by Cole Moreton
‘Why is it green?’
‘What?’
‘This cake. This hill cake here.’ She gestured up the slope towards the lighthouse. He thought for a moment.
‘Because Derek is a fan of Plymouth Argyle.’ ‘Pardon me?’
‘They play in green shirts.’
‘Can’t you do better than that?’
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He couldn’t. He had to admit it. He could make up crazy non-sense at the drop of a hat – they both could, it was their game – but she always won.
‘I can do better,’ she said. ‘Derek the teenager with a breast obsession – I hate the word “boob”, by the way, dunno if I’ve told you that, please never use it in my company again – also happens to be a pagan. It’s a pagan family.’
‘Derek is not a pagan. He supports Plymouth Argyle. That’s his religion.’
‘Okay, so the mother is a pagan. That’s it! She deals with all this breast stuff by making him a birthday cake that is secretly in the shape of the left breast of the earth goddess, so that when teenage Derek and his useless dad – let’s call him Clive—’
‘Why?’
‘Because that’s his name.’ They both laughed. ‘When they eat the cake they are actually worshipping the goddess. Unbeknownst to them.’
‘Unbeknownst? Great word.’
‘I do my best. So there we are. This hill like a green birthday cake for Derek in the shape of the earth mother’s breast, only cut in half to show the cream.’
She thrilled him. The quickness of her mind. The mischief. He looks up at the hill now and smiles, because she was so right. And there at the top of it is the nipple. The lighthouse. Not the most beautiful construction in the world, perhaps – a simple tower of granite, although it sparkles in sunlight and wears a lantern room as a glass crown – but she loved it from the moment she saw it. Even with that ugly three-storey building pushed up hard against it, the keeper’s quarters they were making into bed and breakfast rooms, cut into the slope of the hill so that the top floor meets the bottom floor of the tower. Still, it is the view from that soft peak that draws people and makes them gasp.
‘The hill and the tower are both called Belle Tout,’ she said. ‘People say it like Bell Too. They think it means “good view”.’
‘Surely the French would be “good all”?’
‘If you want to be a smart arse about it. I can see France.’
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‘Rubbish. Where?’
‘Where d’you think? Over there on the horizon.’ He looked along the line of her arm to where she was pointing out at sea and she laughed at him doing so and kissed him. ‘You are loveably gullible, do you know that? As a matter of fact, the curvature of the earth makes it impossible to see the coast of France from here, although many people still swear blind that you can. Anyway, you don’t say it like that. You say “toot” or even “towt”. I’m giving you the good stuff here. It’s from the old English for a look-out. Belle is from Belen, the Celtic god of light. They used to sacrifice people up here.’
‘When?’
‘The olden days.’
‘Which was when exactly?’
‘The sunset is to die for . . .’
To die for. That hurts.
Run. Get moving. Get away from here. Think of something else. So the Keeper runs downhill into the dip, where a narrow road runs almost alongside the edge of the cliff. There’s just a strip of grass between the tarmac and the drop. People like to get out of coaches in the lay-by and walk as near as they dare. They can look back along the line towards Beachy Head and follow the sheer chalk face down and down and down to the rocks at the bottom, where the other lighthouse – the newer, more famous one with its red and white stripes – looks tiny in the landscape, revealing just how
huge these cliffs are.
This morning there is just one car, a big silver Mercedes. The driver is still in the car, both hands on the wheel, looking straight ahead. That’s not a good sign, but the Keeper tells himself it’s none of his business what state the driver is in. He is not here to keep people from harm; the Guardians have put themselves in charge of that. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone. So he runs, but as he does a black coach comes gliding down the coast road towards him, indicating to turn into the lay-by. Suddenly there is another coming up from behind him, a white coach, also indicating. There
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is only room for one in that narrow space in addition to the Mercedes. The white coach gets there first. The black coach car-ries on, the driver giving an irritated wave. Bad luck, mate.
The white coach stops, sighs and starts to spill out students. Dozens of them, raggedy silhouettes with bobble hats and hoods and long, skinny legs. They will be told to walk up over his hill and past his tower and down the broad South Downs Way to the Gap, to be picked up again a few miles on. They don’t really want to do this, as is obvious from all the slouching and shrugging. It’s part of a schedule that will see them take in Brighton, the Tower of London and Stonehenge before supper, or something like that. Students come to the hill every day and he does everything he can to avoid them, but this time he is caught beside the group and feels conspicuous. What will they make of a bloke twice their age in a woolly hat and black wind-cheater, muttering to himself as he runs?
