Careless In Red (35 page)

“And what did you tell him?”

“I said he should be honest. I said he should always be honest because when people are honest about who they are, what they want, and what they do, it gives other people—this is the people they’re involved with, I mean—the chance to decide if they really want to be with them.” She looked at Bea and her expression was earnest. “So I suppose he was, you see,” she said. “Honest, I mean. And that’s why I’ve come. I think that maybe he’s dead because of it.”

“MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, it’s a question of balance,” was the declaration that Alan used to conclude. “You see that, don’t you, darling?”

Kerra’s hackles stood stiffly. Darling was too much. There was no darling. She was no darling. She thought she’d made that clear to Alan, but the bloody man refused to believe it.

They stood before the glass-fronted notice board in the entry area of the former hotel. Your Instructors was the purpose of their discussion. The imbalance between male and female instructors was Alan’s point. In charge of hiring all of the instructors, Kerra had allowed the balance to swing to females. This was not good for several reasons, according to Alan. For marketing purposes, they needed an equal number of men and women offering instruction in the various activities and, if possible and what was highly desirable, they needed more male than female. They needed the males to be nicely built and good looking because, first of all, such men could serve as a feature to bring unmarried females to Adventures Unlimited and, second of all, Alan intended to use them in a video. He’d lined up a crew from Plymouth to take video footage, by the way, so whatever instructors Kerra came up with also needed to be onboard within three weeks. Or, he supposed—thinking aloud—perhaps they could actually use actors…no, stuntmen…yes, stuntmen could be very good in making the video, actually. The initial outlay would be higher because stuntmen no doubt had some sort of scale upon which they were paid, but it wouldn’t take as long to film them because they’d be professionals, so the final cost would likely not be as high. So…

He was absolutely maddening. Kerra wanted to argue with him, and she had been arguing, but he’d matched her point for point.

He said, “The publicity from that Mail on Sunday article helped us enormously, but that was seven months back, and we’re going to need to do more if we’re to begin heading in the direction of the black. We won’t be in the black of course, not this year and probably not next, but the point is, we have to chip away at debt. So everyone has to consider how best to get us out of the red.”

Red did it for her. Red held her between wanting to run and wanting to argue. She said, “I’m not refusing to hire men, Alan, if that’s what you’re implying. I can hardly be blamed if they’re not applying in droves to work here.”

“It’s not a question of blame,” he reassured her. “But, to be honest, I do wonder how aggressive you’re being in trying to recruit them.”

Not aggressive at all. She couldn’t be. But what was the point in telling him that?

She said, with the greatest courtesy she could manage, “Very well. I’ll start with the Watchman. How much can we spend on an advertisement for instructors?”

“Oh, we’ll need a much wider net than that,” Alan said, affably. “I doubt an ad in the Watchman would do us much good at all. We need to go national: advertisements placed in specialised magazines, at least one for each sport.” He studied the notice board where the pictures of the instructors were posted. Then he looked at Kerra. “You do see my point, don’t you, Kerra? We must consider them as an attraction. They’re more than merely instructors. They’re a reason to come to Adventures Unlimited. Like social directors on a cruise line.”

“‘Come to Adventures Unlimited for a Shag,’” Kerra said. “Yes. I’ve got the point well enough.”

“That’s the implication, naturally,” Alan said. “Sex sells. You know that.”

“It all gets reduced to sex in the end, doesn’t it?” Kerra said bitterly.

He gazed at the pictures again. He was either evaluating them or avoiding her. He said, “Well, yes. I suppose it does. That’s how life is.”

She left him without replying. She said abruptly that she was going to the Watchman if anyone wanted her, daring him to make his point again about the futility of placing an advertisement in that paper, and she set out on her bicycle.

This time, however, she had no intention of riding until the sweat of her efforts bled the anxiety from her muscles. She also had no intention of going to the Watchman to place an advertisement for randy males willing to instruct equally randy females during daylight hours and fulfill their sexual fantasies at night. That was all they needed at Adventures Unlimited: an excess of testosterone oozing down the corridors.

