The Perfect Daughter (32 page)

‘So he stayed Saturday night as well?'

‘Yes.'

‘And left on Sunday morning?' He'd have had to, if he planned to be back in Manchester for work on Monday.

‘Yes.'

‘Did he say where he was going? Perhaps to the station?'

‘I don't know. We didn't speak to him. John had gone out very early because there'd been some boats in the night before and when I got up at about six your friend wasn't here. But he'd left his bag in his room so I assumed he'd come back later and fetch it.'

‘And did he come back?'

They looked at each other for a long time and I could feel anxiety stirring in them like some deep undersea creature.

‘I'm not sure.'

‘I'm not sure, either. You see, the door's always left open…'

‘… because some of the fishermen will leave things on the kitchen floor if they think we might be interested…'

‘… and he insisted on paying in advance.'

‘So I suppose we assumed he'd come in and collected his bag and gone.'

‘Have you looked in his room since?'

The silences were getting longer. In the end John said reluctantly, ‘I might have gone in to get a journal, but I didn't notice if the bag was still there.'

‘Come on.'

I followed the woman up the stairs, two at a time. They were steep and uncarpeted, with an old bit of ship's rope rigged at the side instead of a bannister. Three doors opened off a little square of landing. The woman opened the left one and there in the middle of the floor, plumped down on a faded rag rug, was Bill's travelling bag. I recognised the stain he'd told me came from a bottle of retsina that burst at Delphi, when he was hiking round Greece, years before I knew him.

‘Is it your friend's?' the woman asked. She sounded scared.

It was a small room, with a window looking towards the wharf and the heaps of china clay. Two of the walls were stacked to waist height with what looked like learned scientific journals. There was a metal-framed bed under the window that might have come out of a barracks with the sheet and blanket folded back and the dent of a head in the pillow, a washstand in the corner with a flower-patterned ewer and basin. I walked over to the washstand, stepping round the bag. There was a little clean water in the basin, just enough to splash your face if you got up early.

‘He didn't shave before he went out.'

There was no soap scum or little crusts of dried lather and bristle. A thin white towel was flung over the rail of the washstand as if it had been picked up and used once, but not very crumpled. No trace of razor, brushes or comb. They'd be packed away in the bag.

‘What do you think's happened?' the woman said.

‘I don't know. Could we go downstairs and talk?'

*   *   *

I liked her, which helped. They were two serious people in a world of their own with their marine parasites, but not uncaring. Her name was Margaret. John must have understood at a look from her as we came downstairs what was happening, because he left his jam-jar on the bench and came through with us to the other room, a combined living-room and kitchen with a cooking range and some sagging armchairs.

I said, ‘He called on a relative of mine just up the estuary on Saturday. I don't suppose he mentioned that?'

They shook their heads.

‘Can either of you remember anything about what he said or did? Anything at all?'

Margaret said slowly, ‘No. He came back early Saturday evening, asked if he could have the room again, then went out to get dinner somewhere, I suppose.'

‘After he went out to dinner, what time did he get back?'

‘Quite late. It was getting dark.'

‘Was there anything you noticed? Did he seem worried, excited?'

‘No, nothing like that. Just one thing – I don't know if it's any help. When he went out he had a local map in his pocket. It was still in his pocket when he came back but folded up a different way, as if he'd been looking at it over dinner.'

John was staring at her as if amazed she could be so observant about anything not submarine.

‘Did he say anything to you about what he intended to do on the Sunday?'

‘No. Unless he did to you, John. They were talking when I went take some warm water upstairs.'

John blinked. ‘Were we?'

‘Yes, I remember hearing your voices. Was he asking you something?'

He screwed his face up, trying to remember. ‘I'm not sure. I was dissecting mackerel.'

‘
Think
, John.' From Margaret's voice, she was used to this.

‘Oh yes, now you come to mention it he
did
ask me about something but I can't remember what.'

