Desire Line, page 34
The air was dense with starch from rice steaming and sharp with the dregs of soy-sauce I’d just emptied onto hot red peppers in my pan. Cooked onions, put aside, added their note. (Also cat smell from the streaky-grey tom that had come through a dip in the Thames and was under my feet.) And frying eggs. I eased them gently away from the sides, folding inwards, cosseting the yolks, losing myself in the perfection of their change. I was less than satisfied – with life not the eggs – but not unhappy. Sara was all boiled off somehow. I hadn’t even remembered to ask if Eurwen had ever met Kim Tighe, for instance. If Neil Rix had been the fairground artist and painted the portrait of Kim on a billboard for Sara to recognise, then it was likely they all knew each other. It was a small place— and Sara wasn’t stupid. Researcher’s intuition had told her she was onto something, that Kim could lead her to her daughter. I liked that, her not being wrong about everything. And that if she’d carried on or held on and Kim hadn’t fried her own brains, it could have worked out. Sara’s journals and the rest of the stuff lay safe in my rucksack. But why, Yori? Just say nothing for another night. You’ll be here tomorrow. And what does it matter if you never know more than you do now? It doesn’t. (I tried to convince myself anyway, nearly succeeded).
‘That’s the liquid gone onto the onions.’ I said. ‘Very soon, now.’
‘You couldn’t wait to learn to cook!’
‘I probably knew I’d need to.’
‘Ouch!’ She stopped what she was doing and came down the length of the kitchen and stood looking into the pan. ‘Was I a dreadful mother?’
‘No.’
‘You were a nice baby. I don’t think I’ve liked another since. Never bad-tempered. You watched everything. We knew you were mulling it over.’
‘I was. This is near ready.’
Obediently she took the place I’d laid for her with Fleur’s second-best crockery and Arts and Crafts flatware, a satisfaction to handle. ‘Ah!’ Finally, she’d noticed Sara’s necklace coiled next to her glass. ‘I haven’t seen this in years. Mum gave it me. Where on earth—?’
‘Josh has been keeping it for you. There was nothing else I thought you’d be interested in. Only this.’
Nodding, she held it up to the light and the moonstones shimmered. ‘It’s been mended!’ In putting it on, her fingers showed they knew how, with no fumbles, and the clean fleece she wore was opened at the neck making the fall into its V perfect.
I’d known it would. ‘Happy birthday!’
‘Thank-you!’ As she half-rose to kiss me she flushed through her white cheeks and all the way down into her throat, hardly looking, IMO, any older than when it had first been given. Did the makers of ever predict this when they were passing out their tickets to happiness and good skin and not-thinning bones, how parents and children ended up siblings with all the problems of that? My only loss was I’d never see her in peacock silk wanting to please everybody round Fleur’s table—
—also that the PalmWalk model was shifted to the furthest shelf to gather dust. It had not, despite her promise, been looked at since this morning. At least the necklace was a success. Then she took it off and handed it back. ‘There’s no point— I won’t wear it. Too sad. Anyway, Henri and me we don’t do that sort of thing. I can’t remember the last time I needed to get dressed up. It was a kind thought, Yori, but really, take it home with you. Give it to— I don’t know, whoever.’
Josh had told me, ‘Don’t be disappointed with her,’ as we’d stood, side-by-side, and looked into his apple tree. ‘If you let yourself, it won’t drive her down— she’s not Sara and thank Christ for that— it’ll just drive her away. See me.’
I brought the rice over, then the ‘child’, fried eggs. Then into another warmed dish I heaped the ‘mother’. It was all vegetables though it ought to have included stewed chicken— unmentionable in my mother’s kitchen. I sat opposite. And couldn’t stop myself saying, ‘Why animals?’
She didn’t pretend. And at least considered it seriously. ‘You know I can’t properly tell you. It’s what I do. Or perhaps all I’m able to do. Sometimes it makes no sense but that doesn’t stop me. And it’s a burden, caring about them so much which I always have. I can’t let them suffer. It would— it would belittle me to let them suffer.’ I was reminded of someone else, another attempt to reason out an attachment that wouldn’t stand up— Tomiko’s. When I’d told him my plan was to come here and I said Eurwen out loud, he’d tried to talk and failed. Stared at his feet. Anyway she seemed to have mystified even herself because she flipped it to a joke, ‘and of course the whole point about donkeys and starlings and dogs is they never read books!’
