Run it. That was a laugh. Harry turned it over a few times with the crank lever you needed to start it, and got nothing but a few wheezes and one sodding great bang that blew a cloud of smoke out the exhaust. Best he could offer the boy was to take it all apart, clean everything with petrol, and put it back together again with a new fan belt and plugs. No promises.
But it was good to be involved. They couldn’t talk much, at first, because Jack was making lots of noise. Caulking, he said. Seemed to involve a lot of hammering. But then they had a break and a cup of tea. He’d run a cable from the shore so they could use power tools and have a brew.
Jack perched on the steps up to the cockpit, and Harry sat on the floor of the chart-room, with his legs stretched out over the deck and his back against the wall. Or bulkhead, as the boy insisted on calling it. Jack didn’t seem to want to talk much, like he had something on his mind, but Harry felt good to be there. They hadn’t spent this much time together since before Jack’s wedding.
‘He did you proud, didn’t he?’ Harry looked over his shoulder into the main cabin. He hadn’t realised how big the boat was. It’d be worth a bit, done up.
The boy didn’t answer.
‘I still wonder what he was thinking.’
Jack sipped his tea and watched Harry.
‘Did he say anything to you?’
Jack shook his head.
‘Only, you spent a lot of time with him, didn’t you, before he died?’
‘He was a lonely old man. He was dying. I was here when I could, when he needed me.’
‘All right, all right, keep your shirt on.’ This was going to be hard if the boy was going to be all antsy, but they had to have it out. ‘Only, my lawyer says I could challenge the will.’
He stiffened, which was what Harry had expected. Actually, Harry was flying a kite. His lawyer had said he hadn’t got a hope in hell without evidence. Undue influence is bloody hard to prove, especially within families.
‘And will you?’ Jack’s hands around his mug seemed big, all of a sudden, like they were grabbing a weapon.
‘Nah. Wouldn’t do that to you, would I?’ And Harry couldn’t prove anything anyway.
‘Do you promise? Only, I’m borrowing shedloads of money against the will…’
Harry didn’t like the look on Jack’s face. Too bloody hard by far. ‘Nah. Promise.’
‘Do you mean that, Dad?’
God, Harry wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of Jack these days. ‘I swear.’ Harry laughed, nervously. ‘Cross me heart and hope to die.’ Anyways, if the boy wasn’t going to admit it, Harry might as well make the best of it.
Jack relaxed a bit, but he still watched Harry like he didn’t trust him.
*
It was the next day before Jack began to open up. They sat in the same places, except this time Harry had bits of engine scattered all over the floor around him. It was getting dark early that night. The sky behind Jack was thick with black clouds, and he’d stretched a tarpaulin tent over the cockpit, so they needed the hand lamps. He started talking about his deployment, but in a way that told Harry he was circling round something he really wanted to talk about. And then, in the middle of a decent conversation, he blurted out a weird question.
‘Do you believe in ghosts, Dad?’
Harry thought the boy was having him on. The light from the hand lamps shone upwards from below, so Jack’s eyes seemed all sunken and dark, like when kids shine a torch under their chins to make themselves look scary. If Harry had been an impressionable sort, there’d been a couple of moments crawling round the boat that could have seemed spooky, like when the bare bulb of the hand lamp made the boat’s ribs stand out, and the shadows danced as if there was something hiding in there. That sort of thing. But what kind of a question was that? Harry laughed.
‘Don’t be bloody daft.’
It was only when Jack threw his tea over the side and went back to work that Harry realised he might have been serious.
He always seemed to get it wrong with Jack.
II: Diary of Edvard Ahlquist, Volume 39
17 th January. Light airs, variable, cold.
Harry came. It was awkward. He was all stiff and brisk as if death was nothing more than packing to go away on holiday. He brought Tilly as well, so we couldn’t really talk. Pity.
Harry asked me what they could do, but they blinked when I told them. If they can’t offer companionship, then at least they could be useful. Shopping. Cleaning. Gardening. Washing. All the stuff I can’t do no more. Harry don’t do housework, but he did a bit of digging, clearing the weeds in the raspberry patch.
Now there’s a challenge for me. Live to eat this year’s raspberries. They always fruit early, down there in the dampest corner, where they get the sun nearly all day.
When Harry thought I wasn’t looking he eyed the cottage in a calculating sort of way, like he was guessing its value. Tilly went through the cupboards. Said she was cleaning.
They didn’t stay long. Tilly had to get home for her kids. I hope she brings them here while I can still talk to them.
Harry shook hands when they left. Backed away when he thought I was going to hug him.
I should have gone quietly with a heart attack or a stroke. Out like a light. This slow dying is inconvenient for him. It might mean we have to talk. Maybe that’s why he brought Tilly.
When they’d gone I sat in the boat seat with my three pals for company. Oxygen, morphine, and the dragon. I wished Jack lived nearer.
I came inside when the whispering started. The Viking always comes when there’s whispering.
III: GEORGE
George cycled out to Eddie Ahlquist’s cottage for the barbecue. Jack’s cottage now, Charl said. The bike was the only way to get there, since the buses were crap on Sundays and George couldn’t afford a car. It meant that Jack and Charl didn’t hear her coming, though she could hear them fifty yards away, yelling at each other in the back garden. George climbed off her bike by the front gate, wondering whether to go in, so the shout from Jack was loud and clear.
