Grave Doubts (23 page)

He inhaled deeply and thought about the girl. She had been younger than he usually liked but with a body mature enough to satisfy his tastes and she had been suitably terrified. In fact she had behaved exactly as he had hoped and imagined as he lay on the hot beach all day, waiting.

The tide was rising. He found a point, a rock just in front of the cave where he had hidden her, and watched as the black peak above the water became smaller. It had been difficult not to finish her off at the sheep pen but the idea of her terror as he forced her, conscious and open-eyed, beneath the waves had stayed his hand. And it had been exciting, knowing her fear of the sea, and watching her struggle as the air bubbled up from her lungs and the seawater flowed in.

He had pushed her under three times, counting to sixty then pulling her up to retch and gulp air, before returning her to the water. The last time, he had counted up to one hundred and when he pulled her up, her eyes had stayed closed. But as he had stuffed her into her rocky tomb he thought that she had coughed. Far from displeasing him, the idea of her conscious as the tide rose around her made him excited all over again. He imagined her claustrophobia as the water inched over her knees, to her waist and finally into her nose and mouth. Unexpectedly he was reminded of his mother’s death and the link between the two women brought a new variation for him to use in his fantasies.

The water was well above the top of the cave mouth and he knew that he should go. She would be missed soon, and searches would start during the night, so he needed to be well away. Since his one serious encounter with the police he had become ultra cautious. There would be no trace evidence on her, and he doubted there was any on him, but a man with wet clothes in a pack might be uncommon enough to be remembered.

It was a real shame that he had dropped his knife and he cursed Griffiths all over again. He had lost his talisman. While he carried it he remained lucky. Now that it had disappeared he was superstitious enough to fear that his good fortune might change.

The tip of the rock vanished and he rose with a sigh of satisfaction. He packed his clothes into a plastic rubbish sack and placed them in his backpack, then stubbed out his cigarette, put the butt in his pocket and left the sea behind him.

Nightingale prepared a substantial Sunday meal despite her rudimentary kitchen. There was plenty of wine and Amelia had second helpings of everything. Afterwards Nightingale suggested a stroll outside to keep her awake. Summer had returned and this time the forecast was for it to stay. In the walled garden the temperature was in the low eighties.

‘It’s amazing to think you’ve only been here six weeks. You’ve fitted in so well. Oh, what a pretty wild orchid.’

Her guest wandered ahead with a wide reminiscent smile on her face. Nightingale watched her from a distance, leaving time for the memories to settle.

‘It must have been wonderful here thirty years ago.’

‘Oh yes, it was.’ Amelia’s voice was wistful.

‘I wonder why my grandparents left the house to my aunt and not my father.’

‘He didn’t want to live here. He thought the village too small for him.’ Amelia plucked a long strand of wild grass by the wall and started to chew it thoughtfully. ‘It was time for him to go away.’

‘Why?’

Amelia looked at her with narrowed eyes.

‘Your father had a penchant for pretty women. He kept it secret from his parents for years, but eventually things got out of hand and he made quite a few enemies. When your grandparents moved from the farm to live in town, they left it in your aunt’s care. Your father didn’t argue. His new in-laws had rented a very nice house for the newlyweds near them.’

‘Did you love him very much?’

Amelia took a quick, short breath then fell silent. Nightingale let the quiet deepen, in no rush to hurry the revelations along. After all these years the urge to confide must be strong. Eventually Amelia spoke.

‘We were at school together. He was the boy all the girls wanted to go out with, yet he chose me over the others. It lasted one summer. In autumn he moved on to someone else and that lasted to the Christmas dance. The third relationship went on to Easter and the fourth until he hitchhiked to a festival of some sort.

‘When he came back, three girls came with him and camped up on the hillside. They were older, eighteen or nineteen, but then your father was a precocious lad. He used to sneak out to spend the night in their tent.

‘And so it carried on until he had an affair with one of his schoolteachers’ wives. There was a scandal and he went to another college to finish his A’ levels, then off to university.’

‘Where he met my mother?’

‘Yes but he kept her secret for years, until after he graduated. Whenever he came back it was on his own and I would be waiting for him. I realise now that I was simply a convenient way to fill in time during the holidays but back then I thought I was his true love.’ She laughed at herself but Nightingale could hear the echo of heartache.

‘It must have hurt like hell when he became engaged to my mother.’

‘It was terrible but I didn’t believe that it would last. She was so different from his other women.’ She hesitated then continued, her expression determined. ‘She wasn’t the nicest of women I’m afraid. Perhaps her power over him lay in her selfishness. She bullied him into dropping his old friends. After they were married there were terrible rows and they separated almost straight away.’

