Cold to the Touch (11 page)

They left the shelter of the boats and walked towards the sea. The land behind them and the village seemed irrelevant right at the water’s edge and the wind became stronger. Looking down the deserted shoreline, Sarah could see the beginnings of the next town in the distance, and then another outcrop of boats and sheds where the real industry was, as opposed to this deserted encampment of damaged goods. She let the sea lap over the toes of her boots and then retreated, then advanced, wanting to dance with it, resisting the impulse to scream like a child. The sea was so calm that he could skim stones across the surface, making them bounce, once, twice, three times before sinking, a talent she had always envied, and told him so. He shrugged it off, the way she imagined he might shrug off all praise, even if he stored it away safely.

Throwing stones did not ward off the increasingly cold and darkening sky. By common accord they turned their backs to the water and half walked, half scrambled up the shingle bank to where the scrubland began, stopping at the boats.

‘Tell me things,’ Sarah said. ‘Tell me about the Hurlys. Jessica’s my friend, I need to know why she can’t come back.’

Jeremy looked at her directly for the first time. He had blue eyes, like Jessica’s, but then so did others. They might resemble one another in that way, as well as in the abundance of hair and their gangly height, if only he were not so lacking in lustre when he was not moving. He had Jessica’s animation only when he was throwing stones and now, as he fumbled in his pockets for a ready-made reefer – the first of the day, perhaps, but certainly not the last. The smell of it hung on the air.

‘Hurly was brought up here. Was a butcher’s boy. Lived below stairs in that house you’re going to be painting, only then it was a leaking wreck and them as poor as mice, my gran says. Laughed at, they were, she says. He certainly knew how to hunt for food. Pennyvale was stinking poor then, not like now. Anyway, they all went away and old Hurly got rich in the butchery business and came back, bought two or three houses, and a shop, always wanted the vicarage, but couldn’t get it, see? Came back with a tart he’d married in London. King of the roost, he was, owned the abattoir. He wanted a fishing boat, too, but no one would sell him a boat, or let him moor it. Nobody liked him.’

Jeremy sucked smoke into his lungs greedily. Sarah nodded encouragement and stroked the fennel in her hands. She wondered if ‘Gran’ was still alive, how accurate the information was. She would like to meet Gran – or Mum, for that matter.

‘Gran’s dead,’ he said, answering an unspoken question. ‘And Mum never says nothing, never will, I don’t think. She lives in Kingsley now, I don’t know where. Anyway, she worked for the Hurlys, cleaning and that, and old man Hurly
shagged her and she had me, and Dad left. Funny how she’d never been able to have kids until she worked for him. Gran worked it out. So did Mrs H, although nothing was ever said.’

‘Gran might have worked it out wrong,’ Sarah suggested.

‘I don’t think so. Why else was she sacked? Why else did she have a bit of money, all of a sudden? Why else would Mrs Hurly get so mad about Jessica and me kissing as kids?’

‘Nits?’

‘We all had nits in that school, so did the teachers. Lots of silly nits!’

They were back into the mysterious maze of plants: Sarah wanted it to be a forest. It was getting dark and she wanted to go home, but above all she wanted to know more.

‘Did Jessica ever know about this?’

‘No, not her. No one told her. She’d have come and found me if she did.’

‘That’s not why she left?’

‘Everyone leaves,’Jeremy said, ‘except me.’

It was almost dark by the time they were back in the main street, walking home. There were few enough street lamps to illuminate the road. She thought of inviting him in for a cup of tea or something, decided this was presuming too much. All very well to be at close quarters with Jeremy in the open air, perhaps not indoors, even at her age; but something had been established between them, so she asked him anyway and was relieved when he refused.

‘Thanks a lot,’ she said. ‘That was wonderful. I was scared of the sea. Perhaps you’ll show me the best place to swim when it’s warmer?’

‘Sure.’ He shrugged. ‘But you’d be better off learning to
fish, at least you can eat it. I’d teach you how to fish if I had a boat still.’

‘What happened to your grandad’s boat?’

‘Don’t know. Might have been one of those that Jessica burned. Look, I’ve got to go now.’ He nodded towards the house. ‘Nice house, this, I like this house.’

