Desire Line (46 page)

And an achiever. Henri Fortun, activist, zoologist, journalist, spokesperson, a professional ‘talker back', as that Camille woman would have it, who'd loved my mother since forever in the only way she'd been able to be loved, with no interest on your investment expected. Or paid a lot of the time, knowing Eurwen. Yeah, Yori, who could explain the attraction?

I let go the door and went and found Eurwen out under a no-colour sky smudged with white. The yard was wide enough to accommodate a truck's turning circle but tree seedlings and weeds showed up crack-lines in the hard standing and she'd need to decide soon how much to resurface and how much to green. Some planting would improve the aspect from her living quarters which at the moment was flat, dull and worn out whereas she'd been able to view Jarn Mound above a sea of tree tops and once the Irish Sea itself from an attic. But not a bit bothered at having her environment degraded, she was cheerfully going about her dog-feeding. It was almost done in fact. While she gathered empty bowls from the crazed concrete, dogs of every size and sort milled around her. Nothing pale, though, and nothing long-coated. She sighed when I drew attention to this – told me these sleeker, dark ones were hardest to rehome. Lighter and fluffy were prized. There were a dozen at least I estimated and no identifiable breeds among the pack, just thickset or leggy, square-headed or tapering. One tragic-eyed monster stood high as her hip bones, another low tubular thing skittered around on two hind limbs and a single front, like a trick it kept on performing and you kept on expecting it to fail.

It shrank from me touching. ‘How many have you got?'

That earned me a glare. ‘They come and go. Now Bilbo here – the lab cross – he's down the road on Monday. We've found him a home. He's for Henley-on-Thames and going up in the world. Good adopters are like gold dust.'

‘Hard to believe. I guess you're after a dependable maybe older couple—?'

‘Mm, yes.'

‘With a big country house and, oh, the income to support— a dog, say?'

‘Ideally.'

The dogginess intensified, a corn chip and motel bed combo with a hint of nettles. They weaved their way around behind me which I resented, hitting the backs of my knees, circling and jostling for Eurwen's notice, nosing her. Three-legs showed its teeth. The monster whimpered. Otherwise the canine tension became sub-vocal and almost worse than their racket. Something seemed about to happen. ‘What next?'

She smiled properly, fully, this time, obviously content and in no hurry and sensing it, the animals dispersed in two and threes. A wrestling game started with some shoulder charges. I dodged away. ‘I don't know,' she said, enjoying it, enjoying herself. ‘Whatever you like. I do the chickens, usually.'

Out in the dull morning her face was a pale oval above her dark sweater, with every ingredient familiar, the slight freckling, the perfect symmetry prevented by that small mole contained in one eyebrow nine out of ten people wouldn't notice. The best-known features in the world, mine included. In step, we walked from the modern timber kennels and the wired dog runs, left agape – I resisted suggesting we round the dogs up and call a halt to playtime – to our next appointment in an older, brick outhouse. Set at right angles it formed a third boundary to the yard and had been a store for some useful commodity in the gravel business. There weren't any other structures showing above the shaggy privet that hemmed in the fourth side of the enclosure and cut off further views. ‘So do you like living here?'

‘Oh, yes.'

What did I expect—
no?
In fact, what did I want? Never mind all that about passing for sixteen. She'd had me at sixteen, a child-project she probably never tendered for but found herself pulled into anyway— and managed to complete. She'd produced me when she didn't need to, at sixteen, half my own age, well nearly— now I was bending the numbers her way. But who'd have ever put money on Eurwen seeing it through?

Not me. Not someone who'd stayed away for five years— because I hadn't allowed things to lapse or been sidetracked. I'd been keeping apart. So you're here now under cover of a tidying up job, Yori? Or to get a response, even if it means opening an old wound?

I was Bad Son.

Shame. Like a ton of gravel. I took her image in from a few metres off, bent over the doorlock, childlike in the way she braced her whole body as she fought it— I could hear her hard-breathing anger from this distance. Just as all those times as a child, now it kept me from going forward. Doing the obvious by saying let me have a go. Instead while she fiddled with a rusted finger-latch I surveyed where I'd come to after dark. The bungalow's pretty much as expected, gaunt, nineteen-thirties buff brickwork, every course of which needed raking out and repointing as part of a complete refurb. New lights would have to be made to order to fit five identical punctuations of glazing— make that new frames. The list wrote itself. Three replacement downspouts. A fan-shaped stain unfurled beneath a length of soffit added of its own accord, ‘and guttering'.

‘That's a good slate roof you've up there, anyway. Uncommon for this area—'

‘If you say so.' She was really labouring with the latch but when I leaned over and did it then grabbed the bottom part of a stable door, she snapped, ‘Don't open it any further! What d'you think you're doing, Yori? If they get out this way, the dogs will have them.'

‘Really?'

‘
Really
.'

We ducked into the poultry fustiness, poorly illuminated and made unbearable by the mismatched hens' frantic dashes through sawdust. Their noise wasn't up to the dogs' level but – higher-pitched and madder – it was as horrible. Eurwen of course clucked soothingly. My eyes prickled and then a violent sneeze threatened to knock me backwards.

‘Try not to scare the feathers off them, will you? It's winter next week.'

‘I was thinking—'

‘Open that far hatch. They'll go out themselves.'

‘I could come down here again for—'

‘Well you've found your way once.'

‘—a couple of weeks, maybe—'

‘
Fully open!
Let them see the outside. Now get further away. You're scaring them. Further!'

‘—and do repairs.' The chickens formed up into a squad and made a break for the outside. Slamming the hatch down with force enough to threaten the hinges repaid me with a finale of squawks. I made for fresh air myself, holding my breath, desperate for the yard.

