‘Excuse me, love. You ain’t allowed here.’
It was the foreman, a grizzled man with tufts of unshaved beard, wearing an old shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a safety hat pushed back on his head.
‘It’s Ted, isn’t it?’ I said with my brightest smile, and held out my hand. ‘Rosie Churchill. We’ve met before. I’m just here to see Mr Bright.’
Ted reached up to scratch his head. He looked about him. ‘You should probably wait here. We don’t want any rubble landing on you.’
‘Oh, I’ll be all right.’ I strode past him towards the clutch of small huts at the centre of the weird landscape, and after a second I heard Ted panting to catch me up.
‘They’re going up a treat, aren’t they?’ I indicated the finished building. ‘Last time I was here they’d hardly begun.’
‘Fast workers, my lads.’ Ted sniffed proudly. ‘Hoping my daughter’s going to get a flat when they’re done. Not that we get special treatment, mind.’ He wagged his finger.
‘Of course not.’ I thought of living at the top of that skyscraper, with the whole of Helmstone laid out before me; a bit like being a crow in a nest, perhaps.
‘I used to live here, you know.’ Ted nodded at a man operating a mechanical digger, a pile of twiggy earth in his scoop. ‘Before it all got bombed to smithereens. Ooh, I was a right little tearaway in them days.’ He chuckled throatily.
‘Really?’ I said, not at all interested, but not wanting Ted to keep me from my goal of the steadily approaching huts. The central one, on a sort of raised platform to show it was special, had a window, made grimy from all the dust flying around, and through it I could see the dim shape of Harry’s head behind his desk. Just the sight of his silhouette made my stomach clench with nerves.
‘You’ve moved to Castaway House, ain’tcha?’ Ted said suddenly, and I turned to him, startled. ‘Mr Bright told me. Soon as I heard the name, I remembered.’
I stopped at the base of the wooden steps leading up to the hut. ‘Remembered what?’
‘About Clare.’ He shook his head, as if amused by some far-distant joke. ‘Girl from our area; I used to play with her brother, till he got the old T. B. Rough as a cock’s arse, she was, and she only ends up marrying the poncey sod who lives there, don’t she? Goes all la-di-da, gets herself an education from somewhere, changes her name to Clara, as if that’d help. You wouldn’t credit it.’
I climbed the steps. ‘Well, thanks for that, Ted.’
‘Ah, I know you ain’t interested. You get along now.’ He waved a hand.
‘I am, honestly. But I’ve got to …’ I waggled my head. ‘You know.’
‘Course, it all went wrong in the end.’ He was walking away now, speaking more to himself than to me. ‘It always does.’
I watched him go, something in what he had said unnerving me slightly, although I wasn’t sure why. Still, I had other things to think about, and so, without knocking, I turned the stiff metal handle of the door to the hut and went in.
There was a sort of anteroom before Harry’s office, with a shatterproof window laid into the door, criss-crossed into squares, so I could see him before he could see me. He was sitting at his desk in his usual manner – leaning so far back as to be almost horizontal, sideways on – and looking up at the giant plan of the Princes Street Estate pinned to the wall.
I opened the door.
Harry switched his gaze to face me, and when he saw who had entered his whole body jerked upright. ‘Rosie!’ His teeth formed its crooked smile. ‘What a lovely surprise!’
He got to his feet to welcome me in. I strode towards the desk, trying not to notice his looks. Even his uneven teeth gave him a sort of flawed perfection, and his permanent five o’clock shadow appeared somehow to enhance his features rather than detract from them.
I dumped the shopping bag on his desk, the shoes in their box still inside, and said, ‘I don’t want you to buy me any more presents. I don’t want ever to see you again. Do you understand?’
Harry gaped at the bag. From behind me there came a discreet cough, and a voice said, ‘Erm … should I step outside for a moment?’
I turned. A pale, blond man in a frayed suit was standing just there to my right; he’d also, I saw now, been looking at the map of the estate.
‘Sorry, Joe,’ said Harry, with an easy charm, as if this sort of thing happened all the time. ‘Look, let me introduce you. Rosie, this is Joe Prendergast from the council. Joe, this is Rosie Churchill. My stepdaughter.’
‘How d’you do, Miss Churchill?’ The man held out a nervous hand, which I shook, my face burning hot shame.
