The Race (27 page)

“I’ve done something very wrong,” Christy said, and then stopped. She seemed to shrink inside her clothes, to diminish, and Alex knew she must be feeling what he was feeling, that sense of embarrassment that hits you when you’ve been assuming the person you’re talking to understands you perfectly and then you suddenly realise you’ve been in different conversations all along.

“You think Linda’s dead, don’t you?” Alex said. Understanding flowered inside him, unfurling inside his head like the fragrant, curlicued petals of night scented stock. Who wrote that? Alex thought, then realised that Christy herself had written it, or something like it, when she was describing the blood seeping from under the dancer’s toenails in her story ‘Allegra’. “You think Derek killed her.”

“I should have warned her,” Christy said. “She didn’t know what he was like, not really. Nobody did. I let her down. I should have called the police but I didn’t. It’s all my fault.” There were tears in her eyes now, diamond-bright, glistening globules. As Alex watched, one of them toppled over the rim of her lower eyelid and fell into her lap.

“It’s not though,” Alex said. He realised with wonderment that his presence here was required after all, that there was a point to all this. That he had been called, as Aunt Clo might have said, for a reason. “It’s not right. Linda’s not dead. What on Earth made you think she was dead?”

Christy looked up at him from where she sat on the corduroy sofa, her eyes still full of tears and a dawning bewilderment. “I saw Derek,” she said. “The night Linda disappeared. I couldn’t find Linda anywhere, and there was all this blood on Derek’s sleeve, dried blood. Then later on I found Linda’s engagement ring.”

After they had eaten their lunch she showed it to him, a cluster of diamonds and pearls on a yellow gold band. Alex had never seen the ring before, and he realised that Linda had most likely taken it off before each of their meetings. She must have given it back to Derek in the end, a final way of telling him that things really were over between them.

It would have hurt her to do that, Alex knew. Linda always loved pretty things, delighted in them like a magpie, like a child. It had been one of the most charming and innocent aspects of her character.

“I found it in the garage of our old house on Laton Road,” Christy was saying. “It was in one of the drawers of the old tallboy Derek always used for storing his sales receipts. I came back to help Derek with the house, you see. To clear it out before he went to Australia. I suspected for years that Derek might have done something terrible to Linda but I kept telling myself I had to be wrong, that if anything had happened to her I would have heard something. Finding the ring brought everything back. But by then – I don’t know, it just seemed too late for me to say anything. It would have looked like I’d been covering up for him. I couldn’t bear the thought of it.”

“Derek’s in Australia?” The news had caught Alex so off guard he had barely taken in the rest of what she was telling him. There was something almost mythical about it, this conclusion to the Peller saga, the kind of thing that only normally happened in stories.

“Yes. He went out there to be with our mother. I think he likes it there, better than he liked it here, anyway. I just hope he stays there.”

~*~

“But Derek having the ring didn’t mean Linda was dead,” Alex said later. “You must have realised that, surely?”

“I was frightened,” Christy said. “I didn’t want to know the truth, so I let things carry on the way they were.”

~*~

Two days after Peller’s attack on him, Alex tried calling Linda’s flat again, but it was the same as before, the phone just ringing and ringing with no reply. By then he was feeling worried as well as angry. He had been over their final telephone conversation so many times he no longer knew how much of it was a genuine memory and how much was invention. Either way, there was nothing that offered a clue as to what had happened. She’d said she would be home late, that was all.

She had not been joking.

In the silence of the dingy flat on Devonshire Place the idea that Linda had gone back to Derek, after everything that had happened, began to seem less and less likely. That had been his own paranoia speaking. Linda was impulsive but she wasn’t crazy. Alex telephoned the flat again the next day and the next, and when after three more days there was still no reply he called the dance school and asked if he could speak to Linda Warren. There was a long pause while he was put on hold, then the switchboard operator, Susan her name was, came back on the line and told him that Linda wasn’t available.

“She’s teaching at the moment,” Susan said, and the smug knowingness in her voice was all that Alex needed to know that she was lying. Linda was there all right, she just didn’t want to speak to him.

