The Fire Child Page 10

  I saw it. You did it. It’s your fault she died.

  I feel a tightening in my chest.

  I gaze at the words I saw him write. Deliberately and carefully, on my car window.

  Jamie is, apparently, trying to tell me something. Or tell himself something. But it is something so bad he cannot say it in words. So he says it cleverly in fading letters, written in fog.

  But what does he mean? Who saw what? Who did what? How can her death be anyone’s fault?

  And now, even as I stare at the words, they disappear. The misted window is demisting, in the milder air of the south coast; the words have now gone, as if he never wrote them. But he did.

  My knuckles are whitened around the steering wheel as I drive back, far too fast. Answers surge and retreat, like ocean waves. Outside Botallack, the road takes me close to the cliff edge, almost toppling into the Atlantic. On an impulse, I brake, skidding the car on gritty sand.

  Opening the window I greedily breathe the damp air, as if I can inhale the truth. I know this cove. I know its name. I now know all these lovely Cornish names. We’ve passed Zawn Reeth – the red cove; we’ve passed Nanjizel, the cavern beside the bay. So this is Carn les Boel, the carn of the bleak place.

  I know these names because I am a quick learner. I remember these words because I am smart, a survivor. And because I am smart, I think I’ve worked out what might have happened, that night Nina Kerthen died.

  Jamie has been having visual dreams. Jamie talked of that night in the letters, like a witness. And Jamie has told me he saw.

  There is one obvious conclusion: Jamie was there when it happened. He was a witness, present at the actual death. No wonder he is so disturbed.

  But this is another thing that David didn’t tell me. And this evasion is infinitely worse. Because David didn’t tell the police, either.

  Lunchtime

  Can I wait until the weekend to force the truth of this out of David? No. He might not even tell me, especially if he is somehow implicated in the death. Which leaves only one person I can speak to. One adult who might know the facts, one Kerthen who might be willing to talk.

  It’s raining very heavily as I park the car. Running to the front door of Juliet’s apartment, in the West Wing, I knock.

  Juliet Kerthen answers, promptly.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Kerthen.’

  ‘Hello, Mrs Kerthen.’

  ‘Tiny bit of mizzle?’ she says, as the rain continues to pummel the gardens into submission. ‘Won’t you come in and have a cup of tea? Get in the warm and dry.’

  I am escorted inside, the door is shut behind me. Her little apartment smells, as ever, like an old person’s house, but in a very nice way. Lavender. Pomades. Hand-made pot pourri. Old-fashioned scents.

  ‘I have been listening to the radio,’ she says, as I follow her down her little hallway. ‘This Hitler chap must be stopped.’

  I pause, embarrassed.

  She turns, laughing quietly. ‘I may be rather less acute than I was, Mrs Kerthen, but I can still tell a joke.’

  We step into her cosy yet messy kitchen. It is always chaotic here, but over the last few months I have begun to understand that Juliet Kerthen is an example of aristocratic squalor: the idea that being truly posh means that you can somehow get away with negligence.

  Juliet is making tea. As she opens the brown teapot lid I realize she is pouring spoonfuls of sugar directly into the pot. Not tea. Spoonful after spoonful of sugar. What do I do? I need to point out her error, without offending.

  Reaching out a hand, I gently touch her wrinkled wrist with its jangling copper bangles. Juliet does not turn to look at me, instead she looks at the sugar spoon, then she looks at the pot. Without a word she rinses the pot, and starts again.

  Her mortification fills the kitchen, like steam. The angle of her shoulders is pained and self-conscious. And now I begin to doubt my reasons for being here. Perhaps I shouldn’t ask Juliet my bleak and intrusive questions. The questions with their very frightening implications.

  Juliet chatters on, but with a hint of desperation. The weather, the price of wine, anything to cover her mistake. My pity for her is heavy, like something I am dragging behind me.

  ‘I do worry about David working so hard. Like the Japanese thing, where they fall over and expire, from all the toil. Won’t you reach for the biscuits? Ginger snaps, I think.’

  The questions choke in my throat. Is David lying about his wife’s death? Did your grandson witness a murder? Can we have some chocolate biscuits, I don’t like ginger snaps.

