"I'd ring her if I were you, Geoff, and postpone the nookie and don't get to be a timekeeper." Fenton smirked.
"Go to work, because
I want it on my desk at lunch-time the threat, what it is, where it's coming from."
He had said it himself: "He chose well, if he won't run." The cue end was beside the name of the village, which a man wouldn't leave, where a home was protected only by a door with a new lock and an old bolt.
The wind whipped about him and snatched at his coat. He was alone in the darkness. The sea cried beneath him and he sat on the deck far forward of the lights of the tanker's bridge. The night hours were precious to him, when he could escape from the claustrophobic confines of the cabin, which was like a prison cell during daylight because he had been told he must not attract the crew's attention. He stayed there until darkness came, and then he slipped out, glided silently along the hushed corridors of the accommodahon block and eased open the watertight door that led to the wide length of the deck space above the crude's tanks. In the night, in the darkness, with the great throbbing power beneath him, he felt the strength of his people and of his God.
Frank Perry had walked for nearly an hour past the green, down to the darkened boatyard with the stilted walkways over the river mud, then out on the raised path towards the Northmarsh.
He was at the place where the tidal river merged with the inland water mass and the slow-swaying reed-beds. There was a crescent moon up and a shallow light on the beds. The silence was broken only when he disturbed a swan that clattered, screaming, away. He rehearsed what he would say, what he would tell her, and he peed the beer out of his bladder and into the still water at his feet. If they had had their way, Fenton and the younger man who had not spoken, then he, Meryl and her boy would by now have been rootless flotsam. Maybe they would have been in an hotel, or an Army camp, or in an empty chalet complex that was available because the holiday-makers had not yet come. There would be nothing to hold on to but the handles of packed suitcases, for ever. If he had moved her on, if they were now in an unknown bed, listening for danger in the night, alone, perhaps she would have stayed with him for three months, a year, but finally she would have gone… It was his home, and her home and her son's home, and he prayed, mumbling, that she would understand… He would stay where he was safe, where she was, where his friends were, and her friends… He was drunk. He had accepted two more pints than was good for him. It was so long since he had been drunk, the Christmas before last, lights on the tree, Stephen in bed with his new toys around him. They'd shared a bottle of whisky, sprawled on the sofa, her head on his waist, and stayed there until the bottle was finished, then helped each other up the stairs, tittering. He had thought himself blessed.
But he could remember as clearly when he had thought himself cursed. It was the second night after the minders had checked him into an Army barracks, and at his insistence they had permitted him a single phone call. They'd huffed, complained, left him in no doubt that they were doing him a great favour, and would only drop the rule book that once. Perry had rung his father. Every moment of the call was seared sharply in his memory.
"Hello, Dad, it's Gavin. Dad, please don't interrupt me and don't ask me questions. And don't try to trace this number because it's ex-directory and you'll only waste your time. I've had a difficulty overseas and I'm changing my identity. I don't exist any more. I have a new name and am starting out on a new life. I've left home. They don't know where I am. I won't be able to make contact again. It's for the best. If I came to see you and Mum I'd be endangering you as much as myself. Don't, please, think badly of me. There were good times and we should all cling to them. I don't know what the future holds, but I won't ever forget your and Mum's love for me. Forgive me, Dad. I'm not Gavin any more. He's gone. Look after yourself, Dad, and kiss Mum for me." He'd rung off.
The minders had been round him and they'd nodded coolly as he put down the phone, implying that he'd done well without bothering to say so. His father had never spoken, there had been only the silence in his ear. That silence on the line had been the moment when he'd known he was cursed… He would not quit again. He listened to the retreating cry of the swan, watched its ghostliness over the reed-beds and the quiet water, and turned for home.
His car was parked in front of the house. He paused beside it, then crouched and felt with his fingers into the hidden space above the front near side wheel for a bag of sugar.
"Got a flat one? Got a puncture?"
Jerry Wroughton stood in his door holding his cat, a spiteful little beast that killed song-birds. His neighbour always put it out last thing at night.
He lied, "Thought I had false alarm."
The cat was dropped and ran to the cover of darkness. Wroughton asked, "Are you all right? You've not looked yourself the last few days, Frank."
"Haven't I?" He straightened and rubbed the dirt off his hands.
"What I wanted to say, and Mary, if there's anything wrong, and we can help, you've only to shout."
"Do I look that bad?"
"You said it, chief. Pretty grotty. Just yell, it's what neighbours are for."
"Thanks, Jerry, I'll remember that you're very kind, both of you. I appreciate it."
He went inside, locked the door and pushed the bolt over. He went to bed, alone, his back to hers, cold. He would tell her in the morning. It could wait until then.
Chapter Four.
They walked on the beach, their feet crunching on the smoothed stones of red agate, opaque quartz and pink granite, and on the pebbles of cysterine, slate and Torridonian rock, and on the broken scallop, whelk and mussel shells. He did not speak until they were quite alone, away from a pair of winter shore anglers with their long rods resting on triangles of gawky legs, away from a woman and her toddler, who threw flat stones that bounced then sank into the first wave line, and away from the sight of their village behind the sea barrier of raised shifting rocks, away from the world. He had told her, at the house on the green, that he was ready to talk. She had made two curt telephone calls to cancel her commitments for the morning, and she had seen her boy, Stephen, charge for a sort of freedom into the Carstairs car. They walked together, but they were apart. Her hands were deep in the pockets of her coat, as if she intended to prevent him taking her fingers in his.
Perry didn't work his way round to it. There was no delicacy, no subtlety. It would have been kinder to her if he had come upon it slowly, but kindness wasn't in his script. He wanted the weight of deceit off his back.
"You tell a lie and each day it is harder to retract. The lie breeds a life of its own. You get so that the lie becomes the truth. You become comfortable with it, even though you dread the moment the lie will be found out. The lie is easy at the beginning, but it becomes, gradually, more and more, the hell that you carry." He paused, stared at the stones and shells under his feet, then pressed on.