‘Are you sure you won’t come in?’

‘No, thanks. It’s Jack Dunn’s house, really. Jessica shagged him, too. He was dead keen on her. Called his dog Jess. Perhaps because she was pretty.’

O
nce inside, feeling the warmth of home, Sarah paced up and down, thinking. There was an overpowering, interfering desire to acquaint Jessica with the fact that she might have a half-brother.

No, she would never do that: that would be gross interference on the basis of flimsy hearsay. Phone her anyway: she wanted to hear her, tease her about cleaning the block and be teased herself. Confess that she had met her mother and it had not gone well. Weekends excepted, it was a rare day not to hear from Jessica for a brief hello, how-are-you-doing, hurried chat at least and it suddenly seemed a long time. Three days: Sarah felt lazy and disloyal
.

She tried all evening, but there was no reply. It did not worry her the first few times and then it began to nag like toothache. Jessica never ignored her phone unless she was ashamed of something: something was wrong; she had done something silly. It felt as if she might have known that Sarah was finding out about her, getting to know her from other sources and she had decided she did not want to be known. Withdrawing from contact. Jessica had the keys to Sarah’s flat, to use as she wished: if her phone was lost, she could phone from there.

Maybe she was on her way here, wanting to surprise. But why not phone?

Sarah slept uneasily, waiting for sounds, hoping for a knock on the door or the phone to ring.

Ah well, another dawn.

O
ver breakfast in the morning, Sarah found the leaflet she had picked up in the church and stuffed into her handbag. Maybe best to have a little more knowledge before a morning with the vicar.

T
he day was dreary grey and bitterly cold, a great day for housework. Sarah was thinking what a forgotten word that
was and was still astounded to find how she reacted to the weather. Here it dictated the course of every single day, instead of being the irritating irrelevance that it was in a city. Here and now it changed every minute, dictated moods and was the arbiter of events.

She checked the limited sea view, obscured by mist today, rain forecast. She checked Jessica’s phone:
number not available
. All in all, a good day for distracting herself, because Jessica had swung back into her mind like a black cloud of mosquitoes that she wanted to swat away. She had forgotten her other agenda and now she had to remember it.

The vicarage was in the high street, at the downhill end, separated from the church by the graveyard. It was gloomily separate, with a small front garden boxed in by a privet hedge on three sides. There was no latch gate from the street, only an untidy gap in the hedge and a path, flanked by two patches of plain grass, leading to the front door. The frontage was Georgian in style if not vintage, with big ground-floor windows and pillars standing guard over the front-door porch. Someone had messed around with this house. The path was green with moss, the pillars were made of pockmarked concrete and the front door was painted in cheerless, blistered black. The walls on either side bore traces of recently removed ivy, leaving faint trails that crept away from the windows. Handsome but forbidding, the house seemed as if it was trying to repel visitors instead of offering them succour. The new electric bell played a hymn tune, possibly the same as the vicar’s mobile-phone tone – a bit camp, maybe. He did slightly overdo the gay persona. Before the door opened she found herself thinking of Jessica’s phone, which played ‘Greensleeves’. Jessica’s silent phone, nagging away, refusing to be forgotten.

‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ the vicar said. ‘I really can’t believe you’re doing this. Are you a mirage? Does God Almighty send you loaded with gifts? Come in, come in.’

Sarah was armed with a bucket of scrubbing brushes, cleaning cloths and dust sheets, a regular Mrs Mop. The first thing she noticed – for the second time – as she squeezed her way inside was the brown wallpaper in the dark hallway. The hall led on to stairs: two doors opened off it into reception rooms facing the front. Andrew led her into the first.

‘I exaggerated,’ he said. ‘It’s not really so bad. I’m not thinking of doing the whole house, it’s really just this room. Oddly enough, Father Gavin and his wife, killjoys that they were, did all right with the upstairs and the kitchen, where they spent most of their time, but with
this
room, the receiving room, as it were, and the hall, well, it’s as if they were trying to keep people out. You know, make it as dreary as possible so no one would be tempted to come back. No, that’s being unkind, maybe they just couldn’t afford it. The only person who can stand this room is Mrs Hurly, when she comes to tea, and even she doesn’t take her coat off. It’s a room for shouting in, and I sort of wish it was and wish it wasn’t. It’s got to have a better purpose than that, hasn’t it?’

