All she knew so far was that Santo was dead, that the police had been, that a fall had taken him, and that the fall was during a sea-cliff climb. Ben had got no further than that with the information because she’d said, “A climb?” after which she’d read her husband’s face as she’d long been capable of doing and she’d said, “You did this to him.”
That was it. They’d been standing in the reception area of the old hotel because he’d not managed to get her any farther inside. Upon her return, she’d seen at once that something was wrong and she’d demanded to know, not as a way of deflecting the obvious question of where she herself had been for so many hours-she wouldn’t think anyone actually had a right to know that-but because something was wrong on a much larger scale than curiosity over her whereabouts. He’d tried to get her upstairs to the lounge, but she’d been immovable. So he told her there.
She went for the stairs. She stopped momentarily at the bottom step, and she clutched the railing as if to keep herself upright. Then she climbed.
Now, Ben set the milk-and-sugar tea on the floor near her head. He sat on the edge of Santo’s bed.
She said, “You’re blaming me. You reek of blaming me, Ben.”
“I don’t blame you,” he said. “I don’t know why you’d think that.”
“I think it because we’re here. Casvelyn. That was all about me.”
“No. It was for all of us. I’d had enough of Truro as well. You know that.”
“You would have stayed in Truro forever.”
“That’s not the case, Dellen.”
“And if you’d had enough-which I don’t believe anyway-it hadn’t to do with you. Or Truro. Or any town. I can feel your loathing, Ben. It smells like sewage.”
He said nothing. Outside, a gust of wind hit the side of the building, rattling the windows. A fierce storm was brewing. Ben knew the signs. The wind was onshore. It would bring in heavier rain from the Atlantic. They were not yet out of the season of storms.
“It’s myself,” he said. “We had words. I said some things-”
“Oh, I expect you did. You saint. You bloody saint.”
“There’s nothing saintly about following through. There’s nothing saintly about accepting-”
“That’s not what things were about between you and Santo. Don’t think I don’t know. You’re a real bastard.”
“You know why.” Ben set his mug of tea on the bedside table. Deliberately, then, he switched on the lamp. If she looked at him, he wanted her able to see his face and to read his eyes. He wanted her to know that he spoke the truth. “I told him he needed to take more care. I told him people are real, not toys. I wanted him to see that there’s more to life than seeking pleasure for himself.”
Her voice was scorn. “As if that’s how he lives.”
“You know that it is. He’s good with people. All people. But he can’t let that…that skill of his lead him to do wrong by them or to them. But he doesn’t want to see-”
“Doesn’t? He’s dead, Ben. There is no doesn’t.”
Ben thought she might weep then, but she did not. He said, “There is no shame in teaching one’s children to do right, Dellen.”
“Which means your right, yes? Not his. Yours. He was supposed to be made in your likeness, wasn’t he? But he wasn’t you, Ben. And nothing could make him in your likeness.”
“I know that.” Ben felt the words’ intolerable weight. “Believe me, I know that.”
“You don’t. You didn’t. And you couldn’t cope with it, could you? You had to have him the way you wanted.”
“Dellen, I know I’m to blame. Do you think that I don’t? I’m as much to blame for this as-”
“No!” She rose to her knees. “Do not dare,” she cried. “Don’t bring that back to me just now because if you do, I swear if you do, if you even mention it, if you bring it up, if you try to, if you…” Words seemed to fail her. Suddenly, she reached for the mug he’d placed on the floor and she threw it at him. Hot tea stung his chest; the rim of the mug struck his breastbone. “I hate you,” she said and then louder with each successive word, “I hate you, I hate you. I hate you.”
He dropped off the bed and onto his knees. He grabbed her then. She was still shrieking her hate as he pulled her to him, and she beat on his chest, his face, and his neck before he was able to catch her arms.
“Why didn’t you let him just be who he was? He’s dead and all you ever needed to do was just to let him be. Was that too much? Was that asking too much?”
“Shh,” Ben murmured. He held her; he rocked her; he pressed his fingers to her thick blonde hair. “Dellen,” he said. “Dellen, Dell. We can weep for this. We can. We must.”
“I won’t. Let me go. Let. Me. Go!”
She struggled, but he held her firmly. He knew he couldn’t let her leave the room. She was on the edge, and if she went over, they all would go with her and he couldn’t have that. Not in addition to Santo.
He was stronger than she, so he began to move her even as she fought him. He got her to the floor, and he held her there with the weight of his body. She writhed, trying to throw him off.
He covered her mouth with his. He felt her resistance for a moment and then it was gone, as if it had never been. She tore at him, but it was clothing now: She ripped at his shirt, at the buckle of his belt; she pushed his jeans desperately over his buttocks.
He thought, Yes, and he showed no tenderness as he pulled her sweater over her head. He shoved up her bra and fell on her breasts. She gasped and lowered the zip on her trousers. Savagely, he slapped her hand away. He would do it, he thought. He would own her.
In a fury, he made her naked. She arced to accept him and cried out as he took her.
Afterwards, both of them wept.
KERRA HEARD IT ALL. How could she help it? The family flat had been transformed as inexpensively as possible from a collection of rooms on the hotel’s top floor. Because it was needed elsewhere, very little money had gone into the insulation of the walls. They weren’t paper thin, but they might as well have been.
She heard their voices first-her father’s soft and her mother’s rising-then the shrieking, which she could not ignore, and then the rest. Hail the conquering hero, she thought.
Dully, she said to Alan, “You need to go,” although part of her was also saying, Do you understand now?
Alan said, “No. We need to talk.”
“My brother has died. I don’t think we need to anything.”
“Santo,” Alan said quietly. “Your brother’s name was Santo.”
They were still in the kitchen although not at the table where they’d been sitting when Ben had joined them. With the rising noise from Santo’s bedroom, Kerra had shoved away from the table and gone to the sink. There she’d turned on the water to fill a pan, although she had no idea what she would do with it.
She’d remained there after she’d turned off the taps. Outside, she could see Casvelyn, just the top of it where St. Issey Road met St. Mevan Crescent. An unappealing supermarket called Blue Star Grocery sprawled like a nasty thought at this V-shaped junction, a bunker of brick and glass that made her wonder why modern conveniences had to be so ugly. Its lights were still on for evening shopping, and just beyond it, more lights indicated cars moving carefully along the northwest and southeast boundaries of St. Mevan Down. Workers were heading home for the evening, to the various hamlets that for centuries had popped up like toadstools along the coast. Smugglers’ havens, Kerra thought. Cornwall had always been a lawless place.
She said, “Please go.”
Alan said, “Do you want to tell me what this is about?”