‘Do you fancy a beer?’ Dad asks, dumping the gear in the hall. ‘Coffee? Tea? Ben – you sort Ian out while I get washed.’
‘Just water, thanks. I’ve OD-ed on caffeine today.’ Ian plonks himself down on the sofa and fishes out his Blackberry.
‘Viv? Listen, can you track down that harbourmaster again? Tell him we can’t wait till next week. We’ve got to do the interview tomorrow – I know, I know. Try to sweet-talk him – No, not yet. But she’ll be fine. I’ll call her later – About ten? Nine? Whatever. We’ve got to get it done before we set off on the boat – What? – Oh I don’t know. Camp outside his door. Use your initiative. Call me later, right? Bye.’
He winks at Ben. ‘I don’t know. Can’t get the staff these days.’
‘Was that the film crew?’
‘Viv, my PA. Fantastic girl really. I should probably be nicer to her.’
‘Are you going to interview Laura?’
‘Later maybe, when she’s recovered a bit. No – I’m trying to set up an interview with Mary, down on the quayside. I want to get her reaction to all these revelations before we set off on your dad’s boat to look for the body.’
‘Why?’ Ben wants to know.
‘Well, this is a crucial test of Mary’s reincarnation theory. Assuming Tom really did murder Annie that night – and this whole thing isn’t some strange product of Mary’s imagination – and assuming he never told anyone where he dumped the body, then he’s the only person who could possibly know where it is.’
‘So if you find it where Laura said, then that proves Laura used to be Tom?’
‘That’s right. And if we don’t, Mary will have to explain why. That’s why I want her spelling out the logic, on the record, before we set off – so we can get her reaction on film when we’ve finished the search.’
Ben’s not sure he likes the sound of that; it sounds like Ian’s trying to set a trap. But before he can say anything, here’s Dad back from the shower after about six nanoseconds, in clean jeans and bare feet, freshly shaven and ponging of CK One.
‘What if we actually find something?’ says Dad. ‘Wouldn’t that be a turn up for the books?’ As though he thinks the expedition is a waste of time from the start. ‘Though that Laura stuff you told me about fits in exactly with what Jimmy said about hearing someone lugging something down to that coble.’
‘And Laura wasn’t there when you were hypnotized that time, was she?’ says Ben. ‘So that’s a sort of proof, isn’t it?’
‘Not if it all originates with Mary,’ says Ian. ‘In that case, the more neatly it all fits together, the more suspicious it starts to look – though I’m keeping an open mind, of course, as befits a BBC producer.’ And he winks at Dad, like they’re sharing some secret joke, which makes Ben really sit up, because it means there’s something they don’t want him to know about. So he sort of wanders off into the kitchen and opens the fridge as though he’s getting himself a drink, but it’s really to make them forget he’s there.
‘Did you have any luck with the doc’s old clients?’ Dad’s asking, like it’s something they’ve talked about before – which makes Ben even more suspicious.
‘Nah, but it’s early days yet. It takes ages to wade through all that confidentiality bollocks. I’ll put another researcher on to it when I get back. I can layer all that stuff in later, at the edit stage.’
‘So this is all cosmetic, right? This trip, the diver, all the gear?’
‘You might say that – I couldn’t possibly comment.’
‘You’re not seriously expecting to find anything, are you?’
‘I’d say the odds are around a squillion to one, but I feel I owe it to Mary to give it a go – and the viewing public deserves a bit of a spectacle. Plus it gives us a chance to film you on the boat.’
‘It could be tricky getting up close, you know,’ Dad says doubtfully. ‘That reef’s notorious.’
‘But you’ve got sonar, right? State-of-the-art, you said. And I’ll have the magnetometer beeping away, sweeping the sea bed for lumps of metal. It looks like a torpedo, apparently. Measures distortions in the earth’s magnetic field. Should be brilliant telly.’
‘There’s probably some old anchors down there.’
‘So we’ll have a few false alarms – so what? It all adds to the excitement.’
‘And I’ve got the Aquapulse if we want to home in on something,’ says Dad, starting to get into it.
‘Jeff says he’s got his own gear, so don’t worry about that.’
