, page 18
I came back and he’d stayed down. The fabric pulled tight over his protruding vertebrae was depressing— enough to make me want to put my hand out to feel for some muscle, a token of the old vigour. I sat on the nearest seat instead, actually afraid for him. He was seventy-five years of age and looked every one of them, stooped and passive. The hearth seemed mesmerising through the amber contents of his glass— until he tipped it down.
‘I’m very sorry, Josh.’
‘Something else?’
‘Something—?’ I was up again to get him a refill.
‘To say.’
‘Only it’s confirmed. It is her. They couldn’t have done it without—’ what should I choose here? What wouldn’t give extra pain? Emeritus Professor Geoffrey Severing, M.A. (Oxon), D.Phil, F.R.S.Hist.S., O.B.E? ‘Without Geoffrey,’ I said. Geoffrey being Geoffrey, he and Fleur had archived his daughter in numerous databases, nothing left to chance. I waited for a reaction to the hated name but there wasn’t one. ‘Before he died he filled a safety deposit box with—’
‘Medical records, images of course, DNA from her hairbrush, from him and Eurwen— and from a woman called Charity Weiksner.’
‘Yes, she’s—’
‘The half-sister. That year he had in Chicago, the old bastard!’ Josh finished for us, his face ruddy. ‘Christ, what a family! They made her how she was. She was— she was really—’ he gave up on that. ‘His first wife, Sara’s mother, she killed herself with pills, you know?’
‘Now I do.’
‘We’d have been all right, otherwise. I reckon. Me and her.’
I said nothing. Whenever I’d tried to picture them together I failed, a good reason to stop. No one ever talked about Sara, not the way a normal family would, trying to mix love and respect for her memory with a hurt that never got any less— nice stories, funny ones, the sad. Then as years passed maybe even the odd negative one to make her seem real. A vital Severing constituent left one day and never returned. From where? What was happening with her now? They must all have had their theories. But till three weeks ago who could choose a tense to speak in? Sara was or is? It was beyond even Fleur, the family commentator, negotiator and general smoother out. I came to realise Geoffrey Severing thought about not much else, though. He carried on playing himself the way public persons do. Upgraded his technology. Met other old professors in The Lamb and Flag on St Giles. He still published on his pet subject, how the Industrial Revolution had failed at delivering civil progress to keep up with the technology. It kept him in demand till his death at ninety. But talking up Social Luddism (his phrase) or pottering in Pryorsfield’s garden, say, or listening to Fleur’s arthriticy Prelude in C on the piano or even to me, his mind raced round the same tight circuit, exhausted between hope, grief and loathing his son-in-law.
Get Josh outside.
‘Let’s move, should we?’
Incredibly, he did. Down the narrow passage and out— no coat. I snatched mine.
Early evening. Westport would be at its best with the doors standing open to the street and laughter and music spilling out, as genial and different from Rhyl pubs as you could find. We could handle Westport. I said to Josh, ‘I see they’ve done up your place, The Jester—’ I knew he went for company more than drink, so no disrespect here, ‘in a new strip since last summer. It’s—’ But he jerked his head and turned the opposite way. And we were off from the front door and aimed straight at a painful low brightness heaped with cloud, avoiding a woman coming towards us who seemed to know Josh and would’ve stopped given the chance, not speaking to each other though the tension was eating into us, our feet never in step, his stride too long for me.
If you’ve come out and you’ve just swallowed a coal, there are worse walks than Josh’s choice. A few minutes’ march along a straight quiet road of guest houses and tattered palm trees – ruburbia covers vast tracks of Mayo – and you could taste salt. We were into the ‘golf palaces’ as Josh called them, stuccoed, sprawling, risen up from acres of velvet turf. I thought I could guess our route, a circuit of Roman Island, actually connected to the mainland and semi-spoilt by industry, then out onto a man-made promontory called The Point and worth it for the view. But he slanted away, into an alley between walls, two homes’ curtilage, down a little nuisance right of way (for the property owners) I’d never noticed on past visits. I had to drop in behind, stonework gave out to hedge and I lost track of how far this corridor was taking us, trapped in a deep rut under huge skies, cowed and a bit resentful— that would be me. And Josh—?
Finally we came out onto lumpy ground covered in gorse taller than me, already in flower. Just visible through it, shingle and black weed stretched along an inlet.