‘Play your girlie games in the city, but don’t shit in my backyard.’
George stood there, thinking ‘Woah, too heavy’ and wondering what to do.
‘Live and let live. Happy fucking families, right?’
That must’ve been Charl but it didn’t sound like her. Much too shrill. If George walked away, Charl would think she’d stood them up, so George rang the bell of her bike, made as much noise as she could pushing it over the gravel of the drive and dumped it by the house. The silence felt dangerous, like when the wind drops before a squall. Charl appeared around the corner of the cottage, mangling her hands on a tea towel. Her upper body was all angles, with high, sharp shoulders as if she’d put too much starch in her cotton shirt, but then all curves around the bum. Those tennis shorts were way too tight.
‘Hi George.’ Charl’s voice was tinny-bright, the way people speak when they’re trying to pretend that everything’s OK. She gave George an arms-length hug that was still close enough for George to feel the tension across her back.
‘You all right, Charl?’
‘Fine. Fine. We’re in the garden.’ She led the way before George could ask more.
Jack was raking coals in a portable barbecue on a stand. He turned to give George a small kiss on the cheek but his smile was a bit thin, even when she gave him her token bottle of wine. George remembered Charl’s wince at the funeral, so she’d bought the best she could afford, a supermarket special-offer red. There was a bottle already open on the outside table, next to the barbecue.
‘Lovely view.’ It was, too. She wasn’t making conversation. A long, overgrown garden sloped down to a hedge that separated it from the coastal footpath, and beyond the path there was scrubland of gorse and Scots pine and bracken curving around Freshwater Bay towards Witt Point. The harbour stretched away to the right, with the islands overlapping across the channels, and cloud shadows moving over the water u
nder a light south-westerly.
‘Thanks. Grandpa loved it.’
Another silence. There was too much unsaid between these two, and George was stopping them saying it.
‘George, come and help me with the salad, will you, while Jack gets the barbecue ready?’ That, George guessed, was Charl’s way of saying ‘let him stew on his own’.
Their kitchen was small, just big enough for an old, stand-alone cooker and a two-seater table that must double as a work surface. Charl stretched to close the fanlight, very quietly, and turned to George, her mouth pulled into a hard, angry line.
‘What’s the matter, Charl?’
This time the hug was closer, much closer, but Charl probably needed to hold someone and to have her back rubbed.
‘I swear I am that close to walking out.’
George eased her away and held her shoulders. It felt a bit strange to hug a woman when she wasn’t wearing a bra. She supposed that if you’ve got a model’s figure like Charl, you can get away with it.
‘Should I go?’
‘No! No, please stay. Sorry, you walked into a bit of a spat.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
Charl let her go, and reached for a chopping board.
‘I’ve cut that guy some slack of late, God knows I have…’ She brought a knife down on the globe of a lettuce, slicing it in two, and then hacked the pieces into shreds, massacring them.
‘Let me do that.’ George took the knife before they had one of Charl’s fingers in the salad. Out on the terrace, Jack had his back to them as he poked at the coals, and his shoulders were tight so the muscles inside were bunching under his shirt. A Great Dane, Charlotte had called him. Right now, he looked more like a wounded bear. George wished she didn’t feel like one of the dogs yapping at his heels.
‘We used to have a social life together. At least, we did when he wasn’t on deployment. The officers’ mess. Parties. Friends. Life used to be fun. Now…’
‘Now?’
Jack held his hand over the coals and stared into the flames as if he was looking through them to something far away.
‘I tell you, George,’ she touched George’s arm so that she’d look at her. Her eyes were softer now, almost tender. ‘The main reason I come now is to see you.’
‘Aw, Charl.’ George put the knife down and hugged her. ‘That’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.’
‘I mean it, George. You’re fun.’ She broke away, and passed her some tomatoes for slicing. Outside, Jack still held his hand over the flames, and George frowned until he jerked it away. It looked like he’d been testing himself, and reached the limit. He flexed his fingers around the coolness of a bottle, held them there, and tipped wine into glasses.
‘Come and have another sail. I’d be sad if you stopped coming.’
‘God, I’d love to. Fun time. Me time.’
‘Well, do it soon, before the schools break up for the summer. It’s chaos after that, and there might not be a spare boat.’
Jack appeared at the kitchen door, a glass in each hand. Charl glared at him and there was an awkward silence, but George smiled, embarrassed at the way he was being made to feel an outsider in his own house.
‘Wine?’
Charl and George said ‘yes’ together so exactly that Charl managed to grin as Jack bent to open the fridge, the kind of look that left Jack as the outsider. He pulled out a bowl of marinating meat. ‘The barbecue’s ready. I’m going to start cooking.’
George followed him outside, wanting to be friends with both of them, and stood beside him without speaking as a great slab of beef sizzled and dripped. Jack took a gulp of wine, which dissolved some of the tightness across his back.
‘I cycle to Witt Point quite a lot on my days off.’ George nodded down his garden. ‘It’s one of my favourite places.’