Ben wanders back with a glass of orange juice and sits down. ‘Skip says you should go in with a dinghy,’ he says, though he doesn’t know why he’s bothering.
‘Can’t fit a film crew in a dinghy, mate,’ says Ian, as if Ben’s an imbecile or something.
‘Don’t worry, buddy,’ says Dad. ‘Wanderer can turn on a sixpence. I’ll drop anchor and keep the chain short. We’ll be fine.’
After Ian’s gone, Dad sort of bustles round for a bit, tidying up, then he comes to sit down next to Ben on the sofa.
‘What’s up?’ he says.
‘What?’
‘Your face is tripping you and you’ve not said a word for half an hour.’
‘I don’t trust that Ian bloke,’ says Ben. ‘I don’t think he wants to find Annie’s body.’
‘What if it’s not there?’
‘I don’t think he’s even going to try properly.’
‘But if the doc’s having everyone on, don’t you think we need to know?’
Ben rounds on him angrily. ‘See? You’re in on it too. This is all a plot to make her look stupid.’
Paul puts a big hand on Ben’s knee. ‘Listen, buddy. Isn’t it time you faced up to the possibility that there’s no kist and no body down there?’
‘There is! You weren’t there. You never heard Laura. That was Tom talking, I know it was.’ He can still picture the coble; Tom grappling with the heavy kist.
‘So we’ll go out with some decent equipment and have a proper look. Can’t say fairer than that. And if we find the body, all well and good. And if we don’t, well hopefully that will put an end to this Annie business once and for all.’
The phone goes and Dad picks it up. ‘Paul Dixon here – Oh, hi, Ian. What’s up? – Oh, right. I mean, I’m sure they know what they’re doing, but still – What about Wanderer, then? Do you still…? – OK. Right you are. Bye.’
‘What’s going on?’ Ben asks, because Dad’s face has sort of closed up, like he’s cross about something but doesn’t want to show it.
‘Ian’s chartering a boat to do a recce before they start filming. This wildlife diver’s a bit nervous, apparently – he’s been talking to some of the lads over at Deep Blue. He thinks they might need something a bit smaller, a bit more film-friendly, so they’re off down the Royal Quays tomorrow to check out some other options.’
‘So they might not use Wanderer at all?’ Ben asks.
Dad shrugs. ‘Says he won’t know till they’ve looked at what else is available.’
Now Ben’s getting worried. ‘But you’re still going, right?’
‘At the moment it’s just Ian and the diver bloke, I think. Plus the skipper of the other boat, of course.’
‘Dad! You’ve got to go! What if they find something, then pretend that they haven’t?’ That’s exactly the sort of thing that Ian bloke would do, Ben thinks, just to make things difficult for the doc.
Dad laughs and sort of half clips him round the ear. ‘Now you’re talking daft. Why on earth would they do that?’
Then Ben gets an idea. ‘Why don’t we go, Dad? Just you and me. We could borrow old Skip’s dinghy and row right up to the reef like Tom did. Then go down with the Aquapulse and sort of mosey about. It would be really cool.’
‘What, without that magnetometer? We wouldn’t know where to start. It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.’
‘Please, Dad,’ Ben says.
‘Look, tell you what I’ll do,’
says Dad, and he gets up to put an end to the discussion. ‘I’ll go down the Royal Quays tomorrow and ask to go along with them, OK? Will that satisfy you?’
Ben nods, but he’s not convinced. He saw that wink that passed between them. He reckons Dad would say anything to get Annie out of his life.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
2007
Laura’s fiddling with her new mobile phone, peering at a screen the size of a postage stamp and pressing tiny pink buttons. The phone itself appears to be mother-of-pearl, with a lid that pops open like a powder compact. Watching her friend bent over it, red nails frantically clacking, Mary doesn’t know whether to be impressed or appalled. She feels sometimes as if she’s the only person in the country who doesn’t feel the need to carry some intrusive warbling gizmo about their person at all times.
‘Come on,’ she says bracingly. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’
‘Ben’s not answering my texts.’ Laura raises a stricken face.
‘Give him time. He’s had a shock.’
‘But we should be with him. Talking him through it.’ She jabs at another button and presses the thing to her ear again, then stares at it in frustration when there’s no answer.
