Perfectly Pure And Good Part 2

There was no fence to separate the small figure of Stonewall Jones from the scrubby garden into which he stared, or from the greenish, mud-coloured land which stretched from behind his thin back into the distant strip of gold which meant the sea. From his small height, he could see everything he wanted.

When he was as still as now, he merged with any landscape, a colourless little boy, whose pale orange hair corresponded with the freckles all over his skin and the eyes which seemed merely to reflect, without any shade of their own. Stonewall suited his nickname.

Others were called Jack or John and came to fit a more aggressive mould even at eleven years old, but Stonewall blended effortlessly into ageless scenery as a born observer. No-one noticed him at home any more either. He had once been the apple of his mother's eye, but that was when he was a baby. She had new babies now and there was no room. He was good for nothing but hanging round in school holidays, coming up here with the bait he dug twice weekly for Edward Pardoe and which he had just delivered to the kitchen at the back.

'Baah,' he breathed. 'Kchoo, coo, coo.'

Stonewall desperately wanted to be loved, even though his own habits of silence discouraged affection. There was no way to express his own love for the sheep in the garden except by making a sound like a pigeon. Birds he could magic from the skies, lugworms from the sea, but none of it helped a boy who was looking for a dog.

Sal had never behaved; she had been a russet-coloured flirt, skittish as a sand piper, which was why she could have been spirited away so easily by a thief. Stonewall was quietly craving possession of this placid sheep for something which would love him unreservedly and mutually.

He also liked the house, simply because it was more than half a mile from all other houses and looked as if the inside was big enough to swing several cats.

Not that he would have dreamt of such barbaric methods of measuring s.p.a.ce since animals of all kinds, not only dogs, had the effect of melting his bones. His own dog had been given to him to act as a constant companion, keep him safe in his wanderings and make him more forthcoming.

The failure of the latter purpose, and the presence of baby twins gave some explanation as to why he had not been encouraged to weep for her loss in that small, cramped and shrill-voiced cottage where a dog had been a luxury and everyone encouraged him to get lost.

It was not as though they did not care, he simply felt he took up too much s.p.a.ce. He supposed they would let him have another, but he couldn't think of that, yet. A sheep with twisted horns would be less of an obvious subst.i.tute for a walk through town. Stonewall smiled widely at the very idea. It could graze on the ever-present washing in the back yard. He could get it a lead.

'You're a silly thing,' he murmured, then shook himself and sighed. Sheep always seemed so content. The breeze made his hair stand on end. He was not bored on an idle day like this, since that was a condition he could not understand when left to himself, but he was a trifle restless.

Rick would not play this morning: no-one wanted to go looking for ghosts. They all talked about a white-haired ghost who stole bits and pieces from the dustbins, but no-one, not even Rick, was going to believe his sightings. It was a mistake, Stonewall reflected gravely, to be known for both silence indoors and exaggeration elsewhere.

He turned for one last look at the house. From an upstairs window, an indistinct figure in bright clothes was waving at him. For a moment he was startled, then waved back, putting energy into his arm, twirling and dancing for her benefit, watching her double over in laughter.

That was no ghost. It was mad Mrs Pardoe, always ready for a game. Funny the way she noticed everything, even himself. He thought of cantering across the lawn, telling her he'd left the sodding bait wrapped in newspaper by the back door, and would Edward please pay him some time? Or shouting, Have you seen my dog? He did neither.

On the way home for the sort of dinner he despised (shepherds pie and peas), Stonewall formed the conviction, on slender circ.u.mstantial evidence, that the ghost had got his dog, only because it was better than believing she was dead.

He slouched the half mile back into what he thought of as a town.

A fly buzzed at the window. The room was full of half-read books, usually less than half.

Edward Pardoe pretended he had read them all, so that he could quote the odd bit of poetry or drama and dazzle the hayseeds with whom his superior artistic tendencies were forced to slum.

At his feet was a painting of Joanna. Edward read from his pocket book of Browning.

That's my last d.u.c.h.ess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive .. .

She didn't. His sister's face looked flat and dead, a bad piece of chocolate-box art. Edward threw the book away, kicked the painting under the bed and turned to the doll's house.

Enter the dreamers,' he murmured, and they obeyed. Inside the stage set on which they performed, each tiny wooden figure could only bend and gesture in strict response to his own fingers. They could sit on chairs with legs crossed, lounge on beds, raise their arms, look as if they were running for their lives. He often played with the doll's house he had made. Other grown-up boys of twenty-two played with steam trains or computer games, depending upon the early taste of their fathers, but Edward was different. He was like the G.o.d of Eden who could never quite leave his creatures alone.

