though it took them a year to find her. What more do you want, woman? Sarah Fortune’s as strong as an ox.’

  She held her peace.

  Sarah had long since bought the new mirror for the hall of her flat. Like the old, it caught the reflection of herself as she entered, greeted her at the end of the corridor on to which the door opened, revealed her with the cunning of an old enemy. The replacement of the mirror was supposed to be therapy, a positive step towards putting things back the way they were before the former mirror was broken. A gesture to prove it was not all her own fault, as everything else was. Sarah Fortune knew she was beyond redemption. Leaning out of the window with her arms on the wrought-iron balcony, staring into the night, imagining the sound of the sea and the wind in the trees, waiting for thunder, tears and some sensation of liberation, she was feeling nothing, apart from a desire to run back up to his flat, demand entry and say, I didn’t mean that, can we just go on as before? An impulse so overpowering she had found herself halfway there, twice. Then crept back, regretting as much as anything the failure to explain, the sheer cowardice. But if she had said, It isn’t as if I don’t love you, as well as revere everything about you, he would have laughed and said, How can you love and leave at the same time? And she would say, Because I cannot be what you want me to be and in the end you would hate me for that.

  He did not imprison; he was too kind. At least not with stone walls or shackles, only with constancy; the terrible patience of waiting for her to arrive and the unspoken denial of what she had been and what she was. She saw him come out of the big front door at midnight, dressed in a track suit, the dog alongside. Jogging away across the park, running for company, his nightly ritual. One lover, the best and most honest of them all, padding across the brown grass, back into his world. And she to hers.

  Only if she put her hands very firmly over her own ears, could she conjure up the remembrance of dreams, the instincts of courage, and the sound of the sea.

  CHAPTER TWO

  There was no fence to separate the small figure of Stonewall Jones from the scrubby garden into which he stared, or from the greenish, mud-coloured land which stretched from behind his thin back into the distant strip of gold which meant the sea. From his small height, he could see everything he wanted. When he was as still as now, he merged with any landscape, a colourless little boy, whose pale orange hair corresponded with the freckles all over his skin and the eyes which seemed merely to reflect, without any shade of their own. Stonewall suited his nickname. Others were called Jack or John and came to fit a more aggressive mould even at eleven years old, but Stonewall blended effortlessly into ageless scenery as a born observer. No-one noticed him at home any more either. He had once been the apple of his mother’s eye, but that was when he was a baby. She had new babies now and there was no room. He was good for nothing but hanging round in school holidays, coming up here with the bait he dug twice weekly for Edward Pardoe and which he had just delivered to the kitchen at the back.

  ‘Baah,’ he breathed. ‘Kchoo, coo, coo.’

  Stonewall desperately wanted to be loved, even though his own habits of silence discouraged affection. There was no way to express his own love for the sheep in the garden except by making a sound like a pigeon. Birds he could magic from the skies, lugworms from the sea, but none of it helped a boy who was looking for a dog. Sal had never behaved; she had been a russet-coloured flirt, skittish as a sandpiper, which was why she could have been spirited away so easily by a thief. Stonewall was quietly craving possession of this placid sheep for something which would love him unreservedly and mutually. He also liked the house, simply because it was more than half a mile from all other houses and looked as if the inside was big enough to swing several cats.

  Not that he would have dreamt of such barbaric methods of measuring space since animals of all kinds, not only dogs, had the effect of melting his bones. His own dog had been given to him to act as a constant companion, keep him safe in his wanderings and make him more forthcoming. The failure of the latter purpose, and the presence of baby twins gave some explanation as to why he had not been encouraged to weep for her loss in that small, cramped and shrill-voiced cottage where a dog had been a luxury and everyone encouraged him to get lost. It was not as though they did not care, he simply felt he took up too much space. He supposed they would let him have another, but he couldn’t think of that, yet. A sheep with twisted horns would be less of an obvious substitute for a walk through town. Stonewall smiled widely at the very idea. It could graze on the ever-present washing in the back yard. He could get it a lead.

  ‘You’re a silly thing,’ he murmured, then shook himself and sighed. Sheep always seemed so content. The breeze made his hair stand on end. He was not bored on an idle day like this, since that was a condition he could no
t understand when left to himself, but he was a trifle restless. Rick would not play this morning: no-one wanted to go looking for ghosts. They all talked about a white-haired ghost who stole bits and pieces from the dustbins, but no-one, not even Rick, was going to believe his sightings. It was a mistake, Stonewall reflected gravely, to be known for both silence indoors and exaggeration elsewhere.

  He turned for one last look at the house. From an upstairs window, an indistinct figure in bright clothes was waving at him. For a moment he was startled, then waved back, putting energy into his arm, twirling and dancing for her benefit, watching her double over in laughter.

  That was no ghost. It was mad Mrs Pardoe, always ready for a game. Funny the way she noticed everything, even himself. He thought of cantering across the lawn, telling her he’d left the sodding bait wrapped in newspaper by the back door, and would Edward please pay him some time? Or shouting, Have you seen my dog? He did neither.

  On the way home for the sort of dinner he despised (shepherds pie and peas), Stonewall formed the conviction, on slender circumstantial evidence, that the ghost had got his dog, only because it was better than believing she was dead.

  He slouched the half mile back into what he thought of as a town.

  A fly buzzed at the window. The room was full of half-read books, usually less than half. Edward Pardoe pretended he had read them all, so that he could quote the odd bit of poetry or drama and dazzle the hayseeds with whom his superior artistic tendencies were forced to slum. At his feet was a painting of Joanna. Edward read from his pocket book of Browning.

  That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

  Looking as if she were alive . . .

  She didn’t. His sister’s face looked flat and dead, a bad piece of chocolate-box art. Edward threw the book away, kicked the painting under the bed and turned to the doll’s house.