The Winds of Change (14 page)

When he reached the shop into which Trueblood had just gone, Melrose turned. She was still over there, standing where he’d left her, as if he had left her all on her own. He had, after all, spent upward of an hour with her and refused to feel guilty. Where was the mother? He plunged into the shop, which was cool, shadowy and crowded with handsome pieces of furniture. Trueblood had impeccable taste.

‘I need something on enameling,’ said Melrose to Trueblood’s back.

The back turned. ‘Did anyone win the contest?’

Melrose sighed. ‘Are you still back there with that silly goat naming business?’

‘Silly? As I recall you were dead serious. You didn’t want anyone amusing himself at your goat’s expense.’ Here he chortled and held a fine piece of crystal up to the dusty sunlight. ‘Enameling, yes. I’ve got a book on it.’ Trueblood moved over to a stack of books on the floor (as there was no more room on the shelves), pulled one out and handed it to Melrose.

Melrose leafed through the large book as Polly had leafed through her Patrick Pig book, and probably to just as much enlightenment. ‘This is jewelry.’

‘Yes? Enameling. Little bits and pieces of colored enamel in some setting or other.’

‘No, what I need is to do with gardening.’

‘You’ve got me there, old bean. Don’t think I have anything; actually, I don’t know what it is.’

Melrose groaned. ‘I’m to go to Cornwall tomorrow to act like an expert in it, it and turfing up some steps.’

Trueblood made a blubbery sound with his lips, his reaction to Melrose’s being ‘expert’ in any field at all. ‘Take that.’

‘This? But didn’t I just say-’

‘If you’re messing round with this enameled garden or whatever, you’ll impress people as knowing so much about the subject that you can afford to go about it in this eccentric fashion.’

‘Marshall, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Of course not.’ He was holding a small silver crucifix set with precious stones. ‘That’s by way of being the point, isn’t it? Since you don’t know a damned thing about the garden or flower variety of enameling, you pretend to know so much that your knowledge simply bleeds over into actual enamel.’

Melrose considered. It was just the sort of weird notion they’d come up with sitting around in the Jack and Hammer. Which wasn’t a bad idea. ‘Let’s have a drink.’

‘Twist my arm.’ Trueblood dropped the crucifix on the table and they walked out.

She was not there, Melrose was relieved to see, looking across the street. But he did wonder where she was.

15

The church was dim and almost absent of ornament, except for the rose window at their backs, and the gathered candles and a few somber statues.

Jury had been very surprised to find that Sarah had kept to her Scots Presbyterian birthright and not converted to Brendan’s Roman Catholicism; he admired her for sticking to her guns, which must have caused a family war, not with Brendan himself (one of the most easygoing men Jury had ever known) but with Brendan’s family, who would have tried every tactic at their disposal to get her to switch.

It was one of the moments of prayer, this one following a hymn he wasn’t familiar with (well, that counted for most of them), and with his head bent, he thought about Sarah’s ability to stonewall the in-laws, in spite of her having no one in her own family to take her side. That must have been hard.

The moment of prayer was over and the procession to the grave site begun. There were a fair number of people, most no doubt Brendan’s friends. He looked somehow burnt - his face dark and waxen and his heart in a million pieces. You could tell that was so.

The girls, Christabel and Jasmine and the youngest, Chastity, all clustered together. The boy, Dickie, sixteen, stood a little apart. All of them had been raised remarkably in that small flat with a partitioned-off dining room brought into play as an extra bedroom. Brendan had expressed gratitude for the flat, considering they hadn’t been tossed out by the landlord.

Jury heard little of the grave-side service, his mind escaping into childhood, as much as he could remember after his uncle took him from that orphanage. His aunt and uncle had lived in Suffolk, or that part of it a raft of older boys had christened ‘Fuck-up.’ One of the boys had been another cousin - Jury wondered now what had happened to him - a much older brother who paid little attention to him; he just nodded now and then, looking at Jury as if trying to place him. Where had he gone? He might be dead, too.