Oh Mummee, Mummee,' he whined, as a little figure held in his hand sat in a sulk with her ballerina skirt sticking straight to expose a wooden crotch and miniature s.e.xless limbs. 'Oh Mummee, I've got a headache and my dress is RUINED!'

'Shut up,' Edward replied. The little figure lay down on her back, knees apart. 'You be careful, Jo,' Edward murmured again.

Crouched over the doll's house, he concentrated on the mummy puppet on a sofa, decked out with ribbons and looking like a dead tin general ready for a funeral. At the dining table, sat the tiny figure of Julian, coated in a little tweed suit. Joanna had made that in the days when she humoured him more. Real men don't sew, she had told him. They may create houses, but they don't sew. Edward had always wondered why not.

Oh G.o.d!' The genuine Joanna, too tall, too broad and shockingly blonde, exploded into the room. 'What are you doing, Ed? It's too hot to be in here.'

'Go away, Jo. Leave me alone.'

'You should have locked the door if you wanted peace.'

He stood with his back to the doll's house, his wiry frame too small to hide his preoccupation, his face unable to disguise his pleasure in seeing her.

'Playing!' Joanna said, contemptuous but nervous. 'Playing happy families, I suppose. You'd be better off painting. Why don't you grow up?'

That was Edward's problem. He refused to grow up. Wanted to be king of the castle without doing anything to earn the crown, his father had said scornfully. Joanna always felt slightly guilty about the disparity between their father's treatment of his second son and only daughter.

Edward could never do anything right. She could do nothing wrong.

'What?' he jeered. 'Grow up like you? Progress to the amus.e.m.e.nt arcade? Very sophisticated.

Completely mature.'

Joanna was not in the mood to take offence. Edward's teasing lacked any real force, unlike his elder brother Julian, who could make her weep with a mere glance. She flung herself on the bed, began chewing a length of her blond hair, twitchy and insecure as ever.

Oh big brother, I'm so miserable. Do you know, I could feel him trembling when he held my hand? Now he avoids me. Weeks, not a word. What did I do? Am I too fat? I want to die.'

'Of course it isn't anything to do with the way you look. I've told you why, how many times?'

They both knew the subject of Joanna's religious fervour. The conversation was stale, but it was the only one which would have tempted her into his room. Edward shook his head. The room was full of sighing. He moved to the window through which the sun streamed, leaned on the sill, looked at the view he had examined a million times before.

The front garden led down to the narrow road; beyond that, flat land spread out in a brown plain until the sun caught a yellow spit of sand. To the left was the village and beyond that he could just see the ground sloping up into gentle, pine-clad dunes. On the stillest of nights, the sea was audible; by day, never more than a ribbon flecked with white. The view swam before his eyes in the shimmering heat. In his mind's eye, he planted exotic shrubs into the flatness, ripened the sea lavender which would change the dun colours into purple during August, included a bit of yellow corn and a few dappled deer, added alien palm trees. An artistic eye could always create such an improvement.

It was so much easier to amend the landscape than it was to acquire the skill to portray it in paint.

He had tried to learn, but like everything he did, the discipline defeated him. He blamed the teachers. Blaming others for his own laziness was Edward's first and last resort. Silly old farts.

'What gives?' said Joanna, peevishly, changing the subject in deference to his indifference, still chewing her hair like a little girl. He liked her like that.

'You're home early. Don't tell me you've got the sack again.'

Another sigh. Edward had turned back to his doll's house, about to replace the dolls, but the gust of his impatient breathing knocked over the sofa on which Mother sat and sent her tumbling to the floor. She lay with her head in the fireplace.

'No, not yet. I didn't have much to do today, honestly.' He shuddered and Joanna shrugged in sympathy.

All right, don't sound so defensive. You know what I think? I think the idea of you being an estate agent is ridiculous. There, I've said it and that's all I'll say. Anyway, since you're here, I could do with a bit of help.' She was lying on the bed with her arms folded behind her head, her bare feet leaving dirty marks on the coverlet.

It was this last detail, along with her bitten nails, which reminded him that the languid att.i.tude was not one of a willing courtesan in a painting, but the artless, unselfconscious sprawl of a teenager. 'I need help,' she continued, 'because of this awful solicitor woman coming to stay in the cottage. Do you think you could clear up some of your fishing tackle? It does get in the way in the kitchen. And the hall, and the dining room. I suppose supper ought to be better than usual.'

It's always good,' Edward said gently. 'And often marvellous.' She flushed, the pleasure quickly hidden by a flick of the hand across her pink face.

Oh, pooh. Not what Julian says. He says if you really want to cook, go away and learn how. Why does he want us both to go away?'

'You know perfectly well,' Edward said gently. 'Neither of us can, can we? Julian wants to grab everything and shove Ma in some horrible home the day after we leave. How many times must I tell you?' He lightened the sombre tone which always caught her attention.

