by Ann Cleeves
After the funeral they went back to the house in Otterbridge where Mark and Sheena had lived for ten years. It wasn’t a grand house a narrow three-storey terrace in one of the back streets behind the market, with only a couple of steps to separate the front door from the pavement. It was not at all the sort of house, Emma thought, where you could bring up children. But Sheena had never wanted that even before the illness. She had wanted a quiet place to work, her books and her pictures. Emma had always supposed that was what Mark had wanted too.
People expected the Taverners to live somewhere grand because Sheena had been a writer. But although her novels had been well reviewed they were hardly best-sellers. Certainly they weren’t Emma’s idea of a good read. She had ploughed through one or two but preferred something with a story. A thriller, even a historical romance. Secretly she thought Sheena should have gone out more, even found herself a job, mixed with people other than the arty friends who seemed very similar to her. Then she would have had something to write about. Towards the end, of course, that would have been impossible.
After the funeral there was quite a crowd in the little house. Teachers from the High School where Mark worked. Friends of Sheena, many of whom Emma thought were unsuitably dressed for the occasion. Mark introduced her perfunctorily to some of them: ‘This is Margaret from the Flambard Press, this is Chaz, this is Prue.’ He must have hired caterers because trays of rather unappetizing food stood on a table. If Emma had not been pregnant she would have taken charge of the proceedings – handed out plates, offered drinks. As it was she kept out of the way, not because she didn’t feel up to it but because of the same embarrassment which made her uneasy in Mark’s company. Eventually her legs began to ache so she settled herself in a chair by the window with a glass of orange juice and a cardboard vol-au-vent.
From her corner she watched Mark move restlessly from one chatting group to another. He was attractive in an intense, rather humourless way and the women turned towards him as he approached. His face was strained and it was obviously an effort to be polite. Brian must have realized that too because he went up to Mark and put an arm round his shoulder. There was nothing to say.
Emma thought that perhaps there had never been much to say, not even when Sheena was first diagnosed. Nothing that did any good, though Brian had railed at length about the mastectomy and the chemotherapy and the radiotherapy. He had been angry and uncomprehending on Mark’s behalf. Mark himself had said little.
Brian peeled away from the group and stood beside her. He was big and dark, given to sentimentality and outbursts of temper, but only when he’d been drinking. At work he was cool and quite determined, willing to take risks if the odds had been properly weighed.
‘A drink?’ he asked.
‘I could murder a cup of tea.’ The house had been empty for nearly a week and it was not very warm. ‘But I don’t know if that’s on offer.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘ I’ll fix it.’ And he went away into the kitchen glad to have something to do. She thought that was Brian all over. He was the fixer, the dealer, the person who made things happen. But not even Brian could fix it for Sheena to get better though he’d tried hard enough, yelling at consultants when appointments were cancelled, hunting out information about the best doctors, the best centres, pretending to be Mark over the phone so he’d be taken seriously. Now he had to admit defeat and it didn’t come easy.
He brought her tea on a little tray painted with blue and white flowers. When she’d drunk it she asked if he minded her going home. Suddenly she felt very tired.
‘I’ll get a taxi if you like,’ she said. ‘You can bring the car back later.’
He said he would come too. She knew the decision to leave early had little to do with concern for her. He’d never liked sharing Mark with other people. Except Sheena, of course. He’d never seemed to object to her.
It was half past three. The children were coming out of the Infants School on the corner of Mark’s street. Emma thought sadly that soon Owen would be starting school and that he had grown up too quickly.
It had been Brian’s idea to buy the Coastguard Station on the Headland and knock it through into one magnificent house. She hadn’t been very keen. Even then, five years ago, she’d been dreaming of babies and thought a modern house on a quiet estate would be nice. Somewhere with other middle-class mothers to invite in to coffee during the day, pavements for trikes and dolls’ prams. She had kept her misgivings about the Coastguard House to herself. Brian was so generous to her in other things and he was so enthusiastic about the venture that she encouraged him. She had even pretended to share his excitement.
