Mrs Owens sat in the square of shade offered by the breakwater, her ample backside bulging below the frame of the deckchair. Her basket was next to her, containing the empty crisp packets and foil wrappings of their picnic, and the bag of knitting which she had started and then abandoned, as her chin dropped further onto her chest. Her short stout arms were neatly placed across her stomach, the palms hanging slightly open.
Kat reached across and tickled one of her veiny ankles with a straggly seagull feather she had found.
‘Don’t, Kat, you’ll wake her up,’ hissed Eleanor
‘Won’t. Look.’ Kat waggled the feather more energetically. ‘Her tights make her not feel it. And she should wake up anyway, shouldn’t she? In case we drown?’
The question, with its impossible connotations, made both girls look at the sea, a retreating, mesmerising choppy mass some ten yards in front of them, breaking noisily on the shingle. In the vicarage garden that morning the air had been balmy, but here it blew noisily off the water with a force strong enough to lean on, as Kat had gleefully demonstrated while they were eating their picnic, spraying bits of cheese out of her sandwich as she arched her whippet frame into it, stretching her arms wide as if in preparation to skydive off a cliff. Mrs Owens had shaken her head and clicked her teeth, saying what a wee slip of a thing she was, but then adding in the same breath, so that the two thoughts were inextricably, crushingly, connected, ‘And your big sister badly needs a new cozzie.’
Eleanor had shovelled the last crusty portion of her sandwich into her mouth, her cheeks burning. She dug her fingers into the pebbles around their towels, feeling for the cool wet mud with her fingertips. Putting her bathing costume on that afternoon – under her shorts and T-shirt ready for swimming, as Mrs Owens had instructed – she had been distressed to find how the straps cut into her shoulders and the way the sides rode up over her hips, forcing the flimsy material to gather uncomfortably in the crevice of her bottom. She had stood on a chair to try and get the measure of these difficulties, using the small mirror above her chest of drawers, fighting the dispiriting notion, as she tugged and twisted, that this newly burgeoning body was in some way betraying her. Arriving at the beach, she had attempted to keep the betrayal secret by tying her jumper round her waist even after she had stripped off her shorts and T-shirt. Sprawling on the towels beside Kat, bare and flat-chested in her frilly pink bikini pants, she had felt like a lump of dough next to a rose petal.
‘I’ll speak to Dad about it, Eleanor love,’ Mrs Owens had continued, either not knowing Eleanor wished her dead or not caring. ‘You’re growing out of all your clothes. And we’ll see about getting you a brassiere while we’re at it. Don’t you worry, we’ll soon get you fixed.’
Eleanor had unknotted her jumper and run at the sea to get away, flopping down on the sharp stones in the shallows just to hide herself. She had kept her back to Mrs Owens, willing the woman and her hateful words to evaporate. There was no end to anything bad now; not since the hot April afternoon three months before when her mother hadn’t come on the bus to get her and Kat from school and Isobel Kirby had kicked her leg.
Eleanor glanced down at the still lumpy brownish scab on her shin. At the time she hadn’t noticed it was bleeding until Miss Zaphron had handed her a tissue. In subsequent weeks it had become a ritual to let it heal and then pick it open again. It was like a reminder of what had happened. A boundary line between the Before and the After.
‘Look, Ellie.’
Eleanor turned round to see that Kat had abandoned the feather and was busy instead tying messy knots between the laces of Mrs Owens stout walking shoes.
‘Kat, you shouldn’t.’ Eleanor giggled, wriggling across the towels to help.
When the job was done, they picked their way down to the water’s edge and stood as close as they dared to the crashing waves, letting the icy water pool round their ankles.
‘Okay?’ Eleanor had to shout over the roar.
When Kat didn’t answer, she reached for her hand and held it hard. Then they both just stood there, narrowing their eyes in the onrush of wind, their hair blasting from its roots, facing not just the sea on their own, it felt like, but the whole world.
‘Girls!’
