It might be the last hot morning of the year.
Dear Mrs McQuaid
Re: The estate of Theodore Calvert
Thank you for yours of the 8th Inst.
This is to confirm that your tenure of the house remains secure for at least the next six months, from today’s date. As I know you will understand, Mr Calvert’s investments were of the global variety and it will take some considerable time to convert the same into cash and assess the tax situation . . . Please apply to the signatory should you require funds for the maintenance of the house …
So that was all right then.
It was only in the unholy light of a milky morning that Kay liked the sea with the kind of emotion that was anywhere near genuine affection. She was fond of it when it was calm enough to look like something out of a travel brochure advertising long days in the sun somewhere else entirely, where the language, the food and the climate were so different it was surprising that the human beings had the same shape. The house was one road back from the front itself, sheltered from storms. She could hear the sea from there without being able to see it.
Today, it was warm, inviting and friendly, without much of a hint of the mysterious, which she did not like, and even less of a hint of power, which she liked even less. On a morning like this, it looked like a great big bath, with some strange jacuzzi effect going on underneath the surface. Clad in her ankle-length dressing gown of pale lilac towelling, shower cap and plastic shoes, Kay walked gingerly across the shallow incline of the shingle, shed the robe and waded into the water. Up to the chest in three steps, four strokes left and four right without ever taking her sunglasses off, that was enough, and emerged triumphant. The days when she might have stayed in longer and offered up the pain as a penance for her sins were long gone. The water was pleasantly bracing rather than cold, but there was no point getting chilly. Chilliness was uncomfortable.
Theodore Calvert, her employer, went swimming until well into winter, but then he always had something to prove. Either he was proving his virility, or he must have been a closet Catholic. What was it the Jesuits said? Give me a boy before he is eight and he is mine for ever? Even if he railed against that religion for as long as she knew him, Kay theorised that he might have been got at as a boy and that was what had given him that awful mindset, which she was still doing her best to eradicate in herself, namely the strange belief that discomfort equalled virtue and, by the same token, luxury bordered on sinfulness.
The problem about the open sky, mirrored in the endless stretch of invigorating water, was that it drew her towards it and made her think, even when breakfast was more what she had in mind. The lulling noise of the quiet waves, so welcoming to her feet, was the voice of conscience. The sea was calm enough for a prophet to walk upon it. She looked at her toes through the opaque material of the plastic shoes and tried to concentrate on the fact that it was time for a pedicure, let the towelling robe soak the salty moisture from her skin as she sat comfortably on the warm shingle, telling herself she would be better off in the garden with a less awe-inspiring view, but she could not move. Theo Calvert had loved the sea and regarded it as a kind of playground, while, most of the time, she thought of it as cold, wet and inconvenient. After he had left his wife, he had moved to the coast because that was where he had always wanted to live. He had bought a house big enough for his daughters, but of course they had never arrived, not even for a visit. Theo had been a fool to expect any such thing. Also a fool to battle for custody of children who were not only ill but easily old enough to make up their own minds. His lawyers had told him he was mad. He was the one who had left the matrimonial home, was more of the grandfatherly age and bellowed that all his daughters needed was plenty of fresh air and an introduction to sex. His daughters had told a judge that they hated him and Theo had cursed and invoked the devil and thrown himself into the sea for early morning swims in the bitter cold. If she had told him then that he was mortifying his flesh to distract his thoughts, he would not have believed her.
Theodore Calvert claimed that he did not understand any of that. The religion of his wife, which informed her motherly self-sacrifice, was anathema to him, and the sea would be his undoing. It made him brood. Kay dragged herself back into the present world by fishing in her pocket for cigarettes. Too much oxygen was bad for the body. She must look a rare sight, walking from the big house up the side road and sitting on the beach dressed like this, but who cared? The place had its fair share of eccentrics, of which she was among the youngest. It was a seaside resort that had always attracted the elderly, close enough to London for an easy train ride, far enough away to be remote. Why the hell he had chosen it, God knows. He said he wanted a big sky, room to breathe. She lay back on the shingle so that she did not have to look at the sea. Definitely the voice of conscience.
