Mainlander

by Will Smith

  He’d been watching the sea too, just as Vautier had asked him to. The Jerseyman was right: plenty of ways in with no one paying attention. He’d done some fishing in those little harbours, kept his ears open in the bars and cafés, the sailing clubs, discreetly tailed any of his fellow countrymen who had so much as a tinge of insalubrity. There was nothing going on. A bit of cannabis was floating around, but he didn’t know how it was getting in and Vautier didn’t seem too fussed about him drawing a blank on that. All of which had given him an idea.

  He looked down now at Rob’s boat, lying at an angle on the sand of the low tide. Were his eyes playing tricks or was it being rocked by the wind even as it sat with its full weight? Aged fifteen, he’d moved to Marseille, the drugs hub of Europe, where the heroin came in from Turkey and Afghanistan, the cannabis from the Middle East and the cocaine from South America. A container ship sailing from Marseille to Portsmouth, Bristol, Liverpool or Glasgow was a big red flag to a Customs man. To the ones who hadn’t been bought off, that was a challenge. But a little boat like Rob’s, meandering up the coast, would attract little attention. A chain of little boats relaying round the coast of France, each doing a fifty-mile cruise, according to the log book. And from there a hop across the Channel to Weymouth, Cherbourg, Amsterdam, Hamburg. More little boats, or people on foot boarding the ferries. Or, if he could find a farmer as hands-off as Rob, at the bottom of sacks of good old Jersey Royals. And then the profits being slowly rinsed in the Bretagne. If it all went to plan, this hotel would be permanently full on paper, with everyone ordering champagne on room service. When that got too big, with everything looking so rosy, it would be easy to persuade Rob to open other establishments. And when they, too, became full, well, he was in the right place for hiding money. This Island was built on a bottomless pit that you could just shovel it into.

  This plan was his way back in, his lifting of his sentence. His boss, Raymonde, couldn’t live for ever, and Philippe was too unstable to be accepted as a successor. When the time came, he would reach out. Only he wouldn’t be going back on the street: this time he’d be the one giving orders, from a respectable office.

  In the meantime, there was Barney Vautier. Christophe had to bide his time carefully. Back in Marseille a cop like him would be taken care of with a stream of cash or a spray of bullets. In his experience, a cop on an off-the-books lookout for criminals did it because he himself was the biggest criminal. Christophe knew there were few hard drugs in the Island; he’d want to keep it that way. Jersey would strictly be a transit route: the market wasn’t big enough to justify the risk. Harder to hide the trail to the dealers on an island so small. So maybe Vautier could be persuaded to look the other way. Tricky to know – he needed to get closer. Bringing him this Scouser would help. He might even go looking for him. But not tonight, not with the weather worsening. There was an almighty storm coming.

  15

  EMMA

  Friday, 16 October 1987

  Emma was marooned. A sudden deluge of rain was lashing the phone box, driven by a wind that seemed to be coming from 360 degrees. The rain had started as she walked from the car, hitting the letter she had written with four drops even as it nestled in her handbag. She hoped Colin would not mistake the stains for tears. She doubted it. Despite its import, it was not an emotional letter, and she had written it as calmly as if it had been a shopping list. She looked up at their flat. As far as she could tell, through the watery haze, there was still no light behind the curtains. The phone rang unanswered. None of this guaranteed that Colin was out – he could be wallowing in the dark, listening to his terrible music on headphones. She’d caught him like that before. He was pathetic, emotionally stuck in his teens; the wild-eyed declamatory nature of his early courting should have warned her of that.

  Earlier, three days into her voluntary exile at her parents’ house, she’d found herself ringing, wanting to scream at him for forcing her to be the first to make contact – contact she’d longed for, if only to spurn. Emma wanted to scream at him because she couldn’t scream at Rob. Her rage against him had swollen when she realised it had no vent. Part of her appeal to her former lover must have been that they were stuck in a mutually assured destruction pact. He was banking on her silence. She couldn’t blow his marriage apart without blowing hers apart too. She felt duped and bitter that she could only hurt him by refusing the sex she craved. But Colin she could wound and, to her, his transgression was equivalent to Rob’s within their relative moral frameworks. For Colin even to think of erring, to have dipped but a toe into the pool of betrayal, was clearly on a par with Rob cheating on her even as they both cheated on Sally.