It was with a reflex of hope that Eleanor swung round. It wasn’t their mother, of course. It couldn’t be, ever again. There had been other such moments, each one its own rollercoaster. Like the previous week, glimpsing a lady with big blonde hair striding in high heels down Broughton High Street; Eleanor had found herself starting forwards, an involuntary jerk against the iron grasp of Hilda de Mowbray’s hand. But, in the same instant, the woman had turned, confirming a profile that bore no relation to her mother; an ugly square chin, full cheeks. The hair was wrong too, straight and dry and stiff, like straw.
‘Eleanor, Kat – you can’t be here alone, surely.’ The voice belonged to her English teacher, barely recognisable in a wide-brimmed floppy straw hat and a long halter-neck sundress the colour of tangerines. She was out of breath, and had the flat of one hand pinned on top of the hat while the other held the sides of the dress out of reach of the lapping sea.
‘No, we’ve got her.’ Kat stuck a thumb in the direction of Mrs Owens, who was stirring. ‘We don’t like her much. She cleans our house.’
There was a time, Eleanor realised, when she might have felt awkward, or even duty-bound to apologise, for her little sister’s bluntness. But now it made her love her more dearly. Kat speaking out had come to feel like an important part of what they were both going through; they both felt the same things, but only Kat could actually say them. It helped ease the knots in her own heart, Eleanor had found, especially when it came to tackling the new silent fortress of their father. Eleanor couldn’t look at him, but Kat was fearless. ‘I am going to sleep with Daddy,’ she had declared stoutly on the first airless night, when Connie was merely missing as opposed to dead beside the rail-tracks. ‘He will need me, won’t you, Daddy.’
‘Yes,’ Vincent had croaked, swivelling dazed eyes to look at her. They had all slept together in the end, heaped in the middle of the wide bed like mangled wreckage.
‘But this is so lucky,’ Miss Zaphron exclaimed, releasing her dress hem to the perils of the beach so that she could squeeze Eleanor’s shoulder. The silky orange panels billowed round her thin legs like flames. ‘Because I was going to call you today anyway… my dear child, you’ve only gone and won the competition.’ Her big brown eyes shone, making her nose look small.
Beside them, Kat had stopped listening and was doubled over in a private, miming imitation of Mrs Owens, now testily sorting out her criss-crossed shoelaces.
‘The writing competition?’ Miss Zaphron prompted, when Eleanor did not speak. ‘The national writing competition? They have chosen your essay about Jane Eyre. It is going to be published in a magazine. You are a clever, clever girl and should be jolly proud.’
‘Yes, I suppose I am.’ Eleanor smiled. A dim, unreachable part of her was pleased. Far more vivid was the sting of the salty water finding out the freshly picked crevices of the scab on her shin. The pain was taking her back to the deserted forecourt of the school, waiting with Kat under the big tree, leaning against their satchels as if they were cushions. Kat had scratched a hole in the dry ground with a twig. She was herding ants into it and then raining down blobs of spittle on top of them. To see if they could swim, she declared solemnly, catching Eleanor’s look of disapproval.
Eleanor had whiled away the time looking over what she had written during her talk with Miss Zaphron. The competition title was, ‘Why Does Reading Matter?’ Entrants were invited to use a favourite book to answer the question, Miss Zaphron had explained, reading from a leaflet and suggesting Eleanor jot down any first thoughts there and then. Eleanor, thinking at once of Jane Eyre, had written, a story is real life, but also an escape. When she showed the sentence to Miss Zaphron, the teacher had beamed, saying she thought it would make an excellent starting point.
While they sat under the tree, various teachers had drifted past, each pausing to ask if they were okay. She and Kat had kept saying yes, not looking at each other, mutually eager to hide the ignominy of having been forgotten.
‘Mummy’s toooo busy at the moment,’ Kat cooed, when the first expression of serious concern arrived, via Mr Posner who taught Eleanor Maths and who had a deeply pockmarked face, as if it had withstood a hail of tiny bullets. By then it was some forty minutes after the official end of the school day. ‘But she will come soon, and then we go on the bus together,’ Kat had chattered, displaying the assurance that made Eleanor want to hug her. The Maths teacher had patted Kat’s head and offered them both a fruit Polo, saying he would pop back to check on them again soon.
