by Kathy Shuker
She reached up and kissed him, passionate suddenly, greedy even. Frank responded but part of his brain wondered what was bothering her. A spark of suspicion had started to form deep in his head, a smouldering, singeing glow which, once ignited, refused to be damped down. And it had too many implications. He couldn’t bring himself to ask her about it.
*
Jo thought it would get easier but it didn’t. Eleanor awake but not really Eleanor - an incoherent stranger who stared blankly at her - was a reality she struggled to come to terms with. The words brain damage regularly crossed her mind, accusing and reproachful.
At five-thirty on the Sunday, having sat with Eleanor all afternoon, alternately talking to her and reading out items from the newspaper, Jo went home. Sidney was now free to go out by himself and came running as soon as she called his name. He didn’t seem to stray far from the grounds and when she bent to pick him up his coat was warm from the sun. It was hot today. The gloom and storms of the week had been replaced with blue sky and the odd wispy white cloud. She fed Sidney, then wandered down to the sitting room and threw herself on the sofa, trying to relax. A few minutes later she gave up, changed into a sun dress, shut Sidney inside and descended the steps to the beach and the lapping therapy of the waves.
Harry was there again, sitting on the rock where he had been before, reversed baseball cap on, facing out to sea, lost in his own world. She was surprised to feel so pleased to see him.
‘Hi Harry.’
He turned at her approach, sliding quickly down off the rock onto the pebbles. Today he was wearing flip-flops. It amazed her that he could climb over rocks in them. He was holding his phone, and pulled the earphone out of his right ear, watching her with a wary expression.
‘What is it now? he demanded.
She shrugged and smiled. ‘It? It’s nothing. I just came down to hang out on the beach and I said hi.’
‘Oh.’ He hesitated. ‘Hi.’
He looked away awkwardly to where the tide had recently turned and each wave was slowly eating up a little more of the shore.
‘Seen anything interesting today?’ she asked. ‘I’ve sometimes seen dolphins out in the bay. Of course there’s the whale that’s been in Start Bay this summer. I don’t suppose it’s made it over this far.’
He turned to look at her, eyes narrowed, as if trying to work out if she was making fun of him. He shook his head. ‘I haven’t seen nothing.’
‘Anything.’ She grinned. ‘Sorry. Grammar police. I’m a bit compulsive about stuff like that. Used to drive my boyfriend crazy.’
He looked at her but didn’t respond, and she walked away down towards the sea, bending over, searching the pebbles. Finding a suitably flat one, she skimmed it over the water, counting the number of times it skipped before falling in. Four. She bent to choose another stone and heard the crunch of Harry’s feet getting closer. She straightened, pulled her right arm back, twisting and bending to get the right angle. Frank had taught her to do this, years ago, patiently showing her how to hold the stone and how to use her wrist to flick it. This one skipped five times.
‘Not bad,’ Harry admitted grudgingly.
She glanced across at him. The phone and earphone had been rammed into a pocket of his baggy shorts, the wire still dangling, and he already had a stone in hand.
‘OK, so you do better.’
He leaned over and threw it, then raised his hands in the air. ‘Six,’ he exulted.
‘I’m out of practice.’ She threw again. It managed six skips too, then a vigorous wave caught her by surprise and had her scurrying backwards, too late, her feet getting washed in brine.
‘Ugh.’ She shook her feet off; her canvas shoes were soaked.
‘Hey, you’re on the beach,’ taunted Harry. ‘Going in the sea’s what it’s all about.’ With youthful bravado, he paddled into the next wave, water sloshing around his knees, and looked round at her. ‘Anyway, the stone’ll go further from in here. I dare you.’ He grinned provocatively, then turned back to face the sea, waiting for a wave to swell and pass, jigging up onto his toes to stop it rising too high. He released his stone. It kept on skipping.
‘Yeah.’ He pumped his fist in the air. ‘Seven. I’m the best. Oh shit.’
He put his hand to his pocket then peered down desperately into the water. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’
‘What’s the matter?’ She waded into the water to join him. ‘What are you looking for?’
