Desire Line (4 page)

That was all yesterday.

At home, I work in an alcove at a desk and chair once Libby's husband's. I did the balancing trick on the chair's hind legs, back and back, a touch for insurance. Lifted the fingertip. Everyone likes to
say
they live simply but with my past I have to. So around me were enough personal items to fill a small bag. Next door, clothes would stuff another. Furniture and fittings all property of the owner— Get out, Yori! It was a lost cause when you returned— and
now
? The news presenter described ‘a wave washing through the Victorian streets'
which sounds pleasant, sounds refreshing. It meant filth from forgotten sumps was coating the promenade as it retreated. Not to mention the sewage
.
My money would be on a treacly cascade along Wellington Road right this minute.

Find a marker pen, tear a page from the sketchpad and attach to Glenn's chest,
Good-bye from Y. Have left.
(I'd never done it willingly before because as an eight-year-old I'd been dragged choking on my own snot into a waiting taxi.) And get going!
–
an easy option for someone with resources, someone like me. No trains? Hire a car. Travel straight inland then east across the English border. As for Libby what about
Good luck from Y. Best of luck. Be lucky!
Whereas with Tess, who I'd have to consider once I was away clear, I mean would the whole thing work in a change of place—?

Without opening his eyes Glenn said, ‘Got a drink?'

‘Alcohol? No. Libby will have some when she comes in.'

The expression on his comic book face was cartoon-disgust. ‘S'no good. Think I'll go see what's what.' Then he was getting into the waterproofs, searching the pockets, his big face coming alive. ‘I'll bring us something if anywhere's cooking.'

He was coming back. How bad could this day get? ‘I've already started preparation. There's plenty in.'

‘I bet.' Glenn didn't classify my diet as food. ‘Won't be long. You be here?'

‘Where else?'

Soon as he'd gone, the curtains stopped bellying out and returned to the vertical like he'd taken a chunk of chaos with him. My tidy desktop lay undisturbed from last night closing
QuayStInfill
even though real Quay Street would probably be unrecognisable at this moment and the sketch that lay there out of date. My eyes surveyed a room whose wallpaper (Libby's choice) was covered by two years of aids to memory, uncountable man-hours of work capturing the very best of Rhyl— so
was
that it? Seemed to be. I took a breath. Down came a favourite, ‘Tall Hooded Windows' (could've been lifted straight out of William Morris's Red House in Kent but belonged to Davies & Daughter, Contract Cleaners.) Next to go was ‘Massive Boundary Stone.' It was to our doomed the 1870's Winter Gardens, the first opened in Britain with a skating rink, archery butts and zoo that bankrupted the founder. And of course ‘Quay Street Cottage' went. Senseless because I'd no idea what had been smashed or how many records remained useful, only that sacrifice was a must. No balancing act involved. It was a decision I'd regret – that was the point. Pain. Pain is pleasure. Salt is sweet. Suck it up and smile. To prevent backsliding, the entire collection of a hundred plus gets shredded straight away and makes a tidy package wrapped in ‘Greek Key Brickwork And High Baroque In Seabank Road'– took an entire weekend to complete.

To fill the vacuum I choose to put on Hitchcock's
The Trouble with Harry.
Its plush Vermont landscape, frame after frame artworks in themselves, is about as far from Rhyl as you can get. I enjoy the early shots taken using a dead man's POV, especially the feathered trees seen from between his feet. The killer kid with his toy gun. You know the boy is going to be a handicap to Shirley MacLaine's love life once the last reel finishes— but then, keeping an eye out for the director's walkthrough twenty minutes in, I manage to miss him as he strolls past a stationary limousine. Has
already
strolled past when I'm back from swallowing an extra something at the sink which seemed only sensible. I had to apologise to AH. Not amused. Top of my Ten Unremakeable Movies it might be but even
you
can't save this day from Rhyl's tendency to slob out. Talking of which, Glenn finally lurches in with the dusk and fills the room up. ‘You don't wanna know!' he says just as wonderful Shirley's delivering her best line in the entire film about frosted glass.