  Ginger snaps plated, tea safely potted, she guides me into the tiny sitting room, where a bony grey cat snores happily on one chair. Genevieve. The cat opens its eyes, abruptly, as if hoping to see someone else. Nina maybe. The cat sees me, affects a modest but definite hiss – aimed very much at me – and then returns to sleep.

  The rain is still lashing Juliet’s windows. One of the windows is open, banging in the autumn gales. The wind has an odd, howling quality.

  Juliet closes it firmly. ‘What a noise, what a noise.’ She mutters something inaudible, sits down again. ‘You know there is an old Cornish legend about that noise? They say on stormy days you can hear the voices of the drowned, calling out their own names.’ She shakes her head. ‘Sometimes I do wonder, I do. All those poor boys, down there, all those poor boys in the mines, and the fishermen who drowned. Maybe they never really leave us: the dead. Maybe they are always with us, in some way.’

  Our conversation hopscotches. It’s like crossing a river on low unsteady rocks; as soon as we alight on a subject that gives Juliet concern, as she feels her mind falter, she leaps on, searching for another, safer topic.

  Her one steady reliable subject is Jamie, her beloved grandson.

  ‘Jamie is so bright, quite the smartest little boy, and so striking. I saw him in the nativity play; everyone agreed, so very angelic. Yet with those dark looks, like his father, and those eyes, like his grandfather. Do you think he is happy? I so worry about him. That woman. That woman.’

  I am not sure what to say. My questions have died inside me, for the moment. Instead I listen.

  ‘He has all those ancestors, but, really, what a curse they are. David worries about this sort of thing far too much. I am a Kerthen! I am a Kerthen! We’ve been here for a thousand years! Always going on about the rowans. You know, his father was the same, always telling me about the trees. How exciting is a rowan, really? One summer when he was gambling in London I told him I’d get the gardener to chop them all down.’

  I smile, and she smiles back.

  ‘He hit me for that, you know. Yes. When he came back. Struck me across the face.’

  My smile has gone. I gaze at her. Shocked. Yet she’s still chattering away, as if this is some normal thing. ‘And that wasn’t the first time, dear, though that was the worst. I fear my husband became quite an awful man. He used to say the only good thing about marriage is that it reconciles one to the idea of death. What a thing, what a thing. I suppose I should have married Julian … what is his … Courted me at Cambridge. But then, such a womanly man. Whereas Richard … well, you always knew he was a proper man, for all his faults, just like his son.’ She looks at me. ‘Of course David is a very different kind of creature. But he does have that same obsession with ancestry, with perpetuating the line. An idée fixe. It is rather tragic, I sometimes think.’

  I begin to see my chance. I have to be careful.

  ‘Yet he only had one child with Nina?’

  ‘Yes. Like his father, the irony is piquant. But Nina is so frail. She is so well bred, like a hothouse flower. And all the perfume, the Chanel, the dresses, and those eyes, she was witty of course, and intelligent, but such a frail little thing, and her pregnancy took it out of her I understand, they were in France then, but my dear, don’t worry, you are equally as pretty.’

  My tea is left undrunk. A word has struck me. That verb. The present tense. Is. Not was. I know this is Juliet’s failing min
d talking, but it still disturbs me. I can’t directly ask about David and the ‘accident’, yet – but I can ask about this.

  ‘Is?’

  ‘Sorry, my dear?’

  ‘You said “is”? Nina is so very well bred. Is? Not was?’

  The old woman’s eyes instantly moisten, and I feel my conscience prickling. She made a silly mistake. And I am vulgar, and clumsy.

  ‘Oh, don’t listen to me dear, oh, oh.’ This sweet old woman lifts a biscuit to her mouth and I get the sense that she is doing this because if she doesn’t she will actually cry, and now I dislike myself. I am stupid. Bumbling. Crude.

  Juliet goes into her safe zone, chit-chatting about her grandson again.