‘My phone. It fell out of my pocket. Shit.’
She began hunting too, but the incoming tide was getting stronger and each wave, foaming and eddying, made it difficult to see. Then a wave sucked back and, for a moment in the shallower water, the sun reflected off something. Jo reached down and grabbed it.
‘I’ve got it.’
‘Here.’ He held out his hand and almost snatched it from her. ‘It’s probably buggered now. Shit.’
‘Harry? Look out.’
It was too late. While he had been desperately poking at the phone, he’d turned with his back to the sea and the next wave had reared up impressively. He was caught off balance as it thundered in and he stumbled and fell to his knees in the water. He got up again, still clutching the phone but was soaked through.
Jo grabbed him by the arm. ‘Come on,’ she said, hauling him out of the water. ‘We’d better go up and get you dry.’ She pointed towards the house, invisible from where they stood.
‘I’m fine.’ He shook her off, still staring at the phone, trying to get it to work.
‘No, you’re not. You’re wet through. Come on. There’s no-one else at the house now.’
He glanced up and she could see him start to shiver. That water was cold.
‘Well OK,’ he muttered.
She let them both in through the kitchen door, tossed him the only small towel the kitchen possessed and went upstairs. A couple of minutes later she returned with a hand towel and a huge bath towel and thrust them at him. Sidney stood at the end of the hallway, watching Harry suspiciously.
‘Here. There’s a cloakroom through that door. Take your clothes off and wrap this round you. And here’s an oversized T-shirt of mine. It should fit. I’ll put your clothes in the tumble dryer.’
When he emerged a few minutes later, the bath towel was neatly in place, the T-shirt hanging off his bony shoulders but the cap was still on his head. In one hand he held the phone, in the other he held his clothes, his underpants carefully hidden between the bundled up shorts and T-shirt.
‘Go in there…’ She pointed towards the sitting room, then held out her hand for the clothes. ‘…while I sort those out and get us a drink.’
In the utility room she tossed the garments in the dryer. They were all cotton and would probably have dried as quickly hanging on the line outside but that might draw attention. Lawrence didn’t have a window onto the main garden but it was amazing the things he noticed. She grabbed two bottles of ginger beer from the fridge and a couple of packets of crisps and headed back up the hallway.
Harry was standing staring at the chess board. He’d abandoned the phone on the glass-topped coffee table and taken off the baseball cap. His hair stuck out in tufts.
‘Do you play?’ she asked him.
‘Yeah.’ He sounded surprisingly keen. ‘You?’
‘Badly. My aunt taught me but I don’t play much. That’s Eleanor’s last game.’
He nodded, studying the positions of the pieces. ‘Who did she play? Herself? That’s what I usually do.’
‘Maybe she does too, but usually she plays against Lawrence, her PA.’
‘Was she white or black?’
‘I don’t know. But she probably wouldn’t mind if we finished it.’
Eleanor’s hedgehog hair and staring eyes came into her head. Jo wished she would mind. Eleanor wanting and able to play chess again was unimaginable at this moment. In any case, it was a good way to occupy Harry till his clothes dried.
&nb
sp; So they sat and played, drinking ginger beer and eating crisps. Harry took black and he was good. Very good. She was beaten hands down. By the time they’d finished, Sidney had slipped into the room and was watching from a safe distance.
‘Another game?’ he suggested.
‘No, thanks. I’m no challenge for you and I’m not sure I can cope with any more failure. Where did you learn to play like that?’
He shrugged. ‘My dad taught me. And there used to be a chess club at my old school.’
‘Where was that?’
‘A small town near Cambridge.’
‘Do you play with your dad then? You probably beat him, huh?’
‘Nah. He never has time any more.’
She nodded and glanced at her watch. It was after seven.
‘I’d better check on your clothes. Speaking of your dad, he’ll be wondering where you are. Shouldn’t you ring him? You can use my phone.’
‘No need.’ He got up and went back to the coffee table to retrieve his own, staring with a dejected expression at its blank screen.