She was waiting, her expression dry. ‘There's no cockerel now.'

‘What happened?'

‘The fox! Probably the vixen that was in the lane last night, just before you got here— when I was looking out.'

‘You were looking out?'

We swished back though a drift of fallen leaves, litter from a shrub well-established up against the kitchen wall, an elder whose roots I could feel strangling the drains beneath each tread. She put an arm through mine. Any minute now, she reminded me the
girls
would be dropped off. It was my turn to smile –
Of course
–
being one of the things we'd talked about till the early hours
. No never lonely. Henri's here.
Pleased that it was only
most of the time
,
I hadn't paid attention to her next sentence.
I'm so busy and there are the girls.
She'd gone on to name them, Zadie or Dodie or whatever she was called, the one who just loved ponies and donkeys— the other was mad keen to walk dogs. My imagination, or was that a vehicle now jolting along the track I'd cycled in blackness, losing faith in Eurwen's welcome?

Why had it taken me so long? Why become addicted to missing her instead of just seeing her? Why never sugar and always salt?

Forget everything. Forget Sara even because for now Eurwen was as much of her as I wanted. Again and under her roof. ‘That's good Welsh slate up there,' I repeated. ‘A thirty-degree pitch, probably copper-nailed. At least that's all right.'

She left to do messaging. I lurked outside. It was definitely clearing. Though the temperature would linger at seven or eight degrees till the sun got stronger, it was absolutely still, a rarity back home. The fine day was forecast in one corner of the screen, but I was looking at Glenn's big ruddy face. ‘Amazing huh?' he smirked. ‘Did I tell you last night? Casino Pigalle made more per person in Rhyl than
anywhere else
in UK last year. We're top at something! Us! That's how we got the grant. So how fuckin' long are you slackin' down there?'

Lovely Linda Darnell or Cassie Pigalle or Tess or whoever, had come across after all. The only condition being a pair of mega Casino lightboards had to stand either end of PalmWalk. I could live with that— one of my best girls to start and finish, I could certainly live with that. And it opened up a complete new plotline for me and Tess. ‘Not sure.' She'd just need to be incorporated, another design challenge. ‘Not long.'

‘So that mug? You worked it out yet? Na— 'course not! What they do is—'.

‘I've nearly got it. But can't talk now.'

‘Hey! Yori. Don't you wanna know what that boat's called? William Jones's?'

‘Has he launched? Send it. Yes— of course I do.
What?
'

‘Tell you when I see you,' he said.

See you later
Eurwen was promising somebody at her workstation, still in her heavy woollen and boots. I didn't want to spy and risk identifying Henri,
—and don't worry!
she said, full of sympathy for somebody,
We'll fit them in. We will! And we can always—

I darted through into the hall and came back with the gift. Her fingers still worked but she glanced up. ‘All done.'

Did she see the box, me waiting with the box, my hands lining the box up along the edge of the table? ‘I've brought you this.'

‘Which is?'

‘Just something.'

I'd already stripped away sheets of shred-wrap. She decided to play. Now she was looking at the box I'd made specially from rag-board and lacquered to an egg-shell finish. Long and deep, not wide, it could contain a musical instrument or a weapon. What she had to do was touch the button which said OPEN! But she drummed her finger-tips. No wonder she wound animals up just by being next to them. ‘Is it going to leap out at me now?'

‘No way would I—'

‘All right.'

Finally she pressed the button. Four sides fell back each taking a segment of the top with it. A 1:2000 scale model of PalmWalk sat there, the thick band of ultramarine I'd used for water standing out instantly, then gold for sand, and last the emerald way itself. Tiny resin structures along it, all pastel shades and deep ochre, showed a level of detail way past the skill of a Sato Tomiko, aka Soon To Be Decided, sorry
otosan
. It was the sort of detail you couldn't have produced even a couple of years ago and I'd bought myself the new ruinously expensive printer especially for this. Yet in among miniature planting my buildings were what the eye worked hardest to pick out – exactly how it would be in years to come. ‘That's West Parade—' she said, ‘ah, it's your path!'

‘The first half. Toughest part.' I was all prepared to conduct her from Blue Bridge to Old Woolworths—

‘Very good!' The tip of one finger hovered over shrubs the size of lavender sprigs across from a pygmy hotel, now restored in all its lemon and terracotta glory. It had reminded Sara of Keble College once, or a Keble in some parallel, blasted Oxford. The trees I could've told Eurwen were native sea buckthorn,
Hippophae rhamnoides
,
and a lot cheaper than palms. Which was why nearly three hundred would be needed to fill out the exotics along the route. (Oh and tougher. If we ever did have another frost in Rhyl
they
wouldn't need replacing.) ‘Thank-you. For the model. It's very— seducing.'
Yes.
I was ecstatic with the word. That was exactly what it should be. ‘You were always making them when you were little.'

‘Not like this—' but the vile dogs restarted and she jumped up to go look and, catching one edge of the table, sent a seismic tremble down West Parade and a mini typhoon sweeping through the buckthorns. An omen. I steadied the base and pushed it further into the middle for safety.

‘I haven't hurt it,' she said.

‘No.'

‘It's not alive.'

We never got things right. ‘Come on,' she was at the open door. ‘Can I look later? Here's—' the rest was drowned out by the worst din so far. I tried to make myself heard and failed. The teenage girl leading a donkey around the corner of the henhouse thought it hilarious. She nodded and mouthed
Hiya
to Eurwen, ignored me, and tethered the animal to a ring in the wall just as it let out another ear-splitting two-syllable bellow.