Brodmaw Bay (29 page)

‘Am I going to make up Olivia too? Is she like you? Are there more of you in my imagination?’

‘Your imagination is not needed.’

‘Except that you’re a figment of it.’

‘You think the world begins and ends with you.’

‘Doesn’t everyone think that?’

‘It would be truer to say your world is coming to an end.’

He was frightened, now. The stench in the room was overpowering, despite how cold it had become. And there was something about the tone of the apparition’s voice that sounded threatening. When it spoke, its voice sugested more than confidence. It suggested finality. ‘I made you up,’ he heard himself say. He had meant the words to sound defiant, but even to his own ears they sounded less like a boast than a plea.

‘You did not make me up, Mr O’Brien. I made myself up. Shall I show you who I am really? Would you like to see what I am really like?’ The lips drew back in a leering grin from the little black abyss, narrowing as it did so under her nose.

‘No,’ he said.

‘I think I shall show you anyway. You interference has to stop. I have to stop it. So I shall show you who I am. You will see what has become of me.’

Megan Penmarrick took after her mother. She was tall and quite serious in her demeanour and on her graceful and unhurried way to becoming a beautiful woman. Lillian spoke to her for an hour about her ambition to become an illustrator. They conversed in the garden, at a circular stone table so old it looked medieval to Lillian, in weathered rustic chairs hewn from the wood of an ash tree.

They drank homemade lemonade and ate water biscuits and Megan had to be coaxed into bringing her own portfolio from the studio her father had converted for her in a room under the eaves of the house. Lillian looked out over the descending trees and the sea, thinking what an idyllic place the Penmarricks lived in, hoping that the charming girl whose dreams she had just shared had the necessary talent to fulfill them.

Megan sat back down and pushed a folder of artwork across the rough surface of their table. She flicked hair out of her face in a gesture Lillian knew betrayed anxiety, because at the same age it was a gesture she had shared. She opened the file and the first of a pile of pictures was revealed and she experienced a feeling of relief that swiftly transformed itself into delight and then amazement.

This was the work of an eleven-year-old child. Some of the subject matter, the mermaids and unicorns and vapid princesses with ankle-length manes and the trolls and other creatures, were pretty stereotypical of a fanciful eleven-year-old’s enthusiasms. They were exquisitely done, though, her draughtsmanship and brushwork really skilled and remarkably mature.

Lillian assumed the work was filed chronologically. It became more sophisticated and original the further through it she explored. Towards the end of the portfolio were some exquisite seascapes and pictures of shells and sea life motifs. A small boat endured the odyssey of an Atlantic storm with a stoical old salt at the rudder. This series was so accomplished it was difficult to credit it as the work of a child at all.

At the very end of the images was a portrait of a girl on a swing hanging from the perpendicular branch of a tree in a garden. The garden was beautifully imagined, discarded tennis rackets in wooden frames and leather-bound books and a wicker picnic basket on the lawn giving it a lost, Edwardian atmosphere. The little girl on the swing was very pretty in purple and grey, almost white-blonde in bunched plaits and blue-eyed under the rim of a straw boater.

‘Who is this?’

‘Someone I made up. I call her Madeleine. I call her Maddy, for short. I’m going to think up some adventures for her.’

Lillian raised her eyebrows and shook her head and shuffled the illustrations neatly together and replaced them in the folder. She closed it and handed it back to its creator. ‘You are really gifted, Megan. It delights me to be able to say it, but I have never come across anyone so young with quite so much pure talent.’

Megan blushed. She brushed hair away from her face again. ‘You really think so?’

‘I know so. You need luck to succeed at what I do. You need good fortune and to develop contacts and timing is always very important, though you only ever become aware of that after the event. But I have never come across anyone better equipped to succeed at it than you are. And I will help you all I can.’

She surprised herself with this last sentence. She had not meant to say it. It was not necessary or even necessarily wise to make such an extravagant promise to an eleven-year-old. Six months down the road, Megan Penmarrick might decide she hated illustration and that what she really wanted to do with her life involved quantum physics or drama school. She had the kind of wealthy parents who could indulge her attempts to fulfil her ambitions, however unlikely or unrealistic.

Lillian did not think, though, that she would change her mind. The quantity of material in the portfolio suggested a strong and persistent work ethic went along with the precocious skill. She really would help her all she could and she would do it, if for no other reason than
because
she could.

Except that that wasn’t the only reason, was it? She felt empathetic towards Megan. She felt a part of something already in this blessed place. She very much wanted to move here and embrace what the bay offered and have that embrace returned. She did not even want to do the necessary going back that moving here would practically involve. They had a house to lease and she had a studio to try to sub-let or sell. But she did not simply want to move here; she wanted to stay. She thought that she belonged, that she had found a missing piece of herself in the bay and that its discovery had made her complete.

She thought briefly about the old complications in her life. She pictured Robert O’Brien and the recollection of that episode made her shudder. Her involvement with him had been symptomatic of everything that had been wrong with her existence over recent months and that the bay would put right. James had been right about that, the previous night. They would be happy here, the four of them. They would be safe.