‘A person? A place?' I tried to be patient, fighting the impulse to shake it out of him, but he just sat there looking miserable.

‘Was it about somewhere he was thinking of going or something he was thinking of doing?'

‘Yes.' His face cleared. ‘Boats, that was it. He wanted to know who hired out rowing boats.'

‘What did you tell him?'

‘I said there was a man down at the harbour. I hire from him myself sometimes.'

‘Can we go and talk to him?'

‘What, now?' He looked at me, then longingly towards his workroom, then at Margaret.

‘Yes.'

Chapter Twenty-four

T
HE BACK BEACH WAS QUIET NOW WORK WAS
mostly over for the day. There were only seagulls shrieking over fish guts and a man and a boy gathering up a net. The hire boats were moored to posts a little way out from the beach, bobbing against each other on the rising tide – but no sign of their owner. Margaret and I waited while John went over to talk to the man with the net.

‘He says Matthew's drinking in the New Quay. I'll go over and get him.' And he went, picking his way carefully among lobster pots and fish barrels.

Margaret said, ‘If one of the hire boats hadn't been returned I think we'd have heard.'

It seemed a long time before John came back. The man with him was square-built, brown-faced and white-bearded, wearing canvas trousers and a seaman's jersey. He looked as if he'd be the cheerful type normally, but there was a wariness about him, or perhaps it was only that he resented being taken away from his beer.

John said, ‘This is Matt Pellew.'

The man looked at me.

‘Nell Bray,' I said. ‘I think you may have spoken to a friend of mine at the weekend.'

There was a little breeze coming off the water. It ruffled the edges of his beard and set his flock of hire boats bobbing faster.

‘Who would that be, miss?'

I described Bill. Matt took an unlit pipe out of his pocket, sucked on it and slowly nodded his head.

‘Yes.'

‘When did he talk to you?'

‘Saturday evening, just when I was packing up.'

‘Did he want to hire a boat?'

‘He asked me about them, yes.'

‘For Sunday?'

‘No particular day.'

‘And did he hire one?'

‘No.'

‘Did you talk about anything else?'

A shake of the head. ‘I can't recall, miss. Dare say he wanted to talk about the weather or the fishing. Most of them do.'

Margaret said, sharply: ‘Is any of your boats missing, Matt?'

Perhaps he resented the tone because he gave her an annoyed look from under jutting eyebrows.

‘No, it's not.'

In a pacifying tone John said, ‘This lady's worried, Matt. Her friend was staying with us and now he seems to have gone missing.'

‘Well, I'm very sorry, but it weren't in one of my boats.' He looked meaningfully back towards the pub. ‘Be that all, then?'

I said yes, I supposed it was, but to let me know at John and Margaret's house if he thought of anything else. He nodded, wished us good evening and went back along the beach.

Margaret waited until he was out of earshot. ‘He's lying.'

‘Yes, I think so too.'

John looked at the two of us, scandalised.

‘Surely not. Matt's as reliable as tide tables. The man's a church warden, for goodness sake.'

Margaret said, ‘He could be an archbishop and it wouldn't make any difference. He was lying.'

You could see how unhappy it made John, being at odds with her. I felt guilty about that, but needed Margaret as an ally.

‘Perhaps he just doesn't like nosy outsiders. He might talk to you two if I weren't there.'

‘Not to me. He might talk to John in the New Quay.'

John looked across at the pub, without enthusiasm. A swallow swished past us, looped out over the water and back.

‘But I haven't finished writing up the log.'

‘I'll do it from your notes. Go in there, buy him a beer, work round to it gradually. Tell him there won't be any trouble for him, whatever it is.'

Margaret glanced at me. ‘We
can
tell him that, can we?'

‘Yes.' I hoped so. I wasn't sure of anything.

‘There.' Margaret took John by the shoulders and gave him a gentle push towards the public house. He went unhappily.

