He’d laughed. “Make the right decision and the sun shines. The pathetic fallacy is not such a fallacy as you might think.”
Between customers she adjusted cards of earrings and selections of cuffs, smiling and catching the eyes of potential buyers as they sauntered past, the young women and the teenage girls, the mothers, the lovers. All her other sales were made indirectly, through shops or her website, and she was curious to see the faces of the people who would part with money for the finely wrought treasures into which she poured her soul. The sun grew hot against her shoulder blades as she chatted and explained and slipped the pieces into her signature velvet bags before taking their cash or fitting their cards into her machine. As soon as a lull in traffic allowed, she reached for her bottle of water from beneath her stall and drank deep, though it was repellently warm and the plastic sticky to her touch, observing the stream of holiday-makers, the gulls flying low to steal ice-creams and chips, children bending to watch the sea through the gaps in the boards.
And there he was.
She lowered the bottle slowly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Gil Hunt, strolling this way. A few minutes at a distance on a dark beach, one black and white photo in a newspaper, and she would have known him anywhere. She felt panic stricken, as though her body would not cooperate with anything her brain required it to do. She turned her attention to her rows of earrings, knocking two or three pairs askew and a necklace from its perch, and waited for him to pass.
“Hello.”
He was talking to her. Standing the other side of her stall and talking to her.
“Hello,” she managed.
He smiled. “Nice stall.”
“Thank you.”
He lifted a pendant into his hand, examining it. Jem tried to breathe deep, examining him. Jeans, khaki t-shirt, jaw-length dark hair pushed back from his forehead, brown eyes beneath heavy, arching brows. Be normal, she told herself.
He picked up one of her engraved pewter rings – he was wearing rings himself, she saw, silver, on the third and fourth fingers of his right hand. “This is impressive stuff.”
“Thank you,” she said again, like a polite child at a tea party.
“Are they yours?” he asked. “Do you make them?”
“Yes.” She gestured toward her card pinned to the board. “That’s me.”
“Jemima Gregory,” he read. “Gil Hunt.”
“I know,” she said before she could stop herself.
He laughed, “Okay, this is going to sound slightly less cheesy now – seriously, have we met?”
He knew? He recognised her? “Um … I saw you save that boy. I was on the prom when it happened.”
“That was you?”
“That was me.”
“And I think I saw you in town a week or two ago. You were carrying … well this, I guess.” He indicated her board. She thought – he remembered me. He saw me in the street and remembered me. “Small world,” he said.
“Small town.”
“It is that.” He smiled, glanced along the pier. He’s bored with me now, she thought. He’ll wander off for a chat with McDowell, flirt with Annika. She didn’t know why she was attributing to him propensities for boredom, chatting and flirting; what did she know about him beyond a readiness to fish people out of the sea?
His attention swung back to her. “Business looks buzzing.”
“It has been,” she smiled. “I’ve been sitting here since half past nine and made a small fortune.”
“Really? I guess you’re a bit like exhibitions yourselves out here all day.”
“Very sunburned exhibitions, at this rate.”
He said instantly, “Let me get you a drink.”
“Oh, no, it’s … I’m … ”
“Do you have someone with you?”
“No.”
“And you’ve been sitting in this sun for – what, four, five hours and you wouldn’t kill for a cold drink? I’ll just nip in to Patrick’s, be ten minutes.”
“Okay,” she capitulated. He grinned, took her order. She wanted to watch him walk away but a woman had appeared beside her stand and was studying a necklace of tiny bronze discs and amber beads with the look of a serious buyer. Jem said, her gaze still following Gil Hunt, “Would you like to try it on? I have a mirror.”
She saw him again minutes later, negotiating his way through the crowd, a tray aloft in one hand. She could hear the faint chink of its half dozen glasses and watched as he distributed them to Pavao and Annika and a couple of the newbies. Finally he returned to her with a smile - “There you go” – and handed her a tall glass full of ice with lemon and lime.
“Thank you. This is so kind of you.”
He shrugged. “We have to help each other out, don’t we.”
We? Artists, craftspeople? Human beings? What had the newspaper said he did for a living? A pair of prepubescent girls pushed in front of him to play with her box of rings and she wanted to push them back.
“I’m getting in the way of your profits,” he observed with humour. “I’d better give you some space.”
No, she thought, no no don’t go.
“It’s been lovely to meet you,” he said as though he meant it. She managed to babble something similar in response and suddenly he was leaving, disappearing by degrees into the crowd, and her disappointment was eclipsed by the knowledge that for a shining, shimmering moment a little of Gil Hunt’s light had shone on her.
Cecily ran up the iron staircase and knocked at Gil’s door. She hadn’t had a table empty for more than five minutes all day. In a burst of frustration and impatience at having no time to go out and breathe in the sunshine, she had abandoned the café at the first opportune moment to Justine, the seventeen year old specialising in lethargic disdain who Cecily employed for as many hours as she could bear to wash dishes and wait on tables. Five minutes with Gil, she had thought. What damage could Justine do in five minutes? So she knocked, and this time she heard his voice.