Kerra pedaled off the promontory in the direction of Toes on the Nose, where she was forced to follow the one-way system through town. She climbed to the crest of the hill, where St. Mevan Down rolled inland from the sea, and made her way to Queen Street with its clutter of cars. Ultimately she coursed downward towards the Casvelyn Canal, where just beyond the wharf that edged it a bridge arched to a Y in the road. Go left and you ultimately headed to Widemouth Bay. Go right and you found yourself out on the Breakwater.

This formed the southwest side of the canal, just as the wharf served as its northeastern edge. Cottages lined it, sitting some fifteen feet above the tarmac, and at their far end was the largest of them, one that only a blind man could miss seeing. It was trimmed in fuchsia and painted the pink of flamingos. Unimaginatively, it was called Pink Cottage, and its owner was a maiden lady long referred to by townspeople as Busy Lizzie and only in part as a reference to the flowers she planted in her front garden in enormous banks with riotous abandon every late spring.

Kerra was known to Busy Lizzie as a regular visitor, so when she knocked on the door, the woman admitted her without question, saying, “Why, isn’t this the nicest surprise, Kerra! Alan’s not here at the moment, but I expect you know that. Come in, my dear.”

She was not even five feet tall, and she’d long reminded Kerra of a chess piece. Specifically, she looked very much like a pawn. She wore her white hair in an impressively constructed Edwardian pouf and she favoured high-necked ivory blouses and bell-shaped flannel skirts of navy or grey that fell to the floor. She always looked like someone on the verge of being discovered for a part in a Henry James novel brought to film, but as far as Kerra had ever been able to learn—which admittedly wasn’t very far—Busy Lizzie had no inclination for either screen or stage.

She let one of the bedrooms in her house, the rest being filled with her vast collection of Carlton Ware from the 1930s. She was liberal in her thinking, and, preferring young men to young women as her lodgers—“Somehow one always feels safer with a man in the house” was her way of putting it—she recognised that her lodgers had appetites whose fulfillment she oughtn’t deny. So each successive lodger had kitchen privileges, and if a sleepover occurred in which a young lady might put in an appearance at the breakfast table, Busy Lizzie did not complain. Indeed, she provided either tea or coffee and she asked, “Sleep well, dear?” quite as if the young lady belonged there.

While his house in Lansdown Road was undergoing work, Alan had his temporary lodging here in Pink Cottage. He could have moved in with his parents—it would have saved him money—but he’d explained to Kerra that, while he loved his mum and dad devotedly, he liked to have a degree of freedom that his parents’ blind adoration of him sometimes precluded. Besides, he’d delicately said to her, they had a certain image of him that he didn’t want to mess about with.

Kerra read this as he intended. She said, “God, they can’t think you’re a virgin, Alan.” And when he didn’t answer, “Do they, Alan?”

“No, no. Of course not. Of course they don’t. What a ridiculous…They know I’m normal. But they’re older people, aren’t they, and it’s a sign of respect to them that I don’t take a woman to bed while I’m unmarried and under their roof. They’d feel very…well, odd about it.”

Kerra understood, at least at first. But in the end, the whole question of Alan having this lodging separate from his parents began to have a different resonance.

So she had to know. She had to be certain. She said to Busy Lizzie, “I’ve left a rather personal item in Alan’s room, Miss Carey”—for such was her name—“and I wonder if I might dash in and have a look for it? Alan’s forgotten to give me his key, but if you’d like to phone him at work…?”

“Oh my dear, no need of that. The room’s unlocked anyway, as this is bed-linen day. You know the way. I was just watching my telly. Would you like a cup of tea? Do you need my help?”

Kerra demurred: both the offer of tea and the offer of help. She shouldn’t be long, she said. She’d let herself out when she had what she’d come for.

“And are you riding about in the rain, my dear? On your bicycle? Why, you’ll catch your death, Kerra. Are you sure you wouldn’t care for a nice cup of PG Tips?”

No, no. She was fine, Kerra assured Miss Carey. She was right as rain. They both chuckled at her lame remark, and they parted at the far end of the sitting room. Busy Lizzie went back to her telly as Kerra ducked into the corridor that led along to the far end of the house. There, Alan’s room overlooked the southwest section of St. Mevan Beach. From the window, Kerra could see that the tide was in. The waves were breaking from three-foot swells, and at least a dozen surfers bobbed in the distance.

Kerra turned from the sight of them. The thought came to her of her father last night, and of what it meant that part of his life was hidden from her. But she dismissed this consideration because now was not the time and, anyway, she had to work quickly.

