Cold to the Touch Read online

  Sarah had forgotten to buy anything to eat and listening to Jessica reminded her of food. Left to herself, any variation on the theme of eggs and toast would do, but not when she thought of Jessica’s standards. Jessica demanded fine oils and herbs and fish more exotic than any that were available here: town fish, like tuna, swordfish, scallops and wild salmon. Fish was her speciality: Jessica really didn’t like meat. Sarah picked up the phone and asked for a taxi to take her to the little town three miles away down the coast. Jessica unsettled her: there was definitely something wrong with Sarah if she wanted to see the inside of a big supermarket. Besides, she needed more paint. Classical grey for the vicarage, best not to let the vicar have the choice.

  It would be dark by the time she got back, and it was even nicer coming home in the dark. Maybe she would always be an urbanite: maybe the city was locked in her. Then she thought of urban dinner parties and shuddered. On the way to the next town, in the back of a battered taxi with a taciturn driver, she thought of the first time she had met Jessica Hurly.

  W11, environs of Holland Park, long after dark. Huge house, Lansdowne Road or somewhere. No supermarket food allowed. Mine host already flushed. Purpose of dinner party: to show a degree of financial prudence and showy-offishness, as well as a fat torso. Look, guys, just look at this house. See the furniture? Clock the design features? And why are we having this party? Think on. Because I’ve had a bloody good bonus and rather than ram it down your necks with a party in some old-hat costa-bomb place like the Ritz I’m having it here in my own home, and I scarcely know some of you, but you’re all guys I need to know, like my dentist and possibly some whose noses I want to rub in it. I’ve got a wife, her over there; I’ve got a kid with a nanny in the upper regions of MY house and all’s well with the world, thank you. There’s even a fucking pedigree cat. No credit crunch here for me. So let’s raise a toast to me and all the megadeals that got me this house that no one else could afford and all this vintage champers. Shall we sit? (At MY table, with the Villeroy and Boch china. I really wanted you to see that: not dishwasher-proof, but the cook will see to that. Cheers!) Pity it’s too wet for you to see the garden at the back. Designed by . . . What the hell’s happened to that bitch of a cook? Had to have a word with her earlier. She isn’t cheap, bit of a looker, though she said we couldn’t eat the starter with spoons! Well, I mean, I need to use these very fine spoons we got as a wedding present and I thought I’d ordered soup, but she said I’d chosen foie gras with figs, silly cow, so I said change it, I want to use the spoons, surely you can knock up a soup? And I’m sure I said meat rather than fish.

  Are we seated? Did you like the canopies, sorry, canapés? Looked lively, didn’t they? Jolly well served, too, those tits of hers are like kittens in a basket. Who? No, she comes highly recommended by that bloke who runs DK, Das Kalb to us, that little place near Smithfield, does meltdown steak, he kills it himself. No, not cheap, either, this cook, but not nearly as much as taking all you unimportant little fuckers out to a slap-up meal there. Plus wine, of course – do you like the glasses? Ah, here she is, does it all on her own, you know. Clever girl.

  Yes, I am a clever girl sometimes, Jessica said afterwards in another kind of taxi. So sharp I could cut off my own nose to spite my own face. I’ll never get paid, but it was worth it. Don’t you see? I knew what he was thinking. He was one of those who can only feel big by making everyone else feel small. He didn’t know that it’s never money that makes a man.

  The clever girl came in with the cucumber soup, stood poised in the doorway that led from there to the kitchen, framed in light like an avenging angel in perpendicular heels. Nigella Lawson, eat your heart out. She teetered towards him, coquettishly and steadily bearing a huge silver salver that looked too heavy for her slender arms to lift. Chairs scraped back for men to take it from her, but lift it she did, to a great enough height from which to pour it all over his head. Blue nails, virulent green soup. It wasn’t the action, Sarah decided: it was the wholehearted cheer that followed that dealt the mortal blow to his pride.

  It was cold soup, Jessica said. I wouldn’t have done it with hot. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. It just felt like something that had to be done. If I was like him and made people squirm for fun I’d want someone to teach me that I couldn’t get away with it.

