That Summer He Died (5 page)

In his befuddled state, this tourist had mistaken the rhythm of the waves for signs of animation in Monique’s corpse and had jumped into the sea to try and save her.

Alan had been out walking South Beach himself by this time. Worried that Monique hadn’t returned, he’d gone looking for her. He’d found her towel and clothes there on the sand, unattended and crumpled, blown over themselves by the wind.

He’d followed her footsteps to where they’d disappeared into the sea. He’d heard the mournful wail of a siren coming from the car park on the cliff at the far side of the beach.

‘She was still beautiful,’ he’d told James, as the rain had hissed down. ‘Even after she died. She was still more beautiful than anyone I’ve ever met.’ His face had spasmed then. His voice had soured. ‘What am I supposed to do? It should have been me. It should have been me who died, not her. What the hell am I supposed to do now?’

*

The screech of tortured rubber pierced James’s ears.

Alan swung the wheel hard to the right, like he was caught in a storm at sea, desperately changing tack. The black surface of the road disappeared from view and the car tilted heavily, throwing James against the passenger door as if he were trapped on a fairground ride gone horribly wrong.

The seat belt seared against his throat and his whole body reacted, froze into a block of clenched muscle. He waited for the inevitable: the sound of rendered metal, broken glass and bones.

It never came.

Instead, out of the blackness, there was light. A lit window. The silhouette of a house. He followed the sweep of the headlights. They were on a driveway. The noise of gravel being spat up by the wheels, clattering against the floor of the car like hail, lessened as the vehicle slowed. James heard his breath come out in a heavy sigh, and again, its sudden volume making him wonder if he’d been holding his breath for the whole journey.

‘Scare you, did I?’ Alan said, glancing across before switching his attention back to the driveway, the car ploughing on. ‘Too drunk to drive. That what you’re thinking?’

James stared straight ahead. He didn’t want to get into this. He was sober. Alan was wrecked. Keep quiet. That was the best option. Wait till the morning. See what Alan was like then. He focused on the scene lit up by the headlights: the stream on the left, running parallel with the drive; the outbuildings on the right; and there, ahead of them, the house itself.

A memory burst like a firework out of the darkness. That cold January day when they’d all returned here from Monique’s funeral, James remembered how he’d stood on the terrace at the rear of the building and stared out across the fields to the woods leading down to the sea.

The car crunched to a halt beside the pond at the front of the house and Alan, muttering something incomprehensible under his breath, got out and stumbled off.

James reached over and turned the engine off, killed the lights and slipped the keys into his pocket. Silence blanketed him. He watched Alan reach the gate which led to the terrace at the front of the house and slump across it as he fumbled with the latch. Eventually it swung forward and Alan with it. Then he doubled up further, as if in some failed attempt to vault it, and the sound of vomit spattering across stone slabs broke the silence.

James pulled his backpack from behind the seat and got out. He walked round the car and locked the doors and waited for his uncle to finish. But the noise kept coming like a drain in a storm.

James turned and walked towards the pond, crouched down and stared into its still surface. He slid his hand into the cool water, watched the moon and stars ripple into a shimmering blur.

When he got to his feet and turned round, Alan was nowhere to be seen. He walked to the open gate and stepped over the puddle of puke. He hurried forwards. The door to the house stood open, the light in the hall was on.

Inside, there were familiar signs of neglect. Scattered beside the wood-burning stove in the hall was a collection of crumpled beer tins – high-alcohol lagers. It looked all too familiar to James. This was what grief did. It got you wasted. It switched you off.

A dart of panic ran through him. Should he leave? How could being here help him? Wouldn’t he end up being dragged right down alongside his uncle? Wouldn’t they just drown together? How was that any better than being in London and drowning alone?

But a part of him thought of the sea and remembered the peace of walking alone on the sand. He pictured the flat calm line of the horizon. He could make this work. He could start to feel better here. He would.