‘What did they row about?’

Amelia looked away.

‘Go on, please, I need to know.’

‘Your father had a final fling in the months before the wedding. Some busybody in the village sent a letter to his new wife, which was waiting for them when they came back from honeymoon. She walked out and went to live with her parents.’

‘That was a bitchy thing to do to a new bride. Was he so unpopular?’

‘A bit but it was really because the woman your father had an affair with upset the villagers. On one occasion she was found with the son of a local publican, both stark naked on top of one of the tombs in the churchyard. On another she and half a dozen young men went skinny-dipping from the beach. The stories of the orgy that followed may or may not have been true but they sealed her reputation. For someone who arrived in the Spring and stayed a mere twenty months she left a lot of memories and myths. She broke too many hearts around here, until your father broke hers.’

‘What was her name?’

‘Why, it was Lulu, I thought you knew. She swung both ways, as we said in those days.’

‘I had no idea. So when my mother left did my father go back to Lulu?’

‘Probably. She was living with your aunt at Mill Farm and your father would stay each weekend. Then he was reconciled with his wife, she was pregnant after all and both sets of parents put a lot of pressure on them.’

As the shadows lengthened towards dusk Amelia decided to leave. At the front door Nightingale asked the question that had been preying on her mind for most of the afternoon.

‘So do you regret it, knowing my father I mean?’

Amelia looked shocked.

‘Of course not.’

‘But you said you’ve loved him all these years, wouldn’t it have been better never to have known him and avoid the heartache?’

Amelia shook her head, as if at Nightingale’s stupidity.

‘For the whole of that summer when I was fifteen, he loved me.’

‘Surely that’s even worse. To know for however brief a time what it means to be loved by the object of one’s desire must be far worse than to live in ignorance.’

‘No. For me it was definitely better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Trite but true.’

Nightingale shook her head vehemently.

‘Butler was an idiot. Imagine being blind from birth, learning to cope with it, never knowing what you were missing. Then for one incredible day, when you woke up you could see! The colours, sunlight, trees, the smiles on people’s faces, the eyes of the people you love. Then you go to bed only to wake up the next morning blind again. Nothing could be more cruel than to learn what you are going to miss for the rest of your life.’

Amelia rested a hand on Nightingale’s arm.

‘People are different, Louise. For me that summer was a blessing. Perhaps for you it would have been a curse, but I think that very sad. It means that you will go through life avoiding pleasure in case the absence of it causes you pain. Do you really want to live like that?’

Nightingale tried to forget Amelia’s parting words. Until that afternoon, she had been happy here. Her retreat had started as an escape but had turned into a new beginning. Now her fragile contentment had been challenged and inevitably her thoughts turned to Fenwick. She wondered what he was doing. Was he still seeing that Keating woman? Did he ever think of her?

Twilight was creeping into the evening but she was too restless to sleep and started to prowl the house. She found a torch and climbed the crooked stairs that led up from the kitchen to the landing at the back near the mill. Shadows flickered on the wall ahead of her as the light found the carved newel post, a remnant from some long winter during which a distant ancestor had found occupation in carving. The faces were crudely formed, rising one above the other in a totem pole. Without thinking, she touched the noses of each one and whispered the password she had invented for protection as a child.

It was necessary to have a very good sense of direction in order to navigate through the upstairs of her aunt’s house. In the past visitors had been heard to call out for directions to the bathroom even though they were standing less than ten feet from it. By coming up the kitchen stairs Nightingale had entered the old servants’ quarters, two small bedrooms knocked into one.

At first glance, the room and tiny landing appeared to be completely separate from the rest of the house but Nightingale knew they were linked. In the attic room she had used as a child, there was a low door in the wall, papered over so as to be almost invisible. It led to the roof above the milking parlour.

She went into her old bedroom and found the door to the hidden passage that ran between the eaves and the wall. It was dark and unwelcoming and she was in her Sunday clothes so she closed the door flush to the wall again and pushed the bed against it. The mood to explore had vanished and she went to find a book to read until she became too tired to focus on the words and fell asleep.

The warm weather that had started on Sunday turned into a heatwave. Instead of going into town on the Monday she gardened, read and sunbathed naked in the kitchen garden until she became too hot and went to swim in the sea. She followed the same pattern for the rest of the week and was surprised at how good her laziness made her feel.

The idyll came to an end on Friday when she finally ran out of food and she felt an urge for company. She ventured into Clovelly to find a pub. There was a lovely old place on the high street full of tourists. Fortunately, most of them wanted to drink outside in the sun so the saloon bar was quiet. She pushed her way through the crowd by the door and into the dimness beyond. A long, dark oak bar curved away towards a bottle glass window. Two drinkers, locals by their proprietorial stare, were playing dominoes at a table beneath the window.

