On the Edge

by Jane Jesmond

  We both stared at our drinks and I thought, this time, at least, no one could say it was my fault. Not like with Grid. But I understood Seb’s mother. Seb’s passions had been cerebral. His love had been words. They poured out of him in an unending stream of anecdotes, opinions, arguments and banter. He was never dull, always full of life. But he wasn’t sporty or physically active in the least. He was always the first to hail a taxi, to prefer the nearest pub, or to duck out of a proposed walk with an excuse about a deadline.

  ‘How’s Mark?’ I said. ‘He’s Seb’s only brother, isn’t he?’

  A ripple of emotion passed over Kit’s face. ‘Not good,’ he said. ‘Mark’s not good. But he thought we should have the chance to say goodbye to Seb. Just a few of us. The ones who knew Seb before he left Cornwall. Old school friends mainly, who wanted to say goodbye quietly. None of the nutters from London. No one Seb went free running with. We all went and said a few things about Seb or read one of his poems. By his grave. That’s why you couldn’t get hold of us.’

  ‘Seb would have liked that.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  Seb was dead. I felt the fact of it reach into my core and twist it into a different shape. I hadn’t seen much of him since Grid’s accident and, if I was honest, not for a few months before that, when I was unhappy about Kit disappearing from my life and all my spare time was taken up with climbing. But he was a friend, a childhood friend and he’d never pour out the details of his latest obsession to me again. A wave of depression gripped me. Everything was so awful. Kit. Seb. And me. I supposed it was time to grow up. Time to say goodbye to excitement. Time to think about the future and become sensible. Except I wasn’t sure if I could. Not while the hole in my memory of last night held so many secrets.

  I dragged myself back to the present and my brother sitting opposite, his restless fingers picking at the thick varnish on the arms of the bench.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘You go back to The Seagull, Jen. And come over tomorrow. We’ll go out and leave the place clear for you to talk to Ma.’ He patted my shoulder. I tried not to wince. ‘You are OK, aren’t you?’

  This was my chance to talk. An invitation really. Except, looking at Kit’s shut-in face, I didn’t think he would want to know. So I told him everything was fine and we left the pub and walked off in separate directions – me back to the hotel and him along the road past the lighthouse and back to Tregonna.

  I didn’t go into the hotel, though. It was only seven o’clock. Although I was shattered, seeing Kit in such a state had unsettled me. I wasn’t ready for sleep just yet and the crisps had calmed my hunger.

  Nick Crawford. He’d hovered at the edge of my mind all afternoon. Unfinished business. I owed him an explanation to keep him quiet and now I wondered if he had seen something, someone, anything that would help me pierce the black of last night.

  Ten

  I didn’t think I had any memories of Simon Mullins’s cottage, but as I stopped the car outside I remembered playing there with his great niece, Debbie – a thin curly-haired little girl who always wore woolly tights and skirts in winter, even out to play, while the rest of us wore jeans or sweatpants. We’d played at house in the tumbledown barns at the side of the cottage. None of the walls were more than a child’s knee height but you could see where the different rooms had been.

  The outbuilding was no longer tumbledown, however. Its stone walls had been rebuilt on three sides and the gable end filled in with huge doors. A white van was parked outside and I recognised Nick’s battered car next to it. The cottage was in darkness, but lights shone through a half-open door at the side of the outbuilding and a noise of hammering came from inside.

  I went round to the side door and called. A warm and spicy scent drifted out into the night as it opened. Nick Crawford stood there. The light behind his head glinted off the sawdust spattering his hair and the shadows lent a dark hue to his skin.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Ms Jenifry Shaw. I thought you might come round. How nice.’

  His voice was amused on the surface yet underneath I felt a tension. Maybe it was the pitch black and the quiet of the night but there was a jumpiness about him, as if he was charged with static that needed only a touch for it to crackle out.

  Or maybe I was putting my own mood on to him.