The house was wonderful now. She had to admit that. There was so much space that they wouldn’t be cramped even if the latest baby turned out to be triplets. There were magnificent views out to sea on three sides. All the same if she were offered the chance to move she’d jump at it. She felt isolated on the Headland. She wouldn’t call herself snobbish but felt she had little in common with the residents of Cotter’s Row. She wouldn’t be happy for her children to play down there. Physically, too, the place made her uneasy. Although there was a high whitewashed wall right round the garden and the cliffs weren’t steep, more like rocky shelves down to the water and quite easy to scramble on, she worried that the children would fall. It was a secret nightmare and some nights she would wake up sweating to a picture of one of them limp and lifeless, battered by the waves at the foot of the cliff.
The car bumped across the level crossing, jolting her back to the present. She saw with relief that they were nearly home. Her friend had offered to give the boys their tea so she’d have time to put up her feet, perhaps watch the television news, before they arrived back.
‘Shit!’ They were driving between the rows of houses when Brian slammed on the brakes, hit the horn and shouted. A woman had run out into the street in front of them. He missed her by swerving on to the pavement. The woman stood for a moment like a rabbit caught in a headlamp’s glare, then she ran off. Her pink anorak, unzipped, flapped behind her.
‘Idiot!’ Brian said. ‘She could have been killed.’ But his fury had passed. The BMW, his pride and joy, was unharmed. ‘Do you know her?’
Emma shook her head and said nothing. She thought she recognized the woman but she had her own reasons for keeping quiet.
Brian got out to open the double gates into the yard, drove in, then went to shut them again. She struggled out of the car with difficulty. She enjoyed being pregnant but she would be glad when it was all over.
She was standing on the doorstep, rummaging in her bag for her keys, when her waters broke.
‘Oh God!’ Brian said with a trace of disgust, when she explained what had happened. Both thought with relief that at least it hadn’t happened when she was getting out of the car. Think of the leather upholstery.
The daughter was born at midnight. Brian was there during labour though he disappeared regularly during the early stages. There was a television in the Visitors’ Room and Newcastle United was playing in a Cup match. His howl of dismay when Arsenal scored rivalled the cries of the women giving birth. He was with Emma when she needed him, and afterwards he sat beside her on the bed and stroked the baby’s cheek with his little finger. For an awful moment she was afraid he’d suggest they called the baby Sheena but he said: ‘Helen, then? Like we decided?’
The hospital was on a hill and from the high bed where she sat, propped up with pillows, she had a view all over the town. Helen seemed dull and unadventurous all of a sudden, but it was his mother’s name and better than Sheena. Perhaps she could come up with something glamorous too.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Helen.’
She had planned coming out of hospital after twenty-four hours but Helen had a nasty bout of jaundice and she ended up having to stay in for a week. She quite enjoyed the rest. On the third day, unexpectedly, Mark came to visit. He was on his own and was carrying a huge bunch of flowers – flame-coloured
chrysanths and those huge, round, tightly filled blooms which she’d only seen before at village produce shows.
‘Brian said you wouldn’t mind,’ he said.
‘Of course not.’
But she felt coarse, blowzy. Her breasts were spilling milk and her dressing gown was grubby. Helen was asleep in the plastic fish tank the hospital used as a cot.
‘So this is Helen.’ He set the flowers on the locker and peered in with a genuine interest, watched the balletic movement of the girl’s hands. She could tell he wanted to pick the baby up.
‘Helen Scarlet,’ she corrected.
‘Scarlet?’ He seemed faintly amused. ‘Brian didn’t tell me that.’
‘Brian doesn’t know yet.’
Then they giggled together, quietly, so as not to disturb the baby, like school kids at the back of the class. Before he went he kissed her forehead and told her it was the first time he had laughed since Sheena had died.