He slammed the receiver back into its cradle. Tears dug into his cheeks, like shards of hot glass.

In that moment Alex knew he’d had it with the town, and with Linda too. It was time to leave.

Looking back on it now, Alex knew that if it hadn’t been for his fury at Linda he would probably not have had the courage to make a break for it.

In a way, he owed Linda his future. He owed her everything.

He saw her again, just the once, years later, coming out of a delicatessen on the Fulham Road. He recognised her immediately – her way of walking, that gossamer lightness, was unmistakable. She was wearing a pair of old tracksuit bottoms and plain black plimsolls. She was as lovely as she ever was, perhaps even lovelier.

It did the world good, Alex thought, just to have her in it. He no longer thought about or cared why she left him, so suddenly and without explanation. She was sick of them both most likely, him and Derek Peller. Probably she wanted her freedom as much as he did.

Whatever. It was a lifetime ago. So over.

As she stepped down from the pavement their eyes met. For a second Alex felt sure that Linda recognised him, that she was about to say something. Then she looked past him over his shoulder and walked away.

~*~

“Linda’s not dead,” Alex said to Christy. “She just moved on, that’s all, the way we all do.”

~*~

They went outside. A fresh breeze was blowing. They walked down along the edge of the playing fields towards Castle Meadow.

“What made you come back here?” Alex said. “To Hastings, I mean?”

“It was the money really,” Christy said. “Half the money from Laton Road was mine. There was just enough for me to buy this house outright – I couldn’t have afforded to do that in London.” She pushed her small hands into the pockets of her jeans. “And after Peter died I felt I needed a change.”

“Peter was your husband?”

“We were never married, but we lived together for almost twenty years. Peter died of cancer. I still miss him.”

Alex fell silent, not wanting to crowd her memories with unnecessary speech. “Do you think you’ll stay here?” he said at last.

“I’m not sure what I’ll do in the long run. But it’s fine for now.” She shook her head, and Alex had the sense that she was still trying to get to grips with things, to sort out the facts as she now understood them from the fictions that had tormented her for so long. “Thank you for coming, Alex. I can’t tell you how much today means to me. It’s such a relief to finally know the truth.”

“I’m glad I came.” And it was true, he was glad. He knew his time with her had changed things. In some unaccountable way it had straightened him out. A part of him wanted to confide this to her, to explain, but his greater self resisted.

He knew it was not Christy Peller he should be talking to now. Their time together was done.

They sat down to rest on a bench at the edge of the playing fields. Alex watched the monster gulls, banking and swooping and diving in the gusty cross drafts. They’re like spirits of themselves, he thought. The idea of gulls, become wild fantasies. Grey ghosts.

“Do you think I was a coward?” Christy asked suddenly.

“No more than anyone,” Alex said. “No more than me, anyway.” And then he was remembering what happened in Freetown, the euphoria of those first days, the sense that finally he was doing something, being someone, going where he ought to be going. Those first days it had not even felt particularly dangerous to be there. There was a lot of hanging out in cafes, a lot of talk of revolution and
the establishment of a free state
, a phrase that was used and reused until it finally disintegrated into a slogan. Then the woman journalist was shot in the face and everything changed. Alex had never spoken to her but he had seen her around. He knew her name was Stef and that she worked for Reuter’s.

He started to shake all over when he heard. He was unable to fit his image of the young woman in khaki Bermudas to the words, coarsened as they were by fear and grief, of the older, more experienced newspaperman who told him what happened to her.

“Her whole lower jaw’s gone. Frigging mess her face is now, worse than an animal. If you ask me she’d be better off dead.”

Alex felt that the man had shown him a tiny, perfect glimpse into hell. He had tried to forget, not to know, but the thought of the woman’s shattered face would not leave him. He was too afraid to go and see her, but he wrote a report of the incident, including comment by witnesses, and then flew home to London. He sold the story almost the minute he stepped off the plane. The paper that bought it soon got back in touch and asked him if he was interested in doing a piece on factory closures in Sheffield.

