Silver Bay (23 page)

I dusted the glass frame and put the yellowing newspaper cutting back against the wall, alongside the photographs of the stuffed shark. The taxidermy itself hadn’t been particularly successful – I suspected my father had been in such a hurry to put it on show that he had not had it done by anyone of genuine skill – and the creature had fallen apart when it was moved from the hotel into the museum, stuffing oozing from the seams around the fins and along the joint of the tail. Eventually we admitted defeat and put it out with the bins. I watched out of the window with amusement on the day the bin men came.

It didn’t help that it had been handled by pretty much every visitor who ever walked in. There was something about a stuffed shark that made people want to touch it. Perhaps it was the frisson of knowing that in normal circumstances they wouldn’t be that close to one without amputation or death following hard behind. Perhaps it gave them some strange sense of power. Perhaps we all harbour a perverse need to get close to things that might destroy us.

I looked away deliberately from the photographs and ran the duster lightly over the other objects and curios, seeing the museum through the eyes of the kind of tourist who would be interested in a top-of-the-range watersports park. Or, as the newspaper had put it, a ‘proper’ Museum of Whales and Dolphins. I had not had a visitor in ten days. Perhaps I couldn’t blame them, I thought, carefully placing a harpoon back on its hooks. This was increasingly less a museum than a bunch of old fishbones in a rackety shed. I was only keeping it going because of my father.

They were all up at the hotel, sitting outside, loudly discussing their ideas to fight the planning decision over beer and chips. I hadn’t wanted to be among them, didn’t want to feign sympathy for as yet uncommitted crimes against free creatures of the sea. My own feelings, my own reservations, were quite different from theirs.

I heard the door creak and turned. Mike Dormer was there. It was hard to see his face, as he stood against the light, so I beckoned to him.

‘I haven’t been in here before,’ he said, glancing around as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets, his normally straight-backed posture stooped and apologetic.

‘Nope,’ I agreed. ‘You haven’t.’

He walked around slowly, staring up at the beams, from which hung old lines, nets and buoys, whaler’s overalls from the 1930s. He seemed interested in everything in a way genuine visitors rarely were.

‘I recognise this picture,’ he said, stopping in front of the newspaper cutting.

‘Yes, well . . . One thing we do know about you, Mike, is that you certainly do your research.’

It came out harder than I’d intended, but I was tired and I still felt unbalanced because I’d had him under my roof for so long yet failed to get the measure of him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I deserved that.’

I sniffed, and began to dust the souvenirs on the trestle table, next to the old till. They seemed tacky and pathetic all of a sudden: whale key-rings, dolphins suspended in plastic balls, postcards and tea-towels featuring grinning sea creatures. Children’s gifts. What was the point when no children came here any more?

‘Look, Kathleen, I know you might not want to talk to me right now but I do have to say something to you. It’s important to me that you understand.’

‘Oh, I understand, all right.’

‘No, you don’t. I wanted to say something,’ he said. ‘Really. I came out here expecting it to be a straightforward development job. I thought I’d be in and out, that I was building in an area that no one would be fussed about. Once I realised that wasn’t the case, I was trying to work out a solution that would keep my boss happy in England and you lot happy out here. I needed to find out as much as I could.’

‘You could have shared that with us. We might have been able to contribute something. Especially since I’ve lived in the area for seventy-odd years.’

‘I know that now.’ I noted with a weird satisfaction that his shoes had become very scuffed. ‘But once I got to know you all it was impossible.’

‘Especially Liza,’ I said. Call it a wild guess.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, and Liza.’

‘Well, Mike, for a quiet man you’ve made a big impact around here.’ I kept polishing, not sure what else to do with myself. I didn’t want to stand there in front of him. We were silent for a few minutes, as I worked with my back to him. I sensed him staring at me.

‘Anyway,’ he said, coughing, ‘I appreciate that this probably changes things. I’ve been ringing around. There’s a place up the coast that will have me – us. We’ll go this afternoon. I just wanted to say how sorry I was, and that if there’s anything I can do to – well, to mitigate the effects of this development, you should let me know.’