‘Sorry about that,’ I mumbled. ‘I didn’t know you were here.’
‘That’s quite all right.’ He smiled at both of us, still a little unsure of the situation. ‘I have nieces your age, and I hear all about the fracas between the girls and their parents.’
‘Rosie’s left home,’ said Harry, by way of inadequate explanation. ‘She’s living in Castaway House – you know, up the top of Gaunt’s Cliff.’
‘Oh yes, the Regency terrace.’ Mr Prendergast nodded. ‘Or was it just after – William IV, perhaps?’
‘Um … I don’t know.’ I wanted a hole to open up and swallow me into the dusty floorboards.
‘Joe’s in charge of planning at the council,’ informed Harry. ‘He’s got a vision for the town, haven’t you, Joe?’
I knew Harry’s ways: it was a distraction for the man, but it worked.
‘Absolutely.’ Mr Prendergast’s pale blue eyes widened. ‘You see, we have people desperate for housing, and nowhere to put them. Take your terrace, for example, Miss Churchill – or Rosie, if I may. How many people live in your building?’
‘I’m not sure.’ I sensed Harry on the other side of the desk working out strategies and manoeuvres. ‘Maybe twenty?’
‘And I suppose it’s terribly draughty and damp, isn’t it?’
I flicked a glance at Harry. ‘It’s fine,’ I lied. ‘I don’t notice it, anyhow.’
‘Well, anyway,’ continued Mr Prendergast hurriedly. ‘I want you to imagine, Rosie, a whole row of skyscrapers just like these ones your father is in charge of, on that hillside, leading down into the town. Picture the whole city from the sea, utterly transformed.’ He pointed out of the obscured window at the rising stacks.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, having spent the last six weeks cursing the house. ‘I think the terrace is quite beautiful.’
Joe wagged a finger. ‘Ah yes, but beauty does not house people. We could fit two hundred people in a building the size of yours! With piped-in gas and fitted kitchens. Children could play on the walkways. Lifts to every floor. A city in the clouds. Now, tell me you prefer your damp, draughty home to that.’
I folded my arms, determined to annoy Harry. ‘Well, I do,’ I said. I sensed Harry rolling his eyes. ‘It’s got … character.’
Mr Prendergast shook his head. ‘You didn’t tell me your stepdaughter was one of these preservation types,’ he said. ‘Although I suppose it behoves the youth to rebel against their elders.’
‘Less of the elder, if you don’t mind,’ said Harry. ‘I’m only thirty-two.’
‘It’s got history,’ I said. ‘And a funny castle bit on the roof. And … a lovely stairwell, with this snail-shell at the end of the banister. And … well, I’d rather you didn’t pull it down, thanks all the same.’
‘I see this is where the young are going, then. Back to the past.’ Mr Prendergast smiled. ‘But you can’t stem progress, Rosie. Concrete and aluminium: these are the materials of the future. And we must all live in the future.’
‘Speaking of which,’ said Harry, coming out from behind his desk, ‘I think Ted’s going to sound for tea any second now, and I shall take the opportunity to have a quick chat to my stepdaughter, if she doesn’t mind. Rosie?’
‘No,’ I said sourly. ‘Of course not.’
‘Ah yes.’ Joe Prendergast looked at his watch, muttering incomprehensi
bly, ‘Time and motion, time and motion.’
Harry came past me and scooted up his jacket from its peg by the door. ‘Come on, girlie. Let’s go for a spin. I’ll show you my new Jag.’
We all left together. The whistle sounded and the builders downed tools; I noticed a few of them looking over curiously as I walked with Harry to his car. It irked me that it was only his presence and, earlier, Ted’s, that had prevented them leering at me just as the builders outside the arcade had done, and I was even more irked that I couldn’t laugh it off, take it as the joke it was supposed to be.
‘What d’you think, then?’ Harry twirled the keys in his fist as we approached the car. ‘Only got her last week. E-Type. Four-point-two litres. Thought to myself, Y’know, Harry old boy, you deserve a treat. I tell you something, she drives like a dream.’
He got in and leaned across to open the door for me. As I climbed in, sinking down with my knees up high, I knew I was making a mistake. I should have stalked in, dumped the shoes on his desk and stalked out, and never minded whether a man from the council was there or not. I cringed at my own eagerness to not make a fuss.