  Jack and Joyce, her parents, knew none of the specifics of why she had turned up with a small suitcase and recently dried eyes, just that she and Colin were having problems, although she’d mentioned to her father a dalliance with a colleague. She knew her mother would steer her towards reconciliation, especially should the facts be presented to her; there had been no affair with Debbie, only the poor girl’s projection of affection on to Colin’s relentless courtesy. She made it clear that she did not want to talk to Joyce about it by going to work early and staying late, and making abrupt changes in conversation should the issue be so much as distantly alluded to. Jack was different: he had taken her out for lunch on the Thursday and encouraged a separation, asserting that Colin had gone ‘completely off the bloody rails’ and confessing to long-held doubts, ‘always something odd about him’, as well as portentous fears about his daughter’s long-term happiness with a man ‘who so clearly lacks the nous to get to the top of anything’. But Joyce had always seen Colin as some kind of saviour. She had never said so directly, but Emma sensed she felt that if her daughter couldn’t find happiness with Colin, it would always elude her. She had taken her aside on that Christmas Day of the engagement and, squeezing her hand, had told her tearfully that she was glad Emma was ‘out of the tunnel’.

  ‘What tunnel?’ Emma had laughingly responded, while wiping away tears of her own. She couldn’t recall the last time her usually phlegmatic mother had cried, and it had proved infectious.

  ‘You’ve seemed so lost these last years,’ Joyce had said, ‘and now you’ve found your rock.’

  ‘My rock on the Rock,’ smiled Emma, looking at Colin, on the phone to his own mother.

  ‘You think you’ll stay here, then?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t we?’

  ‘Because you’ve tried to get away so many times before.’

  ‘Twice, Mum. And once was because I had to find Colin.’

  She had smarted at the memory when she arrived back in that room on the Tuesday night. She wanted to deny that she had ever felt such simplistic euphoria. On Wednesday she’d been relieved he hadn’t contacted her – it had made her think he was feeling guilty, that he was scared of her. She’d felt unshackled and carefree. On Thursday evening her father had told her that Colin had been suspended for aggression in the staffroom, and as she fell asleep, she rehearsed telling him how sad it made her that he showed more passion for some petty dispute over a pupil than for his marriage. He had always put her second – to his mother, to his neighbour, to his work. By Friday his silence had meant she’d had no option but to harden her position as the victim. She couldn’t concentrate at work and came home early, wondering if there would be a message of contrition waiting for her, absolving her of any rashness in her departure.

  There was no message, so she’d sat on her bed, clenching her fists and listening to the wind rattling the windows. She stood up and walked over. A grey dusk, the sort of low cloud that cast spirits down, all colour drained from the rocks, the sand and the sea. The Christmas morning of Colin’s proposal had been blue and clear, crisp and vivid. She wondered if he would have ventured out in the rain to write his proposal in the sand. Would it have been more romantic if he had had to brave the elements? Perhaps if confronted by today’s monochrome weather he would have baulked at asking her. And perhaps if those
shells had remained scattered randomly by the tide, rather than assembled by Colin to bind the two of them together, she would be somewhere else, at peace with the world and her place in it. Had her life been shaped by the weather?

  The phone had rung. She bounded downstairs and snatched it up.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Emma, are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, Mum, fine.’

  ‘I was in town and I popped in to say hi, but they said you’d gone home.’

  ‘I had a headache. It’s gone now.’

  ‘When they said “home”, I didn’t know whether they meant our home or yours.’

  ‘This is my home.’

  ‘Yes, of course, you know what I mean.’

  ‘Besides, no one at work knows anything about me and Colin.’

