Gold Digger (24 page)

‘It isn’t true,’ Di said gently.

‘No, I know it isn’t,’ Patrick said, impatient and relieved, wanting the subject to be over. They had reached the pier. A lone fisherman was packing up and going home, nodding good morning as he passed. They paused and counted clouds. The boats on the horizon made her want to move; the sea below made her want to stay. She looked back. No one, the town still asleep.

‘And I just wanted you to know,’ Patrick said, ‘That it wasn’t
my
mum, it wasn’t her, it wasn’t. It was Beatrice and them. It wasn’t
my
mummy.
She
doesn’t say bad things, she tells Aunty Bea to stop.’

‘I hear you,’ Di said. ‘It’s all right. Do you know what?’ she said, leaning over the side, ‘I really, really want to learn to fish.’

‘Oh yeah, so do I,’ Patrick said, fervently.

‘Next summer, hey? When all this fuss is over.’

They walked to the end. In the absence of anyone else on the brink of the day, it felt as if it was their own domain. They looked back at the sweep of the land, the tall houses and the small. Then they looked at the sky. This was home. This was better than any painting.

‘Some people collect clouds,’ Di said. ‘You can do that anywhere and its free.’

‘I collect all sorts of stuff,’ Patrick said.

‘Everybody sane does,’ Di said. ‘C’mon. Let’s run back, it’s good for us.’

He did not register the fear in her voice; it was only another part of the game. Di had seen him in the distance, from halfway down the pier, watched as he was ducking into a shelter on the promenade, still a long way away. She was glimpsing a limping figure with a stick coming towards them from the town end, moving slowly and purposefully towards the pier, the hat pulled down over the eyes. She had been looking around all the time since they set out and had not seen him. He was skulking in doorways, seemed to emerge from nowhere, looking towards the boy, who was playing airplanes with his arms; speeding up himself as if he was planning to greet them at the narrow gate of the pier. Di did not want Patrick to see him or recognise him and she did not want Quig any closer. She did not know what he wanted, or even if he had seen them, but she knew the distance between them was far too small for comfort. He may have been sent; he may have been looking for an easy target: he may simply have resented a boy who had drawn his face.

‘Race you,’ she said. ‘All the way home. Last one’s a sissy.’

Patrick responded, running ahead out of the pier, turning for home, running faster with clumsy speed and waving arms, she in his wake, spurring him on, overtaking him, until the house was there, and they slowed down to a walk. Safe now. Quig could not run like that.

They walked the last stretch in a breathless stroll. The adrenaline waned and Di slowed her steps and so did he. Patrick took her hand as they approached the house, and then, when they were at the gate, he let go. She looked back, one last time, into an empty space.

‘It wasn’t my mum, it wasn’t my mum, Di. It was Aunty Bea and Edmund did it. What shall I tell them, Di?’ he asked once they were inside and the door shut and they were back upstairs.

‘You tell them whatever you think it’s best to tell them. Tell them anything that makes them listen to you. Tell them you want them to stop fighting.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ he said. ‘I meant, what do I tell them about the paintings worth a million. That’s what they’ll want to know about. The ones on Daddy’s computer.’

‘Paintings like that don’t exist here,’ she said. She could not tell him a lie.

‘But shall I tell them that they do?’

‘Tell them whatever they need to hear, I would,’ she said. ‘You must tell them whatever you want, no less, no more.’

‘So I won’t say nothing, then. They wouldn’t believe me anyway. As long as you know it’s not Mummy.’

Her heart was fit for breaking, the fragments of it cold. She envied Gayle her loyal son.

Treasure him. Let him come back.

They were safe indoors. Quig could not penetrate these
walls, not even to kidnap a boy. Even a boy could outrun Quig.

The others foregathered to make picnics and fuss, crowd round and say goodbye. Patrick was seen off like a king and she was lost in the crowd, waving until the car holding him was out of sight. Di went upstairs and looked out of the window, wanting him away and wanting him back.

Then she shut herself away with Saul. There were sounds of argument, upstairs and down.