‘I guess salt water’s the worst,’ said Jo doubtfully. She had no idea how or if it could be made to work again. ‘Is it new?’
‘No. It’s worse. It’s old but it had important stuff on it.’
He looked upset. It was possible tears threatened.
‘Important, like photos?’
He looked up at her, surprised. ‘Yeah.’ He fixed back down on the empty screen. ‘Photos of mum. She bought this for me.’
‘Oh. I see.’ She paused, uncertain. ‘What happened to your mum, Harry?’
He didn’t reply immediately and she began to think he wouldn’t. Then he swallowed hard. ‘She got cancer and died. Nearly two years ago.’
‘I am sorry.’ She paused. ‘I lost my mum when I was sixteen and I still remember how difficult it was. Still is sometimes.’
He looked back at her then, studying her face to check she was being genuine.
‘Have you got photos of her anywhere else?’ she asked. ‘Saved to a memory stick maybe.’
‘A few.’
‘Your dad must have some too, right?’
Harry gave that now characteristic shrug.
‘Yeah, some. But he doesn’t like me looking at them and he never does. I found a box with photos of her in just after we moved and he went ballistic because I put a couple of the framed ones around the place. He won’t have them up in the house. There’s just one in my room. He won’t talk about her either. It’s as if mum never existed.’
She didn’t know what to say. ‘Do you talk about her?’ she ventured.
‘Who to?’
‘To him, I suppose.’
‘Yeah, right. Like I told you, he doesn’t want to know.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said belligerently. ‘Maybe he’s glad she’s dead. You ask him. No, don’t or he’ll know I’ve been here. Look my clothes’ll be dry by now. I’ve gotta go.’
She went to the utility room and came back with his clothes, still warm and still slightly damp. He disappeared in the direction of the cloakroom and, when he came back, he had slicked his hair back and the swagger had returned. He picked up his cap and pulled it on.
‘I’ll let you out of the gate,’ she said, heading for the door.
‘I can climb over the fence.’
‘Well, that’s very clever of you but I’d rather you went through the gate.’
She went with him down the path, Harry always a step or two behind her, flip-flops slapping and scuffing. Once through the gate he paused and turned to face her.
‘You know everyone says that aunt of yours jumped?’
‘She fell, Harry. Slipped. The rest is just gossip.’
He stood, staring at the ground.
‘The thing is…well…y’know, she might have been pushed.’ The shrug again. ‘Just sayin’.’
‘Why do you say that? Hey, Harry? Wait a minute.’
But he’d gone, quickly slip-slapping away down the path and out of sight.
Chapter 8
The nurse had left the radio on in the little side ward and Eleanor turned her head, regarding it with distaste. It was on the bedside cabinet on the other side of the bed from where she sat in an armchair, propped up with pillows. The movable table had been pushed in front of her, its two-pronged supports carefully straddling the chair legs, precluding her movement. The station the radio was tuned to was playing a succession of up-tempo chart hits, interspersed with chat from the DJ, a man who seemed to pride himself on speaking as quickly as possible. And he laughed at his own jokes. At least, Eleanor assumed they were jokes: she struggled to register what he was saying and didn’t want to know anyway. It was simply an irritating noise, twittering constantly into her head when what she really wanted to do was think. She wanted to understand what was going on here. She wanted to order her thoughts, organise them into some recognisable sequence but they stayed obstinately all over the place, random, fragmented, snapshots of events and people which never quite surfaced properly before they had gone again.
Now and then, bits seemed lucid. She had had a fall - she understood that now - and she was in hospital. But what kind of fall and where, she couldn’t remember. There was a lot she couldn’t remember. Nor did this feel like her body or her brain; she wasn’t in control of them and it was driving her crazy. And no-one seemed to understand…anything: how much she was trying; the things she kept telling them; the things she kept asking for. They kept looking at her blankly, asking her to say it again, looking at times concerned, at other times irritated. Well she was irritated too.