‘There’s that.’
‘Yes! And why the question? In fact why do you keep staring like that?’
‘I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe I’m looking at real you.’
‘Huh! Too real, probably.’
Silence, apart from her messages announcing themselves and the cat’s long, regular tongue-rasps across its own belly fur which was unpleasant. I do not like cats almost as much as donkeys. I filled both our glasses from the water jug noting she’d gone for the same utilitarian design I’d chosen equipping my flat at Libby’s. ‘Don’t let your supper cool.’
‘I won’t. What happened to Kailash?’
I held up my spread fingers, looking straight at Eurwen. ‘Daddy’s company. Pick of projects. Success. Money. One boy, Hari. ’ But as I said it, I knew another reason. Even salt is never salty enough.
Eurwen nodded anyway. ‘Families!’ and seemed about to start then put her fork down. ‘Oh, I’ve just thought! You used to do pretend meals for a little girl— you’d made her up. My friend would like food. Here is noodles. Here is aubergine. My friend has no dinner at home. Her brothers steal it. She is very poor. Very hungry. Here is rice. What was her name? I always blamed it on Tomiko or whatever we’re meant to call him now. Him and his stories. What was her name?’
‘Tess.’
At the first mouthful she said, ‘Tess-ss. Mm— very nice!’ but then leaned back away from her plate and took stock. Her kitchen was orderly now, the surfaces gleaming, canisters lined up and dry goods stowed away in shut cupboards. Stone floor flags were damp at the corners still. It had taken me hours. The scrubbed deal table sat in its own pool of light while the rest of the room remained dim. I was pleased at the result and as part of the same thought, I realised the necklace mattered less than it would’ve done once. It was mended. She’d worn it. She was going to eat her oyakodon, winding strips of pepper onto her fork, still not putting it to her mouth though, smiling— more mockery on the way? But it was only a hint she would squeeze my arm with her free hand and giggle at herself. And then Eurwen said something made me want to shout out loud with love. ‘I’m amazed you found anything to cook.’
IV
Lantern
When I wake up in Geoffrey’s chair, it’s at the middle of a wrinkle-free sleeve of a building stretching as far as the residents need. Animal Farm’s a lot fitter for humans. Windows open, drains drain and though those good Welsh slates weren’t as sound as they looked, they are now I’ve been on the roof. I try to coincide my stay under it with Henri’s raids on London or Brussels— H, I’m meant to call her if I have to call her anything. When poor planning puts us together we turn into a pair of those not-wanted dogs jostling for Eurwen’s attention. And H still hasn’t seen the funny side of what happened with the mug. How could I’ve known? I never figured out the mechanism that made the mug obsess over one person, never mind how it hated another. Or what would happen. So much for the smile I thought nothing could wipe off H’s face. But things can just work if none of us speaks the name Sara.
2041 marked the thirty-third year since her disappearance and death, the reason for which was left open by the coroner when he reconvened. It made all Josh’s fears valid because the verdict spawned a Sarafest of mentions and clips and theories. CyberSara really is a work in progress which I can’t help getting a charge from. My grandmother. Eurwen’s livid, of course, over Charity’s collaboration with an up-and-coming documaker though I think what’s threatened shows Charity as just somebody else with a weight tied to one foot. Only my opinion. You decide.
Chapter 33
Josh isn’t bothered by any of this. Not many weeks after the inquest, which they didn’t force him to attend, he was found on the slopes of Croagh Patrick. He’d got himself a comfortable position to sea-gaze from, spine supported by a boulder, his belt pouch of coffee uncapped ready to drink. So Macy Kennedy from Gisborne, NZ assumed till he saw frost on the eyebrows and the white horseshoe moustache that turned out to be icicles. (‘He was obviously an oldie sort of guy so I thought it was, like, a lot of facial hair, eh?’) Sometime during the previous night Josh’s body had given up. He’d been willing it to since my delivery of the Sara thunderbolt. Now that he knew for certain she was dead, he must’ve decided why wait? Lack of plus untreated inflammation of the lungs will overwhelm the system but takes effort— and even then some extra final push. He’d made an efficient job of it, getting the height and exposure needed to finally achieve what all that clambering up the Pilgrim Path had been in aid of.