The reception (Jury was glad to see) wasn’t held in Noonan’s, but in a dim old hotel close to the church. Brendan’s flat was of course out of the question for a crowd of this kind. He had chosen this hotel. The room in which they had gathered was probably a ballroom now used for functions such as this, or wedding receptions (that strange other side of the coin to this), conventions, reunions. He wondered who or what in Newcastle one would want to reunite with.

Newcastle. He supposed it might be a pleasant enough city if one were to look at it without the blinders on of death and the dole. To him it had always been a cold gray pile of rocks that most people would be gladly shut of. Sarah certainly would have.

‘Oh! You’re the one she kept talking about!’ He turned to see a chubby woman wearing a straw hat with a paper flower on its brim. The flower bounced when she talked.

‘I’m the policeman, if that’s what you mean.’ He tried to smile, then gave up on it.

‘I certainly do. My, she did set such great store by you. Even put your picture up’ - the woman nodded toward the end of the buffet table, where a large collage of photos and snapshots rested on an easel - ‘and reports of your cases. You should have a look.’ As if some mission had been accomplished, she plucked up a little cake and munched. ‘Of course, she was only your cousin. It could have been worse.’ With that chilling pronouncement, she turned and left.

They’d been standing by the buffet where sandwiches and small cakes were arranged. He was drinking punch that someone had thankfully pumped a quart of Jamison into. Baby pictures, wedding pictures, pictures of a holiday by the sea when the kids were little. Birthdays, anniversaries, even newspaper clippings, these surprisingly about Jury himself, his picture at the top. Inspector, chief inspector. Some years ago. Brendan had been telling the truth, then: she must have been proud of him and his job.

Brendan came up to put a hand on Jury’s shoulder. He was drunk or on his way to being.

Jury said to him, ‘It’s quite a crowd, Brendan. All of us should be so well remembered. But, you know, I was a bit surprised Sarah hadn’t become a Catholic.’

Brendan laughed. ‘Not my Sarah, no way. She always said she’d live up here in godforsaken Newcastle, but she was damned if she’d change her religion.’

Brendan was pointing at the picture collage. ‘She clipped all that stuff, sometimes the same story from two different papers. She had a shoebox full of newspaper clippings.’

Absurdly, Jury found himself getting angry with Sarah. ‘Our memories didn’t seem to mesh. She seemed to enjoy making a point of it.’

‘Ah, for God’s sakes, man. I told you last time you were here she’s just takin’ the piss out, is all. Look at you. You’d never have gor to the top of your job without being able to sort people. Why couldn’t you her?’

Jury hardly knew what to say.

Brendan went on: ‘She thought you let her down, Richard. See, she depended on you for the news. That’s what she said.’

Stupidly, Jury said, ‘What news?’

Brendan laughed. ‘Any news. From London, maybe. She put it that way: ‘I wish Richard would come and bring the news.’ I don’t know what she meant, exactly.’

‘Neither do I,’ said Jury, sadly.

His train didn’t leave until six, so he thought he’d grab a taxi and go across the river to the Baltic, a place he’d never been in - well, that was true enough. Where had he been in Newcastle, except to the pub with Brendan or taking the kids Christmas shopping that one year? A long time ago. That was a visit he would never forget, not the part with the kids, but the part before that - Old Washington and Washington Old Hall. Helen Minton and the most adolescent love at first sight, it still made him blush to remember. Well, that hadn’t lasted, had it, mate? Old Hall. It struck him as ironic that George Washington’s forebears would come from a little village slap up against another little one like Washington and its half dozen pubs on its single street. Where they liked to joke and say that wasn’t sawdust on the pub’s floor, but the furniture left from last night’s brawl. Fighting seemed to be a cottage industry; they fought out of frustration and anger at their unemployed plight.

Jury was in the taxi now, looking out over the Tyne and the incredible bridges that spanned it. He bet they could compete with New York and those bridges that linked Manhattan and Brooklyn and the rest.