'Anyway the cooking does a lot for me. You could even make me fat.' Jo grinned at him, threw a cushion from the bed towards his head.

He caught it, threw it back, growling; she seized it again and hurled it harder. Edward let it drop, then went into his King Kong mode, lurching towards her with legs splayed and arms raised with the elbows above his shoulders, fingers twitching. Jo behaved like a maiden waiting for a dragon, wringing her hands and shrieking, 'OH! Oh! oh!' until he came closer and there was a hint of real fear in her laughter. Edward dropped the pose.

'You don't take me seriously,' he said. 'No-one does. Oh dearie, dearie me. I'll never get to eat a virgin.'

'Sturgeon, maybe,' said his sister, leaping off the bed noisily, shaking out her skirt The waistband was loose round her small waist, the skirt itself extra voluminous, old-fashioned, flounced and girlish to hide the wide hips she detested. If only, Edward thought, I were larger all over .. .

Joanna also detested her white skin, her cheeks currently blooming into pink as they always did in response to the slightest emotion or exertion. Edward frightened her sometimes.

He always took a joke too far.

And of course I take you seriously,' she added carelessly, retreating. 'Though maybe not as a maiden-s.n.a.t.c.her. Oh, I wish someone would s.n.a.t.c.h me. Listen, do you think Julian will lay on wine for dinner? In deference to the Law amongst us?' Julian, tyrant, despot, unfair critic and spoiler of everything.

I expect so,' Edward murmured, suddenly depressed. 'Provided we undertake to keep it away from Ma.'

Oh yes. Easier said than done.' Both lapsed into silence. Edward moved back to the doll's house, where he replaced the little figure he had blown off the sofa. He felt Jo bending beside him to look into the room with the same old fascination she found so easy to scorn and he so quick to rekindle. At moments like these, they could have been the same childish age instead of he four years her senior. He wanted to pull her closer. The effort to restrain himself was almost too much: he could feel her breath, the babyish talc.u.m powder smell of her and it made him want to faint. His fingers itched to feel the warm patch at the back of her neck.

There was a sound from the road which separated the summer garden from the channels beyond. It was a tinkling parody of Big Ben chimes on the hour, Da dah, dah da, dah da, da dah, garish and eerie. The ice-cream van, calling to Joanna like the music of the spheres.

Oh no!' she wailed. 'It's him! And I look so awful!'

Edward clenched his fists. The door slammed, the room shuddered and everything in the doll's house fell over. Edward peered inside and took the ballerina figure and the small doll dressed like an artist with a smock and placed them with their arms around each other on the master bed of the biggest room upstairs. Then he threw a cloth across the whole construction as if he was silencing a parrot in a cage and took up a station behind the window, out of sight.

The ice-cream van drove down the drive, where weeds had almost overtaken the remnants of gravel and the lawn, where a sheep grazed, somehow expanded into the gra.s.sy flower-beds. Mist was beginning to roll in from the sea, warm and wet, promising oblivion. He watched as the ice-cream van stopped below, still tinkling, shut his eyes, tried to imagine the sound of the distant waves, failed.

Please don't run, Jo, please don't. He could not abide to witness her humiliation or watch her bitten nails pushing through the blond hair; could not bear to see her preen the way she never had for him. He clenched his fist. 'Why is it I never get what I want?' he murmured petulantly. 'Things will change, Dad, just you wait and see.'

As the van drew to a halt, with its monstrous bells still ringing to the faithful, a figure emerged from the front door of the house with a joyful scream. Edward closed his eyes again in the instant he recognized that high-pitched shrieking and the jumble of excited words which followed so harsh on his ears. He looked, without amus.e.m.e.nt, as a plump figure banged on the side of the van, yelling, 'Hallo, hallo oh, goodbye, darling thing, are you being good today?'

The van stopped, lurched forwards a few yards, part of an act. The bright little figure ran after it, whooping with laughter. Edward relaxed. At least this little fool wasn't Joanna. Only his own darling mother, sweetly dotty and harmlessly senile. He looked down at her with more indifference than contempt. As soon as he could manage it, she was going to live in a zoo. If not a zoo, at least behind bars, and a grave would be best of all.

Joanna, money, this house to pull down and this landscape to alter. If only. He wanted never to work, and to go on as he had so far, in the careful cultivation of an image of himself as a cunning player of games and a deeply interesting, deeply unpleasant young man. Oh, yes, and maybe a better fisherman than his father. Nothing else mattered.

Everyone mattered too much.

'Nice evening in store, Doctor?'

'No,' said Julian Pardoe, writing the prescription as he spoke. I very much doubt it.'

'Why's that, then? Lovely big house, yours. So I'm told. People says.'