So another return to Westport. Eurwen and Henri would fly in together and separate from me. I made sure I outdid them to be able to play the host in the cobalt blue house, to have a fire lit and the stale air replaced— though when it came to the sense of desertion, there wasn’t much to be done. It’d been noticeable when Josh was still alive and rehearsing his moves with all the courage and professionalism of Officer Meredith. For a natural exit. This knowledge meant the blaze of cut gorse stems (all dried and stacked ready in the hearth), and the Windsor chairs pushed back as if Josh and I had just stood up, and the two books on the shelf where there’d been three, all failed to get to me. But with everything sorted and only the tea to set out, it was his kitchen reduced me to tears. The chipped enamelled sink I’d once disturbed a live spider crab in, (‘Fisherman I natter to down the quay gave it me but it can go back tonight—’) still had a chalky deposit from its final scour. The counter-tops were cleared apart from A Present from Somewhere that held no fruit left to rot. Cupboards emptied as well, which sort of fitted with his request for ‘burial, no fuss or service of any type’. That’s Josh for you. Actually cremation would have been no or least fuss. Only Meg with her local connections had enabled me to wheedle and grease my way to getting him a grave – not simple or cheap in modern County Mayo – while she’d picked the simpler job of organising the hearse to ferry him to it.
She also brought the two women from Shannon. They were late and rushed, Meg apologising though it wasn’t her fault. ‘No wonder flying’s the new smoking,’ Henri said. She was, as ever, very bright, busy and irritating, her look jumping around Josh’s home which she’d never entered before. My mother on the other hand was gypsum pale, almost trancelike in her movements, didn’t join in the chat but still succeeded in giving off impatience. All wore casual clothes. Meg, who’d put on weight over the years, was padded out further in one of those past-the-knees, thermal cylinders Libby took to in winter. Henri seemed to be dressed for messy maintenance work of some sort in a navy onepiece with matching skull-cap that turned out to be her new dye-job on a severe buzz cut. Eurwen’s signature charcoal shade was at least lifted by acid green wool gloves and snood that made loose coils of her hair even hotter by contrast. They didn’t stay to warm themselves at my fire, late as we were, but formed a line in the hall ready for the undertakers’ knock. I felt stupid in my special purchase, a black Crombie coat.
It was an afternoon burial in the cemetery at Aughavale (the locals say it Urr-vul) where Protestants and Catholics can go in alike. Space not sectarianism had been the problem trying to gain entry for Josh. A couple of kilometres from Westport by funeral car, our route was mainly rural but along the fast coastal road. So unwalkable. But I’d have preferred even a dangerous walk to follow my grandfather under a January sky with the white sun up there somewhere. Now you see it; now it’s gone. Even if the fields on either side were desiccated to khaki and salt-lashed, anything would’ve been better than cooped up in the artificial warmth of the funeral wagon across from an Eurwen who’d erected a cordon around herself neither Meg nor Henri, let alone me, dared cross. When our eyes met accidentally— a tortuous journey, continually being overtaken by every sort of vehicle including farm machinery— my mother didn’t blink. Just the four of us,Meg has whispered to the driver, dark-suited like a film extra. Now her words seem to clear up any late curiosity over Josh’s life here. Or so I assumed. But there was a minor surprise in store for us, and very welcome it was. Creating confusion, it helped break the journey’s spell. We found our arrival at the bleak, walled cemetery being watched by a dozen strangers in a tight group, ready assembled on site, muffled up in layers of clothes and still having to huddle together against the chill. Henri, always needing to know what was going on before it went, asked Meg, ‘What’s this? What’s happening?’ Meg shook her head. It took a moment for any of us to understand why they were here. They marked the spot the coffin-pushers were leading us to, the lines of sight being obstructed. Aughavale, very old and Irish was exactly as I’d researched, packed full of crumbling pillars, simple crosses on plinths, Celtic crosses of man-height but leaning, and massive wedgestones and heavy, raised structures that had also tilted. And fancy ironwork fences topped by vicious finials, half-rusted away. Images that had seemed picturesque in reality suggested they had trouble keeping the dead down.
