by Laura Elliot
‘Any danger of a leak?’
‘No. All sound. I’ve just polished the twins’ trophies. Baking soda and water. You should see the shine.’
‘Have you been drinking?’
‘A few glasses of wine with the pancakes.’
‘You made pancakes for dinner.’
‘Beats turkey any day.’
‘You should go to bed.’
‘Nadine… I need to tell you something.’
‘What?’
‘It’s over.’
She remained silent. Only for the background voices, he would believe she had hung up.
‘Did you hear me?’ His voice was louder than he intended.
She cleared her throat. ‘Yes, I heard you.’
‘I don’t know where to begin… can we talk sometime soon?’
‘What’s left to talk about?’ Her tone brought their conversation to an end. ‘I’m sorry, Jake, but that’s a conversation I don’t ever intend on having with you.’
He found his favourite Bruce Springsteen album and placed it carefully on the turntable. Tonight was the time for vinyl and scratching The River would be an unforgivable crime. The lyrics released a backwash of nostalgia… down by the river… a girl of seventeen, a boy of nineteen, caught in the spiral of youthful passion. The fire turned to ash, like the ash of their youthful passion, and the room grew cold. Finally, stiffly, Jake rose to his feet. He stepped over the trophies. Whiskey was not a good idea when the frontal lobe was involved, he decided as he collapsed onto his bed. His last image before he fell asleep was of the seagull suspended like a white cross against the black sky.
CHAPTER 41
NADINE
The smells of herbs and spices trail familiar plumes around me as Daveth removes the turkey from the oven. His cousin Nessa, her husband Ryan and their three children have joined us for dinner. I know my way around his house now. Olga’s presence is everywhere. She was into crafts, rugs and walls hangings, but she is a gentle ghost and I’m happy here. Daveth has asked me to stay on, to cruise alongside him on Eyebright for the next season. I thought about it for a day but I knew, as I suspect he did too, that ours is just a snatched encounter.
Dinner is ready to be served. Each dish is greeted with cheers as it’s carried to the table. My presence seems to add an extra bounciness to the atmosphere. They’re curious about me, particularly Nessa, who must find it difficult to understand how I can laugh so easily when I’m separated from my family on Christmas Day. Her own three children howl with scorn over the jokes in the crackers, don the funny hats and politely pass the serving dishes around the table. Daveth raises his wine glass in a toast to absent loved ones. We drink and toast Olga, who stares down at us, smiling from a photo on the wall, and remember Stuart in the silence that follows.
When the dishes have been cleared away I sit with Nessa in the room that opens out into a balcony in the summer. It’s a small, warm space with well-worn armchairs and crowded bookcases. Nessa lights a cigarette and tells me I’m the first woman Daveth has brought into his house since Olga’s death. She looks disappointed when I tell her I’m moving on in the new year. She’s easy and kind, and we exchange brief life stories, as strangers do when they know they won’t meet again.
‘Where are you heading after you leave here?’ she asks.
‘To Vancouver to visit my friend, Jenny. Then on to California to see my twins.’
I tell her about Brian’s pottery. How stressed I was when he dropped out of college but how unimportant it seems now. She’s involved in amateur dramatics and interested in hearing about Ali’s play. I’ll miss the opening night of The Arboretum Affair. It’s all Ali talks about when she rings. Tina, queen of the sylphs, her first leading role. I thought it was a fairy story but she says it’s a bitingly savage satire on capitalism and corruption.
‘How long before you return home?’ Nessa asks.
‘A month. But I’m not going home. I’ll settle in London and study art. That’s what I intended on doing when I met my ex-husband. He was in a band that was going stratosphere, or so we believed. We were dreamers. That’s all we had in common.’
‘You stayed together. You reared a family. You need more than a dream to do that.’
‘We muddled through and hoped we wouldn’t do too much damage in the process.’
I close my eyes against the pull of memory; small faces, laughter, tantrums, hugs, squabbles, the clamber of tiny legs and arms. In a moment I’ll weep. Once the tears flow I’ll need a mop and bucket.