Why the hell had she accompanied him all those years ago? She could have stayed in London and got another job, although not on those wages. Calvert was ludicrously generous, one of the reasons why she had stayed with the damn family as long as she had. Stayed, and been indispensable long after she had sussed what Mrs Calvert was like. It took one Roman Catholic, however lapsed, to recognise the symptoms of a terrible holiness in another. A tiny creature, Mrs Calvert, with huge eyes and an elegant gentleness in everything she did. Beautiful manners, soft, solicitous voice, the quiet movements of a convent-educated girl who had never kicked over the traces, although her dress sense was not anything she could have learned in a nunnery. She made you feel like a carthorse, but she was a lady, and it would have been a lady Theodore had wanted. Kay stuffed the cigarettes back into her pocket, suddenly sick at the thought of one, pushed her sunglasses up on her forehead and down again. The sunlight on the water was so bright it was an accusation to her eyes.
Look, she told herself, it’s easy. She had followed Theodore to his rich retreat by the sea because she would never repeat such wages for the relatively easy work, and because of her son. Also, to be fair, because she could not bear to see those girls so sick or watch what Mrs Calvert was doing or be anywhere near it, but mostly because of Jack, or was it? A better life for rebellious Jack. That was it. Bring Jack with you,Theodore had said, he’ll only get into trouble if you don’t. Kay got to her feet and turned her back on the water. No, she had done it to spite that dreadful woman who had begged her to stay, she had done it out of solidarity with him and to please herself, the way she usually did. Oh, for God’s sake, woman, you did what you thought was best and you still do.
Only, for someone raised as a Catholic, ‘best’ was never enough. What was it with them, she raged at herself, walking faster and faster on the way home, suddenly self-conscious about the shower cap, that made them such miseries? Not them, YOU. Hadn’t she dumped the whole Catholic, nun-ridden Irish girlhood before she’d so much as looked at a boy? Didn’t she poke fun at it? Didn’t she take the fear of hell and drown it good and proper? She was thrown out and threw it out, been throwing it out ever since. What Christopher Goodwin had disturbed in his visit the day before last was an entirely irreligious, natural conscience, the sort that lived in the sea and shone light in her eyes like a torch, with a delayed effect, along with his plea that she should meet Anna Calvert and tell her what her father had been like, so that the child had a chance to form an honest picture of her past. In order to construct a future, Christopher had said. Excuse me, I’m on holiday, she said. I don’t owe anything, I just do as I’m told.
She squelched to the back door without seeing a soul. A quiet place, sometimes too quiet. What had she ever done that was so wrong? She had not really encouraged old Theodore to give up fighting for his daughters and love her own Jack instead. No, that was not the way it was. That was not what she had intended, but that was what had happened. She had wanted so much better for sulky Jack. She had never meant Theo to treat him as a son. She was breathing heavily, the shoes rubbed. Definitely the last swim of the year. Her body tingled and her head felt light. She touched the key to the house, held round her neck on a piece of string.
Nor had she meant it to filter back to Isabel Calvert that Theodore lived with his housekeeper as a convenient tart and preferred her boy to his own flesh and blood. Now that would have added to Mrs Calvert’s saintly martyrdom no end. And it was not true. Theo adored his daughters. He had their movements monitored, although there was little enough to report when they never left the house. He also had his wife hounded by every official agency under the sun and Kay supposed that, in the end, he won. Mrs Calvert was forced to relinquish her hold on her invalids. The children were, in a manner of speaking, freed, with liberty to hate him even more for what he had done, but it was certainly true that he had been fond of Jack.