On the extravagantly patterned Indian rug which lay in the centre of the flagstone floor was a heavy stain, approximately the same shape as Australia, as if some bored kid had spent hours making it that way. It might have been spilt soup, though judging by Alan’s recent display outside, it was probably something far less palatable.

Dust swirled like television interference in the air below the antique brass light fitting which hung from the thick wooden beam in the centre of the ceiling. Even as James looked up it trembled, more dust cascading silently down as footsteps clumped across the floor above, then faded and died.

James walked through to the living room and deposited his backpack on the sofa. It was a mess in here, too. Clothes – boots, socks, a shirt and trousers – had been cast carelessly across the floor.

The kitchen was in a similar state of disarray. Unwashed crockery was stacked in teetering piles near the sink. The sink itself was full of brackish water. Plates and saucepans protruded like scuppered ships through its rank, greasy surface, forgotten and left to rot.

On the coffee-stained work surfaces were food wrappers and sodden tea bags. And in and around the bin were food tins, some empty, most half-full, and more beer tins; more beer tins than James could count.

He thought about opening the fridge and searching for something to eat, then thought better of it. He knew what he’d find: curdled milk, rotting vegetables, rotting meat.

Six months. Half a year without Monique. With just Alan here on his own. Left to his own devices. Resorting to his own vices. Left to twist his sorrow and pain in on himself.

James switched out the light, returned to the sitting room and sat down next to his backpack. He stared up at a photo of Alan on the wall. James’s only real memories of him were from funerals, he realised. Recently, that of Monique. And before that of his parents.

There, in the graveyard after the service, James remembered, was the first time he’d ever spoken to his mother’s brother. His other memories of Alan were emotionally fraudulent, culled from the photo albums of early childhood visits to Grancombe, animated through the lens of his mind’s eye into events he sometimes imagined he’d actively participated in.

In reality, though, that wasn’t possible. In those distant summer days before his parents had fallen out irretrievably with his uncle and aunt, James had barely mastered the art of standing on his own two feet, let alone standing side by side with the adults.

He walked to the window and stared through the purple darkness of the paddock behind the house and into the impenetrable shadow of the woodland beyond.

He still didn’t really understand what had caused the rift between his parents and Alan and Monique. Something to do with money, his father had once told him, something to do with the division of the inheritance left by James’s grandmother after she’d whispered her last goodbye, back around the same time that James had gurgled his first hello.

At the time he had heard his father’s terse explanation – some five years back now – he hadn’t questioned it. Just like he’d never really questioned anything his father had said. Now only Alan could provide him with further details, but James’s father had warned him once not to trust Uncle Alan to tell the truth.

James heard footsteps coming down the stairs, a muffled curse. He turned to face the door to the living room. He needed his father. Needed him now. He needed to ask him if the animosity between his uncle and his parents had crossed the generation like some hereditary disease. He needed to know if he’d been left infected. He wanted someone to tell him whether he should stay here, or return to London on the first available train.

Alan, wearing only urine-stained underpants, his belly slopping like an overflow of dough over their elastic waistband, lurched through the doorway and slumped against the wall.

For a few seconds, his dark, unwashed hair hung in greasy strands across his face, concealing his eyes, and then he looked up and slowly pushed it away.

Gradually, his back straightened, bringing him to the same height as James. He swayed uncertainly like a hanged man; as if an invisible noose led from his neck to the ceiling, preventing him from crashing like an unwieldy sack to the ground. They stared at one another for a moment, then Alan raised one hand to his face and scratched roughly at his beard.

‘You look like shit, boy,’ he said. ‘Better get some sleep. Got to get up early. Things to do.’

James didn’t move. ‘What things?’

‘Search party.’

‘What?’

‘Search party.’ Alan’s eyes closed. His brow furrowed. ‘South Beach,’ he muttered. ‘Six-thirty. Said I’d be there. Told them I’d bring you.’

‘What search party?’ James said, but his uncle was already on the move.