We drove slowly along the wide, rutted track towards the vehicle gate, past an abandoned concrete mixer. The men had gathered in clumps, sitting on pallets or leaning against the beginnings of walls, filling plastic cups from flasks of tea and watching me, as I sat hunched in Harry’s car while he hopped out to open the gate with the engine still revving, and then drove us through.
‘I’m glad you came along,’ said Harry after he’d closed the gate and got back in. ‘I’ve been coming up to the house all week, trying to catch you in.’
‘I know,’ I muttered, as he roared out into the traffic and then right along the seafront, stuttering to a halt behind a bus as soon as we got there.
He banged the steering wheel. ‘For Christ’s sake!’
I jumped, but Harry was only referring to the traffic jam.
‘Bloody buses.’
The car was waiting directly beside the fun park, with the Majestic Arcade opposite. I turned away from it and faced the stationary merry-go-round and the idling dodgems. As I gazed, nervous, preparing for the encounter I knew was coming, I saw Johnny emerge from round the back of the ride, adjusting his trousers and squaring his shoulders. I grimaced at having seen him, realizing he must have been for a pee, and then was surprised to see the boy who ran the dodgems also emerging from the same place a few seconds later. He swung up on to the platform in one quick move and lifted a hand. I switched my gaze to Johnny, who was now striding along the seafront, one hand also lifted in farewell, although if I hadn’t seen both of them I’d never have realized they were waving to one another.
Odd, I thought, and then the bus lumbered forwards and we followed in its wake.
‘Don’t take me back to Castaway,’ I said. ‘I don’t want you ever to go to my house again.’
‘Your home’s in Petwick,’ said Harry, but he obeyed me, and instead of turning up the cliff we continued along the promenade, past Riccardo’s ice-cream parlour and the barred entrance to the pier, all the way along to the sheer wall of rock rising up in front of us. Harry nosed his car to a spot beside the pavement, turned off his engine and looked at me. ‘Now then, will you stop playing silly buggers and move back in with me and your mother?’
I stared out through the windscreen at the black face of the rock. ‘Is that all you wanted to say?’
He paused and then leaned across me. I stiffened, but he only flipped open the glove compartment and took out his packet of fags. He pressed the lighter button on the controls and sat back. ‘It’s killing Grace, all this nonsense.’
‘She’ll get over it.’
‘It’s your education, that’s what she’s worried about. Throwing up your schooling like that. There’s no need for it.’
I tightened my lips and continued staring straight ahead. ‘Is that everything?’
‘She knows I’ve been coming, you know. Practically sent me round there. She’s worried about you, living by yourself.’
‘I’m not living by myself.’
‘Not returning her phone calls.’
I turned to him now and opened my mouth, but he spoke before I could.
‘She only wants a chat.’
‘All right.’ I gripped the seat edge. ‘I’ll call her tomorrow.’
‘Not tomorrow. She’s visiting your auntie. Sorting out the sale of the farm; said she won’t be back till late.’
‘Okay. Thursday.’ An idea took hold of me: Mum would be out all day tomorrow. The house would be empty, and Thursday was a whole other day away. ‘Tell her I’ll call her on Thursday.’
‘And not before time.’ The lighter popped out. ‘If you ask me.’
I watched him as he lit his cigarette and blew smoke into the confined space of the car. ‘The reason I left home was because of you,’ I said. ‘The reason I haven’t been returning her calls is because of you. Because I don’t know how I can talk to her any more. And when she asks me why, I don’t know how I can lie.’
‘Jesus, Rosie, you’re such a drama queen.’ He wound the window down a fraction and tipped ash out into the breeze. ‘I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of things. We were having a bit of fun. Where’s the harm in that?’
‘Fun for you,’ I snapped.
‘Hey.’ He tapped my arm and, despite myself, I shivered. ‘You were more than willing, as far as I can recall. Christ, you nearly gave me a heart attack when I came home from work and your mum was in bits, saying you’d moved out. If we’d actually … you know … well, you know what I mean … I’d have been petrified you’d got yourself up the duff.’