A
lways the messenger boy. Raymond Forrest was furious with his client and her instructions. He drove into the town in a bad temper, not improved by traffic jams on the way. He hated his solid car and his solid frame, and he hated the way she was right. His wife, that is.
Just act as mediator
, she said.
Give Di my regards. Met her once and liked her very much.

His ears buzzed with the conversation that had begun yesterday morning and lasted until well into the evening, when Gayle and Beatrice and Edward forgot he was there, listening on the speakerphone to everything else they were saying.

He’s there, he must be there.

No, he must be at the flat. We took him there, didn’t we? Go there.

We’ve been there.

No, wait.

Wait? It’s your son we’re talking about.

Wait. He’s perfectly capable of getting home by himself.
Gayle’s voice.

All that way?

He’s been there before. He’s been in cars and trains. Are you there, Raymond?

Beatrice’s voice.
Di’s abducted him. She’s taken him away.
She’s been speaking to him and telling him to come. I want to call the police.

His own voice.
Is he in danger?

Can’t wait. Yes, He’s in danger. Di’s a pervert, too.

Beatrice, again, before the voices melded in the background, Edward’s uppermost.

Wait, he could be useful … Use him, the little shit …

He won’t come to harm. Don’t you see, we’ve got her? She lured him there, she’s a kidnapper. We can use it … if that’s where he’s gone, he can be our spy. Let her hang herself.

Beatrice.
WE’RE GOING TO PHONE THE POLICE.

‘Good luck to you,’ Raymond Forrest said and put the phone down. Picked up the other one and called Diana Porteous. By that time it was late and there had been more conversations. Why didn’t one or both of these parents just go and fetch the beastly child if they knew where he had gone? Why weren’t they out searching? Even if there were flood warnings on that part of the coast, dammit. If it was his child, he would have got in the car and driven through hell.

It followed, he told himself as slowed down to turn into the High Street, looking at the litter of a storm, wishing he knew a better route, that the parents of the boy were not worried about him at all. As soon as they knew where he was, they knew he was safe. There was another agenda. Edward had refused to speak to Di,
the bitch,
such an overused word for anybody and anything, only a name for a female dog. They would only have him as an intermediary, and Di agreed.
I’ve just got back,
she said
. Sorry to have missed your earlier calls. Yes, he is here and well looked after, not by me. Please tell them that and please tell them that yes, of course, he must come home as soon as possible. I agree it isn’t appropriate for him to be here. They won’t want me to bring him back and they won’t want to
come here and collect, so could you do it, Raymond?
Third party, adult, neutral, utterly responsible lawyer. Trusted by all. Tasked with the impossible.

What had he said to her? Keep your nose clean, keep good company. And what did she do? Failed to respond to the draft of a will he had sent her, surrounded herself with riff raff and treated him like a servant. Here he was now, chauffeuring a silent child who sat in the front seat of his solid car on the way back, drawing things in the book he got out of a canvas bag, the only luggage he had apart from a picnic for one. Raymond felt neutered. All right, he was paid by the hour, but not enough for this. He felt as if
he
had been kidnapped rather than this child who was not exactly a child, more of an alien.

The boy started to hum as they approached the outskirts of London. Then he started to talk, a slight improvement on silence.

‘I like Jones. He’s going to teach me to fish. He’s bent, you know.’

‘Is he? Bent like what?’

‘Bent like bent copper. Not gay bent, like Saul is. And Peg’s going to teach me stuff. She’s going to tell me about sex.’

Raymond Forrest shook himself and groaned.

‘Jolly good,’ he said.

Peg was that surly teenager with spiked hair, who covered the lad with kisses.
Bye, bye sweetheart, come back soon.
She had bosoms hanging out, like flower baskets on a balcony, not good for a boy; not good for Raymond Forrest’s own temperature either. Such undesirable companions Di had chosen.

Raymond felt heavy and clumsy, his emotions, such as they were, in conflict, and what made him most uneasy of all was the sometime presence of Saul Blythe, briefly glimpsed
at the door of the kitchen, that trusted friend of all, the hell he was. Raymond slowed down. Sat nav told him his destination and there was precious little time to talk.