  Halfway down the supermarket aisle, blinking in the artificial light and hating every minute of it, Sarah wondered if this was the kind of episode that Jessica in her current mood might well repeat this evening or another evening without the same moral justification. Whether Jessica’s anger was always in response to genuine provocation and outrage, or whether it was the formless, destructive sort that came from being angry with oneself, Sarah was not sure. Now that Jessica was six months older, she hoped there would be no repetition and she loaded the trolley with an abundance of everything so that she would only have to return later rather than sooner. Then she moved on to the only part of this vast store that she did not actively dislike, which was the Do It Yourself section. Paint. Three times seven-litre cans, heavy stuff. Presumptuous of her to choose for him, but instinct told her he might like it that way and it would save time.

  It was early-evening dark when she got home and lugged it all into the porch: wine, fish and paint. She had forgotten herbs, but Sam the Butcher said he could get them any time, him or Jeremy would. Jeremy, that plain lad, could collect whatever she needed from the herb beds at the back, and any time soon she would be able to collect wild garlic and fennel from the beach herself.

  She was not that close to Nature. Nature could take care of itself.

  The phone rang. This time it was the vicar. Call me Andrew.

  ‘Do you really mean it? About painting the vicarage? The main room, anyway? Only I thought I’d give you a chance to change your mind. I’ve got masses of white paint. Do you mean it?’

  ‘Yes, but not white.’

  He laughed with relief.

  ‘Oh, good. Not white. So sterile and godly. Marvellous – er, when did you think you could start? I mean we, only I’m busy all day tomorrow, then it’s Sunday, and Monday’s difficult with meetings and things and . . .’

  He was flustered and hurried, anxious that she should not go.

  ‘The day after, then. Start on Tuesday. I’ll give myself a long weekend to limber up. It’s supposed to be very cold again next week. A good time to be in.’

  ‘Are you sure? What about the colour?’

  ‘I thought a nice classical warm light grey,’ Sarah said. ‘With your white paint as undercoat. I’ve taken the liberty of buying some. Was that very presumptuous of me?’

  There was not a murmur of protest, only a sigh of relief.

  ‘Sarah, please presume as much as you like. I’ll enjoy it.’

  ‘And I’ll look forward to it.’

  She put down the phone, smiling at the prospect and cautiously pleased to have got her own way. She already knew the right colours. She had seen that graveyard of a room. Time spent redeeming it would be good for both their souls and she liked the thought of that.

  Jessica flitted across her mind on the way out. Sarah could lie in bed all weekend if she wished. There was nothing she had to do: she was a free agent and time flew sweetly when you were free. She had a hundred miles to walk and a garden to tend. She had formed a talent for irresponsible postponement and she was thoroughly enjoying it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Dear Mummy,

  I want to come back, but I don’t know how.

  Who would I talk to? They all hate me because of what I was. Why did you ever let Daddy grow such a chip on his shoulder, and then drive him away – but no, I suppose it was Life did that. Whipped butcher’s boy, wants big house, blah, blah, blah, then leaves home to die. How clichéd he was. You too, I suppose: unloved grande dame plays sourpuss. I’m sorry, I know why you do, but people could love you, you know. They did once.

  I did, I do. You deserve better.

  If I came back, I coul
dn’t even cook for people. They’d think there was poison in it, so I couldn’t do anything, because cooking’s all I can do. Not that it made me able to keep a man, did it? Still doesn’t. Love doesn’t work, Mums. They always love the dog best.

  He would have come back for the dog. Even Jack would come back for the dog. I know I told a lot of lies, but the bit about the vicar was true. I wish you hadn’t trusted him, but then you have to trust somebody.

  Hope you enjoy your view of the sea. Wonder what it’s like down there – can you hear them fighting outside the pub on Saturday nights? Can you hear the gulls?

  I wish you’d get e-mail, Mummy, it makes writing easier.

  I hope you’ve stopped using the baby buggy for shopping. I know it’s practical, but . . .

  It’s going to get better, Mums. Spring is springing.

  Tell me I can come home.

  Jessie.

  That had been the last letter to plop through the letterbox, the third in a fortnightv, and now it was Monday again after another interminable weekend and there had been none this morning otherwise she would have heard. She had begun to miss the sound; it was as if Jessie’s letters had their own sound. All sounds here were distinct.