  ‘Any word from him?’

  ‘No, thank God.’

  ‘Maybe he’s waiting for you to call him.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘You might have asked for space, told him not to contact you.’

  ‘I didn’t. I know what I said.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I said it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Sorry, the line’s a bit crackly here.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘The phone box outside Voisins. I’m sure the pips are going to go any moment and I don’t have any more change, but I’ve done all my shopping so I’ll head back.’

  ‘Great, see you in a bit.’

  ‘Maybe we can have a proper chat, before your father comes in.’

  ‘Maybe, although my headache’s quite bad.’

  ‘I thought it was better.’

  ‘It comes and goes.’

  ‘Dr Paterson’s surgery is open till five.’

  ‘If I wanted to go to the doctor, I would go to the doctor.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll come home and make us a cup of tea. Perhaps we can try and talk things through.’

  The pips went before Emma could reply, which was just as well: she couldn’t work out what she could say that would suggest her condition was beyond a motherly heart-to-heart, and at the same time not in need of medical attention. Either of those options would lead to a constricting form of caring that she just couldn’t face and, worse, to an implied admonishment. Although Joyce thought of herself as a non-interventionist parent, a billowing safety net, ready to catch and comfort her children before setting them off again on the high-wires and trapezes of their choice, she could still convey ‘I told you so’ with a cock of the head. Her opinion seeped from her, like water through rock. Joyce tried to temper her advice and reproaches because experience had taught her that Emma would veer off in the opposite direction almost as a reflex. She had always been a difficult child to help, whether it was stubbornly cutting the hair of her favourite doll, defiant in her belief that it would grow back as her own did, or insisting she would travel the world for three years only to return with a fiancé-in-waiting and an assertion that she had never really wanted to go away in the first place. Emma had sat stewing in anticipation of her mother hinting at the lack of harm in an attempt at rapprochement, desperate to avoid her unasked-for advice.

  Her breathing had quickened, her jaw locked and she had grabbed the phone so tightly she felt she could snap the handset. She dialled with such clumsy ferocity that her finger stuck in the hole. She breathed deeply, depressed the buttons to return the dialling tone, and began again, with controlled determination.

  ‘Were you ever going to call me? What the fuck have you been doing?’ was how she planned to begin, but there was no answer. She had slammed the phone down. Her mother would be home in ten, fifteen minutes. Colin was out. It was a sign, an opportunity. She had sat down and written a letter, which spewed forth with such ease that she’d thought she must have been composing it subconsciously for some time.

  Dear Colin,

  I take your silence to mean that I am not worth fighting for. I know that you’re a complete emotional coward so, rather than waiting for you to speak your timid mind, let me speak mine. You are no longer what I want in a husband. I’ll send someone to collect the rest of my stuff once I’m in my new place. Bonnier’s will be in touch. You had best find your own lawyers, and in the long term a new place to live (I will petition for the sale of the flat – I know you can’t buy me out). I hope there’s enough room at Debbie’s for you, although I imagine it will be hard making do on two teachers’ salaries.

  Emma

  Seeing her feelings on paper made them real. This was what she wanted. She had jumped into the car and driven the long way via the inner coast road to avoid passing her mother on the way.

  She’d darted into the phone box to double-check he was still out – she didn’t want to see him. If he couldn’t be bothered to speak to her, let alone face her, she would do him the same discourtesy.

  There was a break in the rain so she put the receiver down and stepped out of the phone box, pushed on to one leg by a gust. She walked in a stoop to the block, having decided to listen at the door and slip the letter underneath, should Colin be at home.

  Mrs Le Boutillier’s door opened as she neared the landing. Emma wondered if she’d set off some invisible tripwire.

  ‘Oh, hello, Mrs Bygate, I haven’t seen you for a few days.’

  ‘I’ve been staying at my parents’. My mother’s not been very well.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Mr Bygate must have been missing you – that’ll be why he’s not been himself.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s fine.’