Kay unlocked the back door and padded upstairs to the master bedroom, which faced the main road. Theo’s room, which she used as a dressing room, sitting on the balcony to get the late afternoon sun and watch the world go by, such as there was. It was the main thoroughfare into the town and nicely removed from it. She remembered that the regatta would be passing in the early evening and the thought cheered her. As soon as the bath was so full that the foam began to creep over the rim, she wallowed into it with a grateful sigh, a brown face emerging from white bubbles. Once she was immobilised, she began to think that the bath was a bad idea. It was not the sea that played havoc with conscience; it was the act of immersion in any old water. Some horrible throwback to baptism. She sank beneath the foam. The fact that she was a natural born liar was not a new realisation, or even a shameful one. It came from a lifetime’s practice of telling people what they wanted to hear.
Anna Calvert had been a kid who loved sunshine.When Kay had been deputed to take that ten-year-old to the park, they both ignored the command to have a nice, healthy walk and sat on the grass instead, with their tops off and their skirts tucked into their knickers. Therese would have been younger, giggling like mad at the mention of a word like knickers, hopping around them like a plump pigeon. Nice, easy girls, then. The scene played before her eyes. Then she remembered the day when she had tried to introduce them to her son by bringing him along to say hello. Eighteen months older than Anna, he might have seemed glamorous to them, but there were not to be any dirty little boys in Mrs Calvert’s house. Kay blew water out of her nose and reached for the bath plug. Surely they all could have played together? Maybe those girls would have civilised him. Crap. Nothing could have done that. Jack was streets ahead. He was eleven going on fifty and he never saw them again, except in photos, which Theo had in every room of this house. Kay finished the towelling dry (big, fluffy, indestructible towels she had persuaded Theo to buy), and felt conscience recede. It was soluble in soapy water, wiped away by moisturiser. Funny, the way she bothered about her skin and her appearance when her life was so isolated. Self-love was what it was, in deference to those advertisements that said, pamper yourself because you’re worth it, and it was more to do with the sheer joy of idleness than attracting men, although there were always a few fellows hopping round like seagulls, making equally silly noises. Sod that. She did not really want the mess or the sheer effort of a man, and however much she might tease poor Christopher on his monthly visits, she only did it because he was a priest. If she was ever offered a night of passion, or a tumbler of Drambuie, she knew which she would choose. OK, she was a liar and she was lazy and she was sometimes a flirt, and that was fine. The only real question was what to wear.
A door downstairs slammed. Kay heard it, even with her head muffled in a towel, and she froze. Had she left the back door open, the fool that she was, while she was lying in her bath waiting to be drowned? She ran into the bedroom, naked as a beast, clung to the doorframe for comfort. The wind must have taken the patio door and slammed it shut, that would be what it was. She was not a housekeeper for nothing; she was paranoid about security. She knew she had left no doors open, and there was not the slightest breeze. Kay listened, waiting for the sound of footsteps, of breathing, a cough. Waited two whole minutes, getting cold. Nothing, until she heard the reassuring sound of a car passing in the road. Pulling on her gown, she tiptoed to the top of the stairs and sniffed the air. All she could smell was the familiar emptiness of the house, free from anything but the lingering scent of bubble bath. She must stop behaving like this, reacting so dramatically to sudden sounds. It was an old house; it had a language of its own. Let other silly women become neurotic about living alone; she loved it and she was not going to be one of them. Kay thumped down the corridor to her own room at the back, reminding herself it was the regatta today, so she would enter into the spirit of the town’s annual celebration and wear something just a bit festive. Sex was too much trouble for words, but she did like to be admired, and the balcony of Theo’s room was a ringside seat for the carnival parade.
She had made her own room pretty as a picture. Pastel wallpaper with a flowered border, toning colours on the deep flounce of her bed, frilled net curtains of snowy white beneath the pale velvet of the heavier drapes, which she pulled at night. A series of flower prints on the walls and a dressing table with the legs hidden by lace. She made her bed and realigned the decorative cushions as soon as she got out of it in the morning, so that whenever she came back into the room, it would look as she liked to see it, as sweet as it was orderly. Not now.
