‘So,’ she said briskly, ‘this is what we do. Itemize the estate, then value it. Decide on how it should be managed, whether in or outside the family. Then go to the Court of Protection with our plans. They can write a will for your mother.’
‘Simple,’ said Julian ironically, the smile coming back.
‘No. Not simple, but possible. It’ll cost you the price of a house on a Monopoly board, but I don’t suppose that matters, you seem to have plenty of houses. The object of this planning is to make sure your mother is safe, happy and well provided for. That’s the primary aim. Then, to free up enough capital for you, Edward and Jo to spread your wings and fulfil your dreams sooner rather than later.’
Julian laughed, surprising himself. There was irony in the laugh, but at least it was laughter.
‘What dreams? What dreams could a simple country doctor have?’
‘Everyone has dreams,’ Sarah protested. ‘Your father must have had dreams to acquire as he did. Jo tells me that Edward has dreams of being an artist. She may dream of being a cook. Money’s for refurbishing dreams. Why else work for it?’
‘Some of us don’t.’
Surely she could not believe Edward had honest dreams. So much for her wisdom. Edward dreaming of being an artist only meant the same Edward who blamed all his failures on being bored, growing from spiteful boy into lazy man, drifting through one job after another until his father had got him a sinecure in the local estate agent’s office. His ability to concentrate was pathetic, his lack of convention a sham. Julian looked at Sarah and decided her neutral expression was a clever sham too. She might repeat what she was told, but only believe what she chose.
He sat back. This time the smile did not retreat into the gauntness of his face.
‘Miss Fortune, I believe you may be a witch. I was waiting for you to accuse me of cupidity and you talk about dreams. I suppose you also exorcise demons?’
Sarah shook her head, smiling. ‘I find it easier to pay them off. Gremlins, demons, goblins, regrets. They’re the symptoms of life after thirty.’
Julian allowed himself another bark of laughter, which stopped abruptly to coincide with a knock on his door and the entry of a buxom nurse who bustled towards the pile of notes in a wire basket on the edge of the desk, smiling her professional smile. Then she stopped, face to face with Sarah, ceased smiling, grabbed the notes and scuttled away without apology. The door clicked shut angrily behind her. Sarah pretended to study the list of Pardoe assets Julian had given her. ‘Amusement arcade, East Quay,’ was a description which sprang from the page. The room was suddenly hot.
‘Is that enough to keep you going?’ Julian asked, back into the persona of a doctor asking if the medication would last the week. She wanted to slap him, but rose gracefully, tucking the papers under her arm.
‘I wonder if your nurse thought I was a malingerer? Asking for a sick note to sit in the sun, or something of the kind? She seems . . . a little possessive.’ She felt unreasonably angry, looked down at the pristine slacks which had replaced the dirtier jeans, too smart for a village surgery, noticed that Julian’s skin resembled the colour of chalk.
‘I’m sorry. You must have given her a shock. Actually, you gave me a shock when I first saw you. You happen to be the graven image of a patient of ours, oh, two years ago, but she was . . . well, difficult to forget.’
‘Mrs Tysall,’ said Sarah flatly. ‘Your mother calls me Mrs Tysall. Someone in the hairdresser’s said I was like an old client. It’s extremely disconcerting, a person could get sick of comparisons, but I suppose you all mean Elisabeth Tysall who resides in the graveyard, without even a headstone on her grave. Wife of Charles.’
He had risen from his seat, still pale, twisting a pencil in his large hands.
‘Your sister says you dealt with both bodies, Elisabeth and her husband,’ Sarah went on artlessly, driven by the same flat anger. ‘She was your patient, you say. I always wanted to meet someone who knew her. Was she very lovely?’
The pencil snapped.
‘Get out of here. You’re right. Comparisons are odious. You don’t resemble Elisabeth at all. No-one does.’
Sarah stopped, watched his rage crumble into a thinly disguised distress, the veneer of control exerting itself slowly.
‘Demons and gremlins,’ she murmured. ‘I didn’t mean to touch a nerve. Was she a friend of yours? She certainly needed one.’
