That Was Then Read online

  The weather had changed slightly. In the gathering darkness a brisk offshore breeze grated the smooth surface of the seas and handfuls of rain pattered on my window. I put on my mac and boots and went out, leaving the living room light on so Ben would know I wasn’t going to be long.

  I ran across the road and turned right on the promenade, to where the first long flight of steps tumbled down the side of the wall to the shingle. Since living at Cliff Mansions I’d become an ozone junkie. The first hit of damp, salty air went to my head like strong drink. The restless rush and suck of the sea was music to my ears. I couldn’t imagine how I’d survived all those years hugger-mugger in the man-made English countryside, hemmed in by cushiony hills and cabbagy trees, where even if you couldn’t see another house you knew there was one just over the rise or round the bend.

  I reached the steps and went down them, leaving the pallid glow of the promenade lights behind. This was what I liked, this swift transition from concrete to the noisy tumble of the beach. From being a background presence, unfurling its long, sullen waves, the sea’s growl became thrillingly close, and its fine spray joined the rain on my face.

  I trudged down the sliding shingle banks to the water’s edge. The pale foam scudded round my feet and then hissed away, dragging the small pebbles with it, exposing shining muscles of sand. When the tide was really low, small children tried to make sandcastles down here, but their efforts were always unsuccessful. This wasn’t old, quiet powdery sand that had settled down into a comfortable accommodation with people. This sand still belonged to the sea. It was thick, and wet, and granular, full of minute, scuttling marine life, constantly on the move, not susceptible to patting and piling by small hands.

  A bigger wave bounced at me, testing, and I jumped back, feeling a cold trickle of water over the top of my boot. I began to walk at a rather more respectful distance, away from Cliff Mansions towards the western headland. I made myself walk fast, my calf muscles ached with the effort of hauling my feet in and out of the shifting stones. Slimey black rags of weed and bladderwrack marked the tideline, along with the usual marine debris of plastic, fish bones and splintered wood. This wasn‘t a beach on which to meander barefoot, looking for shells, it was a piece of the British coast still locked in an attritional embrace with the channel, giving nothing away, taking nothing much, hanging on like grim death. Periodically, when there were fierce winter storms, the sea wall would be breached and the buildings on the promenade, Cliff Mansions included, would have their foundations shaken by maddened waves suddenly let slip. In the old days the Esplanade Hotel had taken some pride in the tilt of a massive oil painting in the residents’ lounge: when first-time guests pointed out, as they invariably did, that the painting was at an angle the staff would explain that it was not the picture, but the building, which was crooked.

  I walked for about half a mile, clambering over the sodden breakwaters. People sitting indoors would have thought it dark, but it was quite easy to see one’s way down here. There was a bit of moon, the shape of an orange segment in the patchy sky, and the racing sea caught and dispersed its small glow. In the distance the oil tanker was now no more than a compact constellation of lights. The gulls who yelped and screeched overhead all day long were gone to roost.

  When I reached that part of the beach where the fishermen kept their boats I turned back. I was deterred not so much by the thick hawsers stretched up the slope like trip wires and the slippery logs sunk into the shingle, but by the ubiquitous smears of tar. Distant memories of my furious mother battling the tar menace with Thorpit and a kitchen knife made me wary.

  I trudged back up the ledges to the promenade for the walk home. At this end of the bay the authorities had run out of goodwill and cash – there were none of the little civic niceties that marked the stretch from Cliff Mansions to the Martello Tower, no concrete tubs of windproof annuals, no heritage lamp-posts, or seats dedicated to the deceased. On the landward side of the road the ground fell away sharply to the bleak expanse of the sports ground. The ground was below sea level, which meant that in the winter, and even from time to time in inclement summers, it was easily flooded. Tonight, a glimmer of light in the cricket pavilion indicated a home win.