  ‘Well, he was quite abrupt with me this morning. Didn’t introduce me to his friend and he wasn’t very helpful about Marmalade. Now, he’s either in the cattery because the Ozoufs are away – it’s not right to keep an animal like that in a cage – or, and this chills me to the bone, he’s gone missing. I’ve knocked on their door and there’s no reply, but sometimes they both work very long hours …’

  Emma had zoned out. What friend?

  ‘I heard the front bell last night around one, but that wouldn’t be them. Maybe it was your husband’s friend …’

  ‘Sorry, what friend?’

  ‘The young lady.’

  ‘A young lady was here this morning?’

  ‘Yes, they left together.’

  Emma, flattened and empty, turned her back and opened the door to the flat.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t suggesting anything. I thought she was a friend of yours too – she was wearing your jacket.’

  Emma shut the door and stood motionless in the dark for several minutes. She heard Mrs Le Boutillier muttering to herself, then shuffling back into her flat.

  Another woman had been here. No, it wasn’t possible, he wouldn’t do that. But wasn’t that what she’d wanted? No, the letter was a taunt, not a wish. This wasn’t Colin. A woman had spent the night? And left wearing her clothes? That was bizarre. Had Colin picked her up naked? It didn’t make any sense. But her coat wasn’t on the peg. Could it have been Colin’s mother, over here to console her son and claw him back to her? She could make out a blanket on the sofa: that was where Patricia slept when she visited. Emma turned on the light and looked around the kitchen. There was no large tin of shortbread biscuits, a sure sign of her presence – ‘A fresh supply of your favourites, Colin,’ she would say. She opened the fridge: no meat from the butcher. The old woman always stocked up on fresh meat, a silent criticism of Emma’s fondness for supermarket ready meals. Old woman. Of course! How could it have been his mother? Mrs Le Boutillier had referred to the stranger as young and, in any case, she had met Colin’s mother a few times. Colin had hoped they might become friends and give him and Emma some peace, but there had been instant mutual antipathy when the war had come up, with the Mainlander insisting it was terrifying under the threat of bombs, and the Islander contending that occupation was worse. No, the mystery woman was not his mother, decided Emma, with relief – unti
l she realised that this meant it had been someone else.

  She ran to the bedroom. The bed looked unslept in, freshly made. She pulled back the duvet and fell on the mattress, smelling the sheets and looking for signs of an intruder. Nothing. The sheets hadn’t been changed since she left. She let out a laugh. What was she worried about? This was Colin, her rock. A lifeless piece of dull stone who would never betray her. Silly old Colin. A man for whom a ruck in a rug hurt like a pebble in a shoe, and whose favourite band from the punk era was Dire Straits. He was not a man to cheat on his wife. She lay back and let her head hang off the side. Whoever had stayed here must have slept on the sofa, and Colin in the bed that he had made as soon as he’d got up, just as he always did. Or vice versa. The stupid old cow next door was just stirring things: there was nothing of which to be suspicious.

  Emma noticed a pair of heels and a skirt left on the stool by the dressing-table. She rolled off the bed and crawled towards them. They weren’t hers. She couldn’t touch them – she felt sick. She pulled herself up, holding on to the door handle, and staggered through the hall, bursting out of her front door and finding herself pounding on her neighbour’s door.

  ‘I know you’re there! Come on, you’re always butting in when I don’t want you!’

  A confused and hesitant Mrs Le Boutillier opened the door. ‘I was just seeing to my dinner.’

  ‘What did she look like?’ spat Emma, pushing her way in.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know exactly who! The woman this morning!’

  ‘Please, Mrs Bygate, you’re frightening me.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, normally you won’t shut up. Come on, this is your big moment!’

  ‘I am not a gossip.’

  ‘You are when it comes to bloody cats!’

  ‘Have you seen him?’

  ‘No, and he’s not yours. He’s nothing to do with you!’

  Mrs Le Boutillier fell back on to her settee. ‘My chop will be burning!’