A quick glance tells Glenn there'd been a change in here but not what, the pure lager breath having something to do with that. With all his gestures even bigger and contradicting himself, we get a repeat performance, throwing his ape's arms wide, piling on the impressions, his mouth ludicrously mobile. The hot news of a missing teenager plus two adults drowned in a camper van doesn't get the response he hopes for— the deaths were already stale, posted in the hope of keeping Rhyl's Wave going. I listen to descriptions of windfarm rotors lying on the beach, my newly-planted cherry trees washed out of their holes together with their guards, a baby Fiat car floating offshore like a plastic duck asking to be hooked. Glenn was at least an incident— and for a few hours the storm made addicts of us. ‘And my place! Can't even get in there to look till tomorrow.' (This was yet another catastrophe though I didn't pick up on it right away.) ‘I'll tell you what,' he took the tea I'd made as if ordered, switching suddenly to sober, ‘it's had a fuckin' good go at us.'

And The Wave had one more surprise, an anonymous extra to the three dead, though unreported that first day. This person came inland with the main deluge before starting a tour, (a bit like a tripper!) of both East and West Parades. Passing the major attractions, then through good old Quay Street into Marine Lake, he/she stranded with the drainings on the riverbank. A greater mass of water, an extra pulse of ebbing tide, might have sent him/her back to sea and not become flotsam, incomplete and cradled by a portion of old cockle-dredge. Some limbs were missing and the front of the cranium had seen particular abuse which might or might not be important.

Things I learned pretty quickly
post
that I didn't know
pre
.

1. Every year 400-plus people drown in Britain and those are just the reported ones.

2. Any not recovered from the sea can be skeletonised in less than a couple of months, mainly by crabs.

3. After determining sex, race, age and height, plenty of teeth are your best hope of identity.

All of which means time went by before it – before
she –
got back her name. Sara Meredith. Forgotten by some but never by me.

Chapter 3

Nor by my father. Shame to the Japanese is a serious business. After our brief exchange that same week about Rhyl's hardly-world-class Wave, we ran out of words. Then once I convinced myself the impossible had happened, I let days lapse before revealing to him that she was here with us. Because Tomiko knew as much re: the crimes against Sara as I did, another good reason the ancient city of Kochi that lured him home several times, finally kept him.
No dishonour, Sato Tomiko.
If you always lacked enthusiasm for a son, you'd got alibis. My unplanned arrival was one, as well as Tomiko's age at not even nineteen. I've forgiven him because dragging along resentment is like tying a weight to your own foot. My father says so. It's our joke, his motto for every occasion. Tripping over for the seventh time. Finding a tiger is sharing your cave.

He's never invited me to visit Kochi. From Tomiko I get sandy skin, eyes with their secret lids, irises the colour of mahogany and little else. But there's a camera in his studio – he's an artist, a watercolourist though working just in inks now – and any time I want I drop in. I'm happy to watch him on the other side of the world, the flick of wrist and tetchy brushwork saying he hasn't caught what he's after. Again. Or I speak and get ignored which I'm well used to. My father's aged like a character in a long-running series. If I search out pictures (he and my mother on the beach, say, me in between balanced on a donkey) I'm amazed at his youth, the way people are with their favourite actors. But a scar, the first thing anyone would notice, Tomiko's had since before I was born. It blazes a comet trail across his forehead. He laughs, says, ‘Another man's best work!' Lacking it, a bridgeless nose, workaday chin and just one slightly chipped incisor would've made for blandness. Wrong implication. This is a face fronting up real passion so that rusty scar, the Japanese
no
symbol of a dipped sword, big improvement. When we do talk I can compliment him with, ‘You look well
otosan
.'

I should say something else about him. While I was growing up, Tomiko's major plus as a father were his stories. Not every night – do not count the skins of uncaught dogs! – but on nights when least expected. Winding me up, pretending he had to get away quickly, he'd then act out a glimpse of ‘Old Nihon'. Our draughty first home boasted a live-in kitchen shared with other residents, a bathroom above and— one more flight— at its apex our own space, the converted loft you could see the sea from. The stairs were always lit because of a child's fear of the dark.

So here's Tomiko carrying the boy Yori in his arms, a small body padded out against Welsh midwinter.

‘Goodnight Yori.'