  ‘I worry that I haven’t seen Jamie happy for a while, he used to be such a happy boy, you know how happy children can be when they are five, or six, you tell them they are going to the funfair and they run around in little circles of happiness. I wish I could have had more. I so hope you will have them, children are so important, they are so special and yet so strange. I think it is because they are closer to God, to the place where we all come from: they are windows into the otherworld. They tremble from the breath of Eternity. We must get more ginger snaps.’

  The tea is finished. Juliet seems visibly exhausted, yet I still need to ask my questions. Because this is probably the moment: when she is tired, off-guard.

  I feel awful. But I need the truth.

  We exchange a few more pleasantries and she follows me to her door. As she pulls it open, I find the courage. I’m going to come right out with it.

  ‘Juliet …’

  Her eyes are half closed, her mind elsewhere.

  ‘Yes? Sorry? Mmm?’

  ‘You mentioned Jamie.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Juliet, Jamie told me something this morning. He told me he saw the accident, he told me he was there when his mother died. So I’m a bit confused. Was he there?’

  It’s a gamble. She may throw me out of her apartment, she may banish me from her company for ever. But she doesn’t do any of this. Instead she regards me with a tiny, sweet, saddening smile. And then she says:

  ‘Oh, my dear, there are so many mysteries, so many people in this house. I never know who to believe. But maybe you are right, because you know what they say: The doubting of doubt is the beginning of faith.’

  Is this her dementia, or is she saying I’m right? I cannot work it out. She rambles on, ‘Anyway, you must come round for tea again, I will ask Cassie to buy some fig rolls. Goodbye, Mrs Kerthen, goodbye. And don’t worry about the things you see, we all see things here. We’ve all seen too much, learned too much, Jamie most of all, he sees it all. Goodbye.’

  The door is shut. I walk around the northern exterior of the house. The sea is grey and wild on my left, the black shapes of Morvellan are malignant in the dwindling rain. I am fairly sure Juliet has proved my suspicions. Jamie was an eyewitness. The worst of my fears are coming true.

  And when I reach the East Wing, the great front door, above the oval drive, looks like a gaping mouth, shouting in amazement at me: Why have you come back?

  73 Days Before Christmas

  Late Afternoon

  ‘Can we? Can we please?’

  Jamie is adamant. He stares. A black and white boy in his Sennen school uniform, pale skin, black hair. The only colour is the pale pink of his lips, and those wistful blue-and-violet eyes.

  ‘You really want to practise photography, now? Not at the weekend? It’s getting cold, Jamie—’

  ‘Yes. No. Please. And I want to photograph the mines. Please?’

  Jamie is cheerful on this run home from school: a precious glimpse of the happy boy I first met in London, with David, when we toured the British Museum together. He was fascinated by the preserved animals in the Egyptian Rooms. The mummified cats and snakes and ravens, beaks protruding through discoloured linen; the human organs in jars.

  ‘Any particular mines?’

  ‘Levant, with the man engine,’ he says, pointing at a brown metal road sign, corroded by sea winds: Levant Mine: 1 mile

  I know of Levant, though I have never been. I know it is one of the biggest of the Kerthen mines. If we have to photograph mines, with all their connotations, this will be better than Morvellan. Anything would be better than Morvellan.

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Why not. Let’s do it.’

  Swinging the car left, I head for the bedraggled centre of the village. We park. We walk. It is cold, deeply autumnal. Jamie hums a tune. The cliffside chimneys of the Levant mine complex are becoming visible. I can see their dark forefingers of granite on the horizon, framed by the restless sea beyond. I can also see the lattice of winding gear, enormous black metal hoops rusting in the Atlantic weather.

  Jamie turns to me. ‘Sing that funny song again, Rachel.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘All right. Here goes. I’ve got pants, I’ve got pants,’ I wait, getting my timing right. ‘I’ve got pants that are bigger than my aunt’s.’

  He bursts into delighted laughter. ‘It’s funny because it doesn’t even rhyme properly. Right?’

  ‘Yep. That’s what makes it funny. Because it is so stupid.’

  ‘Do it again?’

  And so I sing it again – I’ve got pants, I’ve got pants – and he convulses.

  ‘This is fun.’