The marvel of Clew Bay! Josh had blocked me ahead and it had come suddenly as a wide dazzle. ‘The quick way, see?’ He inhaled with effort as I came alongside. A sheen of moisture slicked his face, neck, arms and not a healthy one— but my attention was shifting. How not? This is a spectacular sight. Like nowhere else. Formed by glaciers and changing sea levels, smooth fragments of Co Mayo, too many to count, were spread out through a shallow stretch of open sea. Mist faint as one brushstroke is laid across them— I’d been here in other seasons and conditions but never seen this perfect composition in sepia, white and greige. Every other pigment was leached out by the dying sun as I looked for and found Clare Island out there, the sleeping woman with her draped skirts, surrounded by her smaller sisters, said to be one for every day of the year. And all in black mourning, back-lit. On land, away south, Croagh Patrick’s bare pyramid loomed, a child’s drawing of a holy mountain. Its pilgrim path showed as a chalk line still. Yet there’s not a human figure in any direction so the whole panorama, tide included, seems in suspended animation. Apart from ourselves. Josh doesn’t pause, won’t slow even to take in this wonder or maybe he can’t, because going forward is what’s holding him together while he decides to— to what?
There’s our foot-crunch, the chest-wheeze (from Josh, something new) and the stupid complaint of a bobbing raft of geese. Josh ploughs on. Me after. We were doing seventy-nine steps per minute, I calculated instead of thinking of something useful. Sudden silence— we’d stepped off shingle onto a concrete slipway. ‘Um, Tomiko—,’ I said, ‘We spoke yesterday and he wants me to tell you he hopes you’re in excellent health.’
‘Does he? I’m all right. He’s OK himself, is he?’
The slipway dived straight out, but twenty metres short of actual water an upturned hull of a blue boat was something to make for. For Josh to make for. ‘I haven’t informed him or anyone else about Sara so far. Not before you. When he knows— no, he won’t be OK. He’ll think he should be here to say it himself. He’ll be full of shame.’
Josh said, ‘Now that’s a word you don’t hear every day,’ and breakers we couldn’t even see clawed away at however many islands whispering shame, shame, shame.
We were at the boat. Tiny, up close— the type of thing used to get out to a real boat, it was holed in the bow, needles of fibre-glass around a wound still sharp. Not drawn up then, washed up. ‘What can I do?’
‘Nothing. You’ve come here, soon as you could. That’s something and you’ve done it. She’s dead. Always had to be, didn’t she?’ Harsh— but the final two words lodged in his throat. That’s that, the tone said. He retreated. The slipway was getting fainter by the second and I thought I’d take one last eyeful. Many islets I knew by silhouette had already winked out. Even so, what a shot! You’d wait a week, a month, then miss that line of birds cutting across in precise formation, a single wingspan above the flat water, the gap unwavering. Since I could live anywhere, why not live here? I never would, though. Do what? Where was the work? ‘Sara must have been—’ but I was talking to nobody because Josh was for home, going strong.
When he noticed I’d caught him up, ‘More shelduck than mallards out there this morning,’ he said, making another mention of Sara awkward and almost grubby coming from me. He tapped my upper arm, our first touch. ‘Come on back. I’ve got some stuff there for you.’
In any other circumstances it would’ve been funny, Josh coming down the narrow stairs carrying a fancy red leather woman’s holdall – I think they were called tote bags – with rounded corners and a bright metal initials plate and zips, all top quality. It got dropped between us on the flagged floor and unzipped too easily though there was dust on the surface. The rose-watered silk interior was in fine condition where it showed. But the bag was almost full. ‘Take your pick,’ he told me, rocking back on his heels, gesturing at his dead wife’s possessions like a street trader. Sara’s stuff.
What had I expected? Second time of asking, Yori. Not these objects sealed in plastic jackets, opaque with age. I tipped one out onto my hand. A gold watch, more decorative than useful, the bracelet small enough for a child’s wrist though able to expand. In another identical bag I felt more hard edges, a necklace this time of jointed sections, pearly beads set in crude silver leaf-shapes strung along a chain. A detached bit was trapped inside, stuck in a corner. ‘This is broken. Both hers?’
‘She’s dead, you say. You don’t own things once you’re dead.’ As an afterthought he added, ‘That’s something I learned in the police,’ making it come across extra callous.
