Desire Line (33 page)

Now I'm given 1. Miles of the finest sandy beach ever made. 2. A small haven. 3. One cleanish river. 3. The Marine Lake and concrete island. 4. Nineteenth-century terraces of a quality that brings tears to the eyes. 5. A second-hand 87-metre steel pylon minus the ascending cabin. 6. Inland, a handsome church, a stone town hall with an inclination from the vertical and a botanic garden. 7. Twenty-six thousand registered inhabitants plus all the un-logged ones who never expected much out of life and weren't disappointed.

An architect that can't make a town out of this lot deserves throwing off SkyTower.

Notes

*
Jarn Mound's a hill that was hand raised by the archaeologist Arthur Evans and his students in 1931 to restore a lost prospect of Oxford. Said to be '50 feet high', slippage means the view isn't clear from the top by I see it. And a blocking development has done for it permanently now.

Chapter 22

Emeritus Professor Geoffrey Severing once explained a financing void as ‘more reasons not to do than do.'

So Sara came back. And Rhyl's not-do summer ripened with yeasty smells that couldn't be got rid of by the stiffest breeze. Gulls turned cannibal which I witnessed one afternoon, several adults attacking a drab youngster on the Marine Lake's concrete island. First strike to the breast and it collapsed back onto its tail, stunned, disbelieving. Maybe its own parent was in the mob— anyway the opportunity to fly off was wasted. Then as extra birds joined the frenzy the head was hacked into, blood splattered the mottled feathers and they had it down. There were other walkers and loiterers that had been stopped like me by the ruckus. The lake was drained to a puddle so we could've—

if we'd tried to—

but too far away to save—

interfere and the driven off birds just starve elsewhere—

As it was, only the outstretched wings and flipper-feet were left next day. There's a whole season being lost, I fumed, and our only daytrippers? Ghouls.

That same night Josh hit Sara in the face.
The punch that was never going to be thrown
, seemed a joke suddenly— I'd got into a routine, reading steadily since Westport. Disgusted, I swept everything up, rammed it back into its envelopes and took the lot into my bedroom where Libby has kindly provided a walnut veneer wardrobe c.1950, hanging space to the left and folding to the right. There were too few pairs of dark pants, dark sweatshirts and black loafers to fill five shelves. I slung the parcel onto the vacant top. Now I understand ‘Serpent Demon Eats Boy's Ears Off', Tomiko. I should've listened and left well alone.

Should've said, ‘Sleep tight, Sara. You're bad luck.'

‘What you got there?' Glenn wanted to know.

‘It's no sig.'

‘
What's
no sig, Yori? D'you want my take on this?'

I didn't.

‘The work-hours you're putting in— and you've put in already— they're never gonna be paid for. Since you went on your little holiday, you're a whole bloody team on your own. You're bringing in done stuff that was an idea and three squiggles the day before. Look at you! It's half past seven on a Friday night. That's a brand new elevation, that is, the foot-crossing by the old clock tower.
I think
, me, you've got seven types of sodding sorrow here with all those different levels. And you're just starting on it.'

I moved my arm to try and block his view of PalmWalk.

‘Don't bother boy. Seen it. Estimated task time: five point three hours. Task time elapsed: 41 minutes.'

‘Maybe.'

‘Say again, Why you doing this?'

‘You're still here.' My simulation surges forward in time, one year, two years, the gaps close up as soft landscaping matures to give arrow-slit views of a restored Harkers Arcade, then of my all-glass CrystalBox, the shopping mall entrance. Clouds are suddenly scattered. Mid-morning sun ignites the glazing. Seascapes appear in each of its five thousand reflective panes. It's so beautiful it makes my breastbone ache, the ache travelling down across the soft belly parts and into my genitals. It excites me more than Tess. Even Glenn's hypnotised. ‘That's quite good,' I suggest.

‘Fucking gorgeous! Beside the point.' He leaned over, his face deliberately in mine. ‘Tell us.'

Earnest, methodical, dependable and impetuous. These are the qualities of my blood group, Type A, my father's blood group. He's passed the knowledge on only recently. ‘But,' I said, ‘these are opposite traits.' Through a small window at his back the mountain's showing seasonal colour but the sky above it changes hourly. ‘Methodical
and
impetuous?'