And why did her sister, Candida, keep coming to see her? They had never got on. Well, maybe when they were little. Yes, they’d been fine then. But not since. Candida hated me, she thought. Or did she say it out loud? It wasn’t always easy to tell.
There was no-one there to hear anyway. The radio still twittered away on the cabinet on the other side of the bed. Candida had probably brought her that radio; she was in a conspiracy with the nurses, no doubt. Eleanor pushed at the table but couldn’t get it to move. She grabbed the plastic tumbler from the table and launched it towards the radio. Her co-ordination was all wrong and, disappointingly, it didn’t connect. In fact, it went nowhere near but the feeder top came off and it did throw water in a pleasing trajectory, all over the curtain at the window to the corridor before ricocheting off the glass and falling with a clatter to the floor.
A nurse appeared in the doorway, looking fraught.
‘If you want someone to come you should press the buzzer, Eleanor,’ she said firmly, coming up to her and showing her once more the red call button which had been placed on the side of her lap.
Eleanor waved an angry finger towards the radio. ‘Poff.’
‘Sorry. Say that again.’
Again the angry finger. ‘Poff,’ she shouted.
‘You don’t want the radio on?’
‘Yesh,’ said Eleanor, shaking her head.
*
She might have been pushed. Harry’s words reverberated through Jo’s head all that Sunday night and continued to do so through Monday. She wasn’t sure why they had shocked her so. The same dark thought had lurked, unwanted and unacknowledged, at the back of her own mind ever since the news of Eleanor’s fall. But, short of a gut feeling - more of a fear - she had seen no reason to entertain it. Nor had the police, apparently. Why had Harry said it? Did he know something - or was he just trying to be cute? Or maybe it was a plea for attention, a need to be important - but then why, having got her attention, rush away like that? Whatever the reason, it had left her feeling deeply uneasy.
She had been at the hospital with Eleanor all afternoon as usual. Her aunt was being difficult. She was talking now but little of it made sense and she was getting increasingly frustrated and cross. The previous day she had hit one of the nurses. This afternoon she had thrown her plastic be
aker of tea at Jo who had taken evasive action, getting sprayed with the lukewarm liquid when the beaker hit the bed end and the lid came off. But for a tea-stained T-shirt, no harm had been done, but it was upsetting all the same. And Eleanor kept confusing Jo with Candida which she found unsettling. All her life she had worked hard not to be her mother; this was a cruel muddle.
‘I’m not Candida,’ Jo had insisted repeatedly. ‘I’m her daughter, Joselyn. Jo. You remember me? I came to live with you when mum died.’
She had been met with stony silence and an obstinate set to the mouth, like a toddler who refuses to eat its dinner.
‘Can you remember your accident, Eleanor?’ Jo asked too, in vain hopes of shedding more light on it, her only response a glare. Eleanor had never been like this. It was as if a malicious spirit had taken hold of her body.
Home now, Jo was prowling the estate, looking out for Harry. It was six thirty on the Monday evening and low tide had occurred more than an hour previously. If you ignored the danger warnings and managed to get between the swathes of bamboo planted along the rear cliff edge beyond the shrubberies, it was the quickest way to see the parts of the beach where Harry usually hung out, short of actually going down there. But he wasn’t there. Maybe he was just messing with her, voicing what a lot of people had thought but not dared to say. But why would anyone want to push Eleanor off the cliff anyway?
Jo eased her way back through a gap in the bamboo, returned through the side gate into Eleanor’s private gardens, and walked to the lower terrace and the top of the beach steps. She looked down over the edge to where Eleanor had fallen, then, glancing round to be sure no-one was watching, bent over and picked up a handful of small stones.
With her left hand firmly gripping the handrail, she moved to the second step down. This was where you would be most likely to slip from onto the cliff; it sat level with the edge of the rock while the others had been fitted and shaped into a slight recess. She dropped one of the stones on the rock near her feet and watched it fall. It rolled, jumped, rolled again, then sped down and away over the edge to the beach below. It hadn’t gone anywhere near where Eleanor was found. She dropped a second and a third stone with the same result.