  Down in the last two streets of cottages that spread from the bottom of the hill and turned their backs on everyone else, Celia Hurly contemplated the restrictions of the view from her bedroom window. The view was endless, revealing nothing but sea and sky and unutterably tedious for revealing nothing more until a crowd of menacing seagulls appeared to hover and scream, filling the space and blocking out the sky. They came so close to the glass, they made her shield her eyes and yell, but once they were gone, wheeling away as suddenly as they had appeared and leaving the clouds intact, she wanted their noise. Nothing was left but the muted sound of the sea, and the lack of noise from the letterbox downstairs.

  The wooden frame of the sash window had the effect of framing and dividing the view. From her bed, she could see the sea through the bottom half, the sky tapering into the horizon through the top and even when she snuggled further down into her bed the damned horizon would never quite coincide with the middle of the window so that sometimes she thought she was looking at it through prison bars.

  Damn the seagulls and that silly fool who threw out stale bread for them most days. You could set your clock by her and yet, each time, Celia Hurly was shaken into angry surprise.

  She had been sitting on the side of the bed and now she reached for her stick to wave at the last departing seagull before falling back with the effort. The horizon rose above the central bar of the window. She did not have the energy to open the window and shout at dotty Mrs Smith, because if that stupid woman did not know by now that seagulls had no need of her bread there was no point in telling her. She had been cooing and throwing bread for these scavengers all year, always choosing to do so outside someone else’s house so that the crap went onto their roofs and windows, not hers. It wasn’t a personal vendetta, so Celia vowed to continue to smile at her should they meet in the hairdresser’s, because that was the right thing to do. And then, maybe, rub guano into her hair.

  Bloody seagulls. Bloody endless sky seen through too small a window and prison bars.

  The room was Spartan. The painted floorboards were rough on her feet once she left the safety of a small sheepskin rug at the bedside and moved towards the door. Everything in here was white, or off-white, depending on its age. White sheets, pillows, a yellowed bedspread and curtains best described as parchment and never closed since she hated the dark. White walls. The metal of the iron bedstead, also painted white, but chipped, was cold against her palm. She pulled on a white towel dressing gown over a cream nightdress, thinking how she had never liked white, not even for a wedding dress. It was only as a deterrent to her own worst impulses that this room was so plain and ill-designed for comfort. She kept it that way to put herself off spending too much time in it, but the strategy had failed because bed was still the best place in the world.

  There were times when she thought of herself as a lizard that had lost its legs by a process of evolution and had turned into a snake. A year or three of burrowing underground, sliding rather than walking, had made the legs redundant until all she was fit for was hiding under a rock. Still equipped with muscles and fangs, as well as with some capacity for the lightning strike, she had perhaps taken to the undergrowth of her own mattress a little too soon. It was not as if she could not walk, but she could scarcely see the point. There was nowhere she wanted to walk towards, and nowhere from which to run.

  Celia Hurly, widow of the parish, had moved several times in the same village, descending from the biggest house to the smallest, and with each move going further downhill, geographically. She retained ownership of four properties, including this hovel, and she planned to go back to any one of the others sometime. Maybe. Owning three properties subject to rental arrangements was a way of keeping her options open, but the last move had been a mistake. She had thought she wanted closeness to the sea, but she didn’t. She had lived at the top of the hill and now she lived at the bottom with two houses either side that were empty during the week until gumbooted families came from somewhere and played with nature and each other from late Friday until Sunday afternoons. Non-villagers came from surrounding towns and other alien places to drink in the pub three doors away and have drunken fights after closing time, which she enjoyed. Such fun, my dears. She had moved each time because she had wanted to, and now she was stuck with the view and a role as a landlady which she only relished sometimes. The late Mr Edwin Hurly, who had been as difficult to acquire as he had been to keep until he wilfully released himself from the burden of life, would have approved. He had always liked white walls and might have enjoyed the thought of his widow being reduced to this screaming boredom with her own brand of venom neutralised. Mr Edwin Hurly had been an excellent provider, common as muck and hell to live with, as bullies are. The only love of his life had been his late-born and only legitimate child and even that had not lasted. He had come to prefer animals. The first thing Celia had done when he drowned on one of the deep-sea fishing trips he took every year to give himself a challenge and get away from the place he had failed to conquer was to get rid of the dog.

  Another perfect day, then. The vicar is coming to tea. I can sing yet. Did I mean sting or sing? Someone will deliver organic vegetables and someone will come in to clean, so everything is all right with the world.

