Desire Line, page 32
But she brooded on about Oxford as if I hadn’t spoken, how she’d never want to live in the city again, how it changes but it doesn’t, not really, because it thinks it shouldn’t have to. Her words were hypnotic, reminding me of sleep. I had to keep blinking and then the floor’s colours crept and overshot the joints, off-white curdled into adjacent indigo. Next thing, the plaster walls started to pulsate, as did Eurwen herself with that hair rippling at every movement. Her voice seemed to fill a room stretched corridor-thin and getting thinner and the only fixed point was the cabinet I’d rejected in a lifeless Pryorsfield— Decide what you’re keeping Yori. I know! But it’s all yours. There’s a mountain of furniture and the ceramics— and I can’t count how many pictures. Fleur said you had a favourite. You must have that, if nothing else— She’d known it was more valuable than everything else put together, of course she had. But to show gratitude now was an admission of the lack before. Pleading thirst I heaved myself up and out into what I assumed was a kitchen. It was and vast. Bigger than the living room— a former canteen? Never meant to be part of dwelling, its refit with composites and steel appliances wasn’t at war with a gravel-pit pedigree. And it was where she actually lived, you could see by the chaos. The tops were crammed with packets and cartons and it wouldn’t be for human consumption, in fact I recognised the catfood – still loyal to her usual brand – and the net of misshapen horse carrots spilling from a cupboard reminded me of cake and Jay. There was a refectory table long enough to seat an entire workforce at but catering seemed to have given way to her office. Against the far wall a workstation held every gadget, old and new and even then there was room for more chairs around the Pryorsfield elm coffer, a pony bridle thrown down on lid. And other-than-Eurwen’s possessions were all over. Two raincoats for instance on the back of the outside door. A waxed fedora you could easily imagine topping red hair. Its companion bucket hat had Henri’s blunt face hovering in space under it, an illusion convincing as the Animal Farm sign. And Sara Meredith stepping out.
I popped three ’s at a go under the running tap, feeling both exhausted and an intruder and checked messages to bring me back to myself. The first four, no five stacked up were all from Glenn— all ending
I don’t need to hear. The opera’s cancelled. I don’t need to hear. Your parents killed Sara, Yori. Leave it at that. Don’t need to—
Notes
*See Appendix D
Chapter 31
It has to be perfect.
The construction must be practical, the meaning open and readable by anyone who uses it. Material is crucial. Not just in itself. Consider its provenance, the connections. With each element immaculate, the whole can be transformed, cut free from the act of making.
He’s reading from an old report, recently obtained, on his chosen quarry: Welsh slate, for hardness, is unsurpassed…The Ancients sometimes roofed with Marble…the expense of the material… cost of labour… of no account. The use of Tiles for Roofing purposes may be based upon the fact that they are more artistic than Slates, but those who have built with Tiles, in search of the Artistic, have often found that they have grasped at the shadow and lost the substance. Extraordinary. An auditor’s report that included this sort of language. Before iron, probably before antler and tusk, by the virtues of stone animals were killed and butchered, bellies filled. Flint, shale, slate all had their uses. They named an age.
I sat up. Opened my eyes trying to think what day it is and what was this contraption I’m in and where am I? And butchered? How had that got there? The virtues of stone — well, OK, but butchery?
‘Yori! Are you awake? I’m coming through.’
‘Huh? Er-m-’ The tartan rug turned traitor. Having covered my entire body it was not up to being pulled round the waist. A fringe caught in the chair’s handle became a hitch and the reclining mechanism reversed, shot me upright. On my feet now, with the rug sarong-like, the garment undid its own knot. My mother entered the living room, palmed the switch and was treated to the sight of bare buttocks as I groped around my own ankles. ‘Hang on. I’m—’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. On her way to the kitchen, dressed, she was wearing much the same as last night. Unless it was the same. ‘You fell asleep with the light on. I had to come and do it. And that’s nothing I haven’t seen before.’