We like your style
, they said.
You have a freshness of approach that is most unusual
.

He accepted the commission at once. He knew that what had happened with the Reuter’s woman had forever put an end to his idea of himself as a war correspondent.

This had been the shape of his cowardice.

Whatever. It was an age ago. So over.

~*~

He said goodbye to Christy Peller and made his way back to the B&B. He dozed on the bed for a while, then washed and changed and had supper at the Jenny Lind. He treated himself to a cognac, then decided he would return to his room at Church View and watch some mindless TV.

When he was halfway up the Bourne he stopped. He took out his mobile phone and keyed Janet’s number.

He was afraid that Leonie might answer, because it was Janet he wanted to speak to, and having Leonie there in the background would only distract him. He was in luck though, it was Jan who picked up. She sounded surprised to hear him, but in a good way, Alex thought, or at least he hoped so.

“Hey you,” Alex said. He hadn’t said hey you to her in months. “How are things?”

“Things are fine,” Janet said. “You sound odd though. Has something happened?”

“I want to come home,” Alex said. “I made a mistake.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” Janet said. “The trouble is they can’t always be put right again.”

“This one can,” Alex said. When he realised he believed his own words, his heart seemed to turn in his chest and perform a somersault.

Maud’s hair is long, to her waist. In the winter months it goes dark, like the rain-dampened roofs of Asterwych, dark as peat. In summer it reveals flecks of amber, the same colour as the soft down on her calves and forearms. The hair between her legs is mossy, like pond weed.

Maud is hurting because she knows I am going away. She’s afraid I will forget her.

“Don’t be silly,” I tell her. “We’ll have letters. Letters are better than anything in the world.”

I say this because I want to comfort her, but also because I feel that it’s true. Words written down on paper are better than words spoken out loud, better even than mind-speech. Words written down on paper stay alive. They are the parts of ourselves we secretly bury and leave behind for those who come after us. Written words are like the ancient stone castles of Inverness-shire – they stand and stand and stand.

I tell Maud I won’t have lovers in Kontessa, only friends. We are lying on a blanket on the rough grass that covers the hills that look down on the Croft. Our limbs are lengthening like the days, the air is filled with the scratch of ripe pollen and the rustle of grass seed, the mauve scent of heather. Maud and I paint each other’s shoulder blades and wrists with henna tattoos and pretend that these days, like the summer before them, are not hurtling towards their end.

Their fleetness is terrible: blunt as a hammer blow, cunning as a rat. As the summer wears itself out I find that I am seeing things differently. It’s as if I’m watching myself from the outside, through a spyglass. Everything I do seems interesting suddenly, and also final. I choose to spend more time with Maud than I really want to, because I know that for her these last few weeks feel like the end of her world.

When we have sex I feel as if we’re doing it in front of a camera. I watch myself through the days, growing away from Maud, separating myself from her inside my mind and wondering if this is happening because I know we must part or if it would have happened – was already happening – anyway.

I know a chapter of my own life is ending, but I can’t get away from the idea that this summer is more important for Maud than it is for me.

Perhaps I’m mistaken. Perhaps these days that I am throwing away will turn out to have been the best days of my life.

~*~

A week before I am due to leave I walk into Asterwych on my own and visit the tattoo parlour. When the tat guy asks me what I want, I tell him I want him to make a tattoo of the design that Maud hennaed on to my wrist the day before. The design, like three twisted grass stalks, is still crisp and clear.

“That’ll be fifty shea. All right?”

It is more than I was expecting but I say yes anyway. The tat guy wipes disinfectant over my arm with a cotton wool pad then goes to work. I lie still in the upright leather chair, listening to the whining buzz of the tat gun and feeling the curious burn-prick-burn of the needle thudding in and out of my flesh on its chrome-steel ratchet. It hurts but not too much – I have established that I can bear the pain, and I know it won’t get any worse. I can relax and almost enjoy the sensation, like the first time I had sex with Wolfe when I was fourteen.