Chapter Nine

When I got home from my chat with old Mrs Mariner, Ray was in the kitchen talking to Jess. It was only five o’clock but I had the feeling they’d been there for a while. Everything about him was awkward and clumsy; his hands and feet were enormous and seemed to flap as if he had no control over them. When I looked in from the yard through the window, I saw his legs were poking out from the table. His wide, bony feet were bare. If he’d been sitting there in his boxer shorts I wouldn’t have been more shocked. He always took off his mucky work boots when he went into the house but never his socks. They must have been making love. In the big back bedroom, which was Jess’s only private place. None of us were allowed in there, not even me. I pushed open the kitchen door and they grinned at each other, smug and sheepish at the same time. I wanted to smack them.

‘There’s tea in the pot, pet.’ Easy, relaxed, as if she had sex with a plumber every afternoon. Perhaps she did. Perhaps that’s why I hated the new relationship so intensely – Marrakech had made me realize what I was missing and I was jealous.

She must have sensed my tension. ‘Are you all right, Lizzie?’ Then, ‘You have taken your tablets today?’

I glared at her. That was none of her business and not something to be discussed in front of lover-boy. All the same, feeling as I did about Ray, still I asked him if he’d give me a lift the next day. I’ve no pride, you see. Don’t see the point in it.

‘About time I had my own transport again,’ I said in explanation. I’d sold my old car after the incident in Blyth. That was always how I thought of it: ‘the incident in Blyth’. I couldn’t trust myself with a car after that. Road rage kills.

‘Good idea, pet.’ Jess beamed. She thought she’d been forgiven after the slip-up with the pills. ‘It’ll do you good to get out more.’ She turned to Ray. ‘Can you fit her in, love?’

He nodded obediently. If she’d asked him to take me to the North Pole in his little white van, he’d have said ‘no problem’ and gone out to look for snow chains in Halfords.

I knew the garage on the coast road. I’d seen the sign, spinning on a pivot in the wind until it was a blur. Ronald Laing, quality motor vehicles. It was close to the 1930s Wills building, which had been converted into expensive flats, and the office behind the forecourt was built in a similar style. Brick. Curvy lines. Probably not original but put up with some care. The cars were a bit special too. The stock wasn’t the usual junk – the ageing Micras and rusting Fiestas meant for nervous housewives and first-time buyers. This was second-hand but classy: top of the range BMWs, a Jag, a couple of four-wheel-drive monsters, a Golf convertible only two years old. If Kay Mariner had bought her car from here she must have been saving. Or perhaps Ronnie had gone upmarket since they married.

Why did I go to the garage first and not straight to Thomas or his mother? Nerves perhaps. I wanted a practice run. And I wanted to get this right. How would I feel if some stranger blundered up to me with information about my family? Shocked, sceptical. I’d have to trust the messenger before I accepted the message. So I needed as much information as possible before approaching Philip’s son. Already I had fantasies that we might be friends. I know it’s soppy, but I dreamt he’d come to see me almost as a sister. I didn’t want to cock things up before we’d even met.

Ronnie Laing came out of his office to meet us as soon as we pulled up. I’m not sure what I’d been expecting. Someone big and bullying, perhaps, because he’d stopped Thomas from visiting his grandparents. A blustering, overweight car salesman. He wasn’t like that at all. He was slight and small, rather diffident. He was wearing a suit. He helped me out of the clapped-out van as if it were a Bentley. I was glad I’d made an effort to look presentable. There was something about him which made me want to impress. It was warm and I’d put on a sleeveless top and a long, straight skirt, slit at the back so I could walk. I hadn’t lost all the Moroccan tan. A real tan in early summer always looks expensive. Ray stayed in the van, as he’d been told.

Each time I saw Ronnie Laing I would be surprised by how small he was physically. None of that remained in the memory. What you remembered was the smile, boyish and confiding. It was as if he had none of the normal barriers people put up round themselves for protection. He couldn’t pretend. You don’t expect that sort of vulnerability in a used-car salesman. And his energy. That first day when he took my hand to help me out from the van, the touch shocked me. I don’t know why. I looked at him and he smiled; he knew the effect he’d had and he was almost apologetic.