The differences were small, but significant. One of the pictures was crooked, as if someone had brushed by. There was a bottom-shaped indentation on the bed. The top drawer of the chest was half-open. She felt sick, made herself breathe slowly. Someone had been here and she thought she knew who it was. He had been, he was gone and he would be back.
Just a kid looking for money.
For letters, for papers, for something.
For her.
Like before.
Today was the afternoon shift. Anna could have slept far longer if the blind in her attic room blocked out the light. She lay where she was, torn between curling herself back into sleep and the compulsion to find the source of the light and bask in it. Summer was ending, the heat of the sun was rationed, wasting it was tantamount to a sin and getting up, putting on shorts and T-shirt to climb on to the roof, was almost a duty. She hauled up a sleeping bag and a cup of coffee. Sleep could be resumed in the sun. It was a grumpy pleasure. First, she examined the view. A ritualistic prowl around the small space of the roof, as if she were a sentry patrolling the ramparts of a castle.
The road at the front was fully awake. The newsagent was open, water was being sloshed over the pavement in front of the bar, two people waited at the bus stop. The sound of cars was pleasant from this distance. Leaning over, she could see a figure emerge from the main entrance of the block and walk away purposefully. What other people did all day was a subject of intense curiosity. They were all trained for life in ways she was not and it was better not to make comparisons, but few of them were as free as she was. Looking down at the bustle of the street below, she wondered how she would ever explain to Ravi how or why it was her rent was paid until the end of the year by some blood money arrangement set up by her father before he drowned and how she had no choice but to accept it because she could not possibly live anywhere else. She had to be close to Therese. It was a lovely day, and that, for the moment, was all that mattered. Anna yawned, clasped her hands above her head, and stretched as far as she could, rotating her hips, unknotting sleepy joints and enjoying the sensation. She would do the exercises later. The bathroom towel rail served as a barre and the bedroom as a gymnasium. All she needed was a floor. She had to be strong for the day when Therese would need her again.
With looser limbs, she moved round to the other side of the roof and looked down into the convent garden. The trees were turning autumn coloured; soon there would be bare branches rattling against the chapel windows with their own music and there would be the carpet of leaves, which she had seen the year before and which Edmund would be slow to clear. When it was done, and the leaves were dry, he would pick a grey day and take the risk of lighting a delicious fire, forbidden in a smoke-free zone, and all the more exciting. She recalled from last year, in her first autumn here, her delight in the pure smoke, which rose and drifted away across her roof. What harm in burning leaves, instead of piling them into bags for someone else to do? She would offer to help this year, unless this Francis, whom she had nicknamed the Golden Boy, was all he needed. She must meet this boy, whom the nuns had so taken to heart. They could make money out of their garden; there were innumerable things they must do if they were going to survive. Edmund would have to help. She peered over the wall. Why there he was, sitting on his bench, looking comfortable and remote from this height. She was tempted to call out to him, but he would never hear, and besides, no one inside the convent walls knew that she watched and no one must know. They tolerated her, but she was always on probation. Barbara was beginning to find her useful, but if anyone knew she watched like an amateur spy, she would be banished, with Therese’s blessing, and that would be unbearable. Anna ducked back in case Edmund looked up, as if he ever would, he who never seemed to lift his eyes higher than the walls. Then she looked again.
He was sitting so still, in the same place he sat in the spring of the year to listen to the dawn chorus of his birds. He sat in the same immobile way she had seen the night before, with a slight difference in attitude, so his body twisted sideways, uncomfortably, the way a person might sit in order to have a conversation with someone who stood behind them. One hand appeared to grip the back of the bench. It was not natural to sit like that when alone, especially not for a weighty man like himself, who always adjusted his stance to accommodate his bulk. It came to her, in a slow, dark realisation, that he had sat there all night. Entirely against the rules. Everyone other than the Sisters went home before supper, via the front door.