But perhaps she was embarrassed— it was very clipped North Oxford this morning. I heard the tap running, cupboards banging, speculated about whether I could get into my stiff-looking pants before she thought of returning. Just made it. My undershirt lay with spread arms raised across one sofa— shot and lifeless. No sign of trainers or jacket, though, or a belt. I was her prisoner.
‘So,’ she said as we sat in the kitchen, the table between us, the tea pot between us, a five year separation back between us that had smoothed over last night and turned jagged again, ‘you were going to tell me what you’ve been up to. I guess that’s why you’ve come.’ Her hair hadn’t been properly brushed out and tangled at the ends but her attitude said fully awake. ‘Town Architect?’
‘A joke. Senior Design Consultant, Project Forward Rhyl. I’m planning things.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well—’ uh, the brightness of those eyes ‘—before I came away, I started a new project. Just got the go ahead. Yesterday. For a path.’
Thanks to Glenn’s persistence last night, the subject of PalmWalk was a pleasure now and I felt like selling it. But her mouth – an unimprovable mouth, peach and open slightly, Sara had described it, and still a girl’s mouth though fifty would be here in a few years— lifted at each corner. ‘Oh, a path.’ I was glad to see that mouth screened by her RSPCA hedgehog cup.
‘Not just a path. Obviously. It’ll be part of the regeneration scheme.’ Come on! You could manage a nod. It was your town for eight years. ‘Connecting key elements along the Promenade— from the bridge, up West Parade, then East,’ I prompted. You walked me along there. To play on the sand, to the shop— later on for my short career at school. ‘The path’s important.’ That’s one reason why it’s important. ‘Also it’s the line everybody wants to take. But things got muddled and Rhyl forgot why it was there. The beach.’
She was considering. For one heady moment I thought she was going to turn inquisitive, These links, say, are they your next project? I framed a reply. But the far side of the window it was getting naturally light. A dog barked and was joined by another and then another in a rousing dogs’ chorus. She jumped to her feet almost upending my tea.
‘Their breakfast’s imminent.’
‘I’m thinking of slate for the Walk,’ I said. ‘For lots of reasons. It cleaves beautifully, wafer thin if you need. But can take immense pressure. It’s formed under pressure and it’s local. Six good sources in North Wales alone, still. I’ve found a really special one over in Pantdreiniog.’ All my correct pronunciation got me was an oh-h! She had her boots on now, was looking around for something to pull over her grey T and leggings, the eyes still showing amusement as she searched at this half-Japanese that could do Welsh. She could’ve passed for sixteen. ‘There’s two seams of it, one purple, one blue. I like that, two shades from the same quarry. I thought mix them, you can get the feel of their layers, their nature, from something like that. Mix them, cut them absolutely exactly, of course, then—’ she pounced on some fallen object behind the industrial-size waste bin. ‘—there’s the other aspect of it, the one where you’re thinking slate, yes, protective,’ my gesture was a steeple, up in the air, ‘but whoa!’ Now a halt signal. ‘Look. It’s being used for something under your feet. A foundation.’
A sweater, old and very shaggy, was what she straightened up with. ‘Sounds very, um, good. Your shoes and things are down here by the way. Are you coming to help? In the yard?’
‘Of course. I’ll get something else on.’
I sacrificed stretches and lunges (again) but not showering and a shave in the newly-installed bathroom, the tiling not grouted and the shower the latest Watermiser model. When I emerged it was to stop-dead facing the room directly opposite with a door just open a crack— into the only part of the bungalow I hadn’t entered. So far. Hers and Henri’s. I reached out to give it a push but didn’t. Why Henri of all people? Apart from her being smart and patient and optimistic and even-tempered and funny, I mean. Who could smile when hit full in the face by a football. Eurwen, forget it – it was an accident – and anyway, time we were off!
And an achiever. Henri Fortun, activist, zoologist, journalist, spokesperson, a professional ‘talker back’, as that Camille woman would have it, who’d loved my mother since forever in the only way she’d been able to be loved, with no interest on your investment expected. Or paid a lot of the time, knowing Eurwen. Yeah, Yori, who could explain the attraction?
