Autumn began with a scowl on the face of the moon.
CHAPTER FIVE
Thou shalt not steal
It might be the last hot morning of the year.
Dear Mrs McQuaid
Re: The estate of Theodore Calvert
Thank you for yours of the 8th Inst.
This is to confirm that your tenure of the house remains secure for at least the next six months, from today’s date. As I know you will understand, Mr Calvert’s investments were of the global variety and it will take some considerable time to convert the same into cash and assess the tax situation . . . Please apply to the signatory should you require funds for the maintenance of the house …
So that was all right then.
It was only in the unholy light of a milky morning that Kay liked the sea with the kind of emotion that was anywhere near genuine affection. She was fond of it when it was calm enough to look like something out of a travel brochure advertising long days in the sun somewhere else entirely, where the language, the food and the climate were so different it was surprising that the human beings had the same shape. The house was one road back from the front itself, sheltered from storms. She could hear the sea from there without being able to see it.
Today, it was warm, inviting and friendly, without much of a hint of the mysterious, which she did not like, and even less of a hint of power, which she liked even less. On a morning like this, it looked like a great big bath, with some strange jacuzzi effect going on underneath the surface. Clad in her ankle-length dressing gown of pale lilac towelling, shower cap and plastic shoes, Kay walked gingerly across the shallow incline of the shingle, shed the robe and waded into the water. Up to the chest in three steps, four strokes left and four right without ever taking her sunglasses off, that was enough, and emerged triumphant. The days when she might have stayed in longer and offered up the pain as a penance for her sins were long gone. The water was pleasantly bracing rather than cold, but there was no point getting chilly. Chilliness was uncomfortable.
Theodore Calvert, her employer, went swimming until well into winter, but then he always had something to prove. Either he was proving his virility, or he must have been a closet Catholic. What was it the Jesuits said? Give me a boy before he is eight and he is mine for ever? Even if he railed against that religion for as long as she knew him, Kay theorised that he might have been got at as a boy and that was what had given him that awful mindset, which she was still doing her best to eradicate in herself, namely the strange belief that discomfort equalled virtue and, by the same token, luxury bordered on sinfulness.
The problem about the open sky, mirrored in the endless stretch of invigorating water, was that it drew her towards it and made her think, even when breakfast was more what she had in mind. The lulling noise of the quiet waves, so welcoming to her feet, was the voice of conscience. The sea was calm enough for a prophet to walk upon it. She looked at her toes through the opaque material of the plastic shoes and tried to concentrate on the fact that it was time for a pedicure, let the towelling robe soak the salty moisture from her skin as she sat comfortably on the warm shingle, telling herself she would be better off in the garden with a less awe-inspiring view, but she could not move. Theo Calvert had loved the sea and regarded it as a kind of playground, while, most of the time, she thought of it as cold, wet and inconvenient. After he had left his wife, he had moved to the coast because that was where he had always wanted to live. He had bought a house big enough for his daughters, but of course they had never arrived, not even for a visit. Theo had been a fool to expect any such thing. Also a fool to battle for custody of children who were not only ill but easily old enough to make up their own minds. His lawyers had told him he was mad. He was the one who had left the matrimonial home, was more of the grandfatherly age and bellowed that all his daughters needed was plenty of fresh air and an introduction to sex. His daughters had told a judge that they hated him and Theo had cursed and invoked the devil and thrown himself into the sea for early morning swims in the bitter cold. If she had told him then that he was mortifying his flesh to distract his thoughts, he would not have believed her.
Theodore Calvert claimed that he did not understand any of that. The religion of his wife, which informed her motherly self-sacrifice, was anathema to him, and the sea would be his undoing. It made him brood. Kay dragged herself back into the present world by fishing in her pocket for cigarettes. Too much oxygen was bad for the body. She must look a rare sight, walking from the big house up the side road and sitting on the beach dressed like this, but who cared? The place had its fair share of eccentrics, of which she was among the youngest. It was a seaside resort that had always attracted the elderly, close enough to London for an easy train ride, far enough away to be remote. Why the hell he had chosen it, God knows. He said he wanted a big sky, room to breathe. She lay back on the shingle so that she did not have to look at the sea. Definitely the voice of conscience.