I paused, my duster raised in my hand, and turned to him. My voice, when it came, sounded unusually loud in the cavernous space. ‘How do you mitigate killing off a seventy-year-old family business, Mike?’ I asked.

He looked shattered then, as I’d guessed he would.

‘You know what? I don’t really give a fig about the hotel, no matter what you might think. Buildings as such don’t hold a great deal of importance for me, and this one’s been falling down for years. I’m not even that fussed about the bay. And the whales and the dolphins, I’m hoping that the busybodies who look out for them now will see they’re okay.’

I shifted my weight, passed my duster into the other hand. ‘But there’s something you should know, Mike Dormer. When you destroy this place, you destroy Hannah’s safety. This is the one place she can be in all the world where she doesn’t have to worry, where she can grow up safe and untouched. I can’t explain more than that, but you should know it. Your actions will have an impact on our little girl. And for that I can’t forgive you.’

‘But – but why would you have to leave here?’

‘How can we afford to live in a hotel with no customers?’

‘Who says you’ll have no customers? Your hotel is completely different from what’s planned. There’ll always be customers for a place like yours.’

‘When there are a hundred and fifty rooms with en-suites and satellite television next door? And winter three-for-two offers and a heated pool indoors? I don’t think so. The one thing we had going for us here was isolation. The kind of people who came here wanted to be in the middle of nowhere. They wanted to be able to hear the sea at night and the whisper of the grass on the dunes and nothing else. They didn’t want to hear karaoke night in the Humpback Lounge, and the sound of forty-eight cars reversing in and out of the car park on their way to the subsidised buffet. Come on, Mike, you deal in hard figures, in commercial research. You tell me how an operation like this stays afloat.’

He made as if to speak, then mutely shook his head.

‘Go back to your masters, Mike. Tell them you’ve done their bidding. You’ve sealed the deal, or whatever it is you City types say.’

I was close to tears and this made me so furious that I had to start dusting again, so he couldn’t see my face. Seventy-six years old and about to cry like an adolescent girl. But I couldn’t help it. Every time I thought about Liza and Hannah disappearing, about them having to settle somewhere far from here, having to start over, I got short of breath.

I had half expected him to leave, I’d had my back to him for so long. But when I turned he was still there, still staring at the floor, still thinking.

At last he raised his head. ‘I’ll get it changed,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure how, Kathleen, but I’ll put it right.’

I must have looked disbelieving because he took a step towards me. ‘I promise you, Kathleen. I’ll put it right.’

Then he turned on his heel, hands deep in his pockets, and walked back up the path towards the house.

The following day I dropped Hannah at school, then took the inland road to see Nino Gaines. He was one of the few people with whom I could have an honest discussion about money. Trying to convey to Liza how little there was would have made her even more anxious, and I had always taken pains to disguise how little her whale-watching trips offset the costs of running our household.

‘So, how much have you got?’ We were sitting in his office. From the window I could see the rows of vines, bare now, like battalions of barren twigs under an unusually grey sky. Behind him there were books on wine and a framed poster of the first supermarket promotion that had included his shiraz. I liked Nino’s office: it spoke of healthy business, innovation and success, despite his advanced years.

I scribbled some figures on the pad in front of me and shoved it towards him. It may sound daft but I was brought up to think it rude to discuss money, and even at my age I find it difficult to say out loud. ‘That’s the pre-tax profits. And that’s the rough turnover. We get by. But if I had to put on a new roof, or anything like it, I’d have to sell the boat.’

‘That tight, eh?’

‘That tight.’

Nino was pretty surprised. I think until that point he had assumed that, because my father was the big name in the area when we’d first met, I must still be sitting on some sizeable nest-egg. But, as I explained to him, it was fifty years since the hotel’s heyday. And ten years since the Silver Bay had had anything like a constant stream of guests. Taxes, building repairs and the cost of looking after two extra people – one of whom required an endless supply of shoes, books and clothes – had put paid to what little I had set aside.

Nino took a gulp of his tea. Earlier, Frank had brought us a tray, complete with a plate of biscuits. That he had placed these on a lace doily made me cast a new look at Nino’s remaining single son, although Nino seemed to believe the decorative touch was for my benefit.