‘And Saul?’ he asked. ‘What’s he going to teach you? What was he like? Was he nice?’

‘Dunno. Not sure. Peg says he used to be a thief, but he isn’t any more. He could teach me about that.’

Raymond groaned again.

‘And what are you going to say to your parents about this motley crew?’ he asked in his unconvincingly avuncular fashion.

‘What’s a motley crew? It sounds pretty. Shan’t tell them anything about them,’ he said. ‘They won’t want to know. You won’t tell them either, will you?’

‘No.’

Patrick leaned forward, breathing into Ray’s ear. ‘Just as long as Di knows it wasn’t my mum. My mum’s smart.’

Duty was duty. He drove slowly. Raymond Forrest had been instructed to deliver this child to the safe territory of Thomas’s London flat, and that was what he did. Duty did not extend to saying anything. The child was in good condition, speaking for himself. His client was in control.

There was no need for a key. The door was open. The interior was a scene of dereliction, nothing like the state Raymond had seen it in before. Everything had been taken down off the walls or out of boxes and systematically torn and smashed into pieces. It must have taken some time. Gayle sat in the wreckage of broken things.

Patrick looked at her, sadly. She did not run towards him, or he to her. Raymond watched as the boy walked across the floor and hugged her knees. She began to cry.

‘It wasn’t me did this,’ she said, waving at the room. ‘It
wasn’t me. And it isn’t fair. My own son runs away to another woman. Everyone hates me.’

She glared at Raymond.

‘I hate her,’ she said softly. ‘She stole my child. Why does everyone love
her
?’

The child is father to the man.
Raymond looked at Patrick with new respect. There can be no sadder moment for a child when they realise that not only is their mother deficient, but that they have wounded her deeply. He stood there, battling with pity. Everything was broken.

Gayle wiped her eyes and stood up, smiling at the boy.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Did you find them? That’s what you went for, isn’t it? Tell me that’s why you went. You went all that way to help us, didn’t you? That’s why you went.’

‘Yes, Mummy. Yes, I did. They’re there, Mummy, the best things.’

She turned to Raymond with an unnerving, glacial smile.

‘Thank you, Mr Forrest. You can go now.’

He did not want to go. He did not want to see if she struck him; he did not want to see a child so desperate to please. He left. Patrick’s high voice followed.

‘I found them, Mummy. I found them. There’s two of them. I found them. Granny’s paintings. I drew a map.’

‘Good boy,’ Mummy said.

Tell them what they want to hear. Love your mother. Even when you know she is very bad, and smashes things up. Make her happy.

‘G
ayle will hate you for this,’ Saul said to Di.

‘Will she?’ Di said.

‘Y
ou do have a roundabout way of going about things, Di,’ Jones said, standing next to her in the furthest attic room, later in the morning, looking at the picture of Thomas’s father. ‘Seems like you can’t think unless you’re looking at some fucking painting or other. Or writing summat. You sent for me, madam?’ He peered at the small picture. ‘Lovely man, old William Porteous. Not like your dad, eh? ’Cos that’s who we’re talking about it, isn’t it? Not this old fella. And we
gotta make it quick, because that Saul’s got me that busy, installing cameras and such. I’ve got my work cut out as it is. And Peg’s not happy.’

‘I look at pictures to clear my mind of other impressions,’ Di said. ‘This man calms me, because he looks like Thomas.’

‘It’s only the sea clears my head,’ Jones said. ‘Nothing else does it. Get on with it, Di, love.’

She lit a cigar. It was nice up here, out of the way. These, and the laundry room, were the ones Peg liked best. Hot in summer.

‘Like I told you, Quig was on the pier, walking towards us. I just had the feeling that he was going to snatch Patrick and I was afraid that I’d be paralysed and not able to stop him, though I could have stopped him, easy. Now you tell me that he might have followed Peg home, that he might have tried to get in that night when I was in the nick. And it might have been, might have been him belted you on the pier. What do I do about it, Jones?’