‘Research was old,' Tomiko said, ‘and when new had enemies.'

Glenn had produced nothing useful as long as I'd known him. His Certificate in Urban Studies from a college that doesn't exist any more entitles him to come up with the background of any site I express an interest in, just to thwart me. Tried it there— didn't work. And he's a hooligan as a house guest and still tells you about sex with Alice even once you're rid of him. I have never liked Glenn Hughes, though I put less importance on liking than most people do. (Does the washing water make friends with your skin?)

‘Isn't Omar about?' I asked.

‘Yeah right. He's working his notice. Gone at four these days.'

Of course. Omar that I'd never bothered getting to know would be leaving for good at the end of next week. Then there'd be just us. Laughable really. To thoroughly humiliate me, the simulation charged on unattended, brushed a gilt illuminated SkyTower and a sparkling series of pools and pavilions opening out into a restored Drift Park. Lusher and tougher. And suddenly unbearable. I got rid. Glenn didn't protest. But – encouragement! – he said, ‘It's a small place.'

‘It is.'

‘And rock bottom now?'

‘Yes.'

‘Could be fixable?'

‘
Can
be.' I should know better. ‘Haven't
you
thought This is our chance? How good we could make it if—'

‘Only three— no, four times since starting here. First was— 2016, that would be. '

I gave in. I'd been had again. (How old was he?) My killer arguments, 1. that big cities were failing everywhere 2. critical mass suburbs had been outed as more divisive than the caste system 3. but six out of seven social classes live well in SMTs— small to medium towns, the Shangri-La of human existence, were all there to be said. I ached to say
This is now orthodoxy even
in Beijing
. And I even know how to put Rhyl back and to what— I just can't find the start. Wanting to score points made me change tack and describe Westport to Glenn. But of course I had to go and mention Josh. And carry on to Eurwen— and Sara. (Again
why?
Showing off?) The first two names were small
mouli
. But Sara he'd heard of. ‘Fucking hell.' He blew out his cheeks. ‘That's the same one that—? And they came and told you? You just went off to Ireland after they came and told—? Fuck me.
You
should've been on everywhere, not that American woman! Why weren't you?'

Gaining and losing respect in equal amounts now, ‘Because other people still alive would be—'

He cut me off with, ‘Got it.' His embarrassingly huge Adam's apple I can't look at bobbed while he digested the new Yori. Then he went typical Glenn, getting out his other Rhyl vanishings stories. To tarnish mine. One he called The Case of the Rhyl Mummy, a squalid domestic murder everybody's heard of. I tried to make him to stop but no— we're straight into The Kicker. OK, more original and tragic.
*
Both are out of place here. They were out of place there. It was his personality. Only finally he could circle back to asking questions— and the least welcome? ‘And you reckon he killed her?'

‘No. Who knows? Just being in Rhyl and the alcohol more like. I've got her papers. He wouldn't have handed them over unless he wanted me to— but he might be ill. I'm having trouble reading them.' (Josh had just hit Sara and then walked so the trouble was with him).

‘I'd bloody read them.'

‘Yes,' I said. The office was quiet with just Glenn and me left and the floors below still unusable. ‘
You
would. It's her journal and it stops before she died.' I raised my hands for
so no good.
Glenn actually seemed to be thinking, his mouth at rest. The atmosphere was bleak. Our illuminated ceiling had greyed, the workplace nudging us out so its systems could fall into a low-energy trace. Next to my screen Glenn's fingers fiddled with Alice Norman's given ring, too tight to remove – all Alice Norman's fault, this, back from Spain but leaving him spare energy to torment me.

Suddenly he's on his feet. ‘Ever been over to Store 20?' he says.