‘Poor John, he hates beer. Still, the fishermen talk to him – all the tall tales they can't get anyone else to listen to. Whatever it is, he'll get it.'

We walked back to their house. She took a black kettle off the range and brewed tea for us, cleared a space on the table and fetched a big cloth-bound book and a sheaf of loose notes from the next room. For a while there was silence apart from the creaking of the chair and the scratch of her fountain pen over the page. The book was ruled in columns for dates, location, variety and size of specimen. An hour later, with the sun throwing a square of gold through the uncurtained window on to the white wall above her head, she sighed and put the cap on the pen.

‘John's taking a long time.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Don't be. I liked your friend.' Then she looked annoyed with herself for using the past tense and said, too hurriedly, ‘I'm sure he'll be all right.'

‘May I stay here tonight? As a paying guest, I mean.'

‘You don't have to pay. There's only the one room, the one he had.'

‘That's all right.'

‘I'll go up and change the sheets.'

‘No, don't. They'll be fine as they are.'

‘Would you like some cocoa? I was going to wait for John, but…'

‘Let's wait.'

We sat and talked as the square on the wall spread to wash the whole room in dusty, fish-smelling gold. John's work on parasites was for a thesis that, with luck, might lead to a university post. She had some training as a biologist, but her parents wouldn't let her go to college. Then she had met John.

‘At a talk on marine gastropods. We eloped three weeks later.'

Her eyes were shining, her voice full of the wonder of it. The feeling that stabbed through me can't have been envy exactly because I didn't covet a life in a fisherman's cottage surrounded by pickled parasites, but it was something a lot like it. I think what I wanted was their certainty. As it was, I'd already contaminated their lives with my uncertainties because John had spent an unwanted evening in a public house instead of at home.

*   *   *

Soon after we heard steps outside and the door-latch clicked. John came in, his glasses covered in condensation and his hair sticking up as if he'd been running his hands through it.

‘You were right, Margaret. I don't know how you knew, but you were right.'

He sat down heavily into an armchair that tilted sideways on uneven feet. It was what I'd expected but my heart plunged.

‘You mean Bill did hire a boat from him?'

‘No. It's a lot odder than that. Just wait while I get it clear in my mind.' He sat there with his eyes closed. He was perhaps just a little drunk, not being used to it. ‘Right. It took a long time. There were a few of them yarning there and he didn't start talking until the others had gone. Then when we were alone he wanted to know what you were doing and where you came from.' He glanced at me. ‘I said I didn't know. He said he didn't know what was going on, but he didn't want anything to do with it.'

‘What did he mean?'

‘I don't know. I stuck to what you wanted to know and asked him if there'd been anything he hadn't told you and yes there had. Apparently your friend went to him as he said on Saturday evening, it must have been just after he left here. They talked a bit about the weather and the fishing and so on, that was true enough, then your friend asked him about the hire boats. But he wasn't interested for himself. He wanted to know about somebody who might have hired a boat a month ago, back at the end of May.'

‘Who?'

‘A young woman. A young woman of about nineteen with red-brown hair. That was one of the reasons Matt didn't want to tell you about it, you know, your friend and a young woman and so on…' His voice trailed away, embarrassed, but Margaret told him to go on.

‘Anyway, there had been this young woman. Matt remembered her because he wouldn't usually hire to a woman on her own, but he said you could tell that this one knew what she was doing. So he let her have a boat.'

‘Did he know what day that was?'

‘No, your friend asked him that and he didn't, only that it was near the end of last month.'

‘Did he know where she went with it?'

‘No. There were a lot of customers that day. He told her to keep in the estuary and not go out to sea, but he tells everybody that. Anyway, then you get to the bit that really bothers Matt.'

He stopped again and ran his hand through his hair. There were already a few fish scales caught in it, gleaming in the light from the sunset when he moved his head. Margaret told him to get on with the story. He looked at me.

‘You have to know what they're like, these people, tough as teak planks but so superstitious they'll…'