She was looking for signs without actually knowing what the signs would be. She needed to understand why the Alan Cheston of the last few days was not the Alan Cheston she had known and involved herself with. She reckoned she knew the explanation, but still she wanted hard evidence, although what she would do with it when she had it was something she hadn’t yet considered.

She’d also never done a search before. The whole enterprise made her feel unclean, but there was no alternative other than hurling accusations at him, and going that route was something she couldn’t afford to do.

She girded herself mentally and began to look about. It was, she saw, all so vintage Alan, with every item in its place. His djembe drum stood in its stand in the corner of the room, in front of a stool upon which Alan sat when he played it during his daily meditation. A tambourine—something of a joke gift that Kerra had given him before she’d understood how significant the drum actually was to Alan’s spiritual regimen—leaned nearby, against a bookcase where he kept his yoga books. On top of this bookcase were his photos: Alan, wearing the cap and gown of the university graduate, flanked by his beaming parents; Alan and Kerra on a holiday in Portsmouth, his arm round her shoulders on the deck of the Victory; Kerra by herself, perched on the flat stone top of Lanyon Quoit; a younger Alan with his childhood dog, a mixed-breed terrier with a coat the colour of rusty bedsprings.

The trouble was that Kerra had no idea what she was looking for. She wanted a sign, but she didn’t know if she’d recognise anything that wasn’t written out for her by means of flashing neon lights. She prowled the room, opening and closing drawers in the chest and then in the desk. Aside from neatly folded clothes in conservative hues, the only items of interest she came up with were a collection of birthday cards given or sent to him through the years and a list entitled “Five-Year Objectives” upon which she read that, among other things, he intended to learn Italian, take xylophone lessons, and visit Patagonia, in addition to “marry Kerra,” which came before Patagonia but after Italian.

And then in a tarnished silver toast rack where Alan kept his mail, she found it: the item without a purpose in the bedroom of a man for whom every item had a purpose, either in the present, the past, or the future. This was a postcard, tucked at the back of correspondence from Alan’s bank, his dentist, and the London School of Economics. The picture on the card was taken from the sea, into the shore, and the view presented was of two deep sea caves, one on either side of a cove. Above the cove was a Cornish village well known to Kerra, as it was the place she’d been sent with her brother throughout their childhoods, to stay with their grandparents while their mother was going through one of her spells.

Pengelly Cove. They were not allowed to go to the beach there, no matter the weather. The reason given was the tide and the sea caves. The tide came in fast, the way it came in at Morecambe Bay. Deep in a sea cave where you thought you were safe with your exploration—or whatever else you were doing—the water swept in and the walls marked its depth, which was higher than the top of the tallest man’s head, as relentless as it was unforgiving.

Kids just like you lot’ve died in those caves, Granddad would thunder, so there’ll be no beachgoing while you’re stopping here. ’Sides, there’s work enough round this place to keep you busy, and if I see you’re bored, I’ll give you more.

But all of that was an excuse, and they knew it, Kerra and Santo. Beach-going meant village-going, and in the village they were known as the children of Dellen Kerne, or Dellen Nankervis as she’d been then. Long, loose, wide-spreading Dellen, the village tart. Dellen whose unmistakable handwriting formed the sentence “This is it,” which was scripted in red on the face of the postcard in Alan’s old toast rack. From the it an arrow extended down to the sea cave on the south side of the cove.

Kerra pocketed the postcard and looked about for something more. But nothing else was actually needed.

CADAN HAD SPENT THE morning with a mouth that felt like a wrestler’s jockstrap and a stomach doing a shimmy to his throat. More hair of the dog that had bitten him was what he’d needed from the get-go, but an unexpected pre–Adventures Unlimited conversation with his sister had prevented him from doing a recce for his father’s booze. Not that Madlyn would have reported Cadan to Lew had she caught him in the act of going through cupboards—despite her general weirdness, Cadan’s sister had never been known to sneak—but she would have realised what he was doing and she would have ragged on him about it. He couldn’t handle that. As it was, he’d had enough trouble merely responding to what she had to say when the subject wasn’t him at all. It was, instead, Ione Soutar, who’d phoned three times in the last thirty-six hours, on one spurious excuse after another.