It was fifteen minutes before anyone reappeared. And then it wasn’t the Maths teacher, but Mrs Mayfield, approaching at speed, the vulture-wings of her scholar cloak flapping. There had been a misunderstanding, she said. Their father, not their mother, would now be coming to fetch them from school.
‘Well, you should be pleased,’ Miss Zaphron declared in a scolding tone that ripped through the images in Eleanor’s head.
Eleanor was grateful. She didn’t want to remember. When the two policemen came to the vicarage front door the following morning, helmets off, heads bowed, Vincent had dropped to his knees with a howl. She and Kat had huddled in the doorway of the kitchen behind him, waiting to be noticed.
‘You have such talent,’ the English teacher went on, the wind whipping at her sentences. ‘We must look after it. I’ve been speaking to Mrs Mayfield. We are going to move you up a class, keep a special eye on you.’
Mrs Owens, her laces back in small tight bows, her wide flat face visibly disgruntled, slid gingerly over the pebbles to join them. Out of the lee of the breakwater, the wind blew her short grey hair up into stalks, flinging her paisley dress tightly round her stocky body.
Miss Zaphron introduced herself, quickly relaying Eleanor’s good news.
Kat took it on board this time, shouting, to no one in particular, ‘Ellie is a brainbox.’
‘Oh, but your father will be pleased, won’t he, love?’ Mrs Owens put an arm round Eleanor’s shoulders, which she endured, inwardly cowering. It was true though, it might make Vincent happy, and that was a welcome idea. Because her father didn’t seem to like doing anything much these days, except his praying, stopping suddenly in the middle of something quite normal – like walking or washing-up or reading – to close his eyes and move his lips fast over whispered words. Eleanor hated it. But she couldn’t say so. She couldn’t say anything.
‘Oh my goodness, yes, I’m sure he will,’ exclaimed Miss Zaphron. ‘I am going to call him this afternoon. Tell him I’m going to call him, Eleanor, will you, dear?’ She was losing the fight with the hat. The brim was bouncing like a flying saucer wanting to take off. ‘I want to propose some extra tuition with me. Reading books and talking about them. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I’m thinking of university one day… maybe Oxford. What do you say, Eleanor? The city of dreaming spires.’ She laughed, as if she had told a good joke, and gathered up her dress to continue her walk along the shoreline. In the distance a man in green shorts and a yellow T-shirt waved. She waved back and broke into a bounding run towards him, a flapping orange bird charging along the fringes of the surf.
Vincent peered through the blind, widening the flimsy plastic slats with his fingers to create a gap. He had thought he heard a car, but what he could see of the drive was empty. The sun had been drowned by cloud, great thick banks of it rolling in over the distant horizon of hills like fog. He was in the small lavatory on the top landing, studying a calendar that Connie had hung on the wall, deploying a thick, rusted nail left by one of his predecessors. The calendar was one he had given her for Christmas, of Renaissance masterpieces. For weeks it had been stuck on April, but since his last visit to the top floor someone had moved it on to July. Mrs Owens most likely. Or maybe Eleanor. Eleanor had a stealth about her these days, a quietness. Kat was wilder, needier, easier. Vincent gave them what he could. He gave everyone what he could. Including God. The trouble was, it wasn’t enough. He knew, because God no longer answered back. No matter how he begged, there was nothing but silence. It had left him empty. What he managed for the outside world was a shell. Inside he was rotting, echoing, stained, without a soul.
Vincent fell against the wall, breathing hard. The calendar picture for July was Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. It was a painting he had been made to study once, during some class on something or other, a hundred years before. His entire life felt like a hundred years before, the sad history of someone he didn’t know, someone who thought he had found salvation only to fail at that too. The woman in the shell looked like an image of perfection, but she was flawed, Vincent remembered. The artist had cheated to create the effect. Her left arm was far too long, serving to accentuate sinuous female curves rather than biological reality. She wasn’t standing in the shell so much as floating at an awkward angle on the front edge of it, one foot virtually in mid-air. Perspective, that was what the Renaissance artists had struggled with and finally mastered. Perspective. But all it amounted to was trickery with their brushes. A con. Vincent’s eyes darted around the grimy avocado walls of the small toilet. They were closing in, sliding on invisible rollers. Soon he would be crushed flat, a fly slammed between two hands.
