by Unknown
He walked on carefully towards the bridge, placing the whole length of each foot upon the ground, not just the balls of his feet but putting his heel down too with every step, for the last thing that Katharine had spat at him the night of the senseless-Bea-in-a-heap-by-the-sundial was, ‘Autistic. You’re autistic, Frank. You bounce on the balls of your feet. It’s a known indicator of autism!’
He headed north, toe, instep, heel, toe . . . No, that’s wrong. He skipped a step and then continued. Heel, instep, toe, heel, instep, toe, over Magdalene Bridge, up the street and towards the council offices on Castle Hill.
‘I’m looking for Beatrice Pamplin,’ he told the receptionist at Shire Hall. ‘She works here.’
The woman looked down her list and shook her head. ‘I don’t have a Pamplin here. Do you know the department?’
Frank thought for a moment. ‘Admin?’
She paused and looked down at her list. ‘Well it’s all admin really.’
‘Accounts?’ His mind tried to retrieve the details of Bea’s work. Something to do with deeds and figures. ‘Finance?’
The receptionist waited. He could see she wasn’t going to let him through without a name, and a department.
‘I had a call from her colleague to say she hadn’t turned up for work.’
‘I need a name, I’m afraid.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Frank, turning away. He’d had enough of this. First Bea doesn’t turn up for work. Then it turns out Bea doesn’t actually go to work at all. What in God’s name was going on? ‘I’ll go to a phone box and dial directory enquiries. It’ll probably be easier.’
‘Just a moment, sir.’ The receptionist called him back. ‘I have a Beatrice Kemp in Land Registry, Covenants and Deeds,’ she said. ‘Would that be her?’
‘That’s her,’ he said, tugging at his cuffs and struggling with the splinter that was Patrick that he could not remove, had never managed to be rid of. Yesterday’s Scotch was beginning to take its toll. It hurt that Bea used her maiden name at work, but of course she did. It was where he worked.
‘Out the door and round the corner.’ The woman pointed with her pen. ‘Park House.’
Behind the handsome, carefully restored building Frank found a warren of walkways running between featureless blocks thrown up too close for light or views. Kemp? Pamplin? Who on earth did Bea think she was? She was Pamplin for the mortgage and the insurance. Mr and Mrs Frank Pamplin. He nodded angrily to himself then looked up at the grey concrete in front of him that looked a bloody mess, like it had been slapped together by a bored child. He had only a dim image of Bea at work; it was a rear view, in a pencil skirt and heels, carrying sheaves of documents down the polished parquet of the building he had just left. But now he suspected this might have been an error. He looked about him and had the queasy sensation of being on the edge of some vast area of her life he knew nothing about. What on earth did she do here all day? A noise behind him made him jump. The door to Park House opened violently and ejected a thin woman in her twenties. She had stockinged feet and carried a pair of stilettos. She was blowing her nose noisily into a man-sized tissue.
‘Oh!’ she said when she saw Frank.
‘Excuse me,’ said Frank. ‘I’m looking for Bea.’
The woman took a step backwards. The unlit cigarette she was holding broke in her fingers and fell to the ground. She fumbled for another one, then shook her head and her face crumpled. ‘Jesus Christ,’ she said. ‘I’m Karen. Are you . . . ?’ She searched her bag for a lighter. ‘Are you . . . ?’ She stopped herself, fearful of making a mistake.
Frank said, ‘I’m her husband,’ and felt, for the first time that day, in control. The girl looked as though she was from another time. She had the serious, ailing face of a nineteenth-century novelist.
She grasped his arm. ‘Thank God.’ She scrabbled some more in her bag and pulled out the lighter. She took a quick look back at the building and pursed the cigarette between her lips, cupping her hand round it and bending her face as if to kiss it. ‘We can’t find her.’ She took a deep inhalation and exhaled, blowing the smoke away from Frank and flapping guiltily with her hand. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she said.
‘I’ve retraced her steps.’
Karen’s eyes widened. She looked at the burning end of her cigarette. ‘Oh my God.’
‘I told the person in her office I would.’
Karen nodded feverishly. ‘Yes. Precious. Yes.’ She tapped excitedly at her chest and nodded. ‘I was there. I work with Bea.’ She opened the cigarette packet and took another one out before remembering the one in her fingers was still lit.
Frank looked around him. He thought perhaps he should go in and try and see this Precious woman. He moved towards the door. Karen put a hand out to stop him.
‘I wouldn’t if I were you. It’s hell in there.’
Bad
‘YOU LET her walk?’ Richard took a look at his wife. Her face was turned away from his as she bent over papers and lists.
‘Yes. She wanted to. Now where did I put that rentals list?’
The children had left for school and they should both be at work but Katharine had a plan to execute and he knew better than to get in the way of that.
