Part 34 (2/2)

'He's lying.'

'You can tell?'

'Trust me.' She turned back to Jed, who was crouched on the deck of his blue boat, coiling a length of rope into a neat pile. 'Just give me five minutes.'

'You're sure it'll take that long?' Sarah whispered harshly, sarcastically, but left all the same; walked the jetty to the end, and stood staring out to sea, possibly in the direction of an invisible island.

Zoe said to Jed, 'You hire out often?'

'The boat?'

She laughed. 'Yes. The boat.'

He considered. 'Well, there's tourists. Like yourselves. After the fis.h.i.+ng.'

'We're not after fish.'

'An' there's some like to see the coast at night. Aye. I'll do tourists.'

'And there's others like to see the islands.'

'Not much in the way of islands, lady. Just lumps of rock.'

'But you still get visitors. And they pay you well. And they pay you extra to keep quiet.'

He eyed her thoughtfully. It was always possible, she admitted to herself, that she'd made a right b.o.l.l.o.c.ks of this. That was something worth considering, so she considered it as she reached into her bag for her cigarettes. She offered Jed one, but he shook his head. He had his own. She was amused, though not side-splittingly so, to see they were much lower tar than hers.

'An' if that were true,' he said at last, when they were both puffing away, 'an' I was paid to keep quiet, I mean.'

'Yes?'

'Well, I'd be daft to open my gob. Wouldn't I?'

She'd been here before. They were past dancing. She blew a big happy cloud of smoke. 'Well, that'd depend,' she told him.

'Oh aye?'

'On how much you were offered to change your mind.'

He nodded deeply, as if he'd rarely come across a point so well put. Twenty-something going on fifty, Zoe amended. Whatever game they'd just embarked on, he was an expert. This was going to cost.

By the time Sarah rejoined them they were each on their second cigarette, sealing a deal notable mostly for Jed's refusal to budge from the first sum mentioned: two hundred pounds, significantly more than Zoe carried with her. Possibly more than her bank carried on her behalf. There was going to have to be serious conversation with Sarah before too long. On the other hand, if she did nothing now, Sarah might not be alive before too long. One of those situations it was difficult to put a price on, so probably two hundred wasn't excessive.

'Did you remember an island, then?' Sarah asked, a shade hostile.

'I'll be forgettin' me own name next,' said Jed.

'He'll be posing for b.l.o.o.d.y postcards next, more like,' Sarah told Zoe, who was writing a cheque and ignored her.

'I'm trusting that won't bounce,' Jed said.

'And we're trusting that won't sink,' Zoe said. 'So we're even.'

Jed patted the rail of his boat with affection. 'I've sailed this lady through high waters,' he said. 'It'll get you through a millpond like today.'

Millpond, Zoe was thinking ten minutes later. The Cruel Sea, more like. She could feel her stomach s.h.i.+fting location in counterpoint to the rolling of the waters all around. She was a city girl, a fact which was patently clear: that's why Jed thought he could get away with pretending this wasn't a typhoon they were in. But he couldn't fool Zoe's stomach. Currently it was hanging on to the railway sandwiches she'd eaten last night, but it was a matter of minutes, that was all, or a matter of moments. The Sea Shall Not Have Them. b.u.g.g.e.r that. The sea would get what was coming.

Sarah seemed okay, or at least wasn't hanging over the edge heaving her guts up. It was hard to get a handle on her, Zoe thought. Joe had liked her, that was for sure. But then, Joe had liked most everybody. It was the single most irritating thing about him.

A sudden dip in the air all around her as the boat fell into a trough. f.u.c.k! But she recovered, at least temporarily. She put her knuckles to her forehead and rubbed, very hard. They came away wet. Seaspray, obviously, but also sweat: she was losing buckets here. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt this bad without being drunk. The joke said first you were frightened you'd die, then you were frightened you wouldn't. Except it wasn't a joke, feeling this ill. It was very f.u.c.king serious indeed.

She tried to dip into her mind for a good memory, something to chase this away. But all her memories were of Joe, for some reason, and though they weren't all bad, they all ended badly. Joe had ended badly. Nothing she tried to remember, or failed to forget, could change that fact. Joe had ended, his throat cut by a stranger, and if you skipped all the details, that was the reason she was on this boat now . . .

Forget about the boat, Zoe.

So she remembered instead, years ago, watching a TV pro-gramme with him: it was about bloodhounds, for Christ's sake, which was probably the reason they were watching it. 'That's me,' he'd said. It had never mattered how she'd treated Joe, how she'd responded to his dumb enthusiasms or his injured pride, he never failed to open up for her, to give her all the ammunition she could want. 'That's me. The archetypal bloodhound. Once I'm on the trail, I never stop.' Well, sure, Joe. She couldn't recall how she'd replied, but she remembered well what she'd been thinking. Sure you are, just like a bloodhound: creased and baggy and slinging drool all over the place . . . He was an emotional dribbler, Joe; he s...o...b..red over people. He'd fall in love with total strangers and tell them his life story; worse, he'd want to hear theirs. It had driven Zoe mad and it had driven her away, but here she was years after the bloodhound show trying to follow this trail to its end, because Joe had started off on it, and never got to finish.

It was a long time since she'd imagined they'd actually grow old together. But remembering him now, remembering he'd never grow old at all, she wanted to cry, or shout, or hurt someone. Larkin, she thought. He'd always been fond of Philip Larkin. Give me your arm, old toad; Help me down Cemetery Road . . . He'd been helped down Cemetery Road, all right, but it hadn't been time for him to go, and he hadn't expected such help. Maybe the man who did that was dead, like Sarah said, but that didn't mean there weren't debts outstanding.

Jesus Christ. b.l.o.o.d.y Joe.

There was a sudden upsurge, and an equally sudden upchuck. Before she knew it, her grief was coming up into view like so much lunch: she was spewing it on the waters, though that wasn't the end of it, everything cast on the waters came back . . . Seasick. And getting so f.u.c.king delirious she'd be spouting poetry herself next.

There was a hand on her shoulder, a voice at her ear. 'Are you okay?'

'No. I'm dying.'

'He says we'll be there soon.'

'You can bury me on the beach.'

But in truth she was feeling better; was feeling, at least, that she might live. Probably an improvement.

Probably, but she'd been wrong about the beach. All there was was rock: this great grey chunk sticking out of the sea like it had been dropped from a large height or thrust up from the depths: whichever, it wasn't anywhere worth visiting. She groaned again as a form of communication, this was increasingly appealing to Zoe: it made clear her feelings on most subjects, and was a lot simpler than forming coherent sentences.

'You sure you're dying?'

'Just f.u.c.k off, okay?'

'Okay.'

'And get me a cigarette.'

<script>