  I realised I was staring at him just as he was staring at me. There was silence broken only by rapid breathing. We sounded as though we’d both been running. Awkwardness took my eyes from his face and I said the first thing that came into my head.

  ‘Can I have a look? I used to play here when I was a child.’

  His eyes flicked into the building before he answered.

  ‘Sure. There’s not much to see, though. The furniture is mostly packed in my van. I’m taking it to London tomorrow.’

  ‘Ah. I thought you suggested I came round to have a look at it.’

  He gave me a smile like we both knew there’d been more to his invitation than furniture and I couldn’t help smiling back.

  Another long pause.

  Nick broke it. ‘Come in anyway. Not much call for handmade furniture here, you see. I sell it through shops in London and Bristol or people order it off my website.’

  The scent inside the barn was strong. I picked up a shaved curl from the floor and sniffed it.

  ‘Sandalwood?’ I asked.

  ‘Cedar. The smell is intense when you sand it or plane it.’

  He stood facing me across his workbench which was empty apart from a few scattered pieces of wood. Behind him, on the whitewashed walls, hung saws and clamps and tools I couldn’t put a name to. I swivelled round. His workshop was white, bright and very clean. Something about it felt all wrong. The momentary spark of pleasure I’d felt at seeing him died and depression bogged me down again. I was in a weird mood. It was time to do what I’d come to do and go.

  ‘I’ve got Gregory’s tarp in my car,’ I said. ‘Do you think you could get it back to him without mentioning me?’ Surprise opened his eyes wide and he looked hard at me. Clearly he’d guessed it had been me on the lighthouse last night, but he hadn’t expected me to admit it. ‘And thank you for last night,’ I said. ‘You were very kind.’

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘You’re full of surprises, Jenifry Shaw.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that.’

  ‘It’s your name. I suppose your mother chose Jenifry. A Cornish name. And Shaw from your father. The famous Charlie Shaw.’

  ‘Is he? Famous still, I mean?’ The comment was meant to be throw-away. A step in the dance between me and Nick. But it came out tinged with a bitterness I didn’t understand.

  ‘I think so. Mountaineer and adventurer, Charlie Shaw? People down here still talk about him. You must have inherited his adventure lust?’

  ‘You guessed then.’

  ‘That it was you in the lighthouse? Yes. What exactly were you doing there?’

  My story was full of holes but it was the best I could do.

  ‘I didn’t break in. I was out for a walk and saw the door was smashed. So I went in and when I was up the top I heard someone on one of the lower floors. I don’t know if they followed me in or what. But it spooked me. I hid up there for ages until I was sure they’d gone. Then I tripped and fell down the stairs while I was racing to get away. Knocked myself out. I was in a bit of a state when you stopped.’

  His eyes sharpened. Although he said nothing, the empty white room with its harsh lighting boring into my head made me feel as if I was in an interrogation chamber. Maybe I should have told him the truth but I couldn’t quite trust him. Something hid behind his easy exterior and it both intrigued and disturbed me.

  I ploughed on. ‘I wondered maybe if you’d seen anybody else around. Before you found me, I mean. Or after, I suppose. Because if you had… it must have been them who actually broke in.’

  Bit by bit his face sh
ut down while I spoke. His eyes lost their warmth and shifted away onto the wall behind me. His lips settled into a perfectly horizontal line. He didn’t believe me. Nothing else could explain the coldness invading his face. My voice died away to nothing like the last gurgles of bathwater going down the plughole.

  ‘I didn’t see anyone,’ he said. ‘Apart from you.’

  He was going to say something more but the noise of a car driving up and stopping outside took his attention away. Doors slammed and the sound of voices slipped in through the door. Low male voices. Nick’s head lifted and his shoulders tensed like a dog catching the first sense of an intruder.

  ‘Will you excuse me for a moment? I know who this is and it won’t take long.’

  He shut the door behind him, cutting the sound of voices off and leaving me in the empty workshop. My hands were still outstretched, frozen mid-gesture, he’d left so quickly.