She scrambled down the ladder, paused only for shoes, raced down the stairs, out of the block and round to the convent door. Left, left and left again, bumping into two pedestrians without having enough breath to say sorry. She stabbed at the bell at the side of the door, waited and stabbed at it again. She looked at her watch. Christ, it was scarcely breakfast time in there, they might all be in chapel or asleep. It occurred to her, even in the rising panic, which made her heart race, that she did not know what they did in there in the majority of time when she was absent; she did not even know what her beloved sister did with each of her waking hours, only that she disapproved of it with all the fury of a rabid dog.Where was Agnes? Where was anyone? What was the fucking point of being at fucking prayer when you should be answering the door? Who do you think you are?
The door was flung open, with none of Agnes’s creeping, smiling reticence, which always gave the impression she had slid three or four bolts and removed a chain to get that far and, however welcoming, would replace all the armoury as soon as you left. To Anna’s discomfiture, it was Barbara, all bossy briskness and twinkling, interrogative eyes behind her glasses, looking as if she had slept well enough to slap down the nonsense of the day with a firm hand. The likes of Anna could be consumed before breakfast. To Anna’s further alarm, she smiled. Perhaps this was her best time of day.
‘Ah, Anna, my dear. How nice to know you young things are up and about at a decent hour. Although scarcely dressed, I see. I wanted to have a chat, as it happened. Come in.’
She followed, meekly. Another time, the tart reference to shorts and T-shirt would have made her furious, but she was suddenly aware of the quandary she was in. She wanted to shout, There is something the matter with Edmund, but yelling any such thing would be too much of a revelation to Sister gimlet eyes, who would be sure to say, How do you know? And then she would have to say, I can see him from my rooftop, and Barbara would say, You what? She was dumbstruck, followed in the draught of Sister Barbara’s voluminous tunic, which hung from her big bosom as if supported on balloons, until they were both in the passage with the black and white tiles.
‘Come into the parlour, dear. We’ve things to discuss. I’ve decided I haven’t been entirely fair to you and you had such good ideas at the meeting yesterday, entirely in accord with my own. Of course we have to get rid of the car. The idea of a taxi account is brilliant. Are you sure about the discount? But what I chiefly wanted to explain to you, dear, is what Therese does here, because I’ve got an awful feeling you might not know.
‘For a start, this is a liberal, secular order. She does not have to wear a hairshirt, she does not have to sing Matins, Lauds, Prime, Sext or even Vespers, although she is exhorted to pray, in a formal fashion, and we do still have the Angelus, because we like it. A lovely prayer, I think. I just wanted to reassure you, as her nearest and dearest, that she isn’t in for a life of flogging and she can go whenever she wants, but I’m sure dear Sister Jude reassured you of that. Things have changed since your mother was a child. Not always for the better, but there it is. I still prefer the Latin, myself. So much more poetic.’
It was a virtual torrent of words from someone who was indeed at their best first thing in the morning, after her restless nights had digested facts and advice and spat them out as priorities. Anna found herself thinking, She’s a kind old tart, telling me useful information, and dear Lord why didn’t I realise that before instead of being so frightened of her, while still mightily frightened.
‘Father Goodwin told me you were awfully sensible, and I must admit, I was slow to comprehend. But you are, my dear, you are admirable. Full of good initiatives.Was there something you wanted? Breakfast will be in a minute. You’re welcome.’
Just in time, she remembered the vernacular of their relentless courtesy, which, in the past, made her itch.
‘You’re kind, Sister. It was just that . . . just that . . . I heard on the news about a bomb, oh not real, just one of those scares. Wanted to check you knew about it. I don’t know what you know, if you see what I mean. It’s very warm, Sister. Do you think we could go into the garden?’
‘Jolly good idea. Don’t use it enough.’
There were French doors from the parlour out on to the terrace part of the garden. Barbara flung them open with the same potentially destructive aplomb she used on the front door, impatient but efficient with all the clumsy locks that surrounded them.
