sand. Sarah, her back to the door, screened by Sylvie, watched them through the mirror.
`What do you want, Rick?' said Sylvie, snapping as if scolding, but patently pleased to see them both.
`Boy needs a hair cut. He got chewing-gum in it.'
`Get your arse out of here, the two of you, and send him back in half an hour, all right? Can't you see I'm busy? You want spray?' Sylvie bellowed to Sarah all in one breath.
Sarah Fortune, with her cloud of clean hair and her small sum of knowledge, walked out beyond the town, away from the people and away from the sea. En route , she bought provisions for the cottage the Pardoes would provide and left them in the car, except for the flowers, which she took with her. This last action made her define the real purpose of being early, not merely to explore — something else far more important.
She had craved the sea for the last few days but once in view, found herself afflicted with a strange reluctance to look at the creeks, the channels and the quay which existed at the bottom of the street and ducked into the town instead. She was suddenly an alien, far from the metropolis which was home, and if not afraid, at least wary.
Tomorrow she would crave the sea again: the mere thought of it made her excited. So often she had dreamed her ignorant dream of living in an unpretentious place like this, inside a cottage with roses round the door. The dream had become a habit of familiar escape. Similar visions of privacy and non-accountability prevailed as her greatest ambition, the tawdry golden thread of her adult life. Somehow she had come to imagine Elisabeth Tysall may have felt the same.
On the edge of the village-cum-town, stood the church. According to the Ordnance Survey map, the only church, bearing bravely the signs of neglect as evidence of the dwindling faithful who needed no more than the burgeoning graveyard and the occasional blessing of a half-remembered God. Elisabeth Tysall, twice-buried, once beneath a sand bank and, later, here, had needed both.
It was her consecrated grave which was the purpose of Sarah's pilgrimage. The newer graves spilled into a field, less attractive than the mossy stones surrounding the church at crooked angles, like drunken friends on the way home, the names obscured, the grass growing between.
The interments of the last two years were less cheerful for being still remembered, harassed in equal terms by grief and dead flowers. Some had already begun to sink into the unkempt; others bore vestiges of fresh planting.
A temporary wooden marker bore the legend of Elisabeth's name. No-one had requisitioned a stone, but then Charles had died, had he not, so soon after she was identified. The grass grew round it freely. On either side, the close-packed graves bore bright, white stones, the soil packed with pansies to the left, a bunch of tired flowers in a plastic container to the right.
Elisabeth, who had chosen the wrong one to love. Sarah wanted to weep for her.
Ì'm sorry,' she was saying. 'I'm so sorry. I should have come sooner. Maybe you know how it is.
I should have come to your funeral, but I didn't know the full story. Still don't. Did anyone come to your funeral?'
She found she was raising her voice to the level of one commonsensical woman talking to a friend on equal terms, a person who was businesslike, ashamed of sentiment, but always prone to it. Sarah parted the grass to lay down the flowers, wishing she had bought something grander; there was no impulse of which she was ashamed, except meanness. Buried beneath was a suicidal woman of youth and beauty, unmourned, unnoticed, and that was an abomination. Sarah began to tidy, until her fingers struck razor points and she withdrew sharply.
Blood appeared on her knuckles; she sucked her fist, squatting back on her haunches to look again. Covered by grass, there were thistles lurking, dead, massed into a bunch beneath another bouquet of fat, desiccated roses, purple with indeterminate
`What do you want, Rick?' said Sylvie, snapping as if scolding, but patently pleased to see them both.
`Boy needs a hair cut. He got chewing-gum in it.'
`Get your arse out of here, the two of you, and send him back in half an hour, all right? Can't you see I'm busy? You want spray?' Sylvie bellowed to Sarah all in one breath.
Sarah Fortune, with her cloud of clean hair and her small sum of knowledge, walked out beyond the town, away from the people and away from the sea. En route , she bought provisions for the cottage the Pardoes would provide and left them in the car, except for the flowers, which she took with her. This last action made her define the real purpose of being early, not merely to explore — something else far more important.
She had craved the sea for the last few days but once in view, found herself afflicted with a strange reluctance to look at the creeks, the channels and the quay which existed at the bottom of the street and ducked into the town instead. She was suddenly an alien, far from the metropolis which was home, and if not afraid, at least wary.
Tomorrow she would crave the sea again: the mere thought of it made her excited. So often she had dreamed her ignorant dream of living in an unpretentious place like this, inside a cottage with roses round the door. The dream had become a habit of familiar escape. Similar visions of privacy and non-accountability prevailed as her greatest ambition, the tawdry golden thread of her adult life. Somehow she had come to imagine Elisabeth Tysall may have felt the same.
On the edge of the village-cum-town, stood the church. According to the Ordnance Survey map, the only church, bearing bravely the signs of neglect as evidence of the dwindling faithful who needed no more than the burgeoning graveyard and the occasional blessing of a half-remembered God. Elisabeth Tysall, twice-buried, once beneath a sand bank and, later, here, had needed both.
It was her consecrated grave which was the purpose of Sarah's pilgrimage. The newer graves spilled into a field, less attractive than the mossy stones surrounding the church at crooked angles, like drunken friends on the way home, the names obscured, the grass growing between.
The interments of the last two years were less cheerful for being still remembered, harassed in equal terms by grief and dead flowers. Some had already begun to sink into the unkempt; others bore vestiges of fresh planting.
A temporary wooden marker bore the legend of Elisabeth's name. No-one had requisitioned a stone, but then Charles had died, had he not, so soon after she was identified. The grass grew round it freely. On either side, the close-packed graves bore bright, white stones, the soil packed with pansies to the left, a bunch of tired flowers in a plastic container to the right.
Elisabeth, who had chosen the wrong one to love. Sarah wanted to weep for her.
Ì'm sorry,' she was saying. 'I'm so sorry. I should have come sooner. Maybe you know how it is.
I should have come to your funeral, but I didn't know the full story. Still don't. Did anyone come to your funeral?'
She found she was raising her voice to the level of one commonsensical woman talking to a friend on equal terms, a person who was businesslike, ashamed of sentiment, but always prone to it. Sarah parted the grass to lay down the flowers, wishing she had bought something grander; there was no impulse of which she was ashamed, except meanness. Buried beneath was a suicidal woman of youth and beauty, unmourned, unnoticed, and that was an abomination. Sarah began to tidy, until her fingers struck razor points and she withdrew sharply.
Blood appeared on her knuckles; she sucked her fist, squatting back on her haunches to look again. Covered by grass, there were thistles lurking, dead, massed into a bunch beneath another bouquet of fat, desiccated roses, purple with indeterminate
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