If only Jake hadn’t rung. He sounded so wretchedly drunk. So alone. Why should I care? And that strangled apology. As if regret was going to wipe everything away.
Inside, Daveth is playing with Nessa’s children on their Xbox. We made love this morning. His frame is different to Jake’s, shorter, heavier, sturdier. Seeing him walking naked to the bathroom always shocks me more than our lovemaking. He’s polished mahogany and limber. My body is light, quivering, as if charged with electricity. When I’m with him like this, my blood racing, it’s impossible to think of leaving. But our time together had run its course. My mind has already travelled ahead. Only my body remains to be convinced.
* * *
On our last night together we sit on the deck of Eyebright and watch the dance of the aurora borealis. The sky burns red and the ice is touched by tongues of fire. Daveth hands me a small box wrapped in glitter. I remove a ring, Alaskan gold moulded into a forget-me-not flower with a diamond in the centre. He slips it on the ring finger of my right hand and we make love under the eddying waves of green and strobes of purple, moonflowers exploding. When I leave in the morning the colours are still swirling inside my head. A radiant firmament, brief, intense and over.
CHAPTER 42
JAKE
When he first moved into Sea Aster Jake had imagined glimpses of Rosanna. An outline of silver hair if he turned suddenly. A wrinkled hand on the door, her silhouette at the window. Jake did not believe in ghosts, or in an afterlife that allowed them to roam outside his imagination. He had put his experiences down to the shock of losing his house and company, and the ending of this marriage. This feeling had passed but he was now affected by a new sense of invasion. It was different to the gently nudging sensation Rosanna’s presence had created but he was unable to pin it down to anything specific.
Small things bothered him. The family photograph that appeared on the window ledge instead of its usual place on the mantelpiece. The cutlery mixed together in the drawer when it was normally aligned in separate sections. The bed neatly made when he came home one night from a gig. He always found an excuse. Coincidences, lack of concentration. Then there was the incident with his Gibson. It should have been sitting on its stand in the breakfast room. Instead, it was propped against the wall. Absent-mindedness or paranoia? How could he prove which was which?
One morning he was unable to find his fleece. It was too tatty to wear outside but perfect for keeping him warm during the cold snap. It wasn’t in its usual place on the back of the bedroom door. He searched the wardrobe twice, the laundry basket, the barn, the hot press. He was leaving to keep an appointment with Reedy at the Raison D’être studio when he found it under his black leather jacket, the arms tucked inside the jacket sleeves. This made no sense. He never wore it outside. He pulled it free and carried it to the kitchen. Karin had often worn it in the mornings before she showered. He had smelled her perfume and been surprised at how long it lingered in the fabric. When he returned from the studio he took a bottle of white wine from the fridge. It was almost empty yet he could have sworn he had only taken one glass from it the previous evening. His hand shook as he drained the bottle into the sink. He rang a locksmith and the lock was changed by the next day.
Eleanor called unexpectedly in the afternoon. He was working on his laptop, earphones on. His first indication that she was outside came when his mobile vibrated.
‘Please tell me why I can’t get into my own house,’ she demanded when
he opened the door. ‘I’ve been ringing the bell for the past five minutes.’
‘Sorry, I forgot to tell you,’ he said. ‘The lock has been changed.’
She arched her eyebrows. ‘Whatever for?’
‘The door wasn’t secure. I was afraid someone might break in.’
‘Like who?’ She followed him into the kitchen and sat down at the table.
‘How do I know? The house is so isolated. You look upset. Is something wrong?’
‘Are you still seeing Karin Moylan?’ she asked.
‘What makes you think I’m seeing – ?’
‘Kindly respect my intelligence, Jake.’
‘I was.’ Nothing would be gained by lying. He checked the press for the china tea set that once belonged to Rosanna. Eleanor refused to drink from a mug. Mugs belonged on building sites and factory canteens, she said. Little rules, big rules. Jake’s childhood had been dominated by them. Hence Shard, rebellion, turbulence, mother-son tension that never abated.
‘We’re not together anymore,’ he said. ‘I ended it before Christmas.’