His father's shadow leaping along the wall has raced them to the top. Now it seems anxious to get out of the room again. On this particular night the child pleaded, expecting a refusal which came. No more unskinned dogs though. His mother and Tomiko had argued over them, as they did over everything. ‘There are not always fish under a willow tree,' he said in lieu. But he didn't leave.

‘There was once,' he began, ‘a
fisherman whose fortune was low. It's winter – exactly like now – but fiercer. Big wind rages. He rowed out to fish and each time he's scared it will be last.' The bed rocked with the force of the breakers and then Tomiko was up and staggering around a room that had become a shifting deck. ‘He wants to eat he must go. But the fish had left this part of the sea. Very small catches now
.
' An invisible sardine was chased across the bed cover and escaped overboard. Yori shrieked with pleasure. ‘And then when life can't get worse his net, most important thing, is fastened by stone on the bottom. He pulls and pulls – really hard work – and gets big hole right across. Useless!'

The net was held up and a hand poked through. Yori loved his father's voice which softened over the local dips and rises, unlike every voice heard, even his mother's and his own. Tomiko's English was at its very best during this period with fewer surplus vowels. Once back in the long silences of his Japanese studio it corroded.

‘Useless,' Tomiko repeated. Use-less, the child parroted into the bedclothes.

‘That night the fisherman walks up the beach. Snow falls. He was hungry and cold. He bumped into trees and rocks and even a horse because the snow was so thick –
anyway at last he found home. And at his door a little fox! Beautiful and her eyes green – but the snow was covering her red coat and the fisherman saw the fox was hurt in the paw. Till then the fisherman thought nobody was more sad than him. But the fox was the most sad animal ever seen. So he shared his last piece of food. He called her Sister Fox – and when she went off into the dark he slept in his cold house not swept. His dream is foxes.

‘We go fast now. Fisherman comes home next night. Still no fish. Very hungry! But big surprise! House is lit and warm and swept. Pot boils. Bath is ready. A beautiful lady puts down his dinner – no words, just dinner. He asks her many questions but she warns him off like this.' Tomiko made a shield of his hand. ‘When he falls asleep she is making up the fire – when he is awake she is gone. Twice again is same. At last he can't wait any more – his tongue kicks in his mouth. He's got to get answer.

‘She tells him she is from Fox People. Her people and ours cannot speak. Now she breaks the rule, she can never come again. The fisherman cries salt. But in the morning, on his boat is a fine new net. Good luck comes too – he catches fish! One day the village matchmaker finds him a pretty wife to marry.'

His father told other stories but Fox People remained Yori's favourite.

It ends, ‘Foxes and women are a lot the same. And if ever a woman is followed, a man must take care. If you're seen she turns into a fox and escapes. Never follow a woman when you have evil in your heart. The Fox People will punish you for rest of your life.'

Yet if you don't follow the woman when the opportunity comes along, you'll punish yourself for the rest of life. As his father says, ‘The reverse also has a reverse side.' Which is why Yori followed Sara Meredith, wife of the same Josh Meredith he failed to contact the day The Wave came. She'd abandoned her car on a still-intact West Parade to ask directions.

He watches as she gets maybe a word in return and is left hesitant till a gull big as a turkey crashlands at her feet. Mad-eyed, the eagle-beak spattered like a blood-feeder, that gets her moving.

Sharing a slice of childhood is my way of establishing trust. Because façade's a term of abuse these days and getting behind one's meant to be a good thing. I don't know. There's my mainly Japanese (handsome) face, for instance. It's not very flat but not very light. The eyes are too deep-set to fool a true
nihonjin.
Of course I'm lean. Any flabby Japanese you think you see are Korean. I'm average height. My look's clean-shaven, easy for me, but to short circuit the minor issue of appearance, think a young Archie Kao. Usually I'm dressed down to dull, a lot of black, though the clothes are top quality which I got used to and you can never go back on something like that. But Rhyl's been made for outsiders, a real melting pot, so walking through these streets with the savvy of a native, you might take me for one of you. Wrong. Behind my façade are rooms you couldn't guess the function of, full of things you'd throw away. And they're not built for anyone's comfort, certainly not mine— but this is two stories. Sara that I followed the day she arrived is the main one.
So get off stage, Yori!
Address always Chief Person in room.
And you can gauge Sara's importance by the fact that when her body washed up it made the town's troubles into nothing.