The Burning Girl
Page 21
EIGHTEEN
If Thorne were to make a list of the places he least liked to be beside, the seaside would come fairly near the top. Admittedly, British seaside resorts were marginally less attractive than those slightly more glamorous ones in Australia say, or Florida, but even then, Thorne was far from keen. The sea might be warmer, bluer, cleaner, but it had its own drawbacks.
Margate or Miami? Rhyl or Rio? As far as Thorne was concerned it pretty much came down to a choice between shit and sharks…
Having said that, what he’d seen of Brighton so far that morning hadn’t been too unpleasant. A ten-minute taxi ride from the station to Eileen’s house. A five-minute walk from there to the pub.
Thorne’s father, and his father’s best friend Victor, had travelled down together from St Albans the day before. Victor had rung while Thorne was getting ready to go out and meet Alison Kelly. They’d arrived in one piece, Victor had told him. His father was excited, but fairly well behaved. He was looking forward to a weekend away.
Thorne had wanted to catch an earlier train, but getting himself together and out of the flat that morning had been complicated. Alison had caught him looking at his watch as they’d shared breakfast in the kitchen, and it had only heightened the awkwardness that hung between them, heavy as the smell of burned toast.
What had been said in the early hours…
That was far harder to deal with, and certainly to talk about, than what they’d been doing to each other a few hours earlier. The sex had been snatched at and sweaty, the two of them equally needy, physically at least.
The morning did its job on them, muggy, thick-headed and cruel. It shone a fresh, harsh light on what was now unsayable.
Thorne belched, tasting last night’s Guinness. Victor laughed. Eileen tried to look disapproving. His dad appeared not to have noticed.
‘Sorry,’ Thorne said. He knew that he was looking slightly rough, knew that Eileen could see it. ‘I had a bit of a night…’
She sipped her tomato juice. ‘That explains why you got here so late.’
By the time Thorne had reached his aunt’s house and got a cup of tea down him, there’d been nothing left to do except head off for a quick drink before Sunday lunch.
‘It won’t be easy to get into a decent restaurant,’ Eileen said. ‘They’ll all be full if we don’t get a move on.’
Thorne said nothing. Eileen had been a life-saver since his dad’s illness had kicked in, but she could be a bit prissy when she felt like it. He hoped she wasn’t in that sort of mood.
‘Beer or birds?’ Jim Thorne said suddenly.
Thorne stared at his father. ‘What?’
‘Your “bit of a night”. On the beer or on the birds?’
Thorne wasn’t sure which was throwing him more, the question or the way it was couched.
‘Maybe both,’ Victor said. He grinned at Thorne’s father and the two of them began to laugh.
Victor was probably the only friend that Thorne’s father had left. He was certainly the only one Thorne ever saw. He was taller and thicker-set than his father, especially now, as Jim Thorne was losing weight. He had much less hair, and false teeth that fitted badly, and the two old men together often reminded Thorne of some bizarre, over-the-hill double act.
‘Maybe,’ Thorne said.
His father leaned towards him. ‘Always a good idea, I reckon. Get a few pints down you and even the ugly ones start to look…wossname…the opposite of ugly?’
Victor supplied the word his friend was searching for. ‘Pretty? Attractive?’
Jim Thorne nodded. ‘Even the ugly ones start to look attractive.’
Thorne smiled. A bizarre double act: the straight man occasionally needing to provide a bit of help with the punchlines. He glanced across the table at Eileen, who shook her head and rolled her eyes. There wasn’t too much wrong with her mood.
Victor raised his glass, as if proposing a toast. ‘Beer goggles,’ he said.
‘The same goes for women, you know,’ Eileen said. ‘We can wear wine goggles.’ She pointed towards Thorne’s father. ‘I reckon Maureen probably had a pair on the night she got together with you.’
Thorne watched his father. They hadn’t talked much about his mother since her death. Almost never since the Alzheimer’s. He wondered how the old man would react.