He relaxed a little more. She’d said the right thing.
‘Me too. I go there most mornings, now, and watch the world come awake. It’s peaceful.’
‘It’s a thin place.’ George spoke without thinking, and bit her lip. Now he’d laugh at her.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, I dunno. Spiritual, maybe.’ Jack looked at her like he expected more, so she swallowed and kept going. ‘Have you ever been to Lindisfarne?’
He shook his head.
‘I went there years ago. Coach holiday with my foster parents. They were very Christian, see? Took me to the Holy Isle. There’s been a monastery there since the seventh century.’
‘What’s that got to do with Witt Point?’
‘Lindisfarne’s a place where God and man are close. You can feel it, even if you don’t believe. God and man, gods and people, whatever. You feel that the veil between this world and the next is thin, almost like it’s not there. Witt Point is like Lindisfarne, a thin place.’
Jack looked at her quite hard, almost staring at her, long enough for George to remember that he had grey eyes. At least he wasn’t laughing. The stare broke into a smile that was gentle and soft and made her go a bit melty inside.
‘I’d turn that steak, if I were you.’
He swore under his breath and flipped the meat in a flare of blazing fat.
‘I hope you like it chargrilled, George.’
He’d relaxed.
‘It’ll still be pink and runny in the middle.’
Jack winced, and his eyes went distant. Somehow she’d spoiled the mood.
‘You all right?’
He snapped back into focus and pointed towards Witt Point with his tongs.
‘There used to be a chapel there too, I’m told.’
‘Yeah. Saxon. Have I done something wrong, Jack?’
‘You? Nah, George. If it wasn’t you it would be someone else. It’s just that…’
Behind them, the kitchen door opened.
‘I don’t understand…’
Charlotte put bowls of salad and bread on the table beside them, and slid her arm inside George’s.
‘You like history, George?’
‘Local stuff, yes.’ George kept her eyes on Jack’s back. He’d gone tense again. These two needed to make up. They were both all right with her on her own but spiky when they were together.
Charlotte’s arm tugged at George’s. ‘Let’s walk around the garden.’
George let herself be led away, hoping she wasn’t going to spend the day bouncing between them like a tennis ball. Charl held her close, so close that one boob was pushed against George’s arm.
‘So why local history?’
George liked the way Charl was interested in her.
‘Like I told you when we went sailing, I drifted around in my childhood. No roots, see?’
Charl smiled at her in a way that was warm and not at all patronising.
‘This is the first place I’ve felt settled.’
Charl picked a raspberry and offered it to her.
‘Try that. They’re full of flavour. We could have some for pudding.’
George held it in her fingers while she worked out how to put her thoughts into words.
‘I guess if you feel you don’t come from nowhere, you want to belong somewhere. Here’s the best place I know.’ George hadn’t opened up this much for years.
‘So you researched local history.’
‘Just the stuff that interests me.’
‘Like Saxon chapels.’ Charl braced her arms back against the boundary fence in a way that tightened her shirt across her breasts.
‘It was dedicated to Saint Witta. Hence Witt Point.’
George pointed past Charlotte’s shoulder towards the point, and realised she was still holding the raspberry. It tasted good.
‘Never heard of her.’
‘Local saint. She’s supposed to have been a virgin who walked on water to escape the Vikings. People used to make pilgrimages to her chapel in the Middle Ages.’
Charl’s smile hardened a little as Jack came down the garden towards the
m.
‘The meat’s cooked.’
George paused as they turned back towards the cottage and for the first time she saw the inside of a seat made out of an old boat. Perched on the bench was Mad Eddie’s figurehead, arched over, like it was staring down at them. It must have been hidden from view by the boat when they were nearer the house.
‘That thing gives me the creeps.’ George stared back at it.
‘What?’ Jack seemed bemused.
‘Eddie’s figurehead. It makes me uneasy.’
‘It’s creepy, but it’s only an old carving.’ Charl looked amused.
‘More like an idol. And I’m frigging sure it’s watching us.’
‘Ooh, shall we dance around it?’ Charl skipped up the garden towards it. Jack stayed near George, his eyes following the way Charl’s tits jiggled inside her shirt. Charl stopped when she slopped wine on her arm.
‘Seriously, Charl.’ George didn’t know how to describe that sense of menace. It felt even stronger here than at the funeral.
‘Oh, don’t be so po-faced.’ Charl licked her wrist, giggling at George.
‘What’s the matter, George?’ At least Jack wasn’t laughing at her.
George took a deep breath. ‘Me mum said I was psychic. I sense things.’ She glanced at him, nervously. ‘And I don’t like Eddie’s carving.’
Jack still wasn’t laughing. He looked at her a bit too long to be comfortable, like he was thinking.
‘Do you mind if we try something, George?’
She let him lead her out onto the coastal path. It was away from the carving, anyway. Jack stopped her on one of the little tracks that wove through the undergrowth down towards the shoreline.
‘Stand there. Can you sense anything?’
Jack was taking her seriously, and this seemed to be important to him, so George shut her eyes, faced down the hill and stood there palms out, listening at a deep, intuitive level.
Draca Page 11