Why the hell had she accompanied him all those years ago? She could have stayed in London and got another job, although not on those wages. Calvert was ludicrously generous, one of the reasons why she had stayed with the damn family as long as she had. Stayed, and been indispensable long after she had sussed what Mrs Calvert was like. It took one Roman Catholic, however lapsed, to recognise the symptoms of a terrible holiness in another. A tiny creature, Mrs Calvert, with huge eyes and an elegant gentleness in everything she did. Beautiful manners, soft, solicitous voice, the quiet movements of a convent-educated girl who had never kicked over the traces, although her dress sense was not anything she could have learned in a nunnery. She made you feel like a carthorse, but she was a lady, and it would have been a lady Theodore had wanted. Kay stuffed the cigarettes back into her pocket, suddenly sick at the thought of one, pushed her sunglasses up on her forehead and down again. The sunlight on the water was so bright it was an accusation to her eyes.
Look, she told herself, it’s easy. She had followed Theodore to his rich retreat by the sea because she would never repeat such wages for the relatively easy work, and because of her son. Also, to be fair, because she could not bear to see those girls so sick or watch what Mrs Calvert was doing or be anywhere near it, but mostly because of Jack, or was it? A better life for rebellious Jack. That was it. Bring Jack with you,Theodore had said, he’ll only get into trouble if you don’t. Kay got to her feet and turned her back on the water. No, she had done it to spite that dreadful woman who had begged her to stay, she had done it out of solidarity with him and to please herself, the way she usually did. Oh, for God’s sake, woman, you did what you thought was best and you still do.
Only, for someone raised as a Catholic, ‘best’ was never enough. What was it with them, she raged at herself, walking faster and faster on the way home, suddenly self-conscious about the shower cap, that made them such miseries? Not them, YOU. Hadn’t she dumped the whole Catholic, nun-ridden Irish girlhood before she’d so much as looked at a boy? Didn’t she poke fun at it? Didn’t she take the fear of hell and drown it good and proper? She was thrown out and threw it out, been throwing it out ever since. What Christopher Goodwin had disturbed in his visit the day before last was an entirely irreligious, natural conscience, the sort that lived in the sea and shone light in her eyes like a torch, with a delayed effect, along with his plea that she should meet Anna Calvert and tell her what her father had been like, so that the child had a chance to form an honest picture of her past. In order to construct a future, Christopher had said. Excuse me, I’m on holiday, she said. I don’t owe anything, I just do as I’m told.
She squelched to the back door without seeing a soul. A quiet place, sometimes too quiet. What had she ever done that was so wrong? She had not really encouraged old Theodore to give up fighting for his daughters and love her own Jack instead. No, that was not the way it was. That was not what she had intended, but that was what had happened. She had wanted so much better for sulky Jack. She had never meant Theo to treat him as a son. Sh
e was breathing heavily, the shoes rubbed. Definitely the last swim of the year. Her body tingled and her head felt light. She touched the key to the house, held round her neck on a piece of string.
Nor had she meant it to filter back to Isabel Calvert that Theodore lived with his housekeeper as a convenient tart and preferred her boy to his own flesh and blood. Now that would have added to Mrs Calvert’s saintly martyrdom no end. And it was not true. Theo adored his daughters. He had their movements monitored, although there was little enough to report when they never left the house. He also had his wife hounded by every official agency under the sun and Kay supposed that, in the end, he won. Mrs Calvert was forced to relinquish her hold on her invalids. The children were, in a manner of speaking, freed, with liberty to hate him even more for what he had done, but it was certainly true that he had been fond of Jack.