Jim Thorne nodded, enjoying it. ‘I think you’re probably right, love,’ he said. ‘Bloody strong ones an’ all.’ He raised his glass until it covered the bottom half of his face. ‘I was stone-cold sober…’
Once the drink had been supped and the glass lowered, Thorne tried and failed to catch his father’s eye. The old man’s gaze was darting around all over the place.
The pub was old fashioned in the worst sense and half empty, probably as a result. They sat in a tiny bar–the sort of room that might once have been called a snug–around a rickety metal table near the door. The absence of anything like atmosphere was mostly due to the strip lighting. It buzzed above their heads, washing everything out. It made the place feel like a waiting room that smelled of beer.
Thorne knew why they’d chosen this particular pub: his father liked places that were brightly lit. He was forever wandering around his house turning all the lights on, even in the middle of the day. It might have been forgetfulness, but Thorne thought that the old man was simply trying to keep the darkness away, knowing it was creeping up on him and struggling to stay in the light, where he could see. Where he could still be seen…
‘Who’s for another one?’ Victor asked.
Eileen shook her head, slid her empty glass away from her. ‘If we want to get proper Sunday lunch somewhere…’
They began to gather their things together–bags, coats, hats. As Eileen, Victor and his father moved slowly, one by one towards the door, Thorne checked under the table to make sure no one had left anything behind.
He was wishing he was somewhere else. He was thinking about the case; about Rooker and Ryan and two men running for their lives through a dark wood. He was picturing Alison Kelly and Jessica Clarke; faces on his pillow and in a drawer beside his bed.
Beneath her chair, Thorne found Eileen’s umbrella. He grabbed it and followed her to the door. Now he thought about it, perhaps a day out was a good idea. Feeling like a youngster being dragged around by three, slightly strange, grown-ups, might be just what he needed.
They walked towards the seafront. Thorne dragged his heels and stared at things he wasn’t really interested in to avoid getting too far ahead of his father and the others.
Spring was a few days old but hadn’t found its feet yet. It was grey–the type of day Thorne associated with the seaside. He couldn’t help thinking that the picture would be complete if Eileen had a reason to put up her umbrella. This was, he knew, a little unfair on the city of Brighton. Expensive and deeply fashionable, with a thriving music scene and a reputation as the gay capital of Britain, it was hardly the typical coastal resort. Still, prejudice was prejudice, and, as far as Thorne was concerned, if you could buy rock with the name of a place running through it, he was happy to stay away.
As if to confirm his preconceptions, there were people ‘sunbathing’ on the beach. Several families were encamped on the pebbles, windbreaks flapping around them, the goosepimples visible from a hundred yards. Stubbornness, optimism, stupidity–you could call it what you liked. It seemed to Thorne as perfect an embodiment of Englishness as he’d seen in a while.
‘Look at those daft sods,’ Eileen said. ‘In this weather!’
Thorne smiled. There were other things, of course, that were even more English…
‘It’s getting bloody cold, if you ask me.’ Eileen pulled her coat tight to her chest. ‘Ten or twelve degrees at most, I should think. Colder, with the wind-chill factor.’
The wind-chill factor. A concept oddly beloved of forecasters in recent years. Thorne wondered where it had come from, and if they used it in places where the wind-chill might actually be a factor…
They moved on, Thorne listening to his father witter on about how many years, how many workmen and how many thousand gallons of gold paint it had taken to complete the Royal Pavilion, until they reached the restaurant. Eileen put on her poshest voice to ask the waiter for a table. When they sat down, Thorne, who had already decided that he was going to pay for lunch, checked the prices. They all went for the three-course Sunday afternoon special. It wouldn’t break the bank.
‘This is nice,’ Victor said.
Eileen nodded. ‘I normally cook a big lunch for everyone on a Sunday, but Trevor and his wife are away and Bob’s off playing golf, so I decided not to bother. Besides, it’s a treat to go out, isn’t it?’