After her jewellery were the photographs in bunches, held with elastic bands like decks of cards. Dozens of them. A hundred maybe. I can’t resist a real image, a single untampered-with freeze-frame – especially when it’s Eurwen, my own mother. I get sidetracked and pick out Eurwen Happy – a young girl, chestnut hair streaming behind her in the wind, the sky faded almost to nothing and a fairground wheel filling it. But this Rhyl scene’s not the norm. Spreading the deck on the flags shows me most are of Sara’s world. With Fleur, Sara leans on a terrace balustrade, tiny Eurwen in between, brilliant head part-obscured by Fleur’s skirt. An older Eurwen in school uniform hams it up on the Ashmolean Museum steps with a classmate I was on the edge of recognising. Straight black brows – small mouth – a severe razor-cut framing the blunt very regular face – ‘Henriette Fortun,’ Josh provided for me. She was – is! – Canadian but he made it Anglo, the aitch sounded and the name grating. Obviously he still blamed Eurwen’s friend for a lot that’s gone on. I kept my eyes down and jettisoned the pair in favour of Eurwen and Sara arm in arm, not quite of a height, coming out of the crowded entrance to Oxford’s covered market and into the High. Everyone passing seems to be in smart summer clothes as though fresh from Eights Week or college cricket. Sara wears a pale blue blouse and well-cut trousers— and Eurwen stands out in ripped denims and a slogan-bearing T. But ‘We’re good right now,’ the identical smiles are telling whoever’s snapping them. Reading my mind Josh said, ‘Not one of mine. She brought that when, she, you know— she— it was the only one she carried with her. Must’ve been her favourite. You have them. There’s copies stored and I mean no one else,’ he meant my mother, ‘will want photographs.’
‘How did you get hold of so many?’
‘Fleur.’
First to the smallholding he and Meg boughtI’d never seen – not allowed to visit by then – and to Sligo town after they parted and finally to the cobalt blue house, he’d lugged along all this, whatever this was. Evidence of bad conscience would be Gramps Geoffrey’s definition. There was a period after that first heart attack when he emerged from the John Radcliffe Cardiac Unit as a model of Professor Severing, hair trimmed and combed, all the outer layers lifelike, but— He sat at his desk for hours idling, waiting for the power to be hooked up. And Fleur took me aside. ‘Please consider, Yori, that being ill doesn’t come easily. He has had no practice. He may express concerns—’ you could see behind her worried look the decision to leave this open-ended. Fleur needn’t have bothered. (He never did to me and then later, by reclaiming some of his lost ground health-wise, made it less likely). But I knew from then on Geoffrey thought Josh was guilty of something. Of course I’d always wondered about this missing grandmother. Now I was alert for clues. Officer Meredith, a DI to the end, retired from the police early and left for Ireland – tarnished as far as a teenage Yori was concerned – with Meg but without an invitation to Pryorsfield before he went. Still Geoffrey never spoke, except to say What sort of man gives up at fifty?
I notice the quiet now. Nothing was ever on in the background to simulate company in Josh’s home. I couldn’t remember him watching TV or playing music, though plenty of rows with Eurwen when I was small about its volume. Go through this in the morning, I thought. I’d already dismissed her necklace as worthless, making me a bad grandson— and paranoia said everything contained in here was some kind of test. Josh was just too eager.
Who had killed Sara? Me, I always thought. I wasn’t playing games with you, acting a part. I did it. Pregnant Eurwen ran off rather than face her mother, meaning incomplete, unnamed Yori was haunting Sara from the moment she stepped down onto West Parade. (If a Bogey Man really got turned up by Kim Tighe and the Tarot, guess who?) Then Sara goes missing herself— forget the ‘missing’ element because like Josh said we all knew she was dead. Had tobe. Her bones returning was unexpected but their storyline couldn’t be tucked away in here since Josh had had this stuff all the long years. Hadn’t he? For good manners’ sake I pulled out the A4 manila envelopes that came next, bulging at the seams, threatening to split. I looked at dog-eared pages all crossed with ink or pencil notes. Sara’s. This, I guessed, was how books got written when they were actually written, surplus materials hanging around once the job was complete and they should’ve been removed from site. The great thick wodges of paper were too unappealing to tackle. As was the diary rammed down there with them, embossed 2008. I hadn’t even been born then.