Kay unlocked the back door and padded upstairs to the master bedroom, which faced the main road. Theo’s room, which she used as a dressing room, sitting on the balcony to get the late afternoon sun and watch the world go by, such as there was. It was the main thoroughfare into the town and nicely removed from it. She remembered that the regatta would be passing in the early evening and the thought cheered her. As soon as the bath was so full that the foam began to creep over the rim, she wallowed into it with a grateful sigh, a brown face emerging from white bubbles. Once she was immobilised, she began to think that the bath was a bad idea. It was not the sea that played havoc with conscience; it was the act of immersion in any old water. Some horrible throwback to baptism. She sank beneath the foam. The fact that she was a natural born liar was not a new realisation, or even a shameful one. It came from a lifetime’s practice of telling people what they wanted to hear.
Anna Calvert had been a kid who loved sunshine.When Kay had been deputed to take that ten-year-old to the park, they both ignored the command to have a nice, healthy walk and sat on the grass instead, with their tops off and their skirts tucked into their knickers. Therese would have been younger, giggling like mad at the mention of a word like knickers, hopping around them like a plump pigeon. Nice, easy girls, then. The scene played before her eyes. Then she remembered the day when she had tried to introduce them to her son by bringing him along to say hello. Eighteen months older than Anna, he might have seemed glamorous to them, but there were not to be any dirty little boys in Mrs Calvert’s house. Kay blew water out of her nose and reached for the bath plug. Surely they all could have played together? Maybe those girls would have civilised him. Crap. Nothing could have done that. Jack was streets ahead. He was eleven going on fifty and he never saw them again, except in photos, which Theo had in every room of this house. Kay finished the towelling dry (big, fluffy, indestructible towels she had persuaded Theo to buy), and felt conscience recede. It was soluble in soapy water, wiped away by moisturiser. Funny, the way she bothered about her skin and her appearance when her life was so isolated. Self-love was what it was, in deference to those advertisements that said, pamper yourself because you’re worth it, and it was more to do with the sheer joy of idleness than attracting men, although there were always a few fellows hopping round like seagulls, making equally silly noises. Sod that. She did not really want the mess or the sheer effort of a man, and however much she might tease poor Christopher on his monthly visits, she only did it because he was a priest. If she was ever offered a night of passion, or a tumbler of Drambuie, she knew which she would choose. OK, she was a liar and she was lazy and she was sometimes a flirt, and that was fine. The only real question was what to wear.
A door downstairs slammed. Kay heard it, even with her head muffled in a towel, and she froze. Had she left the back door open, the fool that she was, while she was lying in her bath waiting to be drowned? She ran into the bedroom, naked as a beast, clung to the doorframe for comfort. The wind must have taken the patio door and slammed it shut, that would be what it was. She was not a housekeeper for nothing; she was paranoid about security. She knew she had left no doors open, and there was not the slightest breeze. Kay listened, waiting for the sound of footsteps, of breathing, a cough. Waited two whole minutes, getting cold. Nothing, until she heard the reassuring sound of a car passing in the road. Pulling on her gown, she tiptoed to the top of the stairs and sniffed the air. All she could smell was the familiar emptiness of the house, free from anything but the lingering scent of bubble bath. She must stop behaving like this, reacting so dramatically to sudden sounds. It was an old house; it had a language of its own. Let other silly women become neurotic about living alone; she loved it and she was not going to be one of them. Kay thumped down the corridor to her own room at the back, reminding herself it was the regatta today, so she would enter into the spirit of the town’s annual celebration and wear something just a bit festive. Sex was too much trouble for words, but she did like to be admired, and the balcony of Theo’s room was a ringside seat for the carnival parade.
She had made her own room pretty as a picture. Pastel wallpaper with a flowered border, toning colours on the deep flounce of her bed, frilled net curtains of snowy white beneath the pale velvet of the heavier drapes, which she pulled at night. A series of flower prints on the walls and a dressing table with the legs hidden by lace. She made her bed and realigned the decorative cushions as soon as she got out of it in the morning, so that whenever she came back into the room, it would look as she liked to see it, as sweet as it was orderly. Not now.