‘Such a nuisance,’ she announced as she struggled with the grille. ‘But we have to keep people out, you know, especially these days. As soon as anyone knows the existence of a convent, they’re outside the doors wanting food and everything. Which we want to give as far as we can, but not if they abuse us. There’s beggars and beggars.’
The door was open. That was what a convent was like, Anna thought, door upon door, upon door. The garden was like an escape to another planet. Barbara went on talking.
‘We’ve got to make use of space. My dear, that’s a buzz word, or do I mean phrase, years old. Now, if you have any ideas of what to do about this, I’d be grateful to hear, in fact I’m all ears.’
She had big ears, Anna noticed, clamped to the side of her thick, close-cropped grey hair like a pair of horns. They went with her bosom.
‘Perhaps we could walk down to the end,’ Anna suggested. ‘Get the measure of it.’
‘Good idea. Brave the bugs and walk the estate, such as it is? Yes!’
They found Edmund on his bench, by his shed, a short walk only impeded by the brushing away of branches.
Barbara saw him first and called out merrily, ‘Edmund, dear, so soon? What a fine day it is!’
Anna wanted to catch hold of her sleeve and hold her back, but Barbara ploughed forward, delighted at the thought of lazy old Edmund being so soon for work, not wondering yet about who had let him in. A fly crawled on his forehead; another hovered around his open mouth, from which a line of dried saliva crept down to his chin. It was his tolerance of the flies that signified his death. Barbara waved them away, touched his cold hand without saying a word. She withdrew her own, quickly, as if she had been stung, then, shielding the body from Anna’s gaze, she deftly closed Edmund’s ghastly eyes and made the sign of the Cross. She was perfectly calm; she had closed the eyes of the dead more often than she could count, but never in these circumstances and she did not know quite what to do.
‘I’m afraid he’s dead. Must have been a stroke.’ It was an inadequate remark, but that was all she could say, although she wanted to bite back the words as soon as they were spoken. She was expecting screams, but Anna was not to be protected. She had moved behind the bench and looked down at him. This was an obscenity, Barbara thought, suddenly angrier with Edmund than she had ever been. No girl of her age should witness death. Anna surprised her.
‘You’ll be needing to phone for the doctor and Father Goodwin. I’ll stay with him, shall I?’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. We can’t just leave him, can we?’
‘No. I’ll send Therese.’
‘Don’t—’
‘She’ll be the only one dressed.’
She was gone, running up the garden with enough noise to make the birds rise from the trees. Anna registered the sound of their tuneless alarm as she sat on the bench beside Edmund’s body. She could not touch him, confined herself to waving the flies away from his face and standing guard against the nameless enemy, which had already struck. And praying. Kyrie eleison, Lord, have mercy. In the silence that followed the chatter of the birds, she wished she had told Barbara to fetch Matilda, because Matilda was Edmund’s friend, but that, too, would have begged an awkward question, even if it was one delayed until Barbara had time to reflect. The guilt was as acute as pain; she had seen Edmund sitting here yesterday; she could have intervened, knocked on the door. She tried to concentrate on Edmund himself, maybe speed his soul to a painless heaven and deny her own revulsion at this defunct bundle of oddly sweet-smelling flesh. She had not seen the corpse of her mother, nor had she seen Sister Jude; she had reeled from the impact of death, but of bodies, she knew nothing. The curiosity about it was greater than the shock.
On the bench, beside Edmund’s clenched fist, was a small, gold crucifix on a broken chain. She picked it up and examined it. Cheap, but durable, easy to mend. She supposed it was his in the same moment she hid it inside her shoe. Thinking that if there was any memento of Edmund, it should go to Matilda, and Barbara could not be trusted to do that.
There were light footsteps coming back down the garden. Therese appeared, carrying a blanket.
‘Go away!’ Anna yelled.