She nodded, as if her suspicions were confirmed. ‘I assume you knew she was working on our new logo for First Affiliation?’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s talented, I’ll give her that.’ Eleanor acknowledged the cup of tea but made no effort to drink it. ‘Everyone on the executive committee was very impressed.’
‘I’m glad you’re satisfied.’
‘I was satisfied…initially.’
‘Initially? Does that mean you turned her down?’
‘I changed my mind.’
‘Because of my relationship?’
‘My decision had nothing to do with your private life.’
‘Then what?’
‘Her design was far too aggressive for our image.’
Her answer surprised him. Karin was a skilled designer and would have been anxious to impress his mother.
‘What do you mean by “aggressive”?’
She opened her briefcase and handed him a memory key. ‘These are the early designs she did for me.’
He slotted the memory key into his laptop and opened the file. Karin’s first sketches had been drawn in a naive style, two stick-like parents and four children with intertwining circles releasing a blast of sunshine over them.
‘What’s so aggressive about that?’ he asked.
She took a cardboard file from her briefcase and handed him a sheet of paper. ‘Yesterday, I received this in the post from her, along with a letter telling me she wasn’t interested in working with me.’
Jake stared at the sketch. It was a similar configuration to her earlier designs but the children’s expressions were menacing rather than contented and a dark rim eclipsed the brightness of the circle. The dimming of the light surrounding the family unit had been drawn with such savagery that the paper was scored and torn.
‘All I need to know is that she’s definitely gone from your life,’ Eleanor said.
‘Rest assured she is.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ She ripped the paper in two and twisted it tightly. ‘Throw that into your rubbish,’ she said. ‘That woman is disturbed. Keep well away from her.’
‘She’s upset you a lot. I can see that. I’m sorry.’
She had always seemed indomitable but she was showing signs of aging, lines settling deeper around her mouth, her cheeks hollowing.
‘Apart from Karin, is everything all right,’ he asked. ‘Has there been any further word on the planning permission?’
‘No need to worry about that just yet,’ she replied. ‘You’ve done a good job keeping the house and grounds maintained. I couldn’t have managed without you.’
The unexpected compliment surprised him.
‘How is Nadine enjoying Vancouver?’ she asked.
‘Loving it, I gather.’
‘When is she coming home?’
‘London will be her home.’
‘That’s it then.’
‘Don’t sound so surprised.’
‘I’m not surprised. Just sad.’ She stood up to leave. ‘Family is a precious thing, Jake. Don’t ever take it for granted.’
CHAPTER 43
The opening night of The Arboretum Affair was an outstanding success. Ali, as Tina, Queen of the Sylphs, led her army of fleet-footed sylphs into battle against a hoard of marauding trolls. Jake had never been interested in mythical creatures when he was a child but this lack of knowledge did not prevent him believing that sylphs wore more than strategically placed leaves when they were flitting between trees. He was so shocked to see Ali naked on stage, or as naked as made no difference, that he lost all sense of the play within the first few minutes. During the interval the woman next to him explained that the misshapen trees represented the threatened universe, the trolls rampaging through the woods were ruthless developers and the sylphs symbolised the transient nature of innocence.
Backstage in her dressing room, after multiple encores, Ali was ecstatic. Up close he realised that the sylphs were covered in flesh-coloured netting woven with a filigree of woodland plants but this did nothing to lessen his shock. He hated Ali’s artistic director on sight. This hatred was subjective and based on the fact that Mark Brewer was wearing a tuxedo while his daughter – who used to scream like a barn owl if anyone accidently opened the door of the bathroom while she was occupying it – was dressed in a body stocking.
To his relief, Ali emerged from the theatre fully clothed.
‘We’re going to Milly’s to celebrate.’ Christine, her flatmate and one of the sylphs, linked Jake’s arm. ‘You must come with us.’
‘Is that what you want?’ he asked Ali.
‘Suit yourself, Dad.’ She shrugged and walked ahead with her director. Had she sensed Jake’s disapproval despite his best efforts to sound enthusiastic about her performance?