‘Have you left a message?’ Mary asks. ‘Then there’s nothing else you can do. When he’s ready, he’ll get in touch. Meanwhile I think we need a change of scene.’
‘But I’ve texted him we’re at your house,’ she objects.
‘So text him again! For heaven’s sake, Laura.’
‘Where are we going, then?’
‘Out! Anywhere! I don’t know. Yes I do. Take me to that shop in Tynemouth you’re always nagging me about, where they sell the sort of garments you think I ought to be wearing.’
‘Raspberry Bazaar? Are you serious?’
‘If I’m going to be a media superstar, I can’t keep wheeling out the same old outfits all the time, can I?’
Laura taps one final message into her powder compact then snaps it shut and drops it into her handbag. ‘Right, got your chequebook? I’m holding you to this, Dr Charlton. And I don’t want a repeat of that Ikea fiasco.’
Mary smiles ruefully as her friend reapplies her lipstick and fluffs up her hair in the hall mirror. ‘Retail therapy’ – isn’t that what they call it? Sometimes it seems a good deal more effective than the talking variety she normally dispenses.
The shop, when they get there, is not nearly as dreadful as Mary had been fearing – Tynemouth is littered with expensive emporia, full of cashmere and linen, and coiffured shop assistants who look like they’d faint at the sight of a pair of Doc Martens. This shop’s more like the cluttered boutiques she remembers from the seventies: poorly lit, crammed with beads and scarves, joss-sticks and dream-catchers, and racks of roomy, oddly shaped separates in the rich muddy colours she favours – all products of Asian child labour, no doubt.
‘See? Trust Auntie Laura,’ says Laura smugly, watching Mary leaf gingerly through a rack of floor-length silk culottes. ‘Just your kind of schmutter. I bet they’ve even got those bedspreads with little mirrors on.’
‘What do I do? Is there a changing booth or something?’ Mary’s idea of shopping is scooping up three identical size 10 woollen cardigans in various dark shades and taking them to the checkout at Marks and Spencer.
‘Through that door. You go in and strip off and I’ll bring you some cats and camisas to try on.’
Mary starts to object, then stops herself. Would it hurt to give Laura free rein? This outing is about distraction, after all, not about seriously equipping herself with a suitable new wardrobe. But after two hours in her undies, trapped in a back room festooned with paper flowers and swathes of fabric Laura refers to as ‘throws’, she discovers she has purchased an alarmingly large heap of assorted garments wrapped in cerise tissue paper. Surrendering her credit card, she can’t even remember what half of them are. Laura won’t let her look at the total. ‘It costs what it costs,’ she says firmly. ‘That’s a decade’s worth of bona clobber you’ve got there.’
Later, sitting outside in the sunshine, over cappuccinos at a nearby café, surrounded by her purchases, Mary lights up a well-earned Gitanes. ‘Not quite how I’d planned to spend my afternoon,’ she remarks, still somewhat bemused. ‘Still, I hope you’re satisfied.’
‘I would be if one of these dowry messages was from Ben.’ Laura’s bending over the mother-of-pearl compact again, jabbing at buttons.
Mary waits until she’s finished. ‘That single session doesn’t mean it’s all over with Tom, you know,’ she warns. ‘There’s obviously quite a bit more work we need to do before we can put him back to sleep in your unconscious.’
‘Not today though, duckie, if it’s all the same to you,’ Laura says, clicking sweeteners onto a raft of froth and cocoa dust. ‘I’ve had my fill of rape and knives for the time being.’
‘We obviously terminated your therapy too early – and that was my fault. I’m so sorry – I could kick myself.’ Mary gives her head a little shake of annoyance.
‘Don’t be daft.’
‘No, I should have insisted we carry on with the sessions after my illness. But I was so pleased to have you as a friend, I let you convince me there was no need to continue.’ She smiles sheepishly.
‘So we’re both to blame,’ concludes Laura. Then, after a bit: ‘I never cottoned on before that the lad was abused – Tom, I mean.’
‘It sounded as though he was dyslexic, too. Did you notice? So that was another humiliation to bear.’
‘Poor little sod.’