‘Even so, darling. It’s quite a long way and some nasty things have happened on that path. Remember the girl who was dragged into the—’
‘Richard, please! My sister is a grown woman. I cannot continue to spend my life watching over her. Here.’ She passed him a brochure. ‘I think this place looks fabulous. Beautiful garden.’
Richard had been quite pleased at the suggestion they meet back at the house for coffee after the school run. He had envisaged a leisurely breakfast, some calls to work and a jolly time choosing a place to rent in London. If he were absolutely honest, work was a little quiet these days and on occasions he found himself standing in the vast atrium of his office and feeling like the captain on the bridge of a ghost ship. He missed the buzz and hustle of the coalface of finance, but his current post did at least leave him more time for family.
Katharine poured more coffee and took another slice of toast. The woman had quite extraordinary drive, a bit like his mother. And he was very proud of her work. At least she did something useful, he always told her. Saving babies all day long, now that was a real contribution, whereas he, well, some days he was hard pressed to say what he did all day.
‘I think we call this one today, now, put the deposit down and drive up and camp there this weekend. Adrian will just adore that.’ Katharine put half a slice of toast and marmalade inside her mouth and gulped down her coffee. Richard looked at the brochure and nodded.
‘It looks marvellous.’ He glanced at the front. ‘Good lord, is that really the price? Per month?’
Katharine took it away from him. ‘It’s the going rate. But it’ll only be for three months or so. Oh God.’ She reached for her list again. ‘Uniforms! By Monday.’
He had been careful not to crow over the schools issue but he was glad she had come round to his way of thinking at last. It was reassuring that Adrian would have the same sort of education as he had, without the boarding of course; Katharine would never agree to that. In pectore robur had been his school motto, ‘With a heart of oak’, and oddly enough, it was the way he had led his life. His mind ambled off to a forthcoming meeting with shareholders. Claudia, the bottles of Perrier, air-conditioning, and the soothing upward gradient of profit and sales. It was strange that he’d had no calls.
‘And anyway,’ continued Katharine, ‘she’d got the day wrong.’ She pushed her chair back. ‘I’m going to get Wanda in for the day tomorrow. If Bea doesn’t mind.’ She glanced at her husband. A quiver of irritability ran through her. ‘I thought I might set her to work on the cellar. And the children’s rooms. She knows what she’s doing and she’s incredibly cheap.’
‘Well, ask Bea first.’
‘I called her but her phone is off.’
There was a pause. Richard returned to th
e here and now.
‘Are you sure she wasn’t upset yesterday?’
Katharine peered at the details on the brochure. ‘Oh, you know Bea . . .’
‘I imagine it’s a shock for her. The children will miss her.’
‘She didn’t say much.’ She got up and put more bread in the toaster, then turned on him. ‘Richard, don’t look at me like that. I’ve done what I can for Bea, I really have.’ She marched over to the fridge and put her head inside. ‘I rescued her from that ghastly betting shop in Hastings, I found her the job at Shire Hall, helped her buy the house, did what I could to stop her wasting her time on that man Patrick, and practically gave her my children in the absence of any of her own.’ She brought two jars of jam to the table. ‘I mean, just what else am I expected to do?’
The toast popped up and Katharine sat down. Richard noticed the vein in her temple start up a warning throb. He put his hand on her arm and rubbed it.
‘I was simply suggesting—’
‘Well don’t,’ she snapped. ‘It’s not simple.’
Richard surrendered to her unreasonableness. This was marriage, he told himself with a long breath in. There were ups and there were downs and once there were children, well that was an end to it. He opened the paper, lifted himself from the scene and sent his mind off to the office again. Claudia would be running the show as usual, answering his emails, organising his diary and fielding calls. They would take a trip to the Seychelles again at Christmas and stay at the house on the beach. Katharine would relax there, the children would grow happy and brown and they would return to start their new life in London. He considered a lengthy visit to the lavatory with the newspaper.
Katharine felt better for her outburst and leant across to kiss Richard’s hand. He was extraordinary. She could throw anything at him and he just went on being there. That was what was so frightening. She was completely in control. Everything she decided on happened. Even Richard happened because she made him. He was Plan B. Plan A was escape from Hastings and become a success, and at twenty-nine when she found she had achieved that, she looked about her and noticed she had failed to achieve a husband. Time was short and she needed to act fast. When she came across Richard in the hospital, numb with grief and looking for the chaplain’s room, she showed him the way. Her friend Jane urged her on. ‘Snaffle him fast,’ she advised. ‘Widowers are perfect. But they only last a few weeks.’
It wasn’t very difficult. She looked after him and amused him with her breathless grip on life. She knew that her work impressed him and that her body comforted him. Within a year they were married and Laura was on the way and she knew she had a good man. But there was a part of her, a narrow, bad part that crouched below her ribs, that wanted to push him to his limits, wanted to see what would happen if she made herself so hateful that one day he broke her, walked out and never came back. Part of her wondered at the terrible fear and destruction that this would bring, longed to feel that pain, the Tuesday pain when Daddy never came home, never came and never came, the slow, empty terror of it that was more real than anything she had felt before or since.
