“You had a job, Cade. You cocked it up.” Lew downed the rest of his coffee and took his mug to the sink. There, he scoured it out as he scoured out everything. No stains, no germs.
“That’s bollocks,” Cadan said. “Working for you was always a bad idea, and we both know that, even if you won’t admit it. I’m not a detail person. I never was. I don’t have the…I don’t know…the patience or whatever.”
Lew dried the mug and the spoon. He put them both away. He wiped down the scratched, old stainless-steel work top, although there wasn’t a crumb upon it. “Your trouble is, you want everything to be fun. But life’s not that way, and you don’t want to see it.”
Cadan gestured outside, towards the back garden and the surfing kit that his father had just rinsed off. “And that’s not fun? You’ve spent all your free time for your entire life riding waves, but I’m supposed to see that as…what? Some noble endeavour like curing AIDS? Putting an end to world poverty? You give me aggro about doing what I want to do, but haven’t you done the very same? But wait. Don’t answer. I already know. What you do’s all about grooming a champion. Having a goal. While what I do-”
“There’s nothing wrong with having a goal.”
“Right. Yes. And I have mine. It’s just not the same as yours. Or Madlyn’s. Or what Madlyn’s was.”
“Where is she?” Lew asked.
“I told you-”
“I know what you told me. But you must have some idea where your own sister might have taken herself off to if she didn’t go to work. You know her. And him. You know him as well, if it comes down to it.”
“Hey. Don’t put that on me. She knew his reputation. Everyone knows it. But she wasn’t having any words of wisdom from anyone. And anyway, what you really care about is not where she is at this exact moment but that she got derailed. Just like you.”
“She isn’t derailed.”
“She bloody well is. And where does that leave you, Dad? You pinned your dreams on her instead of living your own.”
“She’ll get back to it.”
“Don’t put money on that.”
“And don’t you-” Abruptly, Lew bit off whatever it was he’d intended to say.
They faced each other then across the width of kitchen. It was an expanse of less than ten feet, but it was also a chasm that grew wider every year. Each of them stood at his respective edge, and it seemed to Cadan that the time would come when one of them was going to topple over the side.
SELEVAN PENRULE TOOK HIS time about getting over to Clean Barrel Surf Shop, having quickly decided it would be unseemly to bolt out of the Salthouse Inn the moment the whisper went round about Santo Kerne. He certainly had reason to bolt, but he knew it wouldn’t look good. Beyond that, at his age he was beyond bolting anywhere. Too many years of milking cows, not to mention herding the bloody bovines in and out of pastures, and his back was permanently bent and his hips were done for. Sixty-eight years old, he felt like eighty. He should have sold out and opened up the caravan park thirty-five years earlier, and he would have done so had he only had the cash, the bollocks, the vision, no wife, and no kids. They were all gone now, the house was torn down, and the farm was converted. Sea Dreams, he’d called it. Four neat rows of holiday caravans like shoe boxes, perched on the cliffs above the sea.
In his car, he was careful. There were dogs occasionally on the country lanes. Cats too. Rabbits. Birds. Selevan hated the thought of hitting something, not so much because of the guilt or responsibility he might feel having brought about a death but because of the inconvenience it would cause him. He’d have to stop and he hated to stop once he set out on a course of action. In this case, the course of action was getting himself over to Casvelyn and into the surf shop where his granddaughter worked. He wanted Tammy to hear the news from him.
When he reached the town, he parked on the wharf, the nose of his antique Land Rover pointing towards the Casvelyn Canal, a narrow cut that had once connected Holsworthy and Launceston with the sea but that now meandered inland for seven miles before ending abruptly, like an interrupted thought. This put him across the River Cas from the centre of town where the surf shop was, but finding a spot for the car was always too much trouble over there-no matter the weather or the time of year-and, anyway, he wanted the walk. Tracing a path back along the crescent of road that defined the southwest edge of the town, he would have time to think. He had to have an approach that would play the information out and allow him to gauge her reaction to it. For what Tammy said she was and who Tammy really was were, as far as Selevan Penrule was concerned, in outright contradiction to each other. She just didn’t know that yet.
Out of the car, he gave a nod to several fishermen who stood smoking in the rain, their craft at rest against the side of the wharf. They’d have come up from the sea by way of the canal lock at the wharf ’s far end, and they presented a stark contrast to the boats and boatmen who would be in Casveyln with the start of summer. Selevan vastly preferred this group to those who would arrive with the better weather. True, he made his money from the tourist trade, but he didn’t have to like that fact.
He set off into the heart of town, going towards it along a string of shops. He stopped for a takeaway coffee at Jill’s Juices and then again for a packet of Dunhills and a roll of breath mints at Pukkas Pizza Slices Et Cetera (the accent being on the et cetera, for their pizza was rubbish in a shoe), which was where the Crescent made its turn up into the Strand. Here the road created a slow climb to the top of the town, and Clean Barrel Surf Shop stood on a corner half the distance up, just along a route that offered a hair salon, a decrepit nightclub, two extremely down-at-heel hotels, and a fish-and-chips takeaway.
He finished his coffee before he got to the surf shop. There was no bin nearby, so he folded the takeaway cup and put it in the pocket of his rain jacket. Ahead of him, he could see a young man with Julius Caesar hair having an earnest conversation with Nigel Coyle, Clean Barrel’s owner. This would be Will Mendick, Selevan thought. He’d had high hopes of Will, but so far they’d come to nothing.
Selevan heard Will saying to Nigel Coyle, “I admit I was wrong, Mr. Coyle. I shouldn’t even have suggested it. But it’s not like it’s something I ever did before,” to which Coyle replied, “You’re not a very good liar, are you,” before walking off with his car keys jingling in his hand.
Will said darkly, “Sod you, man. Sod you for a lark,” and as Selevan came up to him, “Hullo, Mr. Penrule. Tammy’s inside.”
Selevan found his granddaughter restocking a rack with colourful brochures. He observed her the way he always observed her, like a species of mammal he’d never come upon before. Most of what he saw he disapproved of. She was skin and bones in black: black shoes, black tights, black skirt, black jersey. Hair too thin and cut too short and not even a bit of that sticky goo in it to make it do something other than what it did, which was lie lifelessly against her skull.
Selevan could have coped with the black and the skin and bones of the girl if she’d given the slightest bit of evidence that she might be normal. Ring her eyes with kohl and plant silver rings through her eyebrows and her lips and a stud in her tongue, and he understood that. Mind, he didn’t like it, but he understood. That was the fashion among certain people her age and they’d come to their senses, one hoped, before they disfigured themselves entirely. When they hit twenty-one or maybe twenty-five and they discovered that gainful employment wasn’t beating a path to their doorsteps, they’d sort themselves out. Like Tammy’s father. And what was he now? Lieutenant colonel in the army with a posting in Rhodesia or wherever, because Selevan could never keep track of him-and it would always be Rhodesia to Selevan, never mind what it wanted to call itself-and a distinguished career stretching out before him.