The metal staircase squeaked under us. Nobody was loitering at the back of the building— there'd been a looters warning again in the afternoon— but Glenn was enough to scare away a ghostly army of
onyudos, kashas, satoris.
Then we were onto the Promenade under a night sky like a low ceiling. It was still and cool. East and West Parade were cleared but the replaced street lights only showed up the shambles left between the road and beach. Temporary solid panels filled gaps in the Victorian railings where concrete had crumbled underneath them and jarred loose their old joints— so even the sea's slight phosphorescence, the only beauty, was interrupted. We walked on patched tarmac, hearing the Holyhead train make for its crossing further up the river and once it died away Glenn Hughes grunted, ‘I give in! All right you miserable little bugger, aren't you going to ask me? Don't you want to know what's in Store 20?'

‘I know what's in it.'

He came to a complete stop. ‘You
know?
'

‘Something you want me to see.'

‘Bollocks to you, Yori. Bloody, hairy, hundred-year-old bollocks! Come on, then.'

He's keen. Soon I'd have to trot at his heels like a dog and at this speed we'd attract the attention of the police vehicle cruising our way. But he took a sudden left into a street I couldn't (how unusual was that?) put a name to. Here the occasional house had been reoccupied and as we passed the first, its lit window showed a stage set— a table, a screen, a sofa, all in a bare room. The next had piled up cartons still unpacked and a woman carrying a child looked out, like she felt she was being watched and I had to turn away, guilty. The interiors should've suggested fresh starts and the human spirit and all that but the reports were of people coming back to uninhabitable dwellings rather than live as refugees.
What's a vestry?
the presenter had asked, trying to get a smile out of his squatter family. I felt ashamed. Even Glenn said, ‘This fuckin' place.'

Where the houses stopped someone at the turn of last century had dumped a square industrial building, flat-roofed, at odds with the street and matt black till a security beam caught Glenn in front of its double height doors. The smell of fresh lubricating oil hung in the air.

‘Store 20,' Glenn said. ‘Guess what? – not an
empty
dried out metal shed as promised by Borough for sole use of Forward Rhyl
but
a half-empty metal shed. The bastards had already nipped in and off-loaded some of their own junk, sorry invaluable records, down here. Including three sealed packs of old hard-drives. They're digitised CCTV footage of the town centre. Several years' worth.'

‘Why bother to even look at the inventory?'

‘I'm interested in all sorts,' he said vaguely, ‘—if it's about Rhyl.' (Ungenerously, I had the fake poster flash into my mind. And how many other forgeries?) ‘I just did, all right? Lucky for you. I noticed 2008 among others. Even that far back we must've needed watching. Your Sara was in Rhyl? You can see her. You can watch her going round the town. If you want. Enjoy.'

Sarcastic or sincere? Because he was curious about Sara, trying to be helpful
and
running in parallel, insulted I'd told him zero re: myself so far. While there was nothing to tell, this had been tolerated but now I'd rectified the fault, it turned into a crime. ‘Yeah, take it all,' he said. ‘Long as you need! Told you I'd do you a favour.' I must have looked less than gratified. It was shock. ‘So I'll be hearing the full deal if and when, yeah?'

At home Libby Jenkinson was in the hall.

‘
Doke!
' (Move, you!)

Actually, ‘Hello, Libby— it's not too bad out there!' I said and while she was thinking how to prove me wrong I got past with, ‘No shopping! Not cooking!' After slamming the door I put my ear against it for the stairs' creak. It came after an interval— as if Libby knew I was up to something and we had a mental battle going on through the pitch pine. (
Fond of her?
I
really
needed to be out here.) Avoiding the desk, it was straight to the kitchen now. I dropped an extra 50mg of 
 
 
while standing at the sink— waited. A short delay and here it comes on the tenth or twelfth exhale, a sense of rightness that never lets you down. Not for everyone, I know, but for me. So what if there's a new story every day, 
 
lecer's Downside!!!? (Thinning of the skin post seventy, some loss of colour vision, laughably the latest, an overmanufacture of ear-wax!) This injection of CanDo into me is the drug's main upside, being a member of the lucky set it works for. I close my eyes and let the sensation build, watching the streets and groves and roads and crescents and parades splayed out from Gaiman Ave all come to attention. A sort of ripple of reordering goes through them. Pavements shake like rugs. A spotless tide sweeps in and cleans the sand. Trees sprout. That festering lakeside void fills itself with a sleek multi-purpose building— coated in Chromyle tm.*