Half a dozen students in a clump are looking at something very near the edge. Very near. The idiots. Two girls even have their legs over the edge of the cliff. His gut tightens at the thought of being where they are. A couple of boys are jostling, as if preparing to push the girls. His shout may as well be a whisper. Even if they hear him, they might be startled into slipping. This place is a hun-gry tiger if you show no respect. Beautiful, yes, staggeringly so, but it can bite if you do something stupid like hang your legs over. He looks away, unable to watch, deeply fearful of what is about to happen, but there are no screams and his eyes are drawn back to the girls. They’ve got up. They’re walking away. Oh Lord. He gulps in air, suddenly aware that he’d stopped breathing. He runs, and they see him and laugh like demented gulls.
The Mercedes is still there. The door is open. There is nobody inside now. The car driver is out on the grass, staggering about on uncertain legs. He’s not in good shape. Hunched, barely able to stand in the wind. One rabbit hole, one gust and he’s gone. The Keeper sprints up the slope to him, skidding on the mud, wonder-ing what on earth he’s going to say to get him to come away from the edge, when he hears a voice calling.
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‘Hello?’
A hiker. A pair of them. A bearded man in a light blue mac, a woman in red. ‘We’re here!’ They’re coming downhill, calling to the man from the Mercedes, who sees them and puts up a hand to say yes, okay, got you. He’s a taxi driver, of course, the old guy with eyes weeping from the wind. There’s a flash of gold as the clouds break, a splash of sunshine on the grass, and the light-house keeper soaks it up and feels his face warm and tighten with a grin. A bloody taxi driver. What a beautiful, bizarre place this is.
And it’s where we’re meant to be.
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Nine
Jack wakes up grieving, twisting, moaning, banging out a rhythm on his chest. ‘No, no!’ The woman in the coffin – bloated, bruised, her face shiny with broken blood vessels, her nose smashed – can’t be Sarah. Say it isn’t her. ‘It’s not her! Listen to me!’ Why won’t they listen? Where are they? His eyes open slowly, painfully, to take in a bare floor, an open toilet, a heating pipe, a blistered wall. A cell. A door opening.
‘Well then,’ says a tall policeman in the doorway, his muscles stretching the fabric of an open-necked white shirt. ‘You got some sleep. Good. We’re not going to have any more trouble, are we? Tea will be here in a minute. Get yourself together, yeah? Back in a mo.’
The door closes and Jack looks at the ceiling, trying to focus, then uncoils himself from the thin mattress, which might as well have been the floor for all the comfort it gave him. He feels as if he
has been beaten all over, but he has a scrambled memory of lashing out, thrashing about, before passing out. His hands are trembling.
‘Tea?’ The policeman offers him a cardboard cup and it shakes as Jack takes it and cradles it close. ‘We’ve got some things to talk about, you and me.’
The giant officer sits down next to him on the bed, which means Jack shifting along. He’s got a long, flat face like an Easter Island statue, but there’s a mark just under his eye that looks fresh.
‘I’m Sergeant Ravi. I’m running the place this morning. I don’t want to charge you for what happened last night, because frankly I don’t need the paperwork any more than I needed a slap from you, but I might have to do that. In the meantime, I have some news for you. They’ve found a wallet and credit cards on the woman who went over last night. How should I put this? The body they found, it’s not your wife.’
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Jack shudders. He hugs himself, eyes closing. Seeing her face again, half destroyed. It’s not true, not true. Not real. A dream. A nightmare, in his sleep. She’s not dead. She must be alive.
‘You all right? Did you hear me? It’s not her. They’ve identified the body; it’s someone else. Poor woman. Not your wife. Sir?’
It felt so real. Jack’s body shakes until the sobs burst out. ‘Well. Okay. I’ll leave you be for a moment, yeah? Let you have
some privacy.’ The sergeant moves away, not closing the door. Jack hears his voice in the corridor, faintly. ‘Keep an eye on him.’
Jack sobs because he feels guilty, sobs because he’s exhausted, sobs because he sobs and doesn’t know why, and while he sobs they watch him and wait and wait. When they’re sure he has run dry and calmed down, and when the threat of violence towards a serving officer seems to have passed, they let him go. The sergeant gives him a paper to sign at the custody desk. Just a caution. ‘You’re under stress. I get that. Just cool it though, eh? We’re doing our best. As your wife went missing from your home address, we are handing the details over to the Metropolitan Police, who will no doubt investigate and decide whether to take the matter further.’
‘Is that it?’
‘Sir?’
‘You know what I’m asking. Are you giving up on this?’
‘Sir, as I have explained, our colleagues at the Met will take over. They have your details. I’m sure they’ll be in touch. My advice would be to go home. You never know, your wife may have left a message. She may even be there. Let’s hope so.’
‘She came here.’
‘Sir, we have looked for her. We’ll keep looking, I promise you. A patrol has been out that way several times, the Guardians have been informed. They are out there all the time, all the way from Beachy Head along to Belle Tout and down to the Gap. If she is there at all they will see her and let us know.’
‘What about beyond that, the Seven Sisters? There are no roads. You can’t just send a car to have a quick look around. What are you doing there?’