Thorne grunted, thinking that, at less than a tenner a head, ‘treat’ might be putting it a bit strongly. ‘Shame we won’t see Trevor and Bob,’ he said. Trevor was Eileen’s son, and Thorne guessed that he probably hadn’t gone anywhere. Lunch with barmy Uncle Jim wasn’t exactly a tantalising prospect. It almost certainly explained husband Bob’s game of golf, hastily arranged once he’d found out that the dotty brother-in-law and dotty brother-in-law’s mate were coming down for the weekend…
‘I know,’ Eileen said. ‘They both said how much they were looking forward to seeing you.’
Thorne suddenly felt enormously sorry for Eileen. For having to lie. For the shit she had to put up with from his father. For doing all that she did and getting nothing in return. Thorne couldn’t remember if he’d ever really thanked her for anything. ‘Maybe next time,’ he said.
Eileen nodded towards Thorne’s father. He was staring at the table, tapping the blunt end of a knife against his teeth. ‘I think your dad’s having a good time,’ she said.
Victor reached across for the water jug. ‘He’s having a brilliant time, definitely.’
‘Did we thank you for bringing him down?’ she asked.
Victor beamed. ‘It’s fine, really. It’s fun for us both to go on a bit of a jaunt.’
‘Thank you anyway, though. I couldn’t get up to fetch him down and he wouldn’t have been able to get here without you…you know, keeping him company.’
‘He’s no trouble, honestly.’
Thorne knew that both of these people loved his father, that they sacrificed a great deal for him, but it still set his teeth on edge to hear them talk about him as if he were not there.
‘He’s trouble when he wants to be,’ Eileen said.
Victor laughed and poured Jim Thorne a glass of water.
Thorne tuned out the conversation and looked away, searching to see if there was any sign of their first course. He felt a hand on his arm and saw that it belonged to his father.
‘You look like you’ve got a lot on your mind, son,’ the old man said.
Thorne nodded. In his mind a young girl’s arms were thrashing, as she whirled across a playground, as she danced around a kitchen, as she tumbled through the air from the roof of a multi-storey car park…
Jim Thorne leaned in close and whispered, ‘Sometimes, I think you’ve got it worse than I have.’ He jabbed a finger into the side of his head. The hair at his temple was white, whereas his son’s was grey. ‘You want to try this, Tom. Can’t recommend it highly enough. However bad you feel, however much it hurts to think about something, half an hour later and you can’t remember fuck all. Just like that, whoosh, it’s gone. Excellent. Goldfish brain…’
Thorne stared at his dad for a few seconds. He couldn’t think of a single thing to say. He was rescued by a waitress who materialised at their table with four bowls of watery-looking soup.
‘Four and three, forty-three…’
When Eileen had suggested bingo, Thorne had felt almost suicidal, and the enthusiasm of Victor and his father had done nothing to change his mood. They walked past what little was left of the West Pier, now all but derelict having caught fire with suspicious regularity. They carried on to Brighton Pier, formerly the Palace, but now renamed as it was the only functioning pier the city had left. Thorne sulked all the way there.
Bingo. It was right up there with karaoke and poking red-hot needles into your eyes…
‘Two little ducks, twenty-two…’
Now that he was playing, though, the excitement of the game was getting to him. Even though the prizes on offer–an oversized teddy-bear and a giant, inflatable hammer–hardly justified his increased heart rate.
‘On its own, number seven…’
‘Bingo!’
The call came from an old woman sitting a few feet away. Thorne swore under his breath and sat back hard in his chair at the same time as everybody else. He slid back the blue plastic squares that had been covering all but two of his numbers.
He was sitting next but one to his father.
The old man leaned across Eileen and grinned. ‘If you’ve got a hundred old women, how d’you make ninety-nine of ’em shout “fuck”?’
Thorne shook his head. ‘Don’t know.’
‘Get the other one to shout “Bingo”.’
Thorne had heard the joke before, but laughed anyway like he always did.
‘How many numbers did you need?’ Eileen asked.
‘Just the two,’ Thorne said.