It was a beautiful room, begging for the light to be let in. High ceilings with plain cornices, two huge windows almost to floor level giving onto the front garden. On the wall opposite the windows there was a blocked-off fireplace with two armchairs either side, looking as if they were paying homage to non-existent flames. A meagre amount of heat circulated from the single radiator. A sofa stood between the windows, miles away from the fireplace. The ceiling was mercifully off-white, the walls a dull maroon, the carpet a drab olive
green to match the darker green of the upholstery and the only other light apart from daylight came from an unpleasant triangle of bulbous spotlights in the centre of the ceiling. There was an additional optional standard lamp in stainless steel and with a bent stem, so crooked and discordant that it looked as if someone had hit it sideways. The ambience of the whole room reminded her of a spectacularly dull waiting room, deliberately designed to exaggerate the anxieties of anyone waiting in it. The central light in particular had a
we-have-ways-of-making-you-talk
feel, and the thought of Mrs Hurly taking tea in it cheered Sarah mightily. The most positive objects on view were six cans of white paint lined up against the wall, alongside a serviceable-looking ladder.

‘If you can enliven this space I shan’t know how to thank you, I really shan’t. It needs more than magic, and if you really provide that I don’t know how I’d ever repay you.’

She considered the view.

‘It needs a bit of work, rather than magic. But as for thanks, you could leave that to God or you can take on my mortal soul for redemption – it could do with it. A cup of coffee would be nice to be going on with, and what the hell is this room
for?’

The vicar paused for effect before announcing something ready-rehearsed. He found it difficult to articulate why it was that the room was slightly cursed.

‘It’s the padded cell of Pennyvale,’ he said. ‘My predecessor said it was the designated room for arguments. You know, like the bleak interview cell you see in TV thrillers, the anonymous room where you can lie on your back and squeal like a stuck pig, get your emotions out. It was where people came to take counsel and bad instant coffee. Married couples, people with children problems, people at screaming
pitch one way or another, could come here and slug it out without anyone hearing a thing, because you can’t, you know, you really can’t. The last vicar fancied himself as a counsellor, which may have something to do with the diminishing congregation. I’ve got another view on that; I think he was lazy enough not to want it to look nice in case anyone would want to use it. I think a priest should encourage celebration, but this one needs help. Shall I make the coffee, I do good coffee, leave you to think about it?’

Surely a room for counselling should be small and cosy, or dark like the traditional confessional, which, when she came to think of it, also defied intimacy. This was a room for clearing the throat, saying
Hmm
and not knowing where to start. Did village people bring their errant children here for a rebuke from the vicar in lieu of a village policeman? It was a punitive room: it had sadness in its very walls, and yet she could see it full of people having a great party. No one had ever been allowed to relax in here, let alone smoke. Sarah was sorry for them all on that account, but pleased that the lack of any festive action had left the ceiling pristinely untouched by champagne corks or nicotine. She touched the dark walls – not bad, not too many cracks – but how many coats of paint would it take to make it pale but interesting? That central light would have to go. There were scuff marks round the skirting boards from enthusiastic hoovering of the sick, threadbare carpet, which should have crawled away before it met the moths.

Andrew came back with coffee on a tarnished silver tray, proper coffee in a cafetière, china mugs. The mobile phone in his pocket rang, loud in the space. He muttered ‘Excuse me,’ and left the room for a minute. She helped herself, sat in the uncomfortable armchair by the blocked-up fireplace,
thought strategy, mobile phones and how to hire a steam cleaner. Sam the butcher would know. Either that or get Jeremy to scrub the carpet in the same way he scrubbed the block, just to see if there was anything to discover beneath the patina of genteel grime, otherwise haul it up and hope to discover wood. She strode to the far corner of the room where the carpet was fraying round the edges, grabbed it and pulled. Badly laid, cheap carpet, scarcely nailed down, it came away easily, revealing disintegrated yellow underlay and, beneath that, planks. The excitement was almost unbearable. By the time Andrew came back she had rolled away a whole noxious strip of the stuff and the air was full of dust.