‘She wrote a lot down,’ Josh said.
‘I thought Geoffrey gave everything to her college, the research?’ For the book you’ve just cremated, I didn’t have to say.
When he tried to smooth his forehead with both hands deep runnels reformed. ‘I don’t know ‘bout that. This is what she left.’ He settled on his haunches, grunting, aggrieved at somebody. But the clenched fists covered in age spots lacked a target.
At the base of the bag apart from three yellowed paperback books, were its last secrets— orphan sheets of doodles, unreadable scribbles but also printed off lists. Courses in Animal Husbandry in Southern England would be for Eurwen, and Psychotherapists and Addiction Treatment Centres in North Wales would not, surely? The business card of Private Enquiry Agent with contact numbers were also intriguing. ‘Regent Private Investigations, Rhyl’ offered Process Serving, Vehicle Tracking, Photographic Evidence Generation and Missing Persons. I surprised myself by itching to know how they figured and dropped the card before Josh caught on. Then there was spare stationery and unused envelopes, and at the very bottom a few letters on a proper writing pad, never torn out. It gave up a name and address I knew. Darling Fleur, someone had made a start and carried on for two sides. ‘She wrote to Fleur while she was at your house? So how long was she actually there for?’ No response from Josh. Family history maintained that Eurwen had gone to be with her father one summer, her parents having separated, and then ‘played up a bit’. So Sara’s first trip to Rhyl to bring her home was meant to be brief. But Eurwen didn’t intend to be brought home, as I knew from my birthdate. And something tragic had happened. Obviously. Or uncanny, depending on how you looked at it. Anyway an intelligent successful woman, a forty-year-old mother with a daughter of fifteen, had walked out of existence— and left no note.
I tidied up some loose pages I had hold of. On the point of putting them down I thought, one piece, one piece won’t kill you. It’s what he’s wanting.
Dear Dad
On TV it says Mum might have had an accident looking for me or maybe lost her memory! This is stupid Dad. I told you there’s nothing wrong. You should have made her understand. If she’s been hurt I’ll get the blame from you. And from her and Gramps Geoffrey and Fleur. Why couldn’t she just stay in Oxford? When Mum turns up say I’m sorry. I can’t come back yet. Wait a bit please both of you. Please.
I’ve got this friend he’s really nice and on his own and missing his family in Japan so I’m all he’s got. He needs me more than you and Mum. Don’t get mad. And don’t blame him because every day he wants to come and explain it all and I said no. Only now Mum has run off or something which is just stupid. I don’t want you to be sad or Mum. I’m not that bad person you all think. Why didn’t you sort things out with Mum? And when he comes can you just be cool with Tomiko – he’s really scared. I’ll call you tonight. Tomiko says he wants to but I don’t know.
x Eurwen
Mother and daughter’s hands seemed identical. Both needed effort. I reread parts but even after I was sure of the sense, there were still problems with it. Then all it took was a question too far from me and— another first— Josh cried. In a dry, grating way, trying not to but at least without the howling and destruction this time. He kept his eyes covered, wishing probably that I wasn’t there. I’ve never been close-up to a crying man before. Redness and moisture and the spasms of throat and lips you see in the very young are the same when grown-ups let themselves go, making unsightly babies of them— of him, so I couldn’t stand to see. Age must come like a sneak thief to men like Josh and carry off their reserves. As it had Geoffrey’s but with different results. He never cried.
Ravenous myself by now, I gave Josh a bottle of Harp from the cool store instead of another whiskey while I went and filled sandwiches out of vacuum packs of meat slices and added mustard from a tube. We made a grim picnic of it, silently chewing our share of the food like we were each eating alone, him mechanically, gagging on the crusts because he hadn’t left beer for the end. There was even something dry and papery about the cough. It had me regretting the fudge all over again and that sent me back to his attempts at kindness in the past that couldn’t be wiped out by a frightened boy obsessed over a shattered door. I hadn’t any comfort to offer but it was important to keep thinking of him as a responsible, decent man, to admire Officer Meredith’s courage and professionalism. A good man, my grandfather. Yet his years were passing uselessly in Westport and you only had to look to be reminded how hard. ‘Can I get anything else?’