I let go the door and went and found Eurwen out under a no-colour sky smudged with white. The yard was wide enough to accommodate a truck’s turning circle but tree seedlings and weeds showed up crack-lines in the hard standing and she’d need to decide soon how much to resurface and how much to green. Some planting would improve the aspect from her living quarters which at the moment was flat, dull and worn out whereas she’d been able to view Jarn Mound above a sea of tree tops and once the Irish Sea itself from an attic. But not a bit bothered at having her environment degraded, she was cheerfully going about her dog-feeding. It was almost done in fact. While she gathered empty bowls from the crazed concrete, dogs of every size and sort milled around her. Nothing pale, though, and nothing long-coated. She sighed when I drew attention to this – told me these sleeker, dark ones were hardest to rehome. Lighter and fluffy were prized. There were a dozen at least I estimated and no identifiable breeds among the pack, just thickset or leggy, square-headed or tapering. One tragic-eyed monster stood high as her hip bones, another low tubular thing skittered around on two hind limbs and a single front, like a trick it kept on performing and you kept on expecting it to fail.
It shrank from me touching. ‘How many have you got?’
That earned me a glare. ‘They come and go. Now Bilbo here – the lab cross – he’s down the road on Monday. We’ve found him a home. He’s for Henley-on-Thames and going up in the world. Good adopters are like gold dust.’
‘Hard to believe. I guess you’re after a dependable maybe older couple—?’
‘Mm, yes.’
‘With a big country house and, oh, the income to support— a dog, say?’
‘Ideally.’
The dogginess intensified, a corn chip and motel bed combo with a hint of nettles. They weaved their way around behind me which I resented, hitting the backs of my knees, circling and jostling for Eurwen’s notice, nosing her. Three-legs showed its teeth. The monster whimpered. Otherwise the canine tension became sub-vocal and almost worse than their racket. Something seemed about to happen. ‘What next?’
She smiled properly, fully, this time, obviously content and in no hurry and sensing it, the animals dispersed in two and threes. A wrestling game started with some shoulder charges. I dodged away. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, enjoying it, enjoying herself. ‘Whatever you like. I do the chickens, usually.’
Out in the dull morning her face was a pale oval above her dark sweater, with every ingredient familiar, the slight freckling, the perfect symmetry prevented by that small mole contained in one eyebrow nine out of ten people wouldn’t notice. The best-known features in the world, mine included. In step, we walked from the modern timber kennels and the wired dog runs, left agape – I resisted suggesting we round the dogs up and call a halt to playtime – to our next appointment in an older, brick outhouse. Set at right angles it formed a third boundary to the yard and had been a store for some useful commodity in the gravel business. There weren’t any other structures showing above the shaggy privet that hemmed in the fourth side of the enclosure and cut off further views. ‘So do you like living here?’
‘Oh, yes.’
What did I expect— no? In fact, what did I want? Never mind all that about passing for sixteen. She’d had me at sixteen, a child-project she probably never tendered for but found herself pulled into anyway— and managed to complete. She’d produced me when she didn’t need to, at sixteen, half my own age, well nearly— now I was bending the numbers her way. But who’d have ever put money on Eurwen seeing it through?
Not me. Not someone who’d stayed away for five years— because I hadn’t allowed things to lapse or been sidetracked. I’d been keeping apart. So you’re here now under cover of a tidying up job, Yori? Or to get a response, even if it means opening an old wound?
I was Bad Son.
Shame. Like a ton of gravel. I took her image in from a few metres off, bent over the doorlock, childlike in the way she braced her whole body as she fought it— I could hear her hard-breathing anger from this distance. Just as all those times as a child, now it kept me from going forward. Doing the obvious by saying let me have a go. Instead while she fiddled with a rusted finger-latch I surveyed where I’d come to after dark. The bungalow’s pretty much as expected, gaunt, nineteen-thirties buff brickwork, every course of which needed raking out and repointing as part of a complete refurb. New lights would have to be made to order to fit five identical punctuations of glazing— make that new frames. The list wrote itself. Three replacement downspouts. A fan-shaped stain unfurled beneath a length of soffit added of its own accord, ‘and guttering’.