  Gulls circle above, aimless yet complaining, as we near the cliffs. I’m shivering in the wind, even though I am wearing my thick raincoat.

  It’s been four days since I had that conversation with Juliet. Four days of thinking and confusion, following the revelation; four days of wondering how to take all this to David. I have decided I cannot do this by phone or by email, this discussion could end our marriage.

  I am going to confront him, face to face, wife to husband. It is time to cut through the lies. He returns tomorrow evening.

  And yet in those intervening days my anger has slowly subsided. Perhaps there is a real, innocent explanation behind the mysteries and evasions. Perhaps a logical explanation as to why David might lie, or dissemble, about something so important.

  I want this to be the case. I want David to come home and convince me. I don’t wish to be the foolish young woman who married in absurd haste, was easily duped by some charming, good-looking bad guy. I still love David. I still want to heal his son, if I can. I still want David and me to have kids. Despite it all.

  And, I suppose, I still want to be the Lady of Carnhallow: owner of that mournful yet magnificent house, where the rowans and tamarisks lead down to the milky surf of the murmuring cove. The romance of my journey to that house, from the grotty suburbs of south-east London, utterly seduces me. I can’t go back to mediocrity. And London poverty. Taking buses through dismal council estates to a tiny rented flat I can barely afford.

  Jamie is holding my hand. I was so lost in thought I hadn’t noticed. It makes my heart quicken, a little. This is one of the few times he has done this: voluntarily taken my hand.

  But I try not to look at him. I don’t want him to be self-conscious about touching me.

  ‘What loses its head in the morning, and gets it back at night?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Jamie chuckles. ‘It’s a riddle. Can you guess?’

  He seems so very young, very suddenly. His face eager and hopeful.

  ‘Oooh, difficult.’ I smile. ‘Say it again.’

  ‘What loses its head in the morning, and gets it back at night?’

  I genuinely do not know. His hand is now swinging mine, like we are playmates. But I can hear the sea’s roar of contempt on the wind.

  ‘A pillow! Hah. It’s a pillow, Rachel.’

  ‘Ah, very clever.’

  My stepson is cheerful. This is good.

  ‘All right Jamie, let’s go and take some photos. It’s getting dark and it’s pretty cold, so we’d better be quick.’

  Pressing Jamie’s shoulder I steer him up the last sl
ope – before the fierce plunge of the cliffsides, where we stare at Levant mine.

  The size of the ruins is astounding; enough, momentarily, to silence us both. Two large, crumbling wheelhouses stand dauntless but empty. Hundreds of concrete columns, further down the cliffs, have the ambience of a roofless, classical temple, but one built for worshipping darker, underground gods. Some of the truly enormous spoilheaps – the acres of the deads, left to rot – are stained yellow, and russet. Poisoned by chemicals, probably.

  And all of it stands next to the swaying desolation of the sea.

  The vastness is underlined by the loneliness. Although there are rain-speckled tourist signs dotted about, explaining the history, The UNESCO Listed Cornish Mining Landscape, we are the only people here – apart from one little girl, in the far distance, half skipping between the ruined columns.

  She is in a kind of Alice in Wonderland dress, under a purple anorak. I wonder where her parents must be. She is wearing peculiarly small boots, as if her feet are deformed, as if she is being forced to wear something cruelly painful. Yet she is moving very easily. Skipping and jumping.

  The girl turns, and looks at me. Now she opens her mouth and points away at something – over there, in the sea. As if she is silently telling me to look in the sea, look, look, look for answers in the sea. Then she runs down a path, lost to view.

  Unthinking and instinctive, I hug Jamie very close to me. Protecting him: like the girl is a kind of threat. My stepson does not mind my unexpected embrace. He didn’t even see the girl; his attention is on the task.

  Jamie turns. I let him go. He says he wants to start taking photos. He has taken out his iPhone, of which I faintly but continually disapprove: an eight-year-old with a fancy smartphone. No.

  But it makes a good camera. He’s already making decent images. He doesn’t need that much tuition from me, no one needs that much tuition in photography any more. My profession, photography, was a profession that died. Like Cornish tin-mining.