age, which crumbled at her touch.
Sarah parted more grass and laid her own daisies, level with the feet, not the heart. The silence of the place was extraordinary.
There was a posse of black crows congregating at the bottom of the field. Two years before, Elisabeth Tysall, wife of Charles Tysall, had walked out at low tide across the creeks. She had been presumed the victim of an accident. Sarah could hear the cultivated voice of Charles telling her of the need for punishment and knew the version was not true.
His Porphyria had laid down amongst the lavender and waited for the sea to take her. She may have covered her own elegant limbs with sand, the better to remain buried for a whole year before the tide broke the bank and released her.
`Why?' Sarah asked her. 'You let him win. I do wish I'd known you.' A redhead you were, like me. A beauty, since Charles would have wedded nothing less. You should have been mourned, whatever you were. Not only by Charles, who loved you in his own, perverted way, followed you into the sea to find your resting place, drowned in the same, aberrant flood.
Sarah looked again at the grave, the dead roses and the scornful thistles. Who loved you? Who cared for you then? Where did you go? You and I, we could have been friends. Instead, you were merely the catalyst in a story and another source of my endless guilt.
The silence struck again, like a blow to the ears, making her long for a voice in return. The intensity of it, the dearth of birdsong, made her look round, notice for the first time the mist of the now late afternoon, obscuring the sun, hiding the wicket gate to the church. She stood and looked down at the daisies.
A headstone for Elisabeth Tysall, something to mark her life, someone must. Something grand and beautiful for a woman who had wanted to live as much as the woman who stared at the flowers now.
Sarah walked back to the landward side of the village where she had left her car and took a wrong turn out of the town, looking for the coast road. The red car with the dented wing crawled through the lanes, following instructions, driving like the locals in second gear. To call this a town was a misnomer: it was a village. She imagined the populace from the hinterland trucking in on Saturday nights, like cowboys from the desert, in search of liquor 'n' entertainment.
A fish-and-chip frontage and a Victorian behind, was how Ernest had described it; a sort of harbour flanked with an amusement arcade and signs saying don't park the car on the front, or the tide may take it. Drive along the quay, Ernest had said, ignore a bend. Go straight on, he had said, off the main road, keep the sea on your left until the track runs out. The house is there, half a mile at most. You can't miss it.
She did miss it, because she detoured round the town out of curiosity and found herself stuck in a narrow lane against a wall lined with hollyhocks and someone waiting patiently behind. She went back to the quay, found it swathed in mist and wondered what Ernest meant about keeping the ocean on the left when she could not see a glimmer of water. The receding tide moved in a dirty little channel out beyond brown banks towards the invisible sea.
The garish lights of an amusement arcade hit her back and the din was raucous. People sat on a wall which separated quay from road, eating fish and chips; the air smelt of salt, vinegar, petrol.
It was all so messy and so normal, shabby holiday life, nothing sinister in the pedestrian litter.
The mist was puzzling rather than frightening; it spread round her like a warm blanket, bringing with it a premature darkness and making her realize at long last that she was very, very late for the Pardoes.
There was a cake on the kitchen table, a lopsided travesty of a confection which looked more like Plasticine. Two slabs of solid matter, wedged together with a gluey icing made with flour in mistake for sugar. One of Mother's better efforts at occupational therapy,
Sarah parted more grass and laid her own daisies, level with the feet, not the heart. The silence of the place was extraordinary.
There was a posse of black crows congregating at the bottom of the field. Two years before, Elisabeth Tysall, wife of Charles Tysall, had walked out at low tide across the creeks. She had been presumed the victim of an accident. Sarah could hear the cultivated voice of Charles telling her of the need for punishment and knew the version was not true.
His Porphyria had laid down amongst the lavender and waited for the sea to take her. She may have covered her own elegant limbs with sand, the better to remain buried for a whole year before the tide broke the bank and released her.
`Why?' Sarah asked her. 'You let him win. I do wish I'd known you.' A redhead you were, like me. A beauty, since Charles would have wedded nothing less. You should have been mourned, whatever you were. Not only by Charles, who loved you in his own, perverted way, followed you into the sea to find your resting place, drowned in the same, aberrant flood.
Sarah looked again at the grave, the dead roses and the scornful thistles. Who loved you? Who cared for you then? Where did you go? You and I, we could have been friends. Instead, you were merely the catalyst in a story and another source of my endless guilt.
The silence struck again, like a blow to the ears, making her long for a voice in return. The intensity of it, the dearth of birdsong, made her look round, notice for the first time the mist of the now late afternoon, obscuring the sun, hiding the wicket gate to the church. She stood and looked down at the daisies.
A headstone for Elisabeth Tysall, something to mark her life, someone must. Something grand and beautiful for a woman who had wanted to live as much as the woman who stared at the flowers now.
Sarah walked back to the landward side of the village where she had left her car and took a wrong turn out of the town, looking for the coast road. The red car with the dented wing crawled through the lanes, following instructions, driving like the locals in second gear. To call this a town was a misnomer: it was a village. She imagined the populace from the hinterland trucking in on Saturday nights, like cowboys from the desert, in search of liquor 'n' entertainment.
A fish-and-chip frontage and a Victorian behind, was how Ernest had described it; a sort of harbour flanked with an amusement arcade and signs saying don't park the car on the front, or the tide may take it. Drive along the quay, Ernest had said, ignore a bend. Go straight on, he had said, off the main road, keep the sea on your left until the track runs out. The house is there, half a mile at most. You can't miss it.
She did miss it, because she detoured round the town out of curiosity and found herself stuck in a narrow lane against a wall lined with hollyhocks and someone waiting patiently behind. She went back to the quay, found it swathed in mist and wondered what Ernest meant about keeping the ocean on the left when she could not see a glimmer of water. The receding tide moved in a dirty little channel out beyond brown banks towards the invisible sea.
The garish lights of an amusement arcade hit her back and the din was raucous. People sat on a wall which separated quay from road, eating fish and chips; the air smelt of salt, vinegar, petrol.
It was all so messy and so normal, shabby holiday life, nothing sinister in the pedestrian litter.
The mist was puzzling rather than frightening; it spread round her like a warm blanket, bringing with it a premature darkness and making her realize at long last that she was very, very late for the Pardoes.
There was a cake on the kitchen table, a lopsided travesty of a confection which looked more like Plasticine. Two slabs of solid matter, wedged together with a gluey icing made with flour in mistake for sugar. One of Mother's better efforts at occupational therapy,
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