The differences were small, but significant. One of the pictures was crooked, as if someone had brushed by. There was a bottom-shaped indentation on the bed. The top drawer of the chest was half-open. She felt sick, made herself breathe slowly. Someone had been here and she thought she knew who it was. He had been, he was gone and he would be back.
Just a kid looking for money.
For letters, for papers, for something.
For her.
Like before.
Today was the afternoon shift. Anna could have slept far longer if the blind in her attic room blocked out the light. She lay where she was, torn between curling herself back into sleep and the compulsion to find the source of the light and bask in it. Summer was ending, the heat of the sun was rationed, wasting it was tantamount to a sin and getting up, putting on shorts and T-shirt to climb on to the roof, was almost a duty. She hauled up a sleeping bag and a cup of coffee. Sleep could be resumed in the sun. It was a grumpy pleasure. First, she examined the view. A ritualistic prowl around the small space of the roof, as if she were a sentry patrolling the ramparts of a castle.
The road at the front was fully awake. The newsagent was open, water was being sloshed over the pavement in front of the bar, two people waited at the bus stop. The sound of cars was pleasant from this distance. Leaning over, she could see a figure emerge from the main entrance of the block and walk away purposefully. What other people did all day was a subject of intense curiosity. They were all trained for life in ways she was not and it was better not to make comparisons, but few of them were as free as she was. Looking down at the bustle of the street below, she wondered how she would ever explain to Ravi how or why it was her rent was paid until the end of the year by some blood money arrangement set up by her father before he drowned and how she had no choice but to accept it because she could not possibly live anywhere else. She had to be close to Therese. It was a lovely day, and that, for the moment, was all that mattered. Anna yawned, clasped her hands above her head, and stretched as far as she could, rotating her hips, unknotting sleepy joints and enjoying the sensation. She would do the exercises later. The bathroom towel rail served as a barre and the bedroom as a gymnasium. All she needed was a floor. She had to be strong for the day when Therese would need her again.
With looser limbs, she moved round to the other side of the roof and looked down into the convent garden. The trees were turning autumn coloured; soon there would be bare branches rattling against the chapel windows with their own music and there would be the carpet of leaves, which she had seen the y
ear before and which Edmund would be slow to clear. When it was done, and the leaves were dry, he would pick a grey day and take the risk of lighting a delicious fire, forbidden in a smoke-free zone, and all the more exciting. She recalled from last year, in her first autumn here, her delight in the pure smoke, which rose and drifted away across her roof. What harm in burning leaves, instead of piling them into bags for someone else to do? She would offer to help this year, unless this Francis, whom she had nicknamed the Golden Boy, was all he needed. She must meet this boy, whom the nuns had so taken to heart. They could make money out of their garden; there were innumerable things they must do if they were going to survive. Edmund would have to help. She peered over the wall. Why there he was, sitting on his bench, looking comfortable and remote from this height. She was tempted to call out to him, but he would never hear, and besides, no one inside the convent walls knew that she watched and no one must know. They tolerated her, but she was always on probation. Barbara was beginning to find her useful, but if anyone knew she watched like an amateur spy, she would be banished, with Therese’s blessing, and that would be unbearable. Anna ducked back in case Edmund looked up, as if he ever would, he who never seemed to lift his eyes higher than the walls. Then she looked again.
He was sitting so still, in the same place he sat in the spring of the year to listen to the dawn chorus of his birds. He sat in the same immobile way she had seen the night before, with a slight difference in attitude, so his body twisted sideways, uncomfortably, the way a person might sit in order to have a conversation with someone who stood behind them. One hand appeared to grip the back of the bench. It was not natural to sit like that when alone, especially not for a weighty man like himself, who always adjusted his stance to accommodate his bulk. It came to her, in a slow, dark realisation, that he had sat there all night. Entirely against the rules. Everyone other than the Sisters went home before supper, via the front door.
Seeking Sanctuary Page 9