  I was almost back at the flats when I heard soft footfalls behind me, first walking, then breaking into a padding, lupine trot. I stiffened with pre-programmed anxiety and turned towards the road. HORRIFIC SEX ATTACK IN SEASIDE TOWN, NO ONE HEARS LOCAL WOMAN SCREAM—

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Ben – for goodness’ sake!’

  ‘Think I was the Beast of Littelsea? Dream on.’

  He fell into step beside me and my nervously pattering heart quietened.

  ‘So what’s occurring?’ he asked. ‘Just out for a bit of a walk?’

  ‘Yes … Your father came round.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘He was hoping to see you, he stayed for quite a while. Sent his love, says he hopes he catches you next time.’

  ‘I was only along at the pub.’

  I refrained from pointing out that the Rat and Ferret might have been Ayers Rock for all its accessibility to the rest of us.

  ‘Give him a ring,’ I suggested.

  ‘I might well do.’

  We walked down the side of the Mansions, leaving the sound of the sea behind.

  ‘How’s Pearl?’ I asked.

  ‘Search me, I haven’t seen her.’

  ‘Right.’

  I felt his amused look first, then his indulgent pat on the shoulder. ‘Pleased?’

  ‘Not at all, I was only asking—’

  ‘You’re chuffed to little bits.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ I protested, though I was beginning to laugh, ‘Pearl was fine – in her way—’

  We were both paralytic by the time I’d unlocked the door.

  Bouvier’s was a provincial auctioneers with big ideas. Ours was a small satellite branch – the head office was in Hove, and the smartest in Brighton. The owner, Piers Bouvier, claimed he could trace his lineage back to the Huguenots, and his grand house named (pretentiously, we thought) La Falaise, had a walled and terraced garden which he said was a classic French design for growing grapes in the English climate. It had not escaped our attention, however, that Piers had bought the house some ten years ago, and not inherited it as he might have liked us to believe.

  Still, we weren’t complaining: Bouvier’s was our meal ticket whatever its provenance. Its success was probably due to the lack of local competition, and also the fact that Littelsea was a retirement area, with plenty of well-heeled senior citizens moving house, and passing on.

  My job had originally been solely clerical but the bit I’d picked up about the trade, plus a penchant for dealing with the public, meant that these days I occasionally got sent out to do the less-demanding valuations.

  In the Littelsea branch of Bouvier’s we were only four – Geoffrey, the manager; Emma, the Sotheby’s-trained second-in-command; Jo, the administrator; and me. And a very happy little ship we were. Geoffrey was a smartly independent widower in his early sixties. Emma was the sort of thirty-something single woman who, if she had not been studying Georgian whatnots for Bouvier’s would have been doing research – and the rest – for some smooth home-counties MP. Jo was a jolly local girl who lived with her parents, went clubbing at weekends and holidaying with girlfriends – ‘never take a bloke on holiday’ being her watchword. Our harmonious working relationship depended on our differences. If our lives outside the office had begun to resemble each other or, heaven forfend, to overlap in any way we should certainly have fallen out irreparably.

  Bouvier’s was situated in a side street running off the Memorial Gardens – not the Lanes, exactly, but quite a pleasant little backwater with an Italian restaurant and a bearable pub, the Magnet, at the non-gardens end.

  On the Wednesday of my first week back, Geoffrey came into our office to ask if I’d do a valuation in Hawley End.

  ‘It should be Emma,
but she’s had to go to the sale in Brighton – they’ve slipped in that oak dining table and chairs she thinks so highly of and she wants to keep her eye on things.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, ‘I’d like to.’

  ‘Jammy thing,’ said Jo, not seriously.

  Geoffrey looked at her. ‘Do you want to go?’

  ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘What’s the score?’ I asked.

  ‘As I understand it it’s a modest house with a few nice pieces – the old lady’s gone into a nursing home and the family are dealing with the contents. To be candid I think it’s more your sort of job than Emma’s anyway, because dealing with the people will be at least as important as putting a price on the items.’

  When he’d gone out of the room Jo made a get-you face. ‘You and your soft skills – I should be so lucky!’