James followed him through to the kitchen. Alan was standing before the open fridge, peering inside, his pale skin ghostly in the shaft of weak light. James observed him in silence for a moment, watched him remove a tin of beer, crack it open and drink. The sound and the noise. . . it made James want to drink too. But Alan carried on drinking. He did not stop until the tin was empty.

‘Medicinal,’ he said, glancing up at James with an unpleasant smile curling across his lips. Crumpling the drained tin in his fist, he tossed it towards the overflowing bin and missed.

‘What search party?’ James repeated.

Alan belched and slapped his hands on his belly. ‘For Dawes. Jack Dawes. Six-thirty. We’ll leave here at six.’ He pushed the fridge door shut, plunging the room into darkness, and squeezed past James into the living room. ‘You can sleep in the room at the back,’ he said as he walked towards the door leading to the stairs. ‘You’ll find clean sheets in the. . . I don’t know.’ The volume of his voice was lowering. ‘Somewhere, I suppose.’

And then he was gone.

James found the room, but not the sheets. He undressed and briefly entertained the idea of going to the bathroom for a wash. But immediately a vision of a blocked toilet and a grime-encrusted basin assailed his mind.

He closed the bedroom door, deciding it was probably wiser to stick with his own germs for the night. He checked out what the room had to offer. An antique writing bureau and a simple wooden chair. A leather-covered armchair and a footstool.

A bookcase rose from the carpeted floor to the papered ceiling, stacked with regiments of paper-covered spines. All of them Alan’s. All written by him. Ten published books. Every edition of each. Hardback. Paperback. Large print. Braille. Along with a babel of translations, covering the major languages of the globe.

James trailed his fingertips across them and – there – he felt it, something he’d not felt for a long time: excitement, intent, the desire to do something, to create, to write.

He thought of the laptop in his bag and of his notebook too. He thought of the last decent stories he’d written, months ago now, at school. He remembered how writing them had made him feel, as if he could be anywhere and anyone, as if he had the power to change. He thought about reading them, or adding to them, or even starting something new.

But he told himself to wait. He was tired. Tomorrow. He could begin something tomorrow. He could begin his new life then.

Shivering, he opened his bag. The neck of a new whisky bottle glinted darkly there in the embrace of his clothes. He took it out, a thirst stretching inside him, a tightening sensation spreading right across his scalp.

No.

A part of him resisted. He took the bottle out but did not open it. He pictured Alan crouching by the sink, and took the stool and climbed up on to it and put the bottle up high on top of the bookcase. When he climbed down, it was out of reach.

He pulled a jumper on and took the dusty duvet from the floor and climbed on to the bare mattress. Wrapping the duvet around him, he switched off the light. He gazed out of the window through the gap in the curtains. Stars sparked in the black sky like silver studs on a leather jacket. The moon hung low on the horizon, cold and distant.

He could get better here.

He might not drown.

He might save Alan too.

Together they might rise up.

When he closed his eyes, he felt like he was drifting on the seabed. He let imaginary ocean currents wash over him, soothing his aching limbs. He pictured the bookcase drifting alongside him. Ten novels. He conjured the books’ pages fanning before him. He watched the lettering of Alan’s name which adorned their spines flickering like the dials of a fruit machine, rearranging themselves into the letters which made up his own name.

One day. One day when Alan was sober. One day Alan would teach and James would learn. One day.

One day soon.

‘How did he die?’ James asked, staring across the desk at Adam McCullock. The lawyer had avoided telling him over the phone when James had called him after reading the letter that morning.

‘I need to know,’ James added.

McCullock couldn’t have been more than thirty, and now the conversation had reached this point, it showed. He avoided James’s stare and stared through the window, took up the offer of the view across Green Park, adjusted his tie.

It was the first time during the meeting that he’d showed signs of discomfort. Up until now he’d explained the terms of the will to James with professional ease, discussed the subject as innocuously as he might have mentioned the weather. He’d kept things impersonal, consistently referred to Alan as ‘the deceased’, relayed the facts of the case, outlined the various paperwork that needed to be done.