The barman had his back to her, polishing a glass, and turned as the door banged shut.

‘Can I help… Good God! When did you get back?’

Nightingale moved closer, smiling in surprise. As the light from the window picked out her features the barman’s look of surprise changed to one of confusion.

‘You can’t be…’

‘I can’t be who?’ She asked with a small chuckle.

‘Never mind. Someone from long ago. You’re the spitting image.’

One of the domino players by the window looked up and nodded.

‘Spitting,’ he said, then returned to the table and knocked twice. But Nightingale could feel their eyes on her and it made her uncomfortable.

‘Half a pint of cider, please.’

She sipped her drink, perched on a stool at the bar, her long bare legs golden brown in the dim sunlight. When she ordered a ham sandwich it appeared promptly, and gradually the normal conversation of the pub returned. Unusually Nightingale felt the desire to join in. Whenever the barman had a brief pause from serving she talked to him, asking questions about the area and its history. He answered in short sentences: he had grown up here, his father had owned the pub before him, his family went a long way back.

She finished her sandwich and ordered another cider. When he served it she asked him the question that had been on her mind all along.

‘Whom do I remind you of?’ She smiled at him and her charm, rarely used but devastating when applied, had its customary effect.

‘An old girlfriend if you must know.’

‘I’m flattered.’

‘You could be sisters, only your eyes are different. Hers were almost lilac.’

‘I have my father’s eyes, or so everyone says.’

‘Well they’re lovely, don’t get me wrong.’

She laughed, enjoying the attention. Suddenly, she felt sexy. Whether it was the heat or the cider she couldn’t tell. If only he had been twenty years younger.

‘So what brings you here then?’

‘I’m on holiday.’ It wasn’t the complete truth but she didn’t want the conversation to be about her. ‘Tell me more about your old girlfriend, I’m curious.’

‘She wasn’t from around here. Had family, an uncle as I remember, in the neighbourhood. Stayed here about a year I think.’

‘More like two.’ One of the domino players interjected.

‘Don’t mind George, he’s my father’s second cousin. He never did like her.’

‘Didn’t do you no good, my lad. Bad day for the village when she come.’

‘Why did she come here?’

‘She was an artist. Had a commission here.’

‘A painter?’

‘No, a sculptor.’

Something clicked in Nightingale’s brain.

‘Was she called Lulu?’

The barman dropped his cloth. George scattered dominoes. Nightingale smiled.

‘How did you know that?’

‘Amelia told me about her. I guessed.’ A simple answer but it didn’t fool George or the publican.

‘And how come you know Amelia?’

Nightingale’s survival instinct was stronger than the cider.

‘Oh, I go to church. A very nice lady.’

‘Aye, mebe.’ The barman turned away and went to ‘sort out’ the kitchen.

The game of dominoes finished and George’s partner rose stiffly to make his way home before ‘’er in doors come to get me’. As the saloon door closed, George came to the bar and leant on it.

‘He was in love wi’ her. Gave up fishing and all sorts ’cos of her. Even said ’e’d marry ’er. No good. She ’ad her eyes fixed on flashier prizes. But you are the dead reckoning, except the eyes mebe. And the hair. You’ve got your’n under control. Her’s were so long she could sit on it. Like silk it were, midnight silk.’

Nightingale said nothing, not wishing to remind the old man he had an audience. It was obvious that Lulu had managed to stir hearts beyond her own generation. Whoever she had been, she’d had an ability to make even the most unlikely of men fall in love with her.

Even her father.

The barman returned. George called him Dan. They talked about cricket, how poor the fishing was and their doubts about tourism for late summer. Nightingale disappeared to find the ladies. When she came back it was obvious that they had been discussing her. She drained the last of her cider and slipped her sunglasses down from the top of her head.

‘You off then?’ Dan picked up his glass cloth and started polishing furiously. Neither man would look at her.

‘Yes, must be getting back.’

‘That would be back to…?’

She could sense his keen interest. Perhaps it was because of the cider, whatever, for some reason she answered openly in a break with her habitual discretion.

‘Mill Farm, at the top of the hill. It was my aunt’s house.’

It was as if an electric current had been passed through both men. There was a dull crack and Dan looked down in surprise as the glass parted in pieces within the cloth.

George spilt his beer.

‘You’re Ruth Nightingale’s niece?’

‘You’d be the daughter then.’ They said together.

‘Well yes. Did you know my family?’

But the men were no longer listening to her. They stared at each other and a knowing look passed between them before George opened a newspaper and Dan found another glass.