Chapter Three
When baby Helen was born Emma and Brian took on a young woman to help with the boys. Emma had been thinking about it for some time. She had had her eye on just the right person but had been reluctant at first to discuss the idea with Brian. He made comments occasionally when he came home from work and his dinner wasn’t ready or there were toys all over the floor.
‘Good God, woman. You managed a department of fifty people. Can’t you handle two toddlers? I don’t know what you do all day.’
This was said in a good-natured way and was supposed to be a joke but she sensed real irritation behind it. If she asked for help in the house would he think she was quite incompetent?
When she broached the subject, however, on her arrival home from the hospital, he was all for it. Perhaps employing a nanny was like owning the BMW. It confirmed that he was successful at last.
‘It’ll give me more time to spend with Helen,’ she had explained.
‘Bugger that!’ he had said. ‘It’ll give you more time to spend with me.’
Claire was nineteen and had completed an NNEB course at the local college. She lived on the Headland which made her ideal. References from the college were good but she had spent the whole summer without a nannying job. Emma, who had appointed many staff in her career, thought Claire would come over very badly in interviews. Even now, in February, when she had been with them for nearly five months she volunteered little information about herself. Her silences were intense and deadening. She was tall and stately and always dressed smartly in dark skirts and white blouses. She looked like a waitress in a pretentious hotel. Emma thought it unlikely that this dress code had come from the college and imagined Claire’s nannying friends in jeans and sweaters. Though perhaps she was not a person to have many friends.
Emma liked Claire because she was reliable and seemed to dote on the boys. She never lost her temper or raised her voice. She generated an air of implacable calm and was as obsessed as Emma about safety. Emma confided to the other mothers in the baby clinic that she thought she had discovered a treasure. The girl was mature beyond her years. Brian called Claire ‘the dumpling’ which was unkind but reassuring. Brian was at a dangerous age and Emma had heard enough stories about middle-aged men making fools of themselves with luscious au pairs to be cautious.
At the end of February David would be three. Emma wanted a big party, not only to celebrate David’s birthday but the safe arrival of Helen. They had no plans to have Helen christened though Brian would have quite liked it. Mark’s influence again. Emma had insisted that the party would have to do instead.
She discussed the party with Claire one morning over coffee. At least, Emma drank coffee. Claire still had a child’s taste and always chose fizzy pop or milk. It was a grey, cold day and even in the kitchen with its big window facing east the light was on. Helen and David were having a nap and Owen was at playgroup. The house seemed unnaturally peaceful.
‘I want something really special,’ Emma said. She stretched her hands above her head, tightening her stomach muscles, and thought she had got her figure back well this time. She wasn’t in bad shape for a woman who was nearly forty, more firm anyway than the young woman who sat opposite her.
Claire looked at her over a tumbler of milk and said nothing.
‘There’ll be adults, of course, besides the kids.’ Emma stretched again, looked with satisfaction through the open door to the enormous living room which had been created when the Coastguard buildings had been knocked together, thought Brian had been right after all about this place. ‘It’s just as well we’ve got plenty of space.
I was thinking of laying something on to amuse the little ones. A children’s entertainer. You know the sort of thing.’
‘My brother-in-law’s a magician,’ Claire said and Emma nearly fell off her chair, in surprise, because Claire had never volunteered any information about her family before and it was such an odd thing to come out with. It was like saying ‘ My Granny’s a witch.’
‘Oh.’ For once she was the one who couldn’t find the words.
‘He does kiddies’ parties,’ Claire said. ‘He’s very good.’ There was a pause. ‘I live with him and my sister.’
‘Oh.’ Emma was confused. ‘Oh, I thought they were your parents. And doesn’t he work for the DSS in Newcastle?’
‘He’s only a part-time magician,’ Claire said, scornfully.
‘Of course. Yes. I see that he would be.’