  That hadn’t worked. All I’d done was to make him suspicious of me. What the fuck. When he came back I’d tell him the truth. If he’d been going to shop me to the police, he would have already. A hint of unquiet niggled me, but I ignored it and looked around the studio instead. There were no windows so I couldn’t even sneak a look to see who his mystery callers were.

  The room was empty apart from his workbench and a long, narrow sideboard. I went over and ran my hands over it. Made of two contrasting woods, a dense, ruddy one for the frame and a lighter and grainier wood for the doors and panels, the sides had a slight curve that broke up its square-ness and made the two woods flow into each other. It was beautiful and elegant, and not a bit like Nick Crawford.

  The darker wood must be the cedar that scented the workshop. I traced its shape around the side panel and winced when my fingers caught on a raised edge. It wasn’t quite as beautifully put together as I’d thought. The join where the side panel was fixed to the cedar frame had snagged the tips of my fingers, still sore from digging into the stone last night.

  I knelt down. The panel wasn’t lined up with the frame. I tapped it and it sank into the frame even more, leaving a proud edge all the way round. Shit. Maybe I could push it back out from inside? But when I opened the doors I saw the inside was lined with more cedar. I’d just have to confess when he came back.

  The lining was smooth with an oily gleam and smelled even more strongly of aromatic wood. I wondered if he’d rubbed cedar oil into it. I sniffed my fingers, but if the spice had impregnated them, I couldn’t smell it.

  There was a faint trace of powder on the fingers of my right hand. I looked at the dresser again and saw where it trickled out of a corner of the uneven join. Too fine to be sawdust and too white, like icing sugar. I rubbed it between my thumb and forefinger. Was it the grains of some product used for filling wood that had dried and crumbled when I dislodged the panel? I thought not. It would have a greasier feel. This was dry and felt like tiny sharp crystals on my skin. The air in the room throbbed in time with the circular motion of my fingers and I felt dizzy. My mouth was dry but my palms were damp and heat beaded my forehead and the skin above my top lip. I knew this feeling.

  It was the moment of anticipation. The moment of holding back. When the first line of the night glittered before you. The moment before you bent and inhaled and let the drug tear through your body into the deepest corners of your head.

  I looked at the powder again. Was that what my body was trying to tell me? There was a sink in one corner and I crossed over to it, ready to wash whatever the powder was off my hand, then stopped. There was only one way to be sure.

  I lifted the fingers to my mouth and bared my teeth ready to rub the powder into my gums. In the mirror above the sink, a face snarled at me with the same expression I’d seen so many times on other people’s faces as their shaking fingers rubbed every last grain into the bony flesh above their teeth. They were like the stray cats down at the harbour pulling each scrap of flesh from the fish carcasses, their eyes flashing threats and fright at the same time. This time the face was mine and its expression of longing shocked me.

  But there was only one way to be sure…

  I didn’t rub the powder into my gums. Instead, I touched my fingers with the tip of my tongue. A sour taste. Dried lemons. And then the faintest of tingling. A sparkling breath that made my tongue curl.

  I was right. My body hadn’t lied. It had known straightaway, recognising the scent and feel like you recognise the touch and smell of a lover even with your eyes shut.

  I grabbed the tap, turned it on full and plunged my hands into the jet of water, gasping at its coldness, like icy needles on my skin. I rinsed away the sweat, swilled water round my mouth and spat.

  There was only one cupboard in the workshop, its shelves full of an array of bottles of glue and stain, tins of varnish and paint, stacks of sandpaper, clean brushes and a couple in use that were wrapped in cling film – and stuff in bags and plastic pots. Stuff that felt like powder when I squeezed it or shook it. Some of it was whitish. I hunted through for a bag that had already been opened but they were all sealed. I thought about tearing a little corner off but there were so many. Most of them must be filler or abrasive grit or whatever the packaging claimed they were but I couldn’t open them all to check. I made a swift decision, tore off a length of cling film, grabbed a brush and knelt down by the sideboard. The brush was the smallest there was but still too big to sweep the minute amount of powder into the cling film lining my other hand. Louder voices cut through the silence, followed by the noise of car doors slamming. Shit. They were leaving, whoever they were. I had no time.