Therese paused, came forward with the blanket. ‘Don’t be silly.’
With soothing sounds, she tucked it round Edmund’s form. Anna stood up to make room. They hugged, fiercely.
‘Come away, Anna, do.You’re cold. He was a good man, gone to a better life.’
The pious platitude made her blood boil.
‘Oh, for Chrissakes . . . Can’t you do better than that?’
‘Be quiet, Anna.’
They stood with their arms around each other,Therese tugging her hair as if that would keep her warm, making Anna wonder, with the unexpected objectivity that follows shock, which of them was designed to protect the other and wondering all the more, because she had always thought the role was hers.
Kay felt protective about this house. Nothing else had been disturbed, not Theo’s desk, nothing. Kay was sure she would notice and knew at the same time that maybe she would not. It was vanity on the part of a zealous housekeeper to think she would detect any other fingerprint than her own, when in reality, a burglar could cover his tracks if he was careful and refrained from the obvious such as eating the food. No marks on the clean bottles of the drinks trolley, but then, not even burglars fancied liqueurs before breakfast.
By late morning, after another bath, she was trying to make herself laugh, as well as tell herself that the burglar, with his minimal interference, was a complete stranger. A big old house with no man in it was bound to be a draw. Envy was what it was. There were several possible culprits, but none with a key. Crap. She knew the neighbours in a polite and cooperative way, which had been forged when Theo had been carried home drunk by the man of the house on the left. There existed between herself and the house on the right an adequate relationship founded by her never refusing to return a football or complaining about children’s noise, even if she did try to clip their tree. They kept her house keys in case of emergencies and she kept theirs. Kids . . . that explained it all. Like the very first time she had an illicit visitor, soon after Theo departed life.
She was reluctant to change the keys. They had been the same keys ever since she came here. By mid-afternoon, she told herself it was not serious and all would be well. Little, bitty, pathetic attempts at theft were not important, a fact confirmed when she went back to her bedroom and had a sudden vision of little Anna Calvert, caught in the act of stealing. Frozen, she had been, that titchy ten-year-old, about to filch her mother’s earrings as Kay barged in with the Hoover, the little mite so mesmerised by making her selection, trying them on and stuffing the favourite bits in her pockets, that she would not have heard an elephant, let alone the anonymous cleaning lady lugging a machine and wondering how soon she could get this done and have a smoke. Bashing the Hoover against the door and catching Anna, facing the mirror, her small face as pale as a ghost, the mouth a gash of her mother’s lipstick and guilt oozing out of every pore, as if, at that age, she was even capable of sweat. The conscience of a child was so variable and so brave. It had the same capability of an adult in lust, with self-delusion to the fore, suppressing the native knowledge of what was wrong and what was going to be a heap of trouble, until the two came together in a moment of shameful truth. Kay had caught Anna at just such a moment and knew when she did so that the actions of the child would be treated as if they were serious sins. So, aware of Mrs Calvert in the kitchen, she had simply gone into the bathroom and handed Anna a sheet of loo paper to wipe her lips and then, over the sound of the Hoover, mouthed, Put them back. The child had emptied her pockets, stuffed jewellery back where it belonged, cast Kay a beseeching glance and run from the room after interpreting Kay’s and wash your face with a desperate nod. This little vignette of memory cheered Kay no end. If she had found the little shit who had got into Theo’s house this morning, she knew she would have done something along the same lines. Attempted theft was not the worst of crimes. Besides, the sun was out, and she could lie in the sheltered patio for an hour, and that made everything bearable and believable, all by itself. The day passed.
No, she owed that child nothing.