The reserve mourners took advantage of being home side. Mostly short, quite old-looking, more males than females, they were pre-installed and ready. I wasn’t. I’d only ever witnessed cremations and on-screen burials, so for a start I was expecting a decorous green-swathed, putting-the-corpse-to-bed type of thing. Not this hand dug hole with the severed roots on show down the sides and moisture blackening the bottom. You had to stare down at it, at its simple wicked utility. My mother did. Eurwen was probably also getting an education re: burials but kept herself well in check. The Irish observed the lowering of the plain wooden coffin as if they’d only come to ensure everything was done right, and then they paid really close attention to Eurwen and me dropping handfuls of earth on top. Which I’m glad to say we managed without making a sound. No one was officiating and neither of us spoke. Then I was aware the locals had started glancing over their shoulders. Expecting what? Gatecrashers? A band? Apart from Meg’s sobbing, it was soon obvious nothing else would happen and the undertakers/drivers, both women, had stood well back, heads bowed and stayed that way. No help there. A humiliating interval (for the family) ended with the oldest man among the strangers coming around and whispering a few words to Eurwen in that soft Connemara way with them. There was a quick pat for her acid-green glove. There was nothing for me. But with my façade who could take offence? He nodded once into the hole and this was the signal for them to leave, all together, exactly like the quiz team or hobby club they probably were. Car doors slammed beyond the cemetery wall with some calling out and what could’ve been a snort, a choke or a laugh. We, the official party lurked till they’d gone and during the wait I realised that on the subject of façades and what was behind, I’d have given anything, I’d have ripped the Egon Schiele out of its vault and out of its frame to trade for an afternoon in Clew Bay again with Josh. Me and him, counting its islands. A good man, my grandfather. Someone should say that out loud. But Henri’s eyes were darting from Eurwen to grave to Eurwen again, her only concern. Meg had aged extra years with cold and was shivering inside her padded coat. Eurwen stood straight, stylus-thin and quiet, her lips slightly apart tasting the sea on the breeze, like me. Her fine-textured skin had been pinked up and was flawless and harmfully beautiful,came into my mind also how the wild west of Ireland was just the perfect setting for her— you could see how in the past women like this started fierce tribal wars and I couldn’t help wondering what difference it would’ve made if her personality had been slotted into a snub-nosed Henri, say. She wouldn’t have stopped Tomiko in his tracks that day by the Lake— so end of Yori because end of story before it begins. So not harmful. Life giving. (Or Meg, say, only ever pretty and quite plain now, not looking as if she’d bounce when dropped.)
Henri fidgeted, Meg snuffled into her tissues, Eurwen seemed petrified. I’d got no real insight into what anybody was experiencing except my own self-disgust at the months spent puzzling over Sara when Josh that I respected, had taken pride in and still loved, was killing himself. That’s you, Yori. And now here’s you, the Primary Male Relative present and not even speaking when—
‘I ought to have thanked those people,’ came from Eurwen suddenly but she was already dismissing them. She seemed drawn to the next field where a mass of small twittering birds rose and came low over our heads, buffeted by the wind. Finding us beneath, they struggled to gain height and Eurwen saw the flock safely on its way till just a foxing of the eastern sky. ‘We can go as well.’
‘Absolutely!’ Henri said.
There weren’t any wreaths to lay or bunches of flowers because for obvious reasons he could never stand either but as we left, the diggers were starting to backfill so we had the damp clay smell clinging in our nostrils instead. Among the Durkins, the Gills, the Stauntons and even, bizarrely, a smattering of Murcotts, Joshua Meredith, who died January 22nd 2041, Aged 76, would have Croagh Patrick in his sights for the foreseeable future, the best finish Meg and I had been able to give him.