He shook his head, reverting abruptly to the original state of officious rudeness.
‘Please go, Miss Fortune. I doubt if you’re at all suitable to help us. Spend the weekend in the cottage, as our guest. Then we’ll reconsider.’
‘As you please.’
Stonewall Jones ran from the amusement arcade, left down the quay, left again and then cut through a crooked alley leading to the main street. On the way, he could nod in several directions to houses where various relatives lived, first his mother, out at work at the moment, her carefully made sandwiches mashed in his pocket, his baby brothers three doors up with Aunty Mary, Uncle Jack round the corner in the police station. The place was a mine of people who were good for a fifty-pence touch, and those who would, in various scolding ways, let him in had he asked, but not one compared with Cousin Rick.
Rick had his drawbacks, but as a hero he was faultless, while as a spy, Stonewall was the soul of discretion, with the added talent of being able to lie convincingly, although truth was his natural inclination. He also had a memory as long as his fleeting stride and a fine eye for detail. Which was why he was now so excited. The redhead.
The memory was visual rather than verbal. Stonewall talked all the time to Rick, sometimes to his mates at school, while anyone else got short shrift. The redhead girl came back before his eyes from a time when he had been smaller, but not such a baby he’d fail to remember a woman with her face full of stitches, coming out of the medical centre, crying. That was two years and a whole lifetime ago; but he never quite forgot because he had not had the chance. First he had found her credit cards and stuff with her photo on it hidden in the creeks. Then he and his stepdad found the body, exactly one year after.
Dad had been terribly sick, which Stonewall had not considered a good example. Tutored by illicit, adult videos, seen in the house of a mate, he wasn’t that shocked himself. The redhead looked like a real dead dog, not a person, the impression accentuated by the long hair like red spaniel ears covered in muddy sand, floppy, silken, gritty and wet. She was a thing, not to be confused with anything live.
The man they had found a month later, well he was different. This time it had been him and Rick, the rovers of the creeks in their idle hours last summer, looking for flotsam, only Stonewall secretly hoping they’d find another corpse, because of all the fuss people made of him last time. Being famous gave him a wonderful, fleeting insight into being noticed.
They’d been so brave, they could still make themselves shudder at the memory. The second body, a man, had only been in and out of the sea for two days and was so nearly alive they couldn’t look at him. A man with his face in the rictus of a smile, another gob full of sand as he lay on a bank, sluiced with mud, his good trousers dragged off his ankles and his bottom a little white mountain. Turned him over and his goolies fell out. Hung like a donkey, Rick said. They had sniggered while trembling, called Uncle Jack who panicked and talked about sending for the lifeboat. More sniggering, hugging themselves, as if anything more than a row-boat could get near at low water, he’d have to go by land. Seen one, seen ’em all, said Rick. They had stood in the tideless channel and rocked with mirth until the doctor came and seemed to know who it was. Then it was harder to laugh. In the end, it was he who carried the corpse away with their help, brought his car as far as he could, using a piece of Rick’s dripping sail to lug the thing over two creeks and into the boot; it was all anyone could do with the tide rising all the time.
Mostly, though, it was left to the doc. Everyone else turned away; so had Rick and he, but not before they ha
d both seen what they had seen: the doctor, kicking the corpse as if it had been a football. Just a couple of kicks, but hard. Stonewall could still hear the sound of a shoe going into a waterlogged chest, could not quite recall the sight of it, since even he had turned his head, but he could always recall the sound. Schluck, schluck, schluck, the thudding of mad hatred. Funny at the time. Everything with Rick was funny, but they never, ever discussed that bit again. Stonewall had felt sorry for the drowned man, later. He reckoned that if he drowned, he would be taken away and buried somewhere like the man was. His mum and dad wouldn’t come to the funeral either. They’d be too busy.