  Because I was due at the client’s house at two-fifteen I left the office at lunchtime and went to call on Helen. She was in, attending to some page proofs at a gate-leg table in the living room.

  ‘No, no,’ she murmured in response to my demurs, ‘come on in, it must be time for a break of some sort.’

  Having no expectations on the refreshment front I’d bought a prepacked sandwich at a petrol station on the dual carriageway, but to my surprise Helen got out a loaf of solid, greyish bread, heavily barnacled with seeds, some low-fat spread and a nice chunk of farmhouse cheddar with proper rind.

  ‘This is it, I’m afraid, but you’re quite welcome.…’

  ‘It looks great, thanks.’

  ‘I believe I’ve got some cider as well.’

  ‘Even better.’

  The cider, bought from the village shop, was flat, cloudy and ferociously strong. It seemed to have no effect on Helen, but after half a glass I could feel my face overheating and my voice working slightly ahead of my brain. Perhaps this was what prompted me to mention Clive’s visit.

  ‘He was asking after you,’ I told her. ‘I said I’d seen you.’

  ‘And how did you say I was?’ enquired Helen in that languid way which would have sounded sarcastic to someone who didn’t know her as well as I did.

  ‘I told the truth but not the whole truth. I said you weren’t epecially happy with your lot.’

  ‘Hmm …’ mused Helen, chipping at the cheese, ‘I wonder if that was wise.…’

  ‘What would you rather I did?’

  She sighed. ‘Heavens, I don’t know. I just truly couldn’t bear Clive to turn up on the doorstep. I should embarrass myself and everyone else and absolutely no useful purpose would be served.’

  ‘He won’t do that,’ I assured her.

  Something in my tone or manner caught Helen’s attention, because she said, with rather more asperity: ‘Why are you so sure?’

  ‘He doesn’t feel sufficiently confident to attempt anything so bold.’

  ‘Thank God.’ She looked at me, blinking as if seeing me properly for the first time. ‘So tell me how everything is with you?’

  I told her. It didn’t take long, I was versed in the art of the breezy summing up. Helen lit a cigarette and waved a hand at the smoke.

  ‘Perhaps I should take up tennis,’ she said, coughing languidly, in response of to some reference of mine about having plenty to do. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Why not? Have you ever played?’

  ‘At school. I wasn’t completely palsied, but I never made a team or anything.’

  ‘If you’re interested you should invest in a bit of coaching,’ I suggested.

  She pulled a face. ‘That smacks of trying altogether too hard … I’ve never made my veins stand out yet, and I’m convinced it would be unwise to start now.’

  ‘How are things with John?’ I asked.

  ‘Sublime and ridiculous,’ she replied, regarding her slightly trembling cigarette. ‘But what can I do?’

  It wasn’t a question, or if it was it was only a rhetorical one, so I said nothing, and she added almost dazedly: ‘I’m not myself.’

  I thought of poor devoted, distracted Clive, and concluded that whatever clumsy attempts I had made to promote his cause, he was on a hiding to nothing.

  The client’s house was actually a neat semi-detched bungalow in a small close off the village high street. A Volvo estate occupied the paved parking bay to the full, so I parked in the road. The front door opened as I approached and an exhausted-looking middle-aged woman in big shorts greeted me.

  ‘Hello – Bouvier’s?’

  I introduced myself. ‘How do you do, Jane Rymer,’ she said. ‘You’re such a welcome sight. One more thing I can cross off my list, does that sound terrible?’

  ‘Not in the least.’

  ‘This is such a trying job, and rather a depressing one, and it tends to fall to the womenfolk, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose it does.’

  She led me into the living room. ‘This is actually my mother-in-law’s place, but Julian is an only, and has to be in the States this week, so muggins here is well and truly lumbered.’

  ‘Poor you,’ I agreed. ‘I sympathise. I moved house myself not so long ago and even sorting out one’s own possessions is a headache, let alone someone else’s.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know …’ she was a coping type and didn’t want to seem to be whingeing. ‘Actually I mustn’t make too much of it. It’s only a small house, and Mother has chosen what she wants to keep.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Whitegates.’ She named a converted Georgian pile between Hawley End and Littelsea. ‘Do you know it?’