‘That’s a good slate roof you’ve up there, anyway. Uncommon for this area—’
‘If you say so.’ She was really labouring with the latch but when I leaned over and did it then grabbed the bottom part of a stable door, she snapped, ‘Don’t open it any further! What d’you think you’re doing, Yori? If they get out this way, the dogs will have them.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
We ducked into the poultry fustiness, poorly illuminated and made unbearable by the mismatched hens’ frantic dashes through sawdust. Their noise wasn’t up to the dogs’ level but – higher-pitched and madder – it was as horrible. Eurwen of course clucked soothingly. My eyes prickled and then a violent sneeze threatened to knock me backwards.
‘Try not to scare the feathers off them, will you? It’s winter next week.’
‘I was thinking—’
‘Open that far hatch. They’ll go out themselves.’
‘I could come down here again for—’
‘Well you’ve found your way once.’
‘—a couple of weeks, maybe—’
‘Fully open! Let them see the outside. Now get further away. You’re scaring them. Further!’
‘—and do repairs.’ The chickens formed up into a squad and made a break for the outside. Slamming the hatch down with force enough to threaten the hinges repaid me with a finale of squawks. I made for fresh air myself, holding my breath, desperate for the yard.
She was waiting, her expression dry. ‘There’s no cockerel now.’
‘What happened?’
‘The fox! Probably the vixen that was in the lane last night, just before you got here— when I was looking out.’
‘You were looking out?’
We swished back though a drift of fallen leaves, litter from a shrub well-established up against the kitchen wall, an elder whose roots I could feel strangling the drains beneath each tread. She put an arm through mine. Any minute now, she reminded me the girls would be dropped off. It was my turn to smile – Of course –being one of the things we’d talked about till the early hours. No never lonely. Henri’s here. Pleased that it was only most of the time,I hadn’t paid attention to her next sentence. I’m so busy and there are the girls. She’d gone on to name them, Zadie or Dodie or whatever she was called, the one who just loved ponies and donkeys— the other was mad keen to walk dogs. My imagination, or was that a vehicle now jolting along the track I’d cycled in blackness, losing faith in Eurwen’s welcome?
Why had it taken me so long? Why become addicted to missing her instead of just seeing her? Why never sugar and always salt?
Forget everything. Forget Sara even because for now Eurwen was as much of her as I wanted. Again and under her roof. ‘That’s good Welsh slate up there,’ I repeated. ‘A thirty-degree pitch, probably copper-nailed. At least that’s all right.’
She left to do messaging. I lurked outside. It was definitely clearing. Though the temperature would linger at seven or eight degrees till the sun got stronger, it was absolutely still, a rarity back home. The fine day was forecast in one corner of the screen, but I was looking at Glenn’s big ruddy face. ‘Amazing huh?’ he smirked. ‘Did I tell you last night? Casino Pigalle made more per person in Rhyl than anywhere else in UK last year. We’re top at something! Us! That’s how we got the grant. So how fuckin’ long are you slackin’ down there?’
Lovely Linda Darnell or Cassie Pigalle or Tess or whoever, had come across after all. The only condition being a pair of mega Casino lightboards had to stand either end of PalmWalk. I could live with that— one of my best girls to start and finish, I could certainly live with that. And it opened up a complete new plotline for me and Tess. ‘Not sure.’ She’d just need to be incorporated, another design challenge. ‘Not long.’
‘So that mug? You worked it out yet? Na— ’course not! What they do is—’.
‘I’ve nearly got it. But can’t talk now.’
‘Hey! Yori. Don’t you wanna know what that boat’s called? William Jones’s?’
‘Has he launched? Send it. Yes— of course I do. What?’
‘Tell you when I see you,’ he said.
See you later Eurwen was promising somebody at her workstation, still in her heavy woollen and boots. I didn’t want to spy and risk identifying Henri, —and don’t worry! she said, full of sympathy for somebody, We’ll fit them in. We will! And we can always—