Richard sauntered across the grass towards where she and Megan sat. He was dressed in a pair of jeans and a faded denim shirt and there was a silk scarf tied loosely around his neck and his feet were shod in wood and leather clogs. His abundant locks had been gathered in a ponytail and he had a pair of secateurs in his right hand. Lillian looked at him and squinted in the sunlight and smiled to herself. If Robert Plant could farm outside Stourbridge, she thought, Richard Penmarrick could prune Cornish roses. Horticulture: obviously it was the new rock ’n’ roll.

‘What’s amusing you, Lillian?’

‘Life generally is amusing me, Richard. Your daughter is a very special talent.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘she is certainly a very precious girl.’

Lillian nodded. She knew exactly what he meant. You did not love them for their accomplishments.

‘Lunch is ready,’ he said, ‘if you are ready for lunch.’

The three of them strolled, through the midday sunlight, the distance to the house. Richard offered Lillian his arm and she took it. Megan asked questions about Jack and Olivia. Lillian was truthful in a fairly sparing account of what had recently happened to her son.

‘Is that why you are moving here?’

Lillian hesitated before replying. She thought that the honest answer was that the assault on Jack was more catalyst than cause. But she did not think it was a word an eleven-year-old would be familiar with. She said, ‘It was what got us from the daydreaming stage to the actuality of planning a move to the coast.’

‘So it was the catalyst,’ Megan said.

Richard chuckled. He was obviously proud of his lovely, talented, clever daughter. Why wouldn’t he be?

‘They’ll adore it here,’ Megan said. ‘There is so much to do. They can join the Club.’

‘The Club?’

‘Our version of the Scouts and the Girl Guides, kind of rolled into one,’ Richard said. ‘Phil Teal runs it and it runs like clockwork. All the kids seem to love it. It fosters a sense of community and a strong team ethic.’

‘I was served food by a boy in a Scout uniform on the beach last night.’

‘The Club members always help out at civic events. They rigged that contraption last night that got the bread to the east shore still warm. They do more serious stuff too: sailing courses and survival skills, rock climbing and abseiling, all sorts of wholesome pursuits.’

‘Jack has always had a strong team ethic. It comes from his football. He’s an exceptional player, but he won’t be allowed to play again before Christmas.’

‘He could coach the younger boys, though,’ Richard said. ‘He could coach Angela Heart’s nine- and ten-year-olds.’

‘He would enjoy that,’ Lillian said. ‘But would it be permitted?’

Richard chuckled again and patted her hand. ‘This is still England,’ he said. ‘Everything is allowed here, if we judge it to be right. This is a corner of our green and pleasant land where common sense is still allowed to prevail.’

They were on their way back to London late that afternoon when, about twenty miles east of the bay, James’s mobile pinged into life and he was informed by the display that he had eight messages, two of them from Lee Marsden and the remainder from the Colorado people. He had drunk a beer with his lunch and Lillian had stayed on the lemonade. He was not over the limit but never drank and drove so she was driving the car. He told her about the messages.

‘When were they left?’

‘Late yesterday afternoon.’

‘Lee needs a hobby. He should take up golf or something.’

‘He thinks he’s on to
20
per cent of something big.’

‘Maybe he is. Yesterday afternoon was Saturday, even in Colorado. Plus, it was Saturday morning. They’re five hours behind us. It must have been a breakfast meeting. They must be awfully keen.’

‘Either that or they’re fanatically geeky sociopaths.’

Lillian laughed. ‘I can just picture them,’ she said, ‘gathered in a donut shop at the foot of the Rockies, drinking American coffee from outsize paper cups, discussing you and their scheme for your game to dominate the world. It’s all very exciting, Jimbo.’

‘Jimbo?’

‘You’ll have to get used to being called that, out there.’

‘It’s bad enough Lee Marsden calling me Jimmy.’

‘We all have to make sacrifices, darling.’

James glanced at his wife, smiling at the wheel. The Jaguar’s roof was down and her hair blew behind her in the slipstream so that he could see the finer, paler strands exposed at her temples. She was not wearing her sunglasses and the laugh lines at the corner of her eye were small and faint and an exquisite flaw as if there to emphasise just how perfectly beautiful she looked. He did not know when he had loved her more or felt closer to her. They had found their focus and direction again. There was an expression Jack used; he would have it in a minute.

He leaned over and kissed Lillian on the cheek. ‘We’re locked on,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we are.’

James thought his brother less ebullient than usual, more reserved than was usually the case with him, when they got back. Given that they had only been away since Friday lunchtime, he also seemed much more relieved at the sight of them at the door than he could have any real justification for being. James knew his children. They were well balanced and well behaved, obedient by inclination as well as training and they doted on their Uncle Mark and revelled in his company. Taking care of them surely could not have been that much of a chore.

It was on the walk back to London Bridge underground station an hour later that James discovered the reason for his brother’s unusual demeanour. James was escorting him as a courtesy. Mark and perennial girlfriend Lucy lived in a smart newish apartment block in Kentish Town. He was headed north of the river and home.

‘Do you fancy a pint?’

‘Not really, Mark. I’m probably in for a longish evening with the kids.’

‘Can we stop for a cup of coffee, then?’

James shrugged. There had been plenty of coffee at the house. They went to the Starbucks in the station tunnel that led to the Jubilee and Northern Lines and sat at a zinc table there. Mark ordered them both a latte and remembered at the counter that his brother enjoyed his with an extra shot. James heard him request it.