‘Imagine what it’s like in a big hall. Tens of thousands of pounds they play for sometimes. More on a national game…’
Thorne decided immediately that he’d best not venture into one of those places. If the excitement was relative to the money up for grabs, he’d probably drop dead on the spot.
Where they were, in an arcade at the end of the pier, couldn’t have been much different to one of the grand bingo halls that were still dotted around London. Most were former cinemas, but several still retained the grandeur of the Victorian music halls from which they’d been converted. Thorne and the others sat on uncomfortable moulded chairs around a small podium with the plastic grids in front of them, and slots into which to shove their pound coins. It was quick and easy. There was no cash to be won. It was bingo-lite.
‘Your next full house in just one minute…’ The caller’s voice echoed through the cheap sound system.
Thorne looked up at him. He was stick-thin and balding. The huge microphone that was pressed against his mouth masked the bottom half of his face. The oversized sunglasses hid the rest of it. Shoddy as the set-up was, the concession to form in the shape of a frilly shirt and wilting bow-tie was something to be admired.
Thorne put his coin into the slot for the next game.
‘Come along now, ladies and gents, only a few places left…’
Thorne looked around. There were no more than half a dozen people in the whole place. The bloke had more front than Brighton.
‘Eyes down for your first number…’
Thorne leaned forward, fingers hovering, ready to flip back the plastic squares. A few feet to his right, he could hear that his father was still laughing at his ‘bingo’ joke. He saw Eileen lean over and whisper, then pick up a coin and push it into the slot for him.
‘Five and six, fifty-six…’
Thorne’s father began to laugh louder. The old woman who’d won the previous game shushed them and shook her head. There were increasingly loud mutterings and murmurs from Thorne’s right. He turned at the same moment as Eileen reached for his hand and implored him for some help.
‘Two and four,’ his father shouted suddenly, ‘your mother’s a whore!’
Victor giggled, and Thorne saw the colour drain from Eileen’s face. He reached across and took hold of his father’s arm. ‘Dad…’
‘Three and six, cocks and pricks!’
Thorne stood up and stepped around the back of Eileen towards his father. He heard sniggering, then a voice of encouragement from somewhere behind him. ‘Go on, mate, why don’t you get up there and have a go?’
Thorne lower
ed his head until it was close to his father’s. The look of excitement, of glee, that he saw on the old man’s face made him catch his breath.
‘Two fat ladies,’ his father announced, ‘I wouldn’t fuck either of them!’
There was a whistle of feedback as the caller put down his microphone. Thorne was shocked to see that the man had no teeth and was at least twenty years older than he’d taken him for. From the corner of his eye, Thorne could see a man in a dark suit–the manager, he guessed–marching towards them with a walkie-talkie in his hand. Thorne knew he should compose himself, should prepare the usual excuses and explanations, but he was far too busy laughing.
The coffee he’d bought at Brighton station had gone cold. Thorne stared out of the carriage window into the blackness as the train moved far too slowly back towards London. He let his head drop back and closed his eyes, wondering why it was that he so rarely felt this tired in bed, when he should sleep.
He pictured his father and Victor, lying in twin beds in Eileen’s spare room and talking about the day they’d had. Laughing about what had happened on the pier. In truth, he had no idea whether his father knew what he was doing at moments like that. Were they events he could objectively look back on and enjoy? Thorne hoped that they were, and imagined his father struggling to hold on to the memory of his bingo-calling exploits before it slipped away from him.
Whoosh, it’s gone. Excellent. Goldfish brain…
Earlier in the day, Thorne had imagined himself as a child with a gaggle of eccentric adults. He knew of course that this was a momentary illusion, that in reality the reverse was true–that trying to look after his father was as close as he’d come, as close as he might ever come, to being a parent.
He didn’t bother stifling an enormous yawn. When he’d finished, he caught the eye of a woman sitting opposite and smiled. She looked equally knackered and smiled back.
He’d heard plenty about parenting. From seasoned campaigners like Russell Brigstocke and Yvonne Kitson. From Dave Holland, who still had milky sick-stains on his lapels. Everything they’d told him seemed suddenly relevant to his situation…