Stonewall pounded on the door of Swamp Cottage, then opened it. There was a lock which was never used, nothing to steal; burglary was not a problem in the village, except recently, when it could be called the work of tourists or the ghost. The door led straight into a tiny scullery where only two dishes lurked in the sink and a fly buzzed at the window, down a step into a living room where a TV blared. Rick sat in an old sofa, his finger easing stuffing out of a split in the arm as he gazed at the screen. The sight of the haversack on the floor and the bruises round the eyes threw Stonewall into a panic.
‘You’re not going, Rick? You’re not going away, are you? Your dad’ll kill you.’ His voice was high with anxiety.
‘He already tried,’ Rick grunted. He got up, towering in the gloomy room, his head inches away from the ceiling as he ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘Don’t fret, boy, it wasn’t so bad. Only I might go on the boat tonight. Then again, I might not.’
‘Can I come too?’
‘Nope. Only in the mornings. Your mum’d miss you. God knows why.’ Stonewall relaxed. If Rick was teasing, he must be all right. The boy took up occupation of the sofa and began to play with the stuffing, rolling flax between his fingers. He was utterly relieved to find Rick so normal, had news to impart which made him as full to bursting as three rounds of chips followed by chocolate.
‘Tell you what, Rick, I just seen a ghost just now. I did, honest. A woman.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘I saw this woman, see? Same one as I used to see, long time ago, when my dad started taking me out in the boat—’
‘And you were scared to death of the water. Oh I remember that. You’d cry like some mating cat in heat, you would.’ Rick taunted without malice. ‘Wait a minute,’ he added, still teasing, ‘you mean you saw one whole woman ugly enough to be a ghost? Just the one? There’s dozens out there!’ His laugh hit the rafters.
‘It’s the same one,’ said the boy stubbornly, ‘that came up out of the sand. She went down the creeks, drunk, her face mashed up. I was with Dad, he ticked me off for laughing at her. Course, that was MY body, the one I found with Dad, not the one I found with you. I’d never have remembered her if it wasn’t for her stuff, with her picture in. Anyway, this one I just seen got the same red hair. Lots. Got to be a ghost. Or a twin?’ He wilted under Rick’s glare.
Stonewall could not resist the importance of being present at the finding of two bodies, made reference to it whenever he could. He’d been a cosseted celebrity in school twice over. Rick, on the other hand, had only ever found the one. A few dogs and cats down the creeks, a couple of swans poisoned by lead weights, a seal killed by massive fishing hooks, but only one corpse. It was the only feature of Stonewall’s little life which gave him any superiority. He milked it.
‘Red hair? You saw a ghost with red hair this morning, did you?’ Rick jeered. Stonewall was deflated.
‘Saw her this morning, when I went out looking for you. Saw her again, walking into town, with your girlfriend,’ he said cunningly, but Rick only shrugged.
‘That weren’t no ghost, baby. That’s a lawyer, so she says. Belongs out with those Pardoes. They could do with a gardener, never mind a lawyer. And Jo isn’t my girlfriend.’
‘Oh no? Not what I heard,’ said Stonewall, looking so much the little man. Rick wanted to laugh at him but hadn’t the heart.
‘Anyway, I follows them both. That’s how I come to reckon the red one was a ghost. Your Joanna went in the grocer’s; the ghost went in the doctor’s. Just like that other one with the hair used to do, all the time. My Aunty Mary used to say it was shocking.’
Stonewall loved to be the purveyor of adult gossip, which lost none of its sparkle in his eleven-year-old eyes for the obscurity of its implications. He simply liked the tone of it, knew they were talking about sex when they lowered their voices and went into corners. In his own home with two babies, he was not a powerful person, always last in line, listening. Brilliant, Rick would say, sometimes in genuine amazement at what this child, so silent indoors and so loquacious out, could collect as second-hand knowledge. Stonewall sensed attention was beginning to wander.
‘Going to get your girlfriend on the boat?’ he asked, to rekindle interest.
‘She ain’t my girlfriend, I tell you. You deaf?’
‘She thinks she is,’ Stonewall muttered.
Rick swaggered. ‘Her and who else?’ he said, then caught sight of his face in the cracked mirror propped over the mantelpiece, let his mouth drop in a leer. ‘Her and Granny Pardoe, at this rate, any woman draws a short straw with me,’ he muttered. ‘Fancy an ice-cream down on the beach?’