He was standing in the centre of his room, staring at a three feet by two feet log which squatted on the workbench in front of him. “Is this your project for the summer?” she asked.
“It will be.”
She stood beside him and stared at it too. “Not inspired?”
“Yeah. It’s just … it isn’t speaking to me yet.”
The perfect cue. “Gil. Last night … ” She paused. He wasn’t rushing in with excuses or reassurances as he usually did. Too distracted by the bloody log. “I’m sorry I was such a cow.”
He did look at her then. “No, you were right. I was being an arse. It’s none of my business.”
Somehow that wasn’t quite what she’d wanted him to say. Or if it was, not in that tone. But then he was concentrating on a chunk of wood he would hew and chisel and smooth into a work of art. When the intensity of his focus was directed there not parties nor Patrick’s nor dancing naked in front of him would be any diversion.
She said, “Friends?”
“Of course.” He relented. “Of course, friends.”
“Dinner? My place?”
“Yeah, sure. Let me know when.”
Well, tonight, she thought. I meant tonight. She watched him walk stealthily around the block as if it were a deer in long grass. “I’d better get back downstairs,” she said. “Left Justine in charge.”
“Okay.” He smiled briefly. “See you later.”
I’ve been dismissed, she thought, clattering back down the staircase.
Or he is seriously obsessed with that piece of wood and will carve it into something so amazing it will make his name and fortune.
Or he is still so pissed off he can barely bring himself to talk to me.
Or all of the above.
She swooped back into her café to find Justine hanging over the boy who delivered the fruit and veg and the floor slippery with the food the last family’s children hadn’t cared to put in their mouths.
What could I do, she wondered as she went
to fetch the broom, in Australia?
Gil stood at his window, distracted not by the prospect of craftsmanship or residual ill-feeling but by his encounter this afternoon with a girl called Jemima Gregory. There was no view of the pier from his studio, he had spoken to her for five minutes at the most, but still all he could see were her kitten green eyes and the long ripples of her dark hair. That the girl watching from the prom that night and the girl who’d struck such a strange chord within him on The Walk and the ethereal beauty selling her jewellery on the pier were all the same person astonished him. He’d wanted to sit down with her and marvel over the coincidence. He’d wanted to hang around, find out a little of who she was. How – why – had he walked away?
All right, he’d been nervous, which if not exactly a first was certainly a rarity and then having wanted to impress and delight her he’d found a deeply prosaic way of doing it and scuttled off. Where was the old charm, the seductive persistence? What was the matter with him?
You talked to her for five minutes, Gil.
You are a madman.
He grabbed his wallet and his keys and set off down the steps and across the square, realising that he had no idea when she was likely to leave the pier or how to find her if she already had. He hurried through the streets, becoming snarled up behind the snail’s pace progress of tourists, dodging round interminable trails of families and pensioners and teenagers, vaulting backstreets of bins and crates and cats as if he were freerunning. He could see even from some distance that the pier was emptier than it had been a few hours ago and as he drew closer he saw there were fewer stalls, many fewer customers. Shit. He slowed, panting a little, narrowing his eyes against the sun.
She was gone.
His first thought was that they had been burgled. Marianne was at work and yet the kitchen door stood ajar. He lowered Jem from his shoulders, where she had ridden all the way up from the gallery, keeping hold of her hand. “Marianne!” He pushed the door wider, stepped inside. “Marianne?”
Jem joined in, her little voice rising through the empty rooms. “Mamma? Mamma?” She looked up at him. “Gone?”
“Apparently so.” He sat her in her high chair with a beaker of milk. “Two seconds.”
But she was nowhere in the house, or the garden. She had left without locking the door, which was after all a far more reasonable explanation than burglary. He picked up the phone, rang the Tourist Office. If he had learned anything these last years it was the importance of caution. “Hello, this is Alex Gregory. Could I have a quick word with Marianne?”
“I’m sorry.” A voice he didn’t recognise. The summer relief, no doubt. “I’m afraid Marianne hasn’t been in today.”
His heart contracted. “Well … did she ring in sick?”
“Not as far as I know. She just didn’t turn up.”
“And you didn’t think to call me?”
The summer relief sounded bemused. Which you would, Alex reminded himself. If you didn’t know. “I think someone tried ringing your house but there was no reply.”
Jem was banging her beaker on the tray of her high chair. “Mamma!” He gave her a biscuit. “Dadda,” she said gratefully.
He rang Eve at the Express & Echo, but she knew no more than he did. There were so few people to whom he could turn, he felt it sorely every time: Marianne’s parents were dead, his own on the other side of the country, she hadn’t many friends and he had never been able to bear to unburden himself to his own. He looked helplessly at his daughter. “Where is she, Puddle? Where’s your mum?”
“Gone,” Jem said.