In Milly’s, a basement nightclub close to the theatre, champagne corks popped as Mark Brewer toasted the success of The Arboretum Affair.
‘What’s wrong, Ali?’ He sat beside her. ‘Are you angry with me about something?’
‘Tell me your honest opinion of the play,’ she said.
‘You were brilliant, darling.’
‘I know that. I’m asking you about Mark’s play.’
Unmitigated bilge, he wanted to say but, wisely, kept this opinion to himself. ‘It was different… interesting.’
‘I knew you hated it.’
‘I don’t hate it. It’s just…’ He hesitated and rubbed the back of his neck.
‘Go on, Dad. Say it.’
‘Why can’t the sylphs wear tunics or frocks?’
Her fine, dark eyebrows lifted in an arch she had inherited from her grandmother. ‘Why not a burka? Would that satisfy you? God! You’re so old-fashioned. Your girlfriend was far more complimentary when she came backstage after the preview last night.’
‘My what?’
‘You heard.’ She tossed her black hair over her shoulders and glowered at him. ‘She apologised because she couldn’t come tonight. Apparently, you were hoping to introduce us. How could you have even considered bringing her with you tonight of all nights?’
He put the champagne glass down on the table, afraid the slender stem would snap in his hand. ‘What else did she say?’
‘That I’d beautiful fingers. Expressive, like a musician’s.’ She turned her hands over and stared at them. ‘I know you have to move on, Dad. But I’m not ready to meet Mum’s replacement… and certainly not on a special occasion like this. Tell her to stay out of my life.’
‘She’s not in my life, Ali. She was for a while but not now.’
‘Are you telling me she was lying?’
‘Yes. She’s angry with me. This is her way of hitting back.’
‘I don’t understand. She was so friendly. Why would she pretend like that?’ Ali’s forehead puckered, her annoyance giving way to anxiety.
‘I’ve no idea what goes on in her head.’
The music was too loud. Jake was used to volume but this was forcing him to shout about something so personal it hurt his throat. He hugged Ali. How fragile she suddenly seemed.
‘Nothing as dramatic as that.’ He had to control his rage and reassure her. ‘But if she ever contacts you again… I know she won’t… but if she does you must let me know immediately.’
‘Is she the reason Mum went away so suddenly?’
‘This is your night, Ali, and not the time or place to talk about it. She’ll be back soon…’
He was interrupted by Mark Brewer, who stooped across the table and held out his hand to Ali.
‘You’ll have to excuse us, Jake,’ he said. ‘We all want a share of your beautiful daughter tonight. I’d like to introduce Alysia to some friends who flew from New York to be with us for the opening.’
High heels added to Ali’s height and she walked with confidence towards the group, aware but indifferent to the fact that she was the centre of attention. Unable to cope with the exuberance of the sylphs and trolls, Jake said his goodbyes and left the nightclub. Mik Abel had offered him his London apartment for the night. Tomorrow he was meeting a tour manager, who was organising Shard’s forthcoming UK tour.
He rang Karin. Her voice mail came on, a husky message that teased the caller with a promise of immediate contact.
‘I’m reporting you to the police if you dare to go near any member of my family again,’ he said.
She was probably listening, smiling as she deleted his message.
It was dark the following night when he emerged from Dublin airport and hailed a taxi to take him to Sea Aster. In the distance, a train, riding high and silently over the viaduct, reflected a seam of gold on the water. Then it was gone and the estuary continued its dark journey towards the sea.
The outside security light switched as he walked towards the entrance to his apartment. He tensed as he was about to unlock the door, puzzled by a repetitive clunking sound that did not belong to the estuary. The wind fanned the smell of dead seaweed over the wall and the overhanging branches poked black fingers into the night. Broken glass crunched underfoot as he hurried towards his van. The front window was shattered, the seats slashed. Deep cuts in the leather, the stuffing sprouting like mottled toadstools. One of the back doors swung in the wind and it was the clunk of steel against steel that had alerted him. He slammed the door and walked around to the side of the van. Someone had dragged keys or a knife along the paintwork, scratching repeatedly through the centre of the distinctive Shard sign.