The boy hid his enthusiasm by shrugging, nodded, followed with a little skip and a sigh of pleasure which somehow got out before he could stop it.
‘And there’s another thing,’ he began as they went out into the alley.
‘Oh yes, another ghost, I suppose. The one with white hair? Tall bloke? Come on, everyone says they’ve seen that.’
‘Maybe ghosts come out at the same time.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Rick admiringly, cuffing him round the ear. ‘I think you need glasses, boy. Dark ones, with wipers, stop you seeing so much.’
‘That ghost got my dog,’ said Stonewall stubbornly, horribly ashamed of the way his eyes filled with tears. ‘He did. I saw him, and then Sal ran away.’
Rick was thinking of his evening date, half wishing he hadn’t made it. Thought of Jo and tried to put her out of his mind.
When Sarah got back to the homestead, wondering whether it was better simply to pack up her bags and leave before she was sacked, two sights met her eyes as she went, like an old familiar, to the back door. The first was Mrs Pardoe, sunbathing in the cabbage patch. She looked like a religious emblem, lying in the pose of a crucifixion with her legs discreetly crossed, the dress hoiked up and the arms spreadeagled. A little dirt didn’t seem to matter. Sarah approached with caution until her shadow fell over the body. It was very hot; her own longing for the sea was intense.
‘Hallo.’
‘You’re taking my sunlight,’ said Mrs Pardoe, shifting in irritation. ‘Give me back my rays.’
‘Can I get you anything?’ The body laid out on the earth still had very good legs, the face resembled a pixie, oddly ageless.
‘Ice-cream,’ said the lady, dreamily, then closed her eyes.
The second sight was Joanna crying in the kitchen, with none of her mother’s aplomb, but again, there was a sense of absent beauty.
‘Sorry,’ said Joanna, beyond embarrassment. ‘Sorry. I can’t help it.’
‘Is it your mother?’
‘Oh no, I’m used to her. She’s fine, honestly. Absolutely fine. You sort of adjust, you know?’
Sarah didn’t know, but nodded.
‘I mean, she’s quite safe by herself and everything, and she doesn’t ask for much, never did. I mean, I could go out this evening, even though Ed and Julian are always out on Fridays. I mean, I think Ma quite likes a bit of time to herself and anyway, she goes to bed ludicrously early, so that’s fine, she doesn’t need a babysitter; but I can’t go anywhere, can I? I mean, not even round to Caroline’s, can I? Even though she’s asked me twice and I said I would . . .’
Sarah continued nodding.
‘Because I’m different, and Caroline’s very together, you see. And she knows I was
going out with Rick who is, let’s face it, the best looking boy around, but he won’t talk to me now. Julian warned him off. And she’ll have her friends there, and I’ve got to pretend I just don’t care, you know, have a glass of wine and make a joke of it. Which I just about could, just about, even if it isn’t true and it’s only a small party, but not like this. Not when I’ve got nothing to wear . . .’
Sarah nodded. An obscure dilemma, one she remembered well. King Henry offered his kingdom for a horse. A love-sick teenager would offer hers for the right suit of clothes. Twice seen, Joanna was remarkably badly, almost childishly, dressed. Sarah settled into an uncomfortable wooden chair and kissed goodbye to her dreams of a distant beach for the afternoon, pulled out her cigarettes, lit one, did not offer the rest. The child was a smoke-free zone.
‘What sort of clothes,’ she asked gently, ‘do you think you need?’
‘Classics,’ said Jo, fervently. ‘I read it in a magazine . . . Caroline reads it too. Stuff that makes you look sophisticated. You know, older, thinner, all that stuff. Expensive stuff. Julian says I can get them if I want, but Edward says don’t, it’s bad to grow up too soon. I always laugh, tell him it doesn’t matter, but it does.’
Sarah felt a recurrence of spontaneous dislike for Edward Pardoe.
‘Classics. A bit of nice jewellery? Just a bit?’ said Sarah thoughtfully.
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