Perfectly Pure and Good

by Frances Fyfield

  Instead he found himself saying, Come into the surgery tomorrow and I’ll tell you a bit about the estate, have the rest of the weekend to think about it. Don’t feel you have to take meals with us. Don’t feel you have to stay.

  Edward was acting out the role of serious, unconventional younger brother, quoting poetry and describing the land. He made it sound as if he owned it all, puffed himself up to look like a small man with a big career, like his father, instead of a boy who failed at everything he tried. The guest listened intently. Mother put half-eaten food on the stranger’s plate while Julian’s own abruptness shocked his sister and nothing fazed the guest. He had wanted everything settled, his father’s family safe, but not like this. Not with the aid of a woman with hair like that, and those calm, amused eyes.

  They had taken her over to the cottage, followed by the sheep with the crumpled horn which lived in the garden and was fed by Mother. Miss Fortune didn’t seem to mind that either. There was nothing to surprise her frightful composure.

  Julian turned restlessly, hearing again the creaking on the stair he had heard before and never wished to investigate. Could be his mother prowling, Edward going out fishing, he did not want to know, could not watch them all the time or even half of it. As long as it was not Edward going into Joanna’s room, something as yet unprecedented, but hanging over his household like the threat of thunder. How immoral to wish away his sister’s virginity on the first unrelated youth who tried to take it, but that was what Julian wished. If only she would leave before some accident of desire should upset her life . . . better if Edward went out fishing, even if it was to foul the sea shore as he did, leaving lines and hooks for seals, just as he littered the house with equipment and the pantry floor with buckets of soft-shelled crabs and lugworms for whiting.

  The silence of the night increased the rattling in his mind. Julian felt responsibility without strength or confidence. He had killed his own self-respect, found himself left with nothing but impotent knowledge.

  From a great distance, he thought he heard a scream.

  Worms beneath this mud: good for bait.

  ‘You don’t know nothing, boy. Nothing. You don’t know your arse from your elbow, or where to put that big dick of yours, or even where you want to put it. Dirt all over the van. You want to put dirt up her fanny? That what you want? I bet you bloody do.’

  The sound which followed was a soft grunt, the noise of the boot into the ribs almost inaudible in itself, except for the air dispelled in the effort and the boy’s biting back of pain. Both of them were covered in mud. The boy curled away on the bank, his left shoulder embedded in mud. Black mud bubbled where his elbow sank below the surface. There was blood inside his mouth, tasting of iron, salt and slime. Rick thought of the ragworms below the surface, imagined something slithering down his throat, struggled to sit, spat, coughed.

  ‘I could have killed you, Dad.’

  He was spitting out weary words, fielding another blow to his ribs, thanking heaven for his father’s boots being so heavy with mud he could scarcely lift them. It could have been worse, had often been much worse. No blow had connected with his groin; he had turned on his back, wishing he had learned the trick when younger, before the damage was done and before he had realized the whole ritual of violence was far quicker if he did not resist. Lie there, let the boot go in, never mind about the shame.

  ‘Kill me, you little fucker? Kill me! You could scarce kill a fly. You let that little runt look after the till while you’re out running after that tart? You need to be towing the line. With a hook. I’d stick it through your mouth. Or up your bum.’

  The boy allowed himself to be lifted out of the mud, shaken like a rat, dropped back. He could have taken his father then, knocked the old man’s teeth through the back of his head, but he lay like a puppet and listened to the breath in his chest. Out of the corner of his eye, lights from the outside of the closed arcade shimmered on the water, blurred by mist. He could hear the tide running swift and deep through his head and his skin, vibrating through each portion of his body. Dad raised his wet face and sniffed like a dog.

  ‘Best move,’ he muttered. ‘Water’s coming on.’ He was suddenly cold, shivery, adrenalin gone, replaced by a sensation which was the nearest he could get to shame. No more punching, rolling and snarling at the east end of the quay. The boy was right. He was strong. He could take his old dad any time, better watch it.