Emma’s knowledge of the other residents of the Headland was sketchy. She had little reason to meet them. Her friends lived in the smarter parts of Otterbridge or in the rural, villages away from the old coal fields. Any information she had came from Kim, a single mother with a daughter the same age as Owen. The nearest playgroup was in the church hall in Heppleburn Village centre and Emma often gave Kim and her little girl a lift home. It was from Kim that she had heard about Claire, who had trained to be a nanny but who was having problems finding a job.
‘Not worth going to college, is it?’ Kim had said cheerfully. ‘All that work then nothing at the end of it.’
Then, when they were coming home one evening after a playgroup trip to Edinburgh Zoo, Kim had pointed out the middle-aged man standing with his bike outside the house where Claire lived. He was bending to pull the bicycle clips from his trousers.
‘They say that cycling makes you fit,’ Kim had said with a giggle. ‘He cycles all the way into the Ministry in Longbenton every day and look at the state of him!’ And it seemed to Emma that the man did look remarkably unhealthy with his flabby stomach, his thin hair and pale greasy skin. She had assumed automatically that he was Claire’s father.
Now, sitting in the Coastguard House kitchen, she did not know what to say.
‘My parents died,’ Claire said. ‘ Bernard and Kath took me in.’
‘Oh I am sorry.’ To Emma it seemed the worst sort of tragedy.
‘Kath’s seventeen years older than me. I suppose I was some sort of mistake. Mum died when I was a kid, and Dad was never very well. Not really fit for as long as I can remember. We lost him four years ago.’ Without changing the tone of her voice she added, ‘Shall I ask Bernard, then? About doing the show?’
Emma hesitated. She felt she was being rushed. She would have liked to consult the mothers at the very nice mother and toddler group in Otterbridge where she went with David and Helen before coming to a decision but she didn’t want to offend Claire. Claire was a treasure. And how could she refuse after hearing what she’d suffered?
‘Why don’t you ask him to come and see me?’ she suggested. ‘We could discuss the sort of thing he does.’
‘OK’ Claire said, and lapsed into her customary silence, as if the exchange had quite exhausted her.
The next evening Bernard Howe turned up at the house. It was dark and rainy and if Emma had been on her own she might have been quite scared by the figure that stood in the security light. He wore a black PVC cape and his hair was dripping. But Emma was not on her own. Mark had called in after school. He
had helped Claire to bath the boys and put them to bed, had jiggled Helen on his shoulder when she refused to settle. He had started coming to the Coastguard House after school quite often though he knew that Brian often worked late. Mark said he didn’t enjoy being in the Otterbridge house on his own any more. It held too many ghosts. Besides, he loved playing with the children.
When the knock came at the door Emma was feeding Helen in front of the fire in the living room. The fireplace had been one of Brian’s grand ideas. It was big enough to hold whole logs and spit-roast a pig. Mark was there too. Emma was being very discreet, holding Helen under one of the baggy sweaters she’d bought while she was pregnant and still wore, but all the same she felt quite brave. She had never been one of those women who could expose themselves in public.
So it was Mark who went to the door while Emma pulled the sleepy baby away from her breast and buttoned herself up.
‘There’s a magician to see you,’ he said in a deadpan voice, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He was standing in the living-room doorway leaning against the frame, more relaxed than he had been for months. She liked to think she was responsible for that.
The front door must have been open too because she could feel the damp wind against her face.
‘Oh.’ She felt suddenly flustered and again thought she was being rushed into something which had not been properly planned. ‘You’d better show him in.’
And when she looked up again from straightening her clothes there Bernard Howe stood, dripping on the parquet floor. He must have come directly from work because his trousers were bunched around bicycle clips. He was large and clumsy and the baggy trousers made her think more of a clown than a magician. He smiled nervously.
‘Claire said …’ He took off the black cape and looked for somewhere to hang it. Mark took it from him. ‘But perhaps I’d best come back another time.’
‘No, no.’ Emma had regained her composure. ‘Please. Do come in.’