She screwed the lid tightly back on the jam jar. A terrifying part of her needed a sacrifice to make her whole again.
Sign
THE VAN driver was shouting. He was strutting and jabbing, effing and blinding at Nesrine, who stood in the middle of Oyster Row, a fistful of bindweed drooping from one hand. The courier held the parcel up and shook it at her like a birthday gift.
‘All I’m asking you is to just sign for it and keep it for them!’
Nesrine wiped her hands on her apron and looked unhappy. Her front door was open and the hosepipe lay on the crazy paving, water running down the path and into the gutter. Frank quickened his pace and reached the gate, hopeful suddenly.
‘Is it for me?’ Lancashire Arts had promised to send him some books.
The van driver swung round. ‘Number seventeen. That you?’
Thank God, thought Frank. He could do with a parcel. He badly needed an arrival, an entrance, a prop. He said, ‘That’s me. I’ll sign for it.’
‘She don’t understand a word I’m saying,’ said the courier, jerking his head in Nesrine’s direction. ‘Sign here.’ Frank squiggled blindly on the tiny screen. He held his hand out for the parcel. ‘Print as well.’ He did as he was told. ‘That’ll be two pounds fifty.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Excess postage.’
Frank looked at the package. It was wrapped in battered brown paper that looked like it had been used many times before. Evidently it had been backwards and forwards for some time. Several different-coloured stamps were stuck unevenly across the top and someone had written, ‘Not known at this address.’ Bea’s name was scrawled in blue pencil. The postcode was wrong. Frank stuffed the packet irritably into his coat pocket and paid the courier.
The van roared off and Nesrine shook her head apologetically.
Frank tried to smile. He had never acknowledged the woman before, much less spoken to her.
‘Have you seen my wife? Bea?’
Nesrine shook her head and said, ‘Yes. Oh yes. Your wife is very kind lady.’ She dropped the weeds and stepped towards Frank, patting her cheeks with her palms, mouth wobbling. ‘When my husband die, I didn’t know what to do.’
Frank took a step away. He didn’t want to get involved in any kind of rerun of the grieving process.
‘Every day she speak to me and one day she give me the roses.’ Nesrine turned to look at the bush by her front door. ‘Wait there,’ she told Frank. Nesrine went into her front garden and bent down behind the dustbin. She re-emerged holding a potted lily and came back across the road.
‘This is for her. I’ve grown it myself.’ She held it out to him and turned back to wave a hand in the direction of her garden. ‘She give me the roses, see? They’re beautiful.’
Frank took the lily and let himself into the house. He dialled Katharine’s number. A woman answered immediately, efficient and brusque.
‘Dr Cooper’s phone.’ Frank hesitated. Cooper? So Katharine took Richard’s name. He asked if Katharine was there, pointlessly, he realised, because presumably if she were, she would have answered herself. Or perhaps not, Frank thought, realising he had little idea how things worked in Katharine’s world of work. He was told, rather rudely in his opinion, that Katharine was in a meeting. The woman sounded rushed and keen to get back to whatever it was he had interrupted – Frank imagined parents sitting before her, being given bad news about their premature baby.
She said, ‘Who’s calling?’
‘This is her brother-in-law. Frank Pamplin.’
‘What’s it concerning?’
Frank had had enough of this. ‘It’s all right. I’ll try her mobile.’
He put the phone down and sat at the kitchen table. The phone rang at once and hope soared inside him then fell and died as he heard Margaret’s voice on the other end. Bea’s mother.
‘Is she there?’
Before Frank could answer, a shadow from the kitchen window moved across the table and he swung round to see a short, heavyset man crossing the patio. He wore yellow gloves and carried a rope in one hand. Some sort of metal cage swung from the other.
‘Who the hell is that?’
‘It’s me,’ said Margaret.
‘There’s a strange man in my garden.’
‘Is that Frank?’
‘Bea’s not here . . .’
‘It’s not her I want to speak to.’
‘Now listen, Margaret—’
‘No, you listen to me. I don’t want a party.’
Frank watched the man lift the cage. Claws, teeth and grey fur sent it jerking through the air with what Frank felt to be an obscene energy. He grimaced.
‘It’s the patio man.’
‘No, Uncle Derek told me, so I know she’s planning one.’
‘Hey!’ Frank banged on the window.
‘Pardon?’ said Margaret.
‘Hey!’
‘Oh, she won’t listen to me. That’s why I’m calling you.’
‘Margaret, something’s happened.’
‘And I’d want to get my hair done, but Leslie is in Lanzarote until the Monday, so that’s no good.’
Urban lowered the cage into the water, paying out the rope. Then he replaced the lid.
‘I think I’ve lost Bea.’
Urban lit a cigarette, then winked at Frank.
‘Frank?’ said Margaret.
Frank watched him smoke and stare wistfully up at the sky.