‘Do you want me to invest in the hotel so you could do a bit of renovation? Smarten up the rooms? Put in some satellite TV? I’ve had a good few years. I’d be glad to sink a few quid into something new.’ He grinned. ‘Diversification. That’s what the old accountant says I should focus on. You could be my diversification.’

‘What’s the point, Nino? You know as well as I do, once that monster goes up by the jetty, we’ll be little better than a shed at the end of their garden.’

‘Can you not survive on the whale-watching money? Surely Liza will be going out more often, with more people around. Perhaps you could invest in another boat. Get someone to run it for you.’

‘But that’s just it. She won’t stay if there are more people. She – she gets nervous. She needs to be somewhere quiet.’ The words sounded feeble even to me. I had long since stopped trying to justify the apparent enigma that was my niece.

We sat quietly, as Nino digested this. I finished my tea and placed the cup on the tray. Then he leant forward over the desk. ‘Okay, Kate. You know I’ve never stuck my nose in, but I’m going to ask you now.’ His voice dropped. ‘What the hell is Liza running from?’

It was then that the tears came and I realised, in horror, that I couldn’t stop them. The sobs wrenched my chest and shoulders as if I were suspended on jerking strings. I don’t think I’ve cried like that since I was a child, but I couldn’t stop. I wanted so badly to protect my girls, but Mike Dormer and his idiotic, deceitful plans had brought home to me how vulnerable they were. How easily our supposed sanctuary at the end of the bay could become so much matchwood.

When I had composed myself a little I looked at him.

His smile was sympathetic, his eyes concerned. ‘Can’t tell me, huh?’

I put my head into my hands.

‘I guess it must be something pretty bad or you wouldn’t be so shook up.’

‘You mustn’t think badly of her,’ I mumbled, through my fingers. A soft, worn handkerchief was thrust into them, and I mopped inelegantly at my eyes. ‘No one has suffered more than she has.’

‘Don’t you go fretting. I know what I’ve seen of your girls, and I know there isn’t a malicious hair on either of their heads. I won’t ask again, Kate. I just thought telling someone . . . whatever it is . . . might offer you a bit of relief.’

I reached out then, and took his strong old hand. He held mine tightly, his huge knuckles atop mine, and I took great comfort from it, more than I had guessed I might.

We sat there for some minutes, listening to the ticking of his mantelpiece clock, me feeling the alien warmth of his skin absorbed by my own hand. I realised I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t have the strength to reassure Liza, who was almost manic with anxiety. I didn’t want to be nice to Mike Dormer and his fashion-plate girlfriend, and think of what they had done to me. I didn’t even want to have to calculate their bill. I just wanted to sit in the still room, in the silent valley, and have someone look after me.

‘You could come here.’ His voice was gentle.

‘I can’t, Nino.’

‘Why not?’

‘I told you. I can’t leave the girls.’

‘I meant you and the girls. Why not? Plenty of room. Close enough for Hannah to stay at her school, if you didn’t mind a bit of driving. Look at this big old house. These rooms would love to see youngsters again. The only thing keeping Frank here is that he doesn’t want to leave me alone.’

I said nothing. My head was swimming.

‘Come and live with me. We can set it up however you want – you in your own room or . . .’

He was gazing at me intently and, in his heavy-lidded eyes, I could see an echo of the cocky young airman of fifty years previously. ‘I won’t ask you again. But it would make us both happy, I know. And I’d help to protect the girls from whatever it is you’re so worried about. Hell, I’m in the middle of bloody nowhere, you know that. Even the ruddy mailman can’t find us half the time.’

I laughed, despite myself. As I said before, Nino Gaines has always been able to do that to me.

Then his hold on my hand became tighter. ‘I know you love me, Kathleen.’ When I said nothing, he continued, ‘I still remember that night. Every minute of it. And I know what it meant.’

My head jerked up. ‘Don’t talk about that night,’ I snapped.

‘Is that why you won’t marry me? Is it because you feel guilty? Jeez, Kate, it was one night twenty years ago. Loads of husbands have behaved worse. It was one night – one night we agreed wouldn’t be repeated.’