He stumbled into the passageway, stalling at the sight of Kat on the top stair. She was lost in one of her private games, clinging to the landing as if it was a cliff edge, her head bobbing up over the edge.
‘Daddeeee,’ she squealed when she saw him. She scrambled to her feet and charged at his legs, chattering about the beach and something to do with Mrs Owens’ shoes.
Vincent clasped her against his knees. He had to fight to stop himself gripping too hard. It wouldn’t do. But he wanted to. He needed to.
‘Kit-Kat.’ He lifted her up, sniffing her soft nest of hair. It was cold as silk against his cheeks and smelt of the sea. I could drown in this, he thought. Then God and the world would cease to matter.
‘Mrs Owens said we couldn’t have ice creams.’
‘Did she now.’
‘Tell her off, Daddy.’
She tightened the clench of her legs round his waist for the journey downstairs, tugging on his crucifix and yelping giddy-up. I am a beast, Vincent thought.
Mrs Owens was seated at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and a biscuit, browsing through the Radio Times. When they appeared in the doorway, she started slightly, as if she sensed his deep wish not to have her there. He needed her, that was the trouble. Just as he needed all of them, all of the people who had been so quick to gossip and find fault. Since the horror of April they had been giving their services for free. Food arrived on the doorstep in Tupperware boxes and foil containers, while offers of help looking after the girls were posted through the letterbox on a Sunday night – schedules of dates and times and phone numbers written in Hilda de Mowbray’s neat sloping hand. It had started straight after Connie’s funeral, and continued into the summer holidays. Christian charity in action. The only problem being that Vincent didn’t feel Christian. He didn’t feel anything, except abandoned. By Connie, but mostly by God. What sort of deity would bestow such a gift on a man only to rip it so cruelly away?
It made it worse that the Charge of the Righteous was being led by Hilda de Mowbray. Hideous Hilda. On the outside a paragon of organised compassion. But behind her sorry smile, Vincent detected the sulphurous whiff of something toxic and triumphant. He was sure she had wanted to see him brought low, and her desire had been granted. Why this should be so was one of the many questions he had flung heavenwards, only to receive a mockery of silence in return. As the days crawled by, it was this not-being-spoken-to that he was finding hardest to bear. It made him feel as if he didn’t exist.
‘We met one of their teachers at the seaside,’ said Mrs Owens.
‘Ellie won,’ shrieked Kat into his ear, yanking his beard so sharply that Vincent had to set her down to stop himself throwing her across the room. ‘She’s going to be in a book, Miss Zaphron said,’ Kat chirruped. She leant her back against Vincent’s legs as if he was a doorpost, inspecting and sucking a few salty strands of her hair.
‘Eleanor’s composition is to be published in a magazine,’ Mrs Owens explained, pondering, as she closed the TV magazine, how exactly the vicar resembled his brainy eldest daughter, with his hefty frame and big sad brown eyes. ‘Nice to have a bit of good news.’ She brushed the biscuit crumbs off her chest and went to rinse her mug under the tap.
‘Yes. Absolutely. Goodness.’ A pain was sliding in and out of Vincent’s left temple, a needle puncturing and pushing, up to its hilt and then withdrawing. He rubbed the spot, aware of how the vein throbbed, as if there was too much blood in his head. ‘Splendid news indeed. And where, may I ask, is the victor of this great prize?’
Kat twirled out of the room, shouting to Eleanor.
Mrs Owens hung the mug back on its hook and folded the drying-up cloth into a padded rectangle. ‘Will you be wanting any more help today? There’s some cold meats for supper. A spot of salad.’ Grief, even in more straightforward circumstances took time, she reminded herself, even for men of God; even those men of God misguided enough to have burdened themselves with such pitifully unsuitable wives. The woman’s death was a shocker, of course. It was no way for anyone to die. The final verdict had been accidental death, but for weeks gossip and local papers had swirled with speculation, because of the alcohol content in her blood and the lack of a handbag or train ticket.