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‘We do have a helicopter, sir. We are doing all we can. With respect, if people do have intentions we usually find them at Beachy Head. She came down by train, so there is no vehicle to trace, but we have spoken to the local taxi firms, who have not picked her up. We’re talking to the bus company. We’ve also put the word out to the hotels, and there are no guests of that name.’
‘What about her maiden name: Sarah Jones?’ ‘One, at the Grand. But it isn’t her.’ ‘How do you know?’
‘Various things,’ says the sergeant, irritated at himself for saying the name of the hotel. Three hundred quid a night for a room. This lad couldn’t afford that. Bit out of their league. ‘For the moment, there is no evidence that she has been in this area at all.’
‘What about the picture on the laptop?’
‘With respect, sir, it’s a picture on a laptop. I’ve got the moon on mine. I’m sorry. She is not answering her mobile phone, as you know. It’s up to the Met now to run a trace, which I am sure they will do. Here, this is who you should talk to.’ He pushes a paper across the desk. ‘Please, ring that number if you have any more information. If it relates to activity in this area they will tell us and we will act.’
‘I’m not giving up. I’m not just walking away.’
‘Sir, you have the freedom to do as you wish,’ says the weary sergeant. Then, under his breath: ‘So does she.’
‘What are you saying?’
Sergeant Ravi answers carefully. ‘We are taking this seriously. You have reported your wife missing. Sir. We are investigating. My colleagues will take you to the Gap, where I believe you have a car.’
‘I won’t go home.’
‘I thought you might say that. There’s a room going at the pub there. They told us to let you know, if you needed it. Ask for Magda. She’s the woman who helped you there.’
Jack takes his things, turns to the officers who are waiting for him, follows them through the door, fingers drumming on a bag strap. He does not hear what the big sergeant says behind him.
‘Good luck, yeah? To the both of you.’
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Ten
Jack says he’s fine, he’ll take a cab later, he’s got things to do in town first. So the officers let him walk away around the corner to a row of shops, where he pops in and asks directions. The Grand is a large white Victorian hotel on the seafront, easy to find.
‘Good morning, sir,’ says a commissionaire in a black coat hung with gold brocade, dropping a shoulder to pull open the heavy brass door so that Jack may pass into a dreamlike place, a haze of light, a constellation of bulbs and lamps and electric candles reflected in mirrors and gilt and leaf.
‘Welcome to the Grand,’ says a woman in a black suit whose hands are clasped in front of her. ‘How may I help?’
‘Yes. Thank you. Please. I’d like . . . coffee.’
She takes him briskly away from reception and down the hall-way to a large, circular space with a massive ornamental fireplace on the far side. ‘This is the Great Hall, where tea and coffee is served,’ she says, already spinning away. ‘Someone will see to you.’ Struck dumb by the quiet, he can hear the hiss of the gas feed-ing the fake flames, the rattle of a silver spoon in a coffee cup. The
clock on the mantelpiece tut-tuts time.
‘Would you like hot milk or cream?’ The waitress is short, slight, pale. She speaks with a soft French accent, eyes averted. She’s pretty.
‘Milk. Thank you.’
She sets out a silver pot, a silver jug for the milk, a silver sugar bowl and a silver spoon. A white china cup on a white china sau-cer decorated with silver swirls. He taps the spoon against the cup and is startled at the clear ringing sound, which makes heads turn. Stop, he tells himself. Concentrate. It’s hard when he wants to scream and shout out to them all, ‘Where is she? Have you seen her?’
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Cookies arrive on a side plate, wrapped in triangles of white tissue paper. They came here for afternoon tea just a few months ago, after walking on the Downs. It was a mistake. The staff kept looking at their walking shoes, which had traces of mud. It’s com-ing back to him. Sarah was in a state, saying something about a woman in the bathroom just now and telling him to look across at an elderly couple, eating their tea: he with a large cotton napkin tucked into the collar of his shirt as he demolished a vanilla slice; she polishing gold-rimmed glasses on the same kind of cloth, with a tiny slice of fruit cake uneaten on the table before her. The woman had been in the bathroom earlier and had washed her hands, dried them on a fluffy white towel, looked at Sarah and said to her face, simply and flatly: ‘Black bitch.’
Jack found that hard to imagine. His face must have said so. ‘Why don’t you believe me? This is a different country down
here. My country ends at the M25 or, I don’t know, maybe the bloody North Circular!’
‘You brought me here,’ he said.
‘I want to leave. Now.’
She was agitated, tugging
at her sleeves, crunching sugar crystals under her spoon. She stood up and spoke loudly to the whole room: to the pastry couple, the waitress, the under-manager in her suit, the mutton-whiskered lords and ladies of the past whose faces looked down from portraits on the wall, the ghosts of luxury and exclusion. Sarah almost ran down the long corri-dor then, out through the revolving door, past the commission-aire, who nodded as though people did this sort of thing all the time.