  I would like to know who that woman is who took Jack Dunn’s house, and why she took it in such a state without making any complaint about the dog hair. I would like to know where Jack Dunn’s mad dog went after it was dumped on me, as if that was going to make up for the unpaid rent, but the agent deals with that. I don’t care. Jack Dunn called his wretched dog Jess. That was why I couldn’t keep it.

  She stood by her window and sang DO-RE-ME-FAR-SO, loudly. The view remained roughly the same and no one noticed.

  At high noon, inside the white room, Celia dressed in careful shades of grey and black: she could still afford her good old clothes whatever other economies she might have to make. She descended to the front door. Ignoring the lack of letters on the mat, she took her coat and her own version of a shopping trolley and opened the door. Manoeuvring the buggy, she sidestepped the puddles in the road outside, got to the end of the track flanking the houses and pushed herself up the steep incline, keeping to the middle of the road. Cars always stopped for someone pushing a baby buggy, not knowing that this buggy was empty. Celia was on her way to enliven the dull lives of the butcher and that horrible boy. She had all her spite and anger about her today, because she was sick of feeling simply sad. The boy only came in after twelve. Mrs Hurly reckoned she was the only person alive who knew exactly who he was: she could see a resemblance to that drowned good-looking bastard, her dear late husband.

  Please come home, Jessie. Please understand that I am way too proud to ask. Please just arrive.

  On her
laborious way uphill she rejoiced in the muscular strength of her arms and the sound of cars braking either in front of her or behind. Everyone waited for the not-so-regal progress of the black widow Hurly, not because they knew who she was but because she was there.

  ‘Are you open yet?’

  The publican of The Star turned round quickly at the sound of a voice, ready to throw away his cigarette. With some amusement he had been watching Mrs Hurly make her way out of the sea road and creep up the hill. She could go a hell of a lot faster than that if she wanted; she was hardly ancient yet, or not in comparison with so many others who lived further up the hill. The village was a good place for aged widows far older than her to break their necks. It was polarised: suffocated by old men and women, hidden adults and small children. Once the kids hit school age they went away for years, got used to finding their entertainments somewhere else; the next town at least, which was so much more sociable than this. They came home from school, took off again and finally fled, except for a few of them. This was not the best place to have a pub when the main custom came from the weekenders, the occupants of the caravan park lurking discreetly behind the cliffs and the out-of-hours drinkers. A Monday just after midday was not a good one on which to ask if he was open yet.

  ‘I’m always open,’ he started to say. Then he recognised the face. Hurried him in.

  The principal butcher’s boy, referred to as an assistant, came in three days out of six, never early and always looking as if he’d had a hard weekend. Look at the state of him. A study in acne scars, a stupid hungover look on that unobservant thin little weasel face was what Mrs Celia Hurly saw and Sam always had the impression that she would like to pinch him, hard, except that she wouldn’t want to get close enough. What was it with her and him? He thought he knew but he could have been wrong. Not a good afternoon for Sam the butcher, but Mondays were not his favourite days. At least no policeman had come to call, as on the Friday before. Jeremy, otherwise known as The Boy, would have hidden away at the sight of a uniform, on account of a long track record in the Youth Court, ten miles away: drunk and disorderly, out of his head on beer and spliffs, no money for anything more serious. Always under suspicion because he knew so much about firearms and other lethal weapons from the time he had worked in an abattoir, which was another piece of history that singled him out. One brick short of a load, it was whispered; at any rate a man with a general air of hangdog disgrace, and an absence of charisma. Jeremy the loser, the one with the missing cathode, the lad who looked bad at the start of the day and worse at the end because by then he seemed to have put his head in a vat of lard. Whenever indecisive (often) he ran his hands through his hair – there was no stopping him. His long blond hair was his best feature and he managed to mess that up too, so he looked even more like a prematurely aged hormone-driven teenager in need of the love of a good woman. Sam doubted the existence of a woman with enough patience to mine this particular twenty-eight-year-old gem, unless they could share his penchant for killing things. Harmless enough: Jeremy only took his air rifle to rooks, nuisancy pigeons and the rabbits which proliferated on the cliffs. Plenty spare, he told Sam: they need culling, why not eat ’em? There was a steady demand for Jeremy’s rabbits, as long as no one knew where they came from. Always fresh, especially in spring. Soft and splendid, as if they had never known such a thing as rigor mortis and a life beforehand.