  I gave it one last go. Leaned my elbow against the loose side panel pushing it in so that more powder trickled out, praying the panel wouldn’t fall in completely and spill whatever hid behind all over the floor. I was mad. I knew I was. But I had to know if it was cocaine.

  The door started to open. I brushed the powder into the cling film, screwed it up and shoved it into my pocket. A brief skid of my feet over the white floor scattered the traces and by the time Nick came back in I was standing by the sink, rinsing my hands and face and trying to calm the ragged gasps of breath that sounded thunderous in the quiet.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  My eyes raked the studio. It was fine. Nothing to give me away. Except the deep shadow round the panel in the sideboard. He must have been fitting it when I arrived and shoved it into place. Would he remember how it had looked?

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked again.

  I took the towel from beside the sink and patted my face.

  ‘Fine. The tap came on stronger than I expected. I was thirsty.’

  In between pats, I stole glances at his face, trying to make sense of what I’d discovered. His surface expression was pleasant. Maybe a bit set about the mouth. But giving nothing away. It was a chameleon’s exterior, and not to be trusted.

  His voice cut over my thoughts.

  ‘If you’re thirsty, would you like a tea or a coffee? Or I’ve got beer in the cottage.’

  He was a dealer. No one would hide cocaine in furniture like he had done if it was purely for personal use. I fingered the crushed cling film package in my pocket.

  ‘No, thanks. The water was fine. Just what I needed.’

  ‘A glass of wine?’

  ‘No, really, no. I’d best get back.’

  All the time, running underneath my words, threads of anger tugged at me. I’d liked him and he’d turned out to be bad.

  ‘The sideboard’s lovely,’ I said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I love the different wood.’

  ‘It’s nice, isn’t it? Cedar and oak.’

  I walked over to it and stroked the top, watching to see how he reacted.

  Not a twitch or a shift gave his thoughts away and a prickle of fear scurried over my skin. He was too cool. Far too cool. Time to go. Through the door the night looked like velvet. Folds of
soft black velvet I could wrap myself in and hide.

  The silence had gone on a long time.

  ‘Really lovely,’ I repeated. ‘But now I must go. Thanks again.’

  My voice sounded brittle and false and it hit each surface of his bright, white room and rebounded. I stumbled past him through the open door, muttering something, and into my car. Slammed the door and thanked the god of automobile technology for keyless ignition. I was clumsy with the accelerator and the car roared wildly, breaking the quiet of the night. I wrenched the gearstick into reverse, pulled away, my eyes fixed on his dark figure soaking up the light in the open doorway, and, with a snatch of the wheel, headed out onto the road.

  The night was thick and low with cloud and through the windscreen my headlights flattened everything so I seemed to drive through a strange grey painting of trees and hedges. From time to time, headlights appeared in my mirror and followed me, until they turned off into the lanes that ran over the moors to the main road to St Austell and beyond, and I was alone again.

  Nick Crawford was a dealer. Or at least that was what it looked like. A retired policeman came into rehab one evening to talk to us about dealers. He said there was a glamour associated with drugs, particularly cocaine. People saw it as something for the young and rich. Exciting. His job, he said, was to show us the reality behind the glamour. And he did. It was an hour of awfulness. Of gang wars. Of children used as drug runners. Of violence and killing. Photo after photo of dead bodies. Each with their own tragic story. And every time, he told us, every time we snorted a line, we were helping it continue. We were as bad as the thugs who grew rich from the trade.

  I parked at the hotel and put the car keys in my pocket. My fingers met the little packet again. I pulled it out and turned it over and over. About half a gram, I estimated. I was probably right. It was a skill I’d acquired. The ability to weigh cocaine by sight.