The light would be going by half past seven. The carnival parade was due about seven. Funny old town, this, she thought with affection. Everyone else has their sodding parades earlier. She got a drink, turned on every light in the house in case she had to come back indoors into darkness, stuck her amazingly sensible casserole, which had displaced another hour of the day in the making, into the oven, and settled herself on the balcony in Theo’s stargazing chair. It was rusted from the salt, but the cover was as clean as her hair and the air was warm. There was a thumping of drums in the distance. The carnival parade would be unsophisticated, amateur, a bit trashy, a dying but lively tradition, but it would be fine. On the second gin and tonic, sipped to forestall the inevitable delay, Kay reflected to herself that she was easy to please.You could take the girl out of her small town, but you could never take the small town out of the girl.
And yet, when the parade began, rumbling into view from the distance on its final leg of the loop around the town, where it had begun and got stalled an hour before it reached her, she felt as lonely as all hell. So what, it was simply one of those days when cheerful things were depressing and somebody’s story about having breast cancer would be positively cheering. She lived here, without belonging, without certainty, with a past she chose to ignore, obligations, loyalties and a future that depended on promises. The first float came level with the window and the mood passed.
Such an effort they made, such things they revealed. The parade was headed by a Scottish band, swinging along as if they meant it. A man with a leopardskin cloak to cushion the strap of the enormous drum strapped over his belly, with legs like tree trunks, socks like a footballer and a hat down over his brow. Another man, equally large, with a wailing bagpipe and a red face, the last of his lament drowned by the stereo sound of the float behind, booming out Yeah,yeah! something to herald the arrival of three carnival queens dressed like bridesmaids with the maquillage of forty-year-olds plastered on teenage faces above corseted, bosom-uplifting frocks with nothing to uplift. Kay frowned in disapproval. They waved in a sketchy fashion to the hangers-on walking alongside; they were tired. Not as fatigued as the boys on the Boy Scouts’ float that followed theirs. Five cub scouts huddled around a large leader, recognisable as Mrs Smith, an enormous woman dressed in feathers who otherwise worked in the fish shop. Another band, girls this time and far more alert, followed by the Kitty’s Tea Room float, featuring jolly women sitting around a huge papier mâché teapot, sipping wine from china teacups and pretending to eat cake. No one could eat cake for an hour. They were nicely merry and Kay raised her glass to them. More carnival queens, poor little ducks in their gooseflesh-revealing evening gowns. There was a loud float for a disco, a small float for Julian’s Kidney Appeal towards which she threw money, a nice float for a dancing school, which included sweet little tots with plenty of energy left to boogie to the music, followed by the rugby club float, with a whole lot of men dressed like apes, benignly drunk, firing water pistols at the accompanying crowd, who fired back, followed by another set of those wretched carnival queens. A crowd of camp followers followed either side of each performance. A tired wee show, with too much booming for her taste. Singing was always better. The last three floats belonged to the churches.
The town had three at the last count. Episcopalian, Methodist and Catholic, where she had, contrary to every other instinct, made Jack go, with his talisman of a necklace, and it was as if, in their annual advertisement, they competed in a vain attempt to draw followers. The first two had the best hymns, belting out ‘When the Saints Come Marching In’ and promising real joy in the delivery, even though their voices were hoarse. The flatbed lorry on which they travelled had no followers and nobody collecting money in buckets, the way the others did. The third float, for St Augustine’s Holy Romans, singing ‘Abide With Me’ faster than usual, almost in ragtime, also had the figure of the devil dancing like a dervish, whirling and writhing in his lizard-like costume of scales and tail, his headdress of horns already gone with the effort of lying down every few minutes in a mimic of surrender, while one of the hymn singers, dressed as an angel, poked him with a longhandled, obviously plastic fork as he lay down, before springing up and doing the whole business all over again. As they passed her balcony, the devil got up and bowed. And then he spat. A magnificent spitting unnoticed in the split second it took for the spittle to land at the edge of the balcony, on her feet. A posse of three fat policemen followed behind, encouraging the tail end of the parade to turn the corner.
That was Jack.
Her bastard, Jack, whatever he called himself now.
A policeman on a motorbike looked up at her and smiled in admiration.
She smiled back, frozen with terror.
Wishing she could pray.