Too early yet to be ringing hospitals or the police. He couldn’t even say how long she had been missing. An hour? Eight hours? Was she in fact missing, had she perhaps wandered to the shop, to the library? She had periods of reading feverishly, devouring book after book, barely stopping to eat or sleep and he wondered, if he asked her later, would she know what they had been about?
He dealt with yesterday’s washing-up, fed Jem and bathed her, all the time anxiety clawing inside him. If she wasn’t home by the time it grew dark he would make the calls. But it was midsummer, and darkness still a long way off. He let Jem play while he watched the television news, images sliding away from him, the words a distant buzz. She had been fine lately. Normal, for her. She would be fine.
He tucked Jem into bed, sat beside her reading about Miffy and Spot the Dog and deciding absently to raise her level of bedtime stories to something more intellectually challenging. She traced the pictures as he read, observing their ritual as she always did, with huge seriousness.
Downstairs the kitchen door banged. He froze. Jem said, “Mamma?”
“Let’s hope so. Marianne!”
“Hello!” Her voice. Her footsteps on the stairs. The great hard coil of worry in his chest loosened a little.
She came spinning into Jem’s room, her fine blonde hair trailing, cheeks pink, eyes bright. Too pink, too bright. He said carefully, “Have you had a nice day?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t believe it! It’s been such a beautiful day I couldn’t resist. I went for such a long walk. The poppies, Alex. Great fields of poppies. You should come with me, we could take Jemima. Tomorrow. It’s not supposed to rain tomorrow. I walked right over to the cliffs, the colour of the water there – ”
“You didn’t go to work.”
“Oh.”
“Or lock the house.”
She frowned. “I was with Eve. We had a picnic in the poppy field but then she went swimming and I didn’t see her again after that. Oh and I brought presents!” She dug in the pocket of her skirt, retrieved a handful of shells which she let fall onto Spot the Dog. Jem regarded them solemnly, picked one up and held it between her forefinger and her thumb.
“What is it, Jemmie?” Marianne asked.
“Shell.”
Marianne laughed. Alex wanted to say, ‘do you know how worried I’ve been?’ and ‘what were you thinking?’ but there was no point. No reasoning with her when she had the coordination of the drunk and her words spiralled tangled and unstoppable. “Let’s all go out tomorrow,” she begged him. “All together, for a picnic or to the beach. It’ll be exciting.”
“Sure.” He would never tell her that neither he nor Jem needed this kind of excitement or that of course they would all be together, because he really couldn’t trust her alone anymore.
Chapter Nine
I wake before him, unpeel my warmth from his and slide out of bed. The drumming of water into the plastic shower tray barely two yards away is going to disturb him, so instead I make a half turn of the basin tap, hold my soaped flannel beneath the gush, and wash fast and shivering. After I’ve rubbed myself dry, I scoop yesterday’s clothes from the floor and pull them on, stumble into my trainers, and unlock the door. The latch chinks faintly and I hold my breath, watching him. He lies supine, arms flung wide, his chest rising and falling but he does not stir. I open the door and escape.
There are muffled sounds from the café’s kitchen but no one in sight. It’s dark in the bar, only minimal daylight filtering in through the glass. I expect the door to the square to be locked but to my relief the handle yields beneath the pressure of my hand and I slip outside into the still autumn morning.
The village is cranking into life: shopkeepers around the perimeter of the square lift back their shutters; a woman loads sticks of bread into the basket of an old-fashioned bicycle; a dark grey Mercedes with a yellow smiley face sticker in the rear window glides away beneath the arch. I breathe in the damp air and exhale slowly, queasy with last night’s alcohol and the memory of despair. It’s hard enough coping with our own, separate, fears but I know my night terrors had appalled Gil and his tension and his tears frighten me. He’s as brave and positive as it’s possible for a human being to be, and this is what I’ve done to him.
I sit on the steps at the foot of the stone monument, watching this alien world waking around me and try and fail to find something to give us courage. Last night
he held me until I slept, but we’d both lain silent and fearful for a long time first. I don’t know whether it’s better to delude ourselves that we will survive and everything will be fine or to continue grimly in the knowledge that it won’t. For continuing grimly isn’t living; I might as well have stayed and surrendered if that’s the best we can do.
After a long despondent while I remember we’ll be moving on soon and shake myself into action. Opposite me is a boulangerie, its light a small beacon in the barely lifting gloom. I buy rolls and pains au chocolat, handing over my euros like toy notes. I still don’t know how much we have or how much we need; we’re so deep in chaos managing money is beyond us. There are no other customers and the baker – if that’s who he is – hardly seems to register me. I want to linger in the warmth of his shop, amid the smell of the bread, but soon someone might be asking him about an English girl passing through here today and I need him to remember as little as possible. I step back out into the square and there is Gil, walking across the cobbles towards me.
“Where the fuck did you go?” he hisses, his voice sharp with anxiety. “Christ, I woke up and you weren’t there … ”