The cleaner stole another glance at the vicar’s big chiselled face, admiring the stoical strength that seemed to radiate from it, but wondering if, on some undetectable level, it masked a sense of release. Such a tragedy – especially for the two dear girls – but there was no denying (God forgive her) that the man was better off alone. All of Broughton thought so, it wasn’t just her.
‘They wanted lollies, but I’m afraid I said it would ruin their appetites.’
‘Quite right, Mrs Owens. Thank you. Cold meats. Splendid.’
‘So I’ll be off then. Till Friday.’
‘Till Friday. Exactly. Thank you… thank you.’ Vincent hurried into the hall to see her out, sensing, as ever, that his responses were inadequate, but lacking the wherewithal to improve on them.
He found Eleanor on the sofa with Kat, watching television. They were propped together like two rag dolls, pink-faced from the beach, their hair tangled and full of air. Kat had stoppered her mouth with her thumb as usual and was sucking rhythmically, her eyes half closed.
‘I gather congratulations are in order. Well done, Eleanor, well done indeed.’
‘Thanks Dad.’ Eleanor spoke softly, sheepishly, not looking at him.
‘You’re a clever girl.’ Vincent perched on the arm of the sofa and delivered a pat to the dark springy roof of her head. ‘And… and… Mum…’ The effort in the word was audible to all of them, an unwieldy mouthful, close to choking him. ‘Mum would be pleased too. Pleased and proud. Okay, Eleanor? Okay?’ His voice rose, as if he was asking himself the question as much as her.
‘Yup.’ Eleanor nodded, keeping her gaze on the telly. A man in a gorilla costume was trying to eat a banana but kept missing his mouth. ‘Miss Zaphron said she’s going to call you. She wants me to have extra lessons.’
‘Oh yes? And do you want extra lessons?’
Eleanor shrugged. It was impossible to relish the idea of more schoolwork, but the opportunity to escape her class definitely held some appeal. After her mother’s death, the taunts and paper pellets had stopped, but for the rest of term it was as if a bell jar had been lowered over her. She had been set apart, stared at, pitied, examined. ‘Miss Zaphron said maybe I’ll go to Oxford one day.’
‘Did she now?’ Vincent was watching the milky evening light fill the window. He found it impossible to envisage the end of the day, let alone the tunnel of six years that might or might not allow his parlous finances to stretch to the accommodation of his eldest daughter attending university. ‘Well, no harm in aiming high, I suppose.’
Eleanor, detecting the drift in his voice, the trace of what sounded like disapproval, returned her attention to the television. The volume was almost too low to hear, more of a drone. The gorilla was using his banana to point at the hands of a big clock.
Beside her, Kat suddenly plucked her thumb out of her mouth and sat up. ‘I want Mum,’ she wailed. ‘I want her. She shouldn’t have gone to the railway. She told us not to. So why did she?’
‘Mum is in heaven,’ said Eleanor grimly, not looking at their father. Unlike Kat, she had been able to pick up on some of the speculation. It had made it hard to think straight sometimes, even after Miss Zaphron had gently taken her to one side to explain that it meant nothing, that journalists, like people, made up stories just to seem interesting.
Vincent reached across Eleanor and picked Kat up, cradling her as she continued to sob, her arms and legs splaying out awkwardly, like a rangy pet. ‘God has reasons for everything and we must accept them.’ He sounded like he did when giving one of his grand sermons, as if he was speaking to the air rather than a person. They both had to attend church every Sunday now, always sitting with Mrs de Mowbray in the front row. ‘A bath before supper tonight,’ he added, in the same loud flat voice, ‘wash all that salt off. We’ll leave the water in for you, Eleanor.’
Kat had gone limp in his arms, not asleep, but like she had given up a fight. He carried her out of the room. As they went through the doorway, her head bobbed up over his shoulder, the tears dry smears on her cheeks, her eyes already fresh and sparkling. She locked her gaze onto Eleanor and shot her a secretive smile, like she knew she was being spoilt and was sorry about it.