The driver, reading his mind said, ‘See that new Millennium Bridge is being built. Oh, that’s goin’ t’ be a corker when it’s done.’ He nodded toward the middle distance where huge cranes appeared to be floating on the river. ‘Knock y’r eye out, that will. You’ll be able to spit at any other bridge in the world. You know how it’s going to work?’ The driver was trying to herd Jury’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

‘No. I don’t know anything about it.’

‘Like an eyelid, like an eyelid comin’ slowly up.’

Jury smiled. ‘I can’t picture that.’

‘See, it tilts; the whole bridge tilts so the ships can get through. The blinking eye is what they call it.’

Jury wondered at his accent. ‘You from the south?’

The driver thought this was funny. ‘Not on your life. County Durham, that’s me. You been there? To Durham?’

Jury closed his eyes. Back with Helen Minton. Here came another memory rushing toward him faster than the end of the bridge. Jerusalem Inn. He wondered how it was two people .... Jury shook his head. Was any chapter of one’s life ever irrecoverably closed? Or written off?

‘Here you are, mate.’

‘Big place,’ said Jury, getting out.

‘It’s big all right. Me, I never been. But I figure people that live in a place are the last to see around it.’

‘You’re right.’ He handed over the cab fare and a big tip.

It raised the driver’s eyebrows much like Jury now imagined the Millennium Bridge would rise. ‘Listen, how far’s Newcastle Station from here?’

‘Newcastle Central? Ah, you can walk it in fifteen minutes. Signs all along. Y’ can’t miss it.’

Jury was surprised by the Baltic, by the scope of it. It was divided, according to the map, into ‘levels’ rather than floors, and all in all the place housed several restaurants, a cinema, artists’ studios and, most prominently, of course, art.

Jury felt he moved clumsily among the paintings, abstract and indescribable, and strange installations. He felt old hat in his preference for Millais and Rossetti, whose content you could hunger after and feed upon. He wondered, though, if it was the present art’s emptiness or his own he was feeling and excused himself from looking any longer at the paintings. He went up another level to catch a view of Newcastle from the observation room. The enclosure, all windows nearly, jutted out from the west wall of the Baltic and allowed a panoramic look over Newcastle, the Tyne and Gateshead. Night was falling, and the lights across the Tyne had switched on. Jury was slightly stunned by the view of the Newcastle skyline. It was sensational; it was better than any view of Southwark across the Thames, with the fairy lights of the National Theatre complex, Tower Bridge and the docks and quays. Along with most people, he had long identified Newcastle as a scruffy, down-at-the-heel, doleful place - Lord knows, hardly a destination city. But from up here it was anything but; this made Jury feel better about Brendan’s lot; he wasn’t after all living in an environment of unrelenting drabness.

He had to go; he had to catch his train.

Near the exit was a bookshop. He went in and looked through a bin of prints, thinking he might buy one. He came upon one that he was sure wasn’t in the Baltic’s collection. It showed a cartoonish family around a table set for a meal. Their eyes were so dark they looked masked. The dinner table was set in deep grass, swamp or mire, probably, with water in the background. On their plates or in their hands were butterflies. It was called The Butterfly Eaters, He thought about this surreal picture for a moment and wondered if they were feeding on illusion or ambiguity. He returned the print to the bin.

He left the Baltic and began his fifteen-minute walk to Newcastle Central. The driver was right: the way was clearly marked, a trail of signs directing him to the station. One couldn’t take a wrong turn or lose one’s way.

Jury stopped and for a moment, in his mind’s eye, he saw the row of old alders in front of Angel Gate. He saw the white crosses.

He bought a coffee and a dried-out sausage roll from a kiosk at the train station. He hadn’t been able to eat at the reception. He was catching the 6:10 train to King’s Cross. He read a local newspaper and tossed it aside, not wanting to read anymore about the depressed North.

He sat on a bench and after a few sips of coffee - bitter and metallic - fitted the top back over the cup and dropped it in the refuse bin along with the rest of the sausage roll. Then he walked along the platform. He had been in this station several times and found it pretty depressing. But weren’t most railway stations, even those with the bustle and business of King’s Cross or Victoria? They were places to say good-bye; rarely did he witness people saying hello, and he wondered why.