  ‘I know of it. It’s got a good reputation.’

  ‘Yes, we had very reliable recommendations and the staff are perfectly sweet … I’m sorry, how rude of me, would you like a coffee or something? Teabag?’

  ‘No thanks, I’d better get on.’

  ‘Are you sure? It’s being in someone else’s house, it throws one.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So how do you like to do this, do I just point you at the relevant bits?’

  ‘If you would.’

  Old Mrs Rymer’s bits were nice – an eclectic assortment of Georgian and Jacobean pieces, far too big for the bungalow, some oriental porcelain, quantities of silver, half a dozen pleasing Victorian watercolours and a hideous but fashionable clock of the same period, its face peeping out like a shy bride from the surrounding squadron of cherubs.

  It didn’t take long to get round. Jane Rymer accompanied me with exclamations of surprise and gratification, sometimes genuine, sometimes merely polite, making her own notes. In spite of her rather distracted manner, she was the right stuff, and nobody’s fool. When we’d finished, I explained that I would send her a printed copy of my estimates by the end of the week.

  ‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘I must say it really is astonishing what one accumulates in a lifetime. I dread to think what our offspring will have to contend with when Julian and I pop our clogs. Do you want that coffee now, because I’m going to.’

  This time I accepted. While she was in the kitchen I studied the collection of photographs on Mrs Rymer’s cherry wood piecrust table. I recognised Jane and the absent Julian on their wedding day, their faces alight with absolute confidence, and another of them a few years later with three children, two boys with shiny fringes and ties, and a little girl in an alice band and a smocked dress. Julian was a little shorter than his wife, sleek and thin-lipped.

  At the back, half-hidden behind other assorted family groups, was an oval-framed black-and-white photograph of a young man in uniform whom I took to be Mr Rymer. Even the ancient mount spotted with damp, and the dusty glass could not dim his heroically Saxon good looks.

  When my hostess came back in with the coffee I pointed to the photo.

  ‘What a wonderful looking man.’

  ‘Isn’t he just? One’s tempted to say they don’t make them like that any more.’

  ‘Is he – I mean I assume he’s your father-in-law …?’

  ‘No. But for hist
ory he might have been.’

  Her expression invited enquiry. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘He was a close friend, a very close friend, of Mother’s before the war.’

  ‘And she kept a photo of him all this time.’

  ‘Oh yes. It was no secret that he was the love of her life.’

  ‘She sounds quite an unconventional woman.’

  ‘Indeed she is.’ She picked up the photo and rubbed the glass on her shorts before replacing it.

  ‘He was German.’

  After I’d printed out the valuations I wrote a standard letter to Jane Rymer and posted the whole lot off to her at her home address in Beaconsfield, as directed. Then I left the office and went home, stopping off at the supermarket en route. By the Indian goodies I encountered Rick Shaw, still in his work suit – he worked in the council planning department. He gave me his shy, warm smile – Desma was a lucky woman.

  ‘I said I’d take back something that requires no cooking,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘You can’t go wrong with tikka masala,’ I agreed. ‘Some pilau rice, a couple of bhajees and you’re home and dry. The nation’s favourite dish.’

  ‘Just what I thought.’ He popped a positive feast in his basket with admirable lack of caution. As we parted company a girl in tight jeans gave him a scaldingly appreciative look, which Littelsea’s favourite dish was far too nice and modest to notice.

  Ben was out again. I took the opportunity to dive into his room and take out the past week’s quota of cereal bowls and rubbish. With regard to my forays into what the papers would have called ‘his space’ we adopted a policy of discreet openness. I went in and and out on these occasional clean-up forays with impunity: on the other hand he made not the slightest attempt to conceal anything, on the grounds that if I went in uninvited I got everything I deserved. Whatever I saw, I made no comment.