Mary regards her thoughtfully. ‘Are you ready to forgive him yet, do you think?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, there’s always a choice, isn’t there? There’s plenty of abused kids that don’t end up raping and murdering, battering their wives. No one’s ever totally out of control – there’s always that moment when you’re on the brink and you can tip either way.’
‘Whatever he did, though, you’ve been making up for it practically every day of your life. Nursing Lord Jim, setting up Salon Laura, helping Ben and God knows how many others. Tom’s given you a quest.’
Laura snorts. ‘I don’t think Ben would see it like that.’
‘Yet you’ve changed his life. Don’t lose sight of that. Remember how lost he seemed when we first met him?’
‘Soon as I spotted him at the caff, I knew. There was something about him.’ She smiles fondly, spooning foam.
‘Strange, isn’t it, that instant connection? At the risk of labouring a point, I can’t help thinking there must be some unconscious recognition that takes place at moments like that. What some might call a meeting of souls.’
‘Did I ever tell you that I clocked you too, years before I came to you as a patient? There was this mad zelda in some ethnic knitted hat with ear flaps wandering round the Co-op first thing every Monday morning, muttering away in a world of her own.’
Mary grimaces in dismay; she hadn’t realized how odd she must seem sometimes. ‘Where were you?’ she asks.
‘In that Post Office bit in the corner, depositing the takings from the caff.’
‘How embarrassing.’
‘When you opened your door as Dr Charlton, you could have knocked me down with a feather.’
Later, weighed down by rustling carrier bags, they walk home the long way round, beside the sunny river, tracing the route Annie and Sam took on their first date over a hundred years earlier.
Mary keeps stopping to rub her hands and flex her fingers to keep the circulation going. ‘Did you check your mobile again?’ she asks as they reach the bottom of High Beacon Stairs and pause to contemplate the long climb to her house on the top bank.
‘Zilcho, nada, nanti,’ says Laura, snapping the lid closed.
‘Did I mention I’ve advertised for a lodger?’ Mary remarks a few minutes later, somewhat out of breath, around a third of the way up. ‘I thought it was probably time I stopped living on my own. If I’m less of a hermit, perhaps I won’t
be so prone to kissing unsuitable ex-boyfriends. What do you think?’
‘Bona idée,’ Laura comments, puffing along beside her. ‘Though I hope you’re not expecting me to apply. There’s many a good deed I’m prepared to do for a friend, but that avocado suite’s more than a girl of my taste and discernment can abide.’
Mary laughs. ‘I was thinking more of a student, someone poor and needy who’ll head off somewhere cheap and dangerous for long holidays on a regular basis and leave me in peace to contemplate the vagaries of the unconscious mind.’
They reach the top of the steps and collapse on a bench to get their breath back. A massive container ship of some kind – carrying double-decker buses, perhaps, or combine harvesters – is trundling up the river in front of them.
‘Talking of unsuitable ex-boyfriends,’ says Laura, ‘did we interrupt a bit of clinch this morning by any chance?’
Mary feels herself blushing and Laura’s eyes widen. ‘We did, didn’t we? Mary Magdalena! How long’s this been going on?’
‘Nothing’s going on.’
‘But you’d like it to, right?’
Mary reaches in her pocket for her Gitanes. ‘If you’d asked me a month ago, I’d have said that no force on this earth would persuade me to get involved with a ruthlessly ambitious twice-married film director with six children.’
‘But now?’
‘Now it’s just as bad an idea as it ever was. Suffice it to say, you and Ben saved me from committing what would undoubtedly have turned out to be a disastrous error of judgement.’
Mary lights up and blows smoke, staring at the vast flank of the container ship as it churns past. ‘When Ian found out he was Dory in a past life, he became obsessed with the idea that I was Henry and that we’d been soulmates for millennia.’
Laura chuckles. ‘As chat-up lines go, that takes some beating,’ she comments.
‘So I went to the library out of curiosity and discovered the dates didn’t work. Henry was still alive when Peggy was born.’
‘So if you weren’t Henry and you weren’t Tom in a previous life, that only leaves—’
‘Sam. Yes, it does rather look like that.’
Herring Girl Page 49