I switched my gaze back to the cliff. A pensioner, an elderly man, was hobbling on a stick past the car. I watched him move slowly all the way to the end of the pavement and lean on the rail for breath. ‘I feel bad enough already,’ I said. ‘Don’t make me feel worse.’
‘No need to feel bad.’ He leaned closer towards me; I smelled his familiar smoky breath as he murmured, ‘As long as she never finds out, where’s the harm?’
‘You should never … We should never have …’
His face was very close to mine now. I turned towards him and he eased his lips on to mine.
‘There you go,’ he whispered, pulling away. He was clever, Harry, moving back while I still wanted more. A small kiss, and he knew he had me hooked back in. ‘Just a bit of fun, see?’
‘No.’ I hugged my arms around myself. ‘It’s not fun, it’s wicked. It’s evil.’
‘Bloody hell.’ He sighed heavily, and I was relieved, because while he was frustrated he was less attractive to me. ‘Look, I like you, you like me. You’ll be off to university soon, won’t you? And we’ll say no more about it.’
I looked at him now, feeling stronger. ‘Listen, I don’t care whether you think I’m being stupid or childish or whatever, I don’t want to see you again.’
‘Well, that’s going to be a bit difficult, eh, seeing as how I’m married to your mother.’
‘You could go.’
He laughed at that.
‘If you leave,’ I continued, ‘I’ll move back in.’
‘And how’s that going to help? Devastate your poor mother? Ruin her life?’
‘You’re not that special,’ I said. ‘If you really loved her, you’d do the decent thing.’
‘Hey.’ He jabbed a finger towards me, and this time I didn’t shiver. ‘You’re her daughter. You’re the one with her blood. If you had any sort of loyalty you’d never have tried it on with me in the first place.’
I spluttered for a bit, almost inarticulate with rage, before saying, ‘It was you! You made a move on me.’
‘Don’t be a silly bitch. Swanning around in that itsy-bitsy school uniform, giving me welcome-home kisses. I mean, look at what you’re wearing now, all sexed up. What was I supposed to think?’
I was helpless with the awfulness of it all. I tugged at my prim pina
fore dress. ‘But … but that was just my school uniform,’ I said. ‘And this is just me. Being me.’
‘You’re so full of crap.’ He flung the end of the cigarette out of the car. ‘You’re a little minx, and you know it.’
‘Stop it!’ I put my hands over my ears. ‘Just stop it!’
‘I’m a man, Rosie. I have urges.’
I grappled with the car door and swung it open. As I picked up my handbag, he said, ‘Don’t be like this. You’re a special kid, you know?’
I scrambled out of the car. ‘Don’t call me. Don’t come round,’ I snarled, my head full of rage. He was smiling at me, not bothered by anything I’d said, anything that I’d told him I felt. I pulled my house keys out of my bag and slammed the door closed. Holding one of them between finger and thumb, I put it against the door and scratched a line along his paintwork, moving all the way along to the end of the car and then back again.
As soon as he realized what I was doing, he honked long and hard on the horn. ‘Stop that, you slag!’ he roared distantly, from inside the car. By the railing, the pensioner looked up, startled.
I bent down and saw his enraged face. I was still holding my keys in my fist. ‘I never want to see you again!’ I shouted, and then turned and clattered into a heeled run along the prom. Behind me I heard his engine start, and I’d only gone a few yards before he drew up alongside me. He leaned across and rolled down the window.
‘You’re a frigid cow!’ he yelled, and then he stepped on the accelerator and Harry and his E-Type Jag leaped down the seafront and finally disappeared from view.
I held on to the rail. I was beside the entrance to the hacked-in-two pier, with its walkway leading to nowhere. I saw its bolted entrance, the steel bars on the plinth overhanging the damp sand. The pier itself, ten yards further from shore, seemed to be listing into the corrosive sea, splintering under the relentless, daily wash of salt and seagull droppings.
A wave of despair for that poor old pier engulfed me, and I found myself exploding into sobs, shaking with the force of them, bent double over the railing as tears and snot dripped on to the sandy rocks below. I groped blindly inside my bag for a handkerchief, but had none, and this calamity drenched me further, until I felt as if I too were rolling about in the icy water, flailing and drowning, my skin flaking from sea salt, my hair twisting into a coiled rope, gasping for air and sinking beneath the scudding tide.
The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House Page 14