Ah, the word of authority. People says. Lovely house. You should try living in it. You should try coping with leaks and delinquents of all ages. You should try . . .' He stopped, not embarra.s.sed, but ashamed for listening to his own voice rising into a petulant yell. Miss Gloomer, obdurate spinster, eighty years old, chronically and courageously ill, sat across the desk in his surgery, knowing her manners, while he forgot his. Her face was a map of pain, patience and fort.i.tude.

She managed to sit in her chair without trembling only because of the stick with the ornamental duck's head she clasped with both hands pressed into the top while the ferrule was digging a hole in his carpet, absorbing the constant trembling of her limbs. I'd be so much better, Julian thought, if I talked to them more, the way I used to, but I can't bear it. Women of virtue like this are the worst, so patient and kind they take a piece of you. I've nothing to give them, even when I like them as much as this, I can't be patient. He turned the bark into a laugh and finished the prescription. 'Mustn't complain, mustn't complain,' he said, testily.

'Why not?' she said surprisingly. 'It's allowed. We all got problems. Perhaps you should try living alone. You've been the same since your father pa.s.sed away. There was a time when you had a kind word for everyone. I suppose they call it stress.' s.n.a.t.c.hing the prescription quickly to avoid more than a split-second release of the stick, she was on her way to the door. Oh Lord, he thought, I should be helping her, instead of sitting here like an inconsiderate dummy.

In his own confusion and her rumbling movements, he still recognized something horribly astute.

I appreciate it's very hard living alone, Miss Gloomer . . he began to say, trying to make amends with a particle of conversation. She stopped dead and cackled.

'Don't you believe it. Only thing I ever got right. Even if it is frightening, sometimes.'

I'll probably see you later.'

'No need. Only if it suits you.'

This time his smile was right from the eyes. He heard the stick guide her down the corridor and waited before pressing the bell. Living alone seemed like a vision of heaven and he would appreciate it now if the next patient was a hooligan tourist deserving of rudeness. 'Next!' he yelled, when the bell brought no response. Nurse popped into the room, smiling, her endless cheerfulness like sand in a graze.

'You've been through them all like a dose of salts today, Doctor. Reckon that's the lot and you can go home.'

Oh. Dr Freeman finished too, has he? Or would he like me to take one of his?'

She shifted uncomfortably. 'Well no, I don't think so. He's got a couple waiting, but they're his regulars, if you see what I mean.'

Dr Freeman was far more popular than Dr Pardoe. Nor did nice-natured women freeze him in his tracks. Once upon a time it had been the other way round.

Julian did not know if fury or relief was uppermost in his mind as he strode to his car. Relief to be out of the ugly modern medical centre with its compa.s.sionate efficiency, or fury with himself for skimping time with the patients and shying away from the opposite s.e.x as if they could sting him. If only he could emulate the charm of Dr Freeman; give each one his undivided attention, instead of champing at the bit, brooding, hating himself, moving from one captivity to the next, taking no comfort.

The interior of his car was overpoweringly hot. It had been cleaned that morning in readiness for house calls to patients who would tell him about ghosts, as if he did not have enough of his own.

Freeman's car was carelessly filthy and parked beneath a tree. Julian wondered what had happened to his comfortable dreams and the endless sympathy he had once commanded, felt faintly savage, ashamed of himself for his own, dogged misery.

There was a smart red car with a dent, parked next to his own in the s.p.a.ce marked 'doctors only'.

The sight of an inconsiderate outsider only increased his irritation.

Sarah Fortune felt a stranger, off territory and slightly confused. She was not due to reach the Pardoes until early evening and it was only early afternoon. She had several motives for reaching the village sooner than expected, but was unsure which to take first, so she dawdled in the high street, trying to orientate herself.

In briefing her for this task, Ernest Matthewson had been deliberately economical with the background information he had given her, which consisted of an Ordnance Survey map, directions and little else. She was left to glean what she could of the family who were paying her fees and giving her a place to stay while she earned them. Which was why, on a whim, in a state of indecision and not relishing the next task, she found herself in the hairdresser's. Hairdressers knew things and it was a place to sit.

On holiday, are you? You've been in here before, haven't you? I'm sure I know you from somewhere.'

'No,' said Sarah, smiling her disarming smile. 'No to both. I'm working. For the Pardoes. Do you know them?'

The woman towelling her wet head of hair did not pause for a moment, but chuckled.

'Course. Everyone does. I got no worries. I pay my rent. How do you find Mrs Pardoe?

Comes in Monday mornings, all the clobber. Mad as a hatter, but still independent, you know. I suppose they'll have to get someone to look after her soon. Poor little Mouse.'

I haven't met her yet. I'm not due up there until this evening. Thought I'd have a look around first.'

And get your hair done? Good idea.' They eyed each other in the mirror. 'Blow dry, or set?'