‘Ronnie Laing,’ he said. ‘Spelled like the art gallery.’ His voice surprised me too. It was pleasant, quiet, almost without accent. There was a trace of a stutter. I knew how his name was spelled. There was that big sign by the road. I thought he was trying to tell me something else. That he was cultured, more than a grease monkey. He wasn’t showing off, but he wanted me to know something about him. I didn’t give him my name. I didn’t say anything.

‘What sort of thing are you looking for?’ he went on.

‘Nothing boring. I can’t stand boring cars.’

‘A woman after my own heart.’ In someone else that could have come out as flirty, teasing, but I thought he was quite serious. He gave a little frown as he spoke. With the easy cliché he spoke of a connection between us. That was how it seemed to me then.

He showed me what he had in stock, touching my elbow occasionally to direct my attention. It wasn’t hard to appear interested. I really would have to buy a car soon. Thanks to Philip I had some money and I couldn’t rely on Ray to ferry me about. But all these were way out of my league and he must have sensed that he wasn’t going to make a sale.

‘If you have anything special in mind I can look out for it for you.’

‘Maybe something a little less special.’

He frowned again. ‘We don’t usually deal with the budget stuff.’ There was a moment’s hesitation. ‘But I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Oh?’ I gave him a quizzical look. I hope that’s how it turned out. The effect he was having was so marked that I wasn’t in the mood for role playing.

‘Nothing illegal,’ he said quickly, and the stutter was more marked. ‘I don’t operate that sort of business. I have contacts, go to auctions. Most of my trade is with repeat customers. I know the sort of thing they want. I might bump into something to suit you.’

‘Oh, right.’ An embarrassed giggle to show I’d misunderstood. I went with him into his office to pick up a business card. There was a framed photo of a woman and two little girls on his desk. The woman had a hairstyle that could withstand a hurricane and a thin, straight smile. There was nothing of Thomas, but I hadn’t expected there to be. Also on the desk was a cardboard dispenser with application forms to join something called the Countryside Consortium. A picture of a bloke carrying a shotgun, wearing green wellies and a Barbour jacket was printed on each one.

‘I didn’t have you down as the green wellie type,’ I said.

‘It’s a serious issue. You have to do what you can.’

‘Oh, right,’ I said again. ‘Of course.’

‘I’ll need your name and number.’ He paused a beat and I seemed to stop breathing. ‘In case I find you a car.’

‘Lizzie.’ I scribbled the Sea View number on a piece of paper.

‘Lizzie what?’

‘That’ll find me.’

In the car Ray was listening to something plaintive and Irish. Easy listening for him.

‘What do you know about the Countryside Consortium?’ He’d switched off the tape and pulled out into traffic. Every Sunday he went walking in the hills. I didn’t know anyone else who’d have information on the countryside.

‘Those buggers.’ For Ray the reaction was vituperative. I was surprised. I’d even thought he might be a member.

‘What’s wrong with them?’

So he told me. They were land-owning bastards who tried to restrict the right to roam on their land. They were townie thugs who thought they should have a free hand to bait badgers and steal raptors from the wild. They were hunters and punt-gunners and they thought democracy didn’t apply to them. In Ray’s view, they were the scum of the earth. None of that seemed to apply to Ronnie Laing. He was gentle and polite. I supposed his support of the consortium was a ploy to hit the farmers with his fancy four-wheel drives, but even that seemed too calculating for him. I thought Ray must have got the whole thing wrong.

That evening I couldn’t put Ronnie Laing out of my mind. I’m an obsessive. It’s part of my personality. Occasionally images get stuck in my head and they go round in a loop, like an irritating song. What bugged me most was that I couldn’t place him. I couldn’t fix his class or his education, even his age. Usually I’m good at that stuff. Ray and Jess invited me to the pub with them, but I stayed at home. I lay on my bed remembering the shock when Ronnie touched me and his quiet voice, the effort it took him to keep the stammer out, the slim, fit body beneath the suit. I was still awake when the clock at St Bartholomew’s struck three. I took a sleeping tablet then and eventually fell unconscious.

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