  ‘Come on home, boy,’ said his father, almost humbly, the way he was when it was far too late. ‘You’ll catch your death.’

  ‘Bugger you. I got my own place.’

  ‘You could do with a wash. You and me both.’

  ‘I could do with a new set of balls after what you’ve done to me over the years. That’s enough, Dad, do you hear me?’

  Weird, to be speaking like a pair of blokes who had gone for a drunken stroll to look at the stars. They struggled up the bank. Past midnight, everything as silent as the grave. The apologies, oblique and humble, were the feature of Dad’s drunken violence which Rick found worst.

  ‘I thought you were taking that bit of Pardoe stuff out. You mustn’t touch her. You know what that poxy little bastard told you, leave his sister alone. Otherwise no job, no arcade, no nothing. We’re doing all right, boy. Don’t rock the boat.’

  Rick adjusted his trousers, tried to manage a laugh.

  ‘Dad, I do leave her alone, but for my own reasons. I might have gone to the boat by myself, when I could still walk straight.’

  ‘Don’t give me that. Leave her alone? You’ve been up that house twice today, bashing the van over that track. I saw you, I heard. Kids might be robbing the till and off you go.’

  Rick took a deep breath, which hurt to the degree where he knew he would live.

  ‘Dad, I goes the first time because Mrs Pardoe likes ice-cream, poor old bat. I goes the second time because this bird came in the arcade and asks directions, doesn’t she? Said she was working up there. Christ, what a looker. A bit old, but a looker.’

  Dad grunted. Sometimes he knew the truth when he heard it, not always.

  ‘What do you mean, old?’

  ‘Thirty. Something like that. Said she was a lawyer. A cracker.’

  His father gave a great shout of laughter, flung his great thick arm round the boy’s shoulder. Rick flinched. He might act for now as if there were a reconciliation but he had done it once too often. All he wanted was a clean body and sleep. And a dream. Running the arcade all by himself. Swimming in the sea with Jo Pardoe. Lying with her in the hot sand . . .

  ‘Old! Thirty! So you lead some lady lawyer up there in the bloody ice-cream van! Doesn’t that beat all!’

  Rick could see him, telling the story in the Globe, the Ark Royal or the Golden Fleece, any of them would have done. The wet and weighty arm descended back to his shoulder and Rick let it rest. He felt for his groin. No soreness this time. His clothes were soaking and stinking, the body beneath weary beyond relief.

  What a life. Work hard to keep your body in one piece, let alone the dreams. Not many of those left. Not a body worth a prayer, either. Not a thing to take to Joanna Pardoe.

  The sheep had surprised Sarah. It had wanted to come indoors to this strange little cottage, last in a row of three, standing in grand isolation, thirty yards to the left of the house. I suppose this was once a farm, Joanna had volunteered, chatty and shy, a nice, nervy child. Workers would have lived here, years ago. Dad wanted a farm once; he wanted to do everything once. I’m sorry you haven’t got the best one, but we had a fire in it a few weeks ago, still don’t know why. Might have been the village ghost, we’ve got a new one this summer. Good night, sleep tight, sweet dreams.

  The cottage was a shoebox of a house, living room-cum-kitchen, stairs to a bedroom, bathroom and tiny room under the eaves, explored in half a minute. Any sounds were the mere echo of her own activity. In her bedroom she faced a storm-proof window, open for airing, with a breeze moving pretty chintz curtains. Someone had
made sporadic efforts, leaving the place less spartan, with an ancient hot-water cistern, older lavatory, clattering pipes, the kind of thin cord carpet which chilled the feet; two hangers in the wardrobe with a loose door, an over-soft bed.

  She was absurdly disappointed that she could not hear the sea, let the lawyer in her take over to quell the disappointment. What did she know about the Pardoes and whatever was she supposed to do for them? She had a glimmer of their personalities, none of their supposed riches. Julian, the doctor, sandy-haired blond, churlish, driven and tired; Edward, a young, cunning braggart, self-consciously keeping himself the rebel and the subject of his sister’s devotion. The girl, bright with gilded innocence and the friendliness of a puppy, watching her mother as if someone was going to take her away, while Mother herself overplayed to the gallery the loud rituals of her madness, comic and irritating by turns. Find out the dreams, Ernest had said without giving her a single clue. Find out, then work out how to finance them fairly: that’s what lawyers should be for. Instead, Sarah thought of Elisabeth Tysall’s punctuated dreams, the colour she might choose for a headstone, and the right shrub to plant.

  The air from the window was like a drug, closing her eyes although the bed was cold. Not damp cold, but lonely cold, intensified by the quiet. No distant music, shouting, footsteps, no humming city life where neither silence nor darkness was ever quite complete. There crept into the chilly vacuum of her bed the panic of separation and the muck sweat of fear.

  Her fingers touched her face: there were lines forming round her eyes; she could take great clumps of skin and pull them off, could lift her scalp away from the bone, feel the scars on her shoulders and her arms, force herself to think of the healing sea which would cure it all. Perspiration trickled down her back before she slept. It was not the countryside of which she had dreamed.

  The day bore no relation to the night: from burial in the terrible silence, she was suddenly elevated into the delightful cacophony of dawn. Birdsong first, little fatty thrushes squabbling for attention and clattering on the roof; then the soft cooing of a pigeon, stupidly repetitious, two high notes, one low, no variation but long pauses, and at last, a wholly man-made sound, cutting across the natural like a knife. The mournful wailing of a distant siren, swelling into a full-bellied moan, fading, rising again to a steady wail, diminishing, howling, three, four times. It sounded like a crowd in anguish, an animal in pain, a prayer for the dead, a muezzin calling from the turret of a mosque and she listened spellbound. Minutes later she was out of doors.

  There was nothing but clear sky and a view without ending. The village, with a long bank of land curving away from it seaward like a question mark, lay on her left, half a mile away. In front of her, opposite the house which stood the width of its garden from the cottages, a vast expanse of land amounting to nothing. She watched idly as she walked, until the nothing began to move as the light caught the surface, showing random, glimmering channels full of chuckling water. Sarah in plimsolls jogged towards town. The channels became wider with each fifty yards, the deceptive flat land gave way to channels of water no longer lapping but guzzling louder and louder in the ten minutes it took her to reach the quay. From the evening gulley of mud and sand, it had become part of the ocean upon which it fed. The sea lapped high against the harbour wall; boats which had been invisible the night before now rode proud and level with her eyes, bobbing and straining with lazy ease. Remnants of tufty land which she had glimpsed standing high and dry in the mist, poked above the surface of the water, like the uncertain remains of hair on a smooth, bald head.

  Early. Salty, fish-smelling. Two men throwing open boxes out of a boat, slamming them on to the stone. The boxes were full of wet, heaving fish. Another man sluiced the deck of the boat from which they unloaded. Blood, mixed with water, ran down the sides. Sarah tried to hide her nausea.

  ‘Excuse me . . . What was the siren I heard?’

  ‘Siren? Oh, that. Lifeboat.’ They did not waste words, not unfriendly, but busy.

  ‘Do you fish with hooks?’ she asked stupidly, eyeing the watery blood.

  ‘Hooks are for fun. You only catch one at a time with hooks. Nets, we use.’

  The fish smell defeated her, she was ashamed to be asking the obvious, risking their mild contempt. The village lay glistening. There were swans in the harbour, carried along by the tide with comical, dignified speed. The amusement arcade was emphatically closed at an hour still too early for the postman. A youth was hosing down the pavement outside, oblivious to bold seagulls whooping over waste-paper bins in search of yesterday’s chips. The same uncertain but gentle giant who had appeared in the hairdresser’s with his charge, and, later, escorted her beyond the boundaries on her regal progress, recognizable even when the pale sunlight illuminated the fresh bruises on his face. He seemed too lethargic to resent interruption, leant on his broom and watched her cross over from sea to land side of the road, trying to smile in mutual recognition.

  ‘Hallo,’ she said. ‘Look, thanks for showing me the way last night. I told them up there,’ she nodded in the direction from which she had walked, ‘that I felt like the Queen. It was very kind of you.’ This time his grin managed to emerge, splitting the face into dimples and making her remember what a star he had looked, in his tight-fitting jeans and brilliant white shirt, among the lights of the arcade with bingo going on in the corner, how politely he had listened to her above the din. A contrast to his dull-haired misery of the morning, no longer a king but a servant.

  ‘That’s all right then,’ he said. ‘My name’s Rick.’

  ‘What did you do to your face?’ The question would be asked two dozen times during the day and for others he would invent a story, make them laugh, but the hour was too early for concoction.

  ‘Nothing. Had a fight with my dad for taking the van out.’ There didn’t seem much she could say about that, except what she did say.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’d rather have stayed lost than got you into trouble.’

  ‘What makes you think you’re that important?’ he flashed back, jeering. ‘Doesn’t take a reason for Dad to hit me. Fact is, he thought it was funny, me taking you out there. Didn’t like me leaving this place, though. Might have missed taking money or something.’ Rick was suddenly uncomfortable, talking so much, but she didn’t waste his time being shocked or anything. She looked fresh out of bed and besides he hurt all over and wanted someone to know.

  ‘Do you look after all those machines?’ she asked, pointing to the arcade.

  ‘Yeah,’ he muttered. ‘All those crappy machines, all that row. And I do the ice-cream-van round. Smashing.’

  ‘Do you? What a marvellous place to live.’ She knew as she spoke that the question and the observation were fatuous. He spat into the gutter.

  ‘You’ve got to be joking.’ Then he spat in the road, to emphasize the point again. She was mildly irritated, not much.

  ‘OK, OK,’ she said. ‘But you’re far too good-looking to let anyone cover it in bruises. Why don’t you dump your dad on a boat and tell him to sail? You’re big enough, unless he’s bigger.’

  He let out a great shout of laughter, then clutched his waist because laughter hurt.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ she said. ‘Give me the damn brush and sit down.’

  ‘I can’t. My dad—’

  ‘Give it me.’ He did, slowly crossed to the wall opposite and lit a cigarette, then sat there watching, waiting to be amused. Sarah swept the pavement in front of the arcade like a furious housewife with only moments to spare, picking up fish paper, hamburger remnants, shoving everything into the plastic sack with which he had come equipped. Then seized a wash leather out of his bucket and cleaned the windows with the deft movements of a person who hated housework, endeavoured to complete it in the shortest possible time with all the refinements of sheer impatience. She scoured door knobs and scuffed panels of paint, covered every inch in ten, hyperactive minutes. The emotions of the last few days had driven her to scour her
flat from end to end with the same relentless energy in a practice made so perfect her swipe of the last windowpane called for a slow hand clap. Rick ambled back across the road.

  ‘Are we quits?’ she asked.

  ‘How much do you charge an hour?’ he asked, still trying to jeer, the smile less painful, strength coming back into his limbs. She was a looker all right, a lovely bum when she bent.

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly tell you. It depends what for.’

  ‘You really a lawyer, like you said? I knew the Pardoes were expecting one. Mrs P. told me. Said it would be some old cow.’

  ‘That was a perfectly accurate expectation. Here I am.’ They were both grinning broadly now.

  ‘I don’t know anything about them,’ she added cunningly. ‘Why would people say, for instance, that Edward was a shit? Someone said so, in the hairdresser’s.’

  ‘Because he is. Because when he goes fishing up yonder,’ he gestured beyond the far distance, ‘he won’t even stop if he sees a seal. Leaves hooks and line for other things to swallow. He likes nasty practical jokes, Edward. And that ain’t all.’ Yes, she was a looker. Not old at all, with her jeans and the smut on her nose. Then his mind went